America has a violence problem. The solution is older than the Republic.
The Legalize Dueling Institute advances a simple, historically grounded policy framework: state‑sanctioned dueling grounds in every major American city, open exclusively to consenting adults. Our projections indicate steady generational declines in duel‑inclination — and a calmer, more agreeable citizenry for everyone else.
Three pillars, one arithmetic
Consent
No individual may be challenged, compelled, cajoled, or surprised into an engagement. Participation requires affirmative, notarized consent from both parties, verified in triplicate and revocable unilaterally at any moment up to the count of ten. Consent is not a feature of the Framework. It is the door, the room, and the building.
History
This is not a radical proposal. It is a restoration. A sitting Vice President of the United States participated in 1804.2 A future President participated in 1806, and was elected twice afterward.3 The Code Duello (1777) governed the practice with twenty-five written rules. The republic has prior, documented experience with regulated dueling. What it never built was the institution to administer it.
Arithmetic
Two duelists enter. One duelist exits. Every time. The mechanism requires no persuasion, no rehabilitation, and no further appropriations. Each engagement reduces the duel-inclined population by exactly one (1), permanently and voluntarily. Applied recursively across generations, the trend admits only one direction.
The Attrition Model™: two duelists enter. One duelist exits. Every time.
The Institute's flagship framework converts an open-ended social liability — the violent individual, at large and non-depleting — into a closed, self-terminating, fully consensual transaction. Prohibition does not reduce the duel-inclined population; it merely disperses that inclination into our neighborhoods, our roads, and our public life. The Framework convenes it, notarizes it, and subtracts from it.
For you
Nothing changes at first, and then, decade by decade, the aggregate does: quieter roads, calmer public discourse, fewer disputes escalating past words. You need never attend, approve, or observe. The Framework imposes no obligation on non-participants, and creates none.
For the duel-inclined
A lawful, regulated, supervised mechanism, available exclusively upon your own affirmative and notarized request, and revocable by you at any moment up to the count of ten. The availability of counterparties declines by design. That decline is the policy.
A well-documented American tradition
The Code Duello
Twenty-five rules, adopted at Clonmel. Evidence that the practice has historically accepted, and answered to, formal regulation.
Hamilton – Burr
Weehawken, New Jersey. Conducted by mutual consent, with seconds and a physician present, under the code of the day.2
Jackson – Dickinson
A future President of the United States, a consenting participant. He was elected to the nation's highest office twenty-two years later.3
“We are not proposing something new. We are proposing something old, under stronger safeguards than it ever had.” Col. (Ret.) Dewitt Farrow · Chair, Historical Precedent · The Legalize Dueling Institute
A measurably calmer America by 2130
Our projections indicate that a century of managed attrition yields a citizenry that resolves its disputes through words, procedure, and time — because those inclined to resolve them otherwise will, by their own election, have grown rare. The Institute regards this outcome as unambiguously desirable, and has defended that judgment at length.4
Skeptics ask whether legalization will increase violence. The Institute welcomes this objection — it is Objection 3.1, and it is answered, with figures, alongside four others.
Notes
- Legalize Dueling Institute, Working Paper No. 12: The Attrition Model™ (2026). Peer status: reviewed internally. Simulation results are insensitive to all tested parameterizations; see WP No. 12, §3. ↩
- Weehawken, N.J., July 11, 1804. The Vice President completed his term of office. ↩
- Harrison's Mills, Ky., May 30, 1806. Gen. Jackson was elected President in 1828 and re-elected in 1832. ↩
- Legalize Dueling Institute, Working Paper No. 4: On the Civic Value of Tranquility (2026), pp. 1–44. ↩