Times asked its readers, "Where do you stand on assault weapons?" Spitzer replied that one approach to "breaking the political deadlock over gun control" would be to treat it like international arms relations and "renounce disarmament but embrace arms control, especially for weapons of military origin." Prior to and since the United States Supreme Court rulings in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), Spitzer also argues that history and prior law do not support the individualist interpretation of the Second Amendment reflected in these two recent court rulings. Since the cases were handed down, he wrote: "The Heller and McDonald rulings established, as a matter of law, an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. But while judges can change the law, they cannot change history, and the historical record largely contradicts the bases for these two recent rulings." Spitzer is the author of six books on gun control: The Politics of Gun Control, The Right to Bear Arms, Gun Control: A Documentary and Reference Guide, coauthor, along with Glenn H. Utter, of Encyclopedia of Gun Control and Gun Rights, Guns across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights, and The Gun Dilemma: How History is Against Expanded Gun Rights. Other work In addition to the American presidency and gun politics, Spitzer has researched and written on many topics related to American politics and public policy, including the behavior of American institutions, national elections, the mass media, the Constitution, and New York State politics and policy. His monograph The Right to Life Movement and Third Party Politics was a close examination of the New York-based Right to Life political party. His book Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Education and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning, argues that legal training serves the practice of law well, but, according to the Harvard Law Review, "presents a sharp critique of the 'wayward constitutional theorizing' published in law journals." Pulitizer Prize winning historian Jack Rakove said of this book, "Nowhere is the gap between pretension and performance [in legal education] more evident than in the realm of constitutional law, and Robert Spitzer explains why." Since 1997, Spitzer has been series editor for the book series on American Constitutionalism published by SUNY Press. Personal life and education Spitzer was born in Utica, New York in 1953. He received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, from SUNY Fredonia in 1975, his