Heller Open Thread
Posted by
tgirsch
Since much of the blogosphere is talking about Heller, and I’m more or less indifferent to it, I figured the least I could do is leave an open thread for discussion. Here it is. If you’re interested in the Happy-about-this constituency, Uncle’s all atwitter. As for an Unhappy-about-this constituency, well, none of the (very few) left-leaning blogs I frequent have really had all that much to say about it, so I’d be interested in a recommendation.
Discuss.
UPDATE: Professor Balkin has an interesting take, sure to stir up some shit:
Despite its long and occasionally dreary originalist exegesis, the Heller majority is not really defending the values of 1791. It is enforcing the values of 2008. This is no accident. Indeed, the result in Heller would have been impossible without the success of the conservative movement and the work of the NRA and other social movement actors who, over a period of about 35 years, succeeded in changing Americans’ minds about the meaning of the Second Amendment, and made what were previously off-the-wall arguments about the Constitution socially and politically respectable to political elites. This is living constitutionalism in action.
Like Lawrence v. Texas, Heller is another example of how the Supreme Court exercises judicial review in response to successful social and political mobilizations, regardless of what individual Justices understand themselves to be doing. The only difference is that in Heller, it is conservatives who have successfully changed public opinion, a change that has now become reflected in Supreme Court opinions.
Welcome to the living Constitution, Justice Scalia. We couldn’t have done it without you.
But for a good summation about how I tend to feel about this, we have to look to Sandy Levinson:
If one had any reason to believe that either Scalia or Stevens was a competent historian, then perhaps it would be worth reading the pages they write. But they are not. Both opinions exhibit the worst kind of “law-office history,” in which each side engages in shamelessly (and shamefully) selective readings of the historical record in order to support what one strongly suspects are pre-determined positions. And both Scalia and Stevens treat each other—and, presumably, their colleagues who signed each of the opinions—with basic contempt, unable to accept the proposition, second nature to professional historians, that the historical record is complicated and, indeed, often contradictory. Justice Stevens, for example, writes that anyone who reads the text of the Second Amendment and its history, plus a murky 1939 decision of the Court, will find “a clear answer” to the question of whether the Second Amendment supports a “right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes.” This is simply foolish. Justice Stevens pays no real attention to a plethora of first-rate historical work written over the past decade that challenges this kind of foolish self-confidence, as is true also of Justice Scalia. There is no serious discussion, for example, of Saul Cornell’s fine book A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control, but many other examples could be offered, from various sides of the ideological spectrum.
Both Scalia and Stevens manifest what is worst about Supreme Court rhetoric, which is precisely the tone of sublime confidence when addressing even the most complex of issues. The late Victoria Geng once wrote a marvelous parody of Supreme Court decisions in which, among other things, the Court announced that “nature is more important than nurture.” We wouldn’t take such a declaration seriously. It is not clear why we should take much more seriously the kinds of over-confident declarations as to historical meaning that both Scalia and Stevens indulge in.
What is especially ironic is that the strongest support for Scalia’s position comes from acknowledging that the Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, has been “dynamically” interpreted and has taken on some quite different meanings from those it originally had. Whatever might have been the case in 1787 with regard the linkage of guns to service in militias—and the historical record is far more mixed on this point than either Scalia or Stevens is willing to acknowledge—there can be almost no doubt that by the mid-19th century, an individual right to bear arms was widely accepted as a basic attribute of American citizenship. One of the reasons that the Court in Dred Scott denied that blacks could be citizens was precisely that Chief Justice Taney recognized that citizens could carry guns, and it was basically unthinkable that blacks could do so. Thus, in effect, they could not be citizens. Charles Sumner, who, unlike Taney is quoted by Scalia, strongly endorsed the rights of anti-slavery settlers in Kansas to have guns to protect themselves against their pro-slavery opponents. If one reads only Scalia and Stevens, one would believe that there is no dynamism to the Constitution, which is both stupid as a theory of interpretation and, more to the point, completely misleading as a way of understanding the American constitutional tradition.
The Gun Guys are crapping themselves, as always, although I expect they count more as Joyce Foundation cronies than bloggers. DailyKosites were surprisingly calm on the matter, for Kosites. Sugarmann’s lost whatever semblance of sanity he had in the first place.
Oh, and the ACLU, defenders of neo-Nazis and anti-American terrorists everywhere (someone does need to do it… but still, eugh) find the case alarming. It’s a complete “reinterpretation”, making the unconstitutional law a “victim” in a “straightjacket”.
Comment 6/26/2008
“Oh, and the ACLU, defenders of neo-Nazis and anti-American terrorists everywhere (someone does need to do it… but still, eugh)”
Yep, those friggin’ civil liberties. Sure would be a better place if we could just do away with them. Or at least decide who should be afforded them and who does not deserve them.
Comment 6/26/2008
I’d be more taken by the principled stand for civil liberties and human rights if they defended the less nasty groups first. As I said, someone does need to do it; the right to a fair trial, and thus the rest of the Constitution, depends on such.
There’s a difference between providing services to people having a right to such, and breathlessly defending something remarkably nasty while stepping on the flowers. People had a lot of criticism for Cochrane’s work for Simpson and Jackson (and depending on viewpoint and evidence, Pratt), but at least he and most other defense lawyers worked for people who actually might have been innocent or wronged, as long as they had or would have money, rather than merely not proven guilty enough or were politically attractive.
The ACLU has demonstrated here that it doesn’t have even that level of intellectual integrity. For those unfamiliar with the group, their very brochure states that : “The American Civil Liberties Union is our nation’s guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.” and that “We protect American values… Our job is to conserve America’s original civic values - the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - and defend the rights of every man, woman and child in this country. We’re not anti-anything.”
This is the organization that founded itself to fight for the right to free speech, before any court decision upheld a free speech claim, according to their own damned brochure. This is the ACLU that’s stood strong behind Roe and countless other decisions that carved out new portions of law, just for them.
Their FAQ page still claims that the right to bear arms is a collective right.
This is the organization that claims to fight any attempt to limit civil liberty or create discrimination.
That they were not on Heller’s side of the case is enough of a mark on their record. That they have not, twelve hours later, managed to change their legal stance when the previous one was shown false and overly limiting on the civil liberties of a human being, proves a rather significant bias against a human right. Calling the unconstitutional law a victim, on the other hand, demonstrates a level of intellectual dishonesty, disregard for a human right, and simple poor tact, significant enough to put the ACLU within the lines of an “unhappy-about-this” left-wing blog.
Comment 6/26/2008
gattsuru:
That you have serious issues with the ACLU’s stance on guns is well-established. But what about all the other stuff? What’s your beef there? I frankly can’t name a single organization that does anywhere near as much to protect unpopular speech, privacy, etc., than the ACLU. If you’ve got a replacement in mind, I’m all ears. But until then, they continue to get my support, because I’m not willing to throw out my support for them over one issue (particularly one about which I’m essentially ambivalent) when they do so much good on the others.
Their FAQ page still claims that the right to bear arms is a collective right.
Well, not exactly. They say that they believe it to be a collective right. If the court had ruled 5-4 the other way, would you amend all of your blog entries and posts to delete any references to you believing it’s an individual right? I strongly doubt it. So why the double-standard, then? Why should they be expected to do something you wouldn’t?
That they have not, twelve hours later, managed to change their legal stance when the previous one was shown false and overly limiting on the civil liberties of a human being, proves a rather significant bias against a human right.
I didn’t realize that they would be expected to have an emergency meeting of their national board to amend their policies to reflect a decision with which most of their board members probably disagree, in order to get their FAQ updated in time to meet gattsuru’s exacting standards. But when you put it like that, I can see why I should withdraw my support from those lazy bastards…
Comment 6/26/2008
Oh, and one more nit:
defenders of neo-Nazis and anti-American terrorists everywhere
They’re actually defenders of those who are accused of those things. Your automatic presumption of guilt is telling. But even if they’re guilty, it doesn’t matter, given that fully half of the bill of rights concerns the rights of those accused and/or convicted of crimes. And yet Mr. Constitution thinks that their work here is a knock against the ACLU.
Something tells me that you wouldn’t even begin to bat an eye at an organization that shared your view of the second (1/10th of the Constitution) while taking an officially neutral but probably biased-somewhat-against stance on the rights of accused and convicted criminals (5/10 of the Constitution). About that plank in your eye…
P.S. I think the ACLU’s self-description as being “neutral” on gun control is actually fairly accurate, but I’m willing to reconsider that. If you can show where they’ve defended a gun control law in court, that would undermine their claim of neutrality.
Comment 6/26/2008
All er… five or six of them? I probably would, but that’s because I tend to find technical accuracy important. I wouldn’t expect it of most bloggers. The way my head works isn’t exactly typical, nor recommended.
I might not even change my overall viewpoint, but it’s rather important to focus things on meaningful goals; in the case of a flopped Heller, getting.
But there’s a difference between a blog, which can cover hundreds if not thousands of posts on a similar subject, and an FAQ. Moreover, bloggers are not exactly vast organizations with more than a half-million members. The ACLU’s About Us FAQ section contains a whole 8 questions and answers about Issues the ACLU Champions, one of which is about gun control.
Beyond, you know, claiming that they believe there is no individual right to keep and bear arms on their national website? Or calling an unconstitutional law a victim? Massachusetts ACLU provided assistance to the “Safe Homes” initiative, officially supporting the goal of “reducing handgun violence”.
But, hey, it’s not like having a group renowned for taking the most absolutist stance on the planet for most of the Bill of Rights, claiming that the Second was written on opposite-day, could mean anything or be at all harmful. Declaring something to not exist is neutral, right? Atheists are ‘neutral’ on the concept of God or Gods, aren’t they?
Of course, since we know the Heller case was entirely unpredictable and came, literally out of thin air, summoned by the eldritch magicks of the Supreme Courts. Italian eldritch magicks, but eldritch magicks non-the-less.
For the love of {insert deity}, this isn’t that tough. You’re honestly telling me that’s an exacting standard to either plan ahead, when you’ve got months of warning, or just pull the damned link off the page while planning?
It was important enough for them to put a fairly pronounced FAQ page up for the matter.
Yes, I think it’s a knock on the ACLU when they claim to defend all the Bill of Rights for everyone, but focus on protecting the scum and dregs of society, then condemn a court decision that recognized and defended part of the Bill of Rights in a way that more than half of the American populace agreed with.
Would you think it particularly accurate for a carpenter to say he built a whole table, then pointed at a trio of legs, saying that the fourth leg and top doesn’t exist?
For those who missed this at home, the man in question, a retired police officer with a stellar record, just wanted to own a handgun in his own home. The ACLU will protect anything, and searches for the claims that have the biggest impact… but found this man to be less than worth their while.
Well, last I checked, the NRA provides and provided legal support to members on 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendment matters. They were some of the first ones hit with campaign finance reform laws, like during the J&G Gun Catalog case. Of course, last I checked, the NRA didn’t claim to be in the business of supporting the whole damned bill of rights for everyone in the first place — it was mission creep for them to just enter the political scene in the first place. That’s not the case for the ACLU, which still claims to be in it for the whole Constitution and Bill of Rights.
There’s a difference between honesty and false advertising, and easy joke about Obama aside, I know that even the average Democrat can figure this one out.
No, not quite. When you defend a group, in court, who go by the name National Socialist Party of America, you’re defending neoNazis. They were literally national socialists, and had no issue with that accusation. The ACLU’s support of John Walker Lindh’s post-conviction and post-appeal suits is probably questionable, since although he was an antiAmerican idiot, the 2001-era Taliban were only terrorist prima facie and by fact, not by the American government’s classification at the time (afaik). I think it’s close enough to be accurate for the sake of communication.
These people still have rights, but that doesn’t change a fundamental and demonstrated fact of who they are.
In case we get to the subject of child pornographers and illegal immigrants, between Charles Rust-Tierney and the brief for New York v Ferber for the former case and the Hazelton Pennsylvania case for the latter.
But, hey, thanks for assuming ignorance or intellectual dishonesty.
Comment 6/27/2008
ON gun control, I believe the ACLU’s official policy is neutral. They don’t offer support to either side. That was their stance before Heller, as it will probably remain after. And of course if one justice had come down on the other side of the issue…
My point being this is an issue about which there can be honest debate.
What is more interesting to me is Gatt’s statement that “I’d be more taken by the principled stand for civil liberties and human rights if they defended the less nasty groups first.” Sort of like using beauty contest rules to determine who get’s their rights defended. Not an approach I would support. Why do they defend the nasty groups? Because it is the nasty guys that get their constitutional rights abused first. The very factthat they are regarded as nasty serves as the justification for denying their rights. Democracy can be tough, and one of the tough parts is approving of the fact that even the nasty groups get their rights. That’s my take on the matter.
Comment 6/27/2008
Yikes. I started my comment and then got caught up in the Colbert Report and my comment ends up being two slots out of sync. Sorry for the lack of thread continuity. I thought I was coming in after Tgirsches first comment.
(Also, for reasons that Tom knows and will keep to himself, my typing is particularly awkward today. It’s all good though..)
Comment 6/27/2008
I don’t think the beauty contest is really an apt comparison. The more relevant question is the amount of political capital spent for the resulting Court dicta. In the case of the neoNazis, it didn’t matter to the court that there were neoNazis involved. It mattered whether the free speech right was protected or not. There were countless other similar bans on the matter, even unpopular ones, that were not so politically costly. Going after most of them probably would not have cost the ACLU 30,000 members.
Heller is the new Roe when it comes to significant and law-changing court decisions. But from what the average viewer can see, the ACLU’s spent more time wondering about the right to virtual child pornography, and been much more favorable to the virtual porn.
Comment 6/27/2008
‘ON gun control, I believe the ACLU’s official policy is neutral.’
I thought so too until their recent statement.
Comment 6/27/2008
there was one spot in The People versus Larry Flynt where Larry was saying something like (paraphrased from memory) “i’m the worst there is; if the first amendment protects me, it protects everybody. but if you allow me to be censored, what’s going to protect the next person to be the worst there is?”
i don’t know how historically accurate that quote was, it’s certainly possible it was part of the movie’s artistic license. but the political point it made was spot on. those scum of society, those neo-nazis and child pornographers, need to be defended in court because they’re the worst there are. it’s no trick to defend only and exclusively honest, upstanding citizens, because they aren’t under threat… yet. let enough many of the worst scum go undefended, and pretty soon all the scum that’s worse than us will be locked up, and then who’ll defend us?
that said, i’m massively disappointed in the ACLU for dropping the ball on Heller. gattsuru has a point, they had plenty of warning — don’t anybody try to tell me the ACLU don’t watch the supreme court docket! — and by now, if they actually have any halfway sensible reason to consider the second amendment anything but a statement of an important civil right, it’s past time they presented that reason. their policy statement on gun control, still linked to on their web site, is pretty much demolished in detail by the Heller decision; they need to make some comment on that, sooner the better.
Comment 6/27/2008
I really don’t understand how people don’t understand who gets defended more than others by these types of organizations. Those who are most often attacked need the defense. You might as well be asking why I’m giving a buck to the dude sleeping on the street instead of you. I may be inclined to give you a buck too, but you’re gonna have to convince me why I need to first, or at least show me your tits, if applicable.
Here’s what makes me just wanna go Shawn Chacon on the libertarians that make these points all the time. The same mofos who are least compassionate about equality of opportunity and resources by circumstance are most outraged when distribution of resources by will is unequal.
Before the game starts, the moderator decides everybody wearing a green hat gets 100 extra chips. Since you’re wearing a green hat (though you didn’t even dress yourself), you don’t see this as a problem. After an hour of game play, somebody says that everybody wearing a blue hat gets 5 chips, and you scream bloody fucking murder! Crying, “What about the green hats?,” frankly like a little spoiled bitch!
You wanna be hooked up by the ACLU - go and adopt a belief system or lifestyle that gets you marginalized by mainstream society. It’s the same old reverse racism argument - okay, homie, you don’t wanna be picked last on the basketball court - you willing to trade your mortgage approval for that?…
Comment 6/27/2008
gattsuru:
When I say that I think the ACLU’s description of their official position on gun control as being “neutral” is accurate, I mean this in the sense that Ted mentioned. While their board may be strongly in favor of gun control, the organization does not involve itself in litigation either for or against gun control laws.
Also, others have made the point about why the nasty groups get defended by the ACLU, but I’d like to add a couple of notes. First, the not-so-nasty groups don’t need the ACLU when their free speech rights are infringed, because there are plenty of lawyers and organizations willing to do it. The ACLU’s involvement is important because they get involved when no one else will. Even the worst piece of shit you can imagine still deserves competent legal representation. Second, you make the mistake of assuming that the ACLU only defends such groups, when in fact those are the only cases that get significant publicity, and important difference.
Comment 6/27/2008
So, other than stating something to condone infringements on both the facts and a basic civil liberty as a matter of policy, and in some cases having no problem with state ACLUs crush the matter underfoot in the name of Protecting People, they are neutral on the matter? Interesting definition.
Last I checked, by the way, while the ACLU does protect people that few others will willingly work with, it’s also had no problem protecting popular viewpoints. The ACLU v Reno case, for example.
To quote, again from the same ACLU brochure : “Since we can’t take on every worthy case, we usually select lawsuits that will have the greatest impact, cases that have the potential for breaking new ground and establishing new precedents that will strengthen American freedoms.”
But here, the law is the victim.
As for your update:
Yes, us and our damned brainwashing. Subliminally quoting the Founding Fathers “No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” — Jefferson, Proposal to the Virginia Constitution is sure a sign of revisionism dated back no further than thirty-odd years.
It’s almost as good as fnord.
Yes, and what review of historical fact would be complete without a study of a text known to be biased, funded in no small part by the Joyce Foundation, and written by a man who proudly proclaimed himself to be no originalist. Thankfully the book was written after Cornell stopped defending Bellesiles, but it makes many similar mistakes, only choosing to state opinion and overdraw citations rather than making outright falsifications. This is, after all, the man that quoted the “Cumberland Gazette”’s op-ed page as a scholarly source. The book may be fine, under the definitions “needlessly ornate” or “thin”, but as a matter of actual scholarly discussion, it’s about as meaningful as… well, the Cumberland Gazette.
Comment 6/27/2008
gatt:
You counter someone’s point about both sides of the gun debate tending to cherry-pick evidence for their particular POV by … cherry-picking a quote that supports your POV. Wow! Color me impressed!
And, of course, by your definition of “neutrality,” the US was actually siding with Hitler from 1938 to 1941 by our non-involvement. Interesting…
Comment 6/27/2008
I happen to live in both the DC and Baltimore news markets. So every day, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, there will be a story out of each city about another young person being shot with a handgun. This thread has been open now for three days, so using average statistics, six young people have been shot in those two cities in that time.
This is not an environment that existed when the framers were hard at work drawing up the Constitution. Clearly the threat they were most concerned with was the tyranny of an oppressive government in general, and a specific one based on the other side of the pond in specific,
I wonder if, for each day the Continental Congress was in session, someone walked in and shot a member, would their outlook have changed? I realize this is hyperbole, but it is an interesting thought exercise none-the-less.
Same thing for the Supreme Court. If, for one year, they had to live and work with the same security - or lack thereof - that the average citizen in Dc receives, would they take a different view on the hand gun ban?
I don’t know the answer to this, and I honestly don’t know if a ban on handguns (especially when it is as localized as it is in the case of DC) reduces the number of people shot. But the majority of the people in the city, including the police, seem to think the ban was a good thing. So I am disappointed it has been eliminated.
Perhaps crime statistics in the next year or two will tell us something about the efficacy of the ban, but I have my doubts. One thing I am sure of, the hard-core pro gun folks will find stats that show the city is safer post-ban, and the hard-core gun control folks will find stats that show the exact opposite.
On a related note, I hope local ownership of pigs and cows and horses throughout the city is not allowed. Even if ti is appropriate in rural Pennsylvania.
Comment 6/28/2008
disclaimer - comment written after ingesting hydrocodone…
Comment 6/28/2008
Ted, if your painkillers have wore off now, could you explain to us why crime is so very bad in D.C. and Baltimore — two cities known for their unusually strict gun control — yet not so bad in surrounding areas, where gun control is more liberal?
as for crime statistics before and after the ban, i think we have reason to be cautiously optimistic. quite recently (2001) the state i live in, Michigan, liberalized its concealed weapons laws, with a concomitant surge in concealed weapons licenses. our crime statistics didn’t budge in either direction. moreover, i hear similar tales from other states that have done much the same; increased legal gun ownership, and even gun carrying, does not seem to be a cause of criminal activity, nor even much of a deterrent. illegal gun ownership, carrying, and use, which is what you were decrying through the painkillers, seems to be a different phenomenon entirely.
besides, claiming that they are related phenomena is smearing law-abiding gun owners — the sort who actually want to get licensed, just so they don’t have to break the law — with the same brush as street thugs and murderers. that’s rather offensive, when you think about it. hopefully that was just the hydrocodone talking?
