Joyce Lee Malcolm

Joyce Malcolm with U.S. Army lawyers and Gregory Gadson on Law Day in 2014 Joyce Lee Malcolm (born October 17, 1941) is the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law. She has been called "the leading historian on the history of English gun control and gun rights" by David Kopel.

Education Malcolm received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. In 2006, she joined George Mason University and became the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment there, a position she has held ever since. Her other positions prior to joining George Mason University included professorships at Princeton University, Boston University, Northeastern University and Cambridge University. She has been called one of the five "inner circle" proponents of the "Standard Model" interpretation of the Second Amendment, along with Robert J. Cottrol, Stephen P. Halbrook, Don B. Kates, and Robert E. Shalhope.

Views on gun control In 2012, Malcolm wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal stating that strict gun control laws enacted after mass shootings in Britain and Australia "haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres." The following year, she told PBS NewsHour that she thought the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 was unconstitutional because recent Supreme Court decisions had found that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns that are commonly used for protection.

Other work Malcolm is also the author of Peter's War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution, a 2009 book that tells the story of the American Revolution from the perspective of an enslaved boy named Peter Sharon, who fought in the colonies' army during the war and a biography of Benedict Arnold entitled The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold: An American Life.

Awards and honors Malcolm is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and Peter's War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2010.