Thank you
all for being here at the Circle of 2nd Amendment Friendship
Dinner. I would like to especially welcome our honored
guest, the Honorable Laurence H. Silberman, Judge of the U.S
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The evening is hosted by
the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, and I'd like to thank the
Chairman of the Fund who is here this evening, Mr. William
Dailey. Bill is an attorney and a Harvard Law grad.The last words that the late Congressman Harold Volkmer spoke to me were one year ago, after he and the other Civil Rights Defense Fund Trustees voted to fund the events of this weekend. He said, "It's a shame David couldn't here." He meant Dr. David Caplan, Ph.D., who had died in 2006. Congressman Volkmer was likely the best and strongest friend that the right to keep and bear arms has ever had. Think McClure-Volkmer, the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, and remember that Harold Volkmer got the House to pass it, after the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee had declared the bill dead on arrival. But Harold thought of David Caplan when he thought of how far the right to keep and bear arms had come by 2011. By then, the Supreme Court had said that the right is an individual right, and the Supreme Court had said that it was incorporated on the states. And by then, the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund was considering the next generation of academics and scholars, the "what's next?" in the big picture. And Harold Volkmer's thought was, "It's a shame that David Caplan couldn't be here to see how far we've come."
Everyone knows who Harold Volkmer was. Some may not know who David Caplan was. And since Harold wanted David Caplan remembered, it's appropriate to explain who David Caplan was for those who might not know:
From when the NRA's Civil Rights Defense Fund began in 1978, until his death in 2006, David Caplan was a trustee on the Fund. In 1976, he authored one of the earliest pro-2nd Amendment law review articles and got it published in FORDHAM URBAN LAW JOURNAL. The paper attracted the attention of many academics and helped to inspire scholarship and writing that continued even after David's death.
In Dr. David Caplan's eyes, every person who worked to preserve the 2nd Amendment was a friend, and he used the phrase "circle of 2nd Amendment friendship" to include all who were devoted to the cause. And that is why this dinner is the "Circle of 2nd Amendment Friendship Dinner."