Comment 6/28/2008
tgirisch, I’ve advocated taking out Iraq for the better part of a decade, as well asassasinating the leadership of Afganistan since its legitimate government lost to illegal actions by the Taliban in the late 1990s. Ditto for Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and a number of other governments intent on killing off their own citizens. Call me an unrealistic, murderous warmonger if you like — I consider it far less of an insult than pacifism in the face of mass starvation, fascist socialism, and murder.
Three guesses what my opinion on America’s early WWII isolationism is.
But even those disgusting actions are not an apt comparison. FDR, in one of his few intelligent acts, did try to help. Say what you will about the SS St Loius, but the man did try to keep Britain in the fight, bending the rules if need be. Those in America who condoned early Nazi actions or called against the actions if right-thinking individuals, in even the lighter words, are remembered and reviled for such today.
To point this out again, the ACLU called the unconstitutional law a victim, the Second a straitjacket. Their FAQ still says that those breaking the Constitution’s rules were right. Their state affiliates have seen police go from house-to-house to search for and destroy private property, but in face of city violence said everything was a-OK as long as the people were told that they didn’t have to comply.
I think your comparison needs work.
Comment 6/28/2008
No, I counter someone’s statement that X is a fine, scholarly article necessary for any serious debate on a matter by cherry-picking a quote that supports my POV. The funny thing about fine scholarly articles, rather than blog comments, though, is that you only need a few cherry-pickable quotes before it stops being a fine scholarly article. A blog comment cherry-picking quotes is… well, a blog comment.
Read the text if you’d prefer to see it for yourself. I think the quotes I’ve cherry-picked are a bit more indicative of the text’s overall quality, than Levison’s description is.
Comment 6/28/2008
Nomen,
There is more crime in DC and Baltimore because both cities have high concentrations of very poor people. And epidemic drug use, which of course is related to poverty. I think you know this, but you asked, so I answered.
As for law-abiding people being smeared, you are perhaps being hyper-sensitive. People who are not inclined towards criminal activity will not become so simply because they own a handgun. The reason for a gun ban is to prevent the criminals from getting them. The efficacy of this approach is certainly debatable, especially in a society that is already awash with guns. (A significant percentage of guns used in shootings are stolen. From law-abiding people.)
But, for me, it comes down to this. Am I willing to forgo the right to own a handgun if there is a chance that by doing so, some kid somewhere will get to live beyond age 14? For me, that is a reasonable trade off. Of course others don’t see the situation in those terms, and so they are not compelled to evaluate their rights in terms of another’s life. But for those of us on this side of the issue, that’s really the bottom line. And hence there is little hope of the two sides reaching a common ground.
Comment 6/28/2008
Ted, yes, i do know that. i think alleviating poverty is our best bet for reducing crime — that, and finding something vaguely like a sane drug policy. i don’t think gun control will do much to reduce crime; it’s a band-aid solution to paper over (some of) the symptoms of the problem, at best. that’s why i oppose gun control as a crime control measure. i see it as a distraction from means that might actually address the problem.
i’m delighted you agree! it would seem to follow logically that making it harder for law-abiding people to lawfully own handguns is also pointless and useless as a crime control measure.
by criminals. hey, how about you help me argue for policies that might reduce crime…? help alleviate poverty and get Obama to fix our welfare system, and those gun thieves might not steal anything, much less any guns. that would be by far the better outcome!
i agree. show me the kid, and i’ll even contribute to his or her college fund. but if you want me to forgo a real, tangible, right just for some hypothetical kid, then i do not agree. i could perhaps forgo the right to own a hypothetical handgun for such a might-have-died.
Comment 6/28/2008
As much as the pro-gun crowd irritates the living shit out of me, I have to largely agree with them on the practical side of this matter. Gun control as a crime reduction strategy is probably a minimally effective measure… statistically, at least.
But, as I’m prone to, I’d like to raise a question about the same idea in the abstract. Would stricter handgun regulations have something of ripple effect on the place of “the gun” in terms of our culture? Maybe - I dunno, but it may be worth thinking about.
What makes somebody react to being wronged by thinking, “I’m gonna shoot that motherfucker?” Certainly there are many different levels of both practical and cultural factors that go into such a reaction. In the hood, some kids literally fantasize about what its gonna be like to catch their fist body. To a degree. “the gun” is a problem before it is ever even our hands, whether the gun in the fantasy is licensed and registered, or has duct tape on the handle and the serial scratched off is irrelevant at that point.
Perhaps the real argument for gun control is a little more abstract than politicized, and doctored crime stats.
Comment 6/28/2008
Nomen, yeah, sure. Let’s just fix poverty, solve the drug problem, and eliminate crime. Then the gun control discussion becomes moot. However, in the meantime…
Comment 6/28/2008
In the meantime, banning guns on a friggen island in the middle of the ocean with rather limited entrances has only resulted in increased gun crime and new bans on knives, samurai swords, and lawful self-defense.
If it hasn’t made Britain any safer than Great Britain used to be, why is there this stupid assertion that it’ll be any more effective here?
It’s not like guns are difficult to kitbash together illegally.
Comment 6/28/2008
re Great Britian, let’s be fair. They have had pretty strict gun regulation for 100 years, and my understanding on the recent ban involves new guns, not currently certified ones.
In any event, in GB, after 100 years of strict gun control, they have fewer gun homicides in a year (average of about 50 per year over the last decade) than Baltimore has in three freakin months. Overall, I would say GB is a shining example of how determined, long term gun control can suppress gun violence.
Comment 6/29/2008
It’s easy to say “your understanding”, but it’s pretty easy to check up on the matter. One hundred years ago the worst gun control the stupid island had was a shall-issue license for carry of firearms and purchase of handguns — one of the ways to pass was to own or rent a house.
You have to go twelve years forward from that point to even find the United Kingdom’s version of the NFA, and other than a licensing and registration scheme, the Firearms Act was significantly less nasty than the American NFA. You could get a license at the age of fifteen. Automatic weapons weren’t banned until 1937.
Shotguns didn’t require licensing or registration until 1968. Up until 1987, there really weren’t that many major limitations. The 1988 reaction to the Hungerford massacre is what really got banners frothing at the mouth, and actively started banning commonly used guns. Ironically, it did little to ban handguns, which the murderer actually used, and more to regulate shotguns, which the murderer did not use, so you know exactly what sort of logical connection was between the two matters.
It’s been 30 years. While I’m sure the licensing and registration schemes from before then contributed to the confiscation — the United Kingdom model is exactly why American gun owners oppose registration — it certainly hasn’t been 100 years of strict gun control.
The most recent bans haven’t been on guns — which have been illegal two or three times over for all but a few shotguns for a very limited part of the population — but actually banning such dangerous devices as airsoft, samurai swords, and having money on you.
Let’s ignore, for now, the assumption that gun homicide is somehow inherently worse than, say, having your head cracked open with a crowbar. It’s not like the latter is just a time-out sort of thing.
But actually look at how things go over time, and you’ll notice that even gun crime and gun homicide have been going up since the 1987 ban, and even handgun crime has gone up since the ban on those went in in ‘97.
Great Britain as a whole, last I checked, has significantly different populations, cultures, and rates of poverty and hard drug abuse than Baltimore. It’s obviously going to do better from a general murder viewpoint. What’s relevant is how it does once you’ve controlled for that, and there are few better indicators than what it’s done compared to its own benchmark.
Comment 6/29/2008
Ted, we’ll never eliminate poverty or drugs. but we’ll never eliminate firearms either! the fact that we have not, and cannot, reach nirvana on the first two counts, is no reason not to try to improve on them. no more is it a reason to waste our time and effort on the third count, when we already agree the third count will not help us curtail crime!
Comment 6/29/2008
Yes, when faced with a gun homicide rate of 50 per year, steady over the last century, a good tactic is to point out this does not include crowbar assaults. Because that is very, very central to any gun control debate.
The indisputable facts about GB is they do not have a gun culture, pro-gun advocacy is all but non-existent, very few people own guns (ie there are few guns per capita) and gun deaths per capita are extremely low. Several orders of magnitude less than in the US.
I do not claim that the only, or even the primary reason for the low gun homicide rate in BG is due to lack of guns, at lot of it is due to social differences (the two countries are so radically different after all). But to argue that lack of guns does not contribute at all to lack of gun deaths is, well, I guess it is expected.
For reference, here are a couple of comparisons of gun violence around the world. Just to give a general impression of how well the approach we have in the US is working:
Germany……381 gun murders
France…….255 gun murders
Canada…….165 gun murders
UK…………68 gun murders
Australia…..65 gun murders
Japan………39 gun murders
USA…….11,127 gun murders
Here are gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in the world’s 36 richest countries in 1994: United States 14.24; Brazil 12.95; Mexico 12.69; Estonia 12.26; Argentina 8.93; Northern Ireland 6.63; Finland 6.46; Switzerland 5.31; France 5.15; Canada 4.31; Norway 3.82; Austria 3.70; Portugal 3.20; Israel 2.91; Belgium 2.90; Australia 2.65; Slovenia 2.60; Italy 2.44; New Zealand 2.38; Denmark 2.09; Sweden 1.92; Kuwait 1.84; Greece 1.29; Germany 1.24; Hungary 1.11; Republic of Ireland 0.97; Spain 0.78; Netherlands 0.70; Scotland 0.54; England and Wales 0.41; Taiwan 0.37; Singapore 0.21; Mauritius 0.19; Hong Kong 0.14; South Korea 0.12; Japan 0.05.
At a minimum, I hope we can all agree that we have a problem with guns in the US. And if that is the case, then an approach that involves stonewalling any possible restriction guns is perhaps not entirely responsible.
Comment 6/29/2008
Oops. Steady over last decade, not century.
Comment 6/29/2008
And there’s my beef with much of the pro-gun movement in this country. They simply refuse to acknowledge that guns are a problem of any kind. A gun is a tool, just like a hammer or a screwdriver, albeit a tool that’s specifically designed to kill people at a distance.
I’m not saying gun control works — in fact, I think it’s pretty clear that it doesn’t. Most of the statistics I’ve seen show that it really doesn’t make a damn bit of difference one way or another. If we could wave a magic wand and make the overwhelming majority of guns disappear, obviously, gun violence would go way down, but that ship has long since sailed, and there’s just no way to do that now — there certainly isn’t the political will to do it.
But the rabidly pro-gun folks don’t really want to talk about gun violence, other than to minimize its importance and promptly change the subject. They’re quick to tell you that gun bans aren’t the answer (and, to this end, they’re probably right), but ask them what the answer actually is, and all you’ll get is nebulous crap about “enforcing existing gun laws” [which, the cynic in me interprets as “incarcerate lots of black people”], or oft-debunked John Lott stats about how if we put MORE guns out there, gun crime will magically go DOWN, because the possibility of your victim being armed will deter the violent criminal (except that the overwhelming majority of gun violence in this country is gang-related, where the perps know the people they’re gunning for are also packing, but pay no attention to those facts behind the curtain).
Ask them to do stuff like actually require legal gun owners to be properly and thoroughly trained before packing, or to register all of their firearms and actually take precautions against having them stolen, or require any sort of “personal responsibility” other than the post hoc variety (i.e., arrest them AFTER they’ve done something wrong), and they’ll shit themselves with rage about how you’re a “gun grabber” who “doesn’t get it” and how you’re just setting the table for universal confiscation, etc., etc., etc., go change your underwear. (It’s funny because some of the pro-gun folks I know — including the ex-officer who taught my permit class — complain about how the police don’t get enough firearms training and how they’re not good about firearms responsibility, and yet they advocate that anyone with a valid driver’s license and a pulse ought to be able to buy and carry whatever firearm they want with virtually no restrictions, and they see no disconnect here.)
Nomen is right, fighting poverty, improving education , and a sane drug policy would go a long, long way toward greatly reducing gun violence. Problem is, most of the pro-gun folks I encounter don’t want to do anything meaningful on any of those fronts (with drugs being the notable exception), or worse, want to go the wrong way — privatize schools so that quality education becomes even more a privilege of wealth, kill the social safety net so that it’s even harder to get out of poverty, etc., etc.
To me, criminalizing guns clearly isn’t the answer. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s any sort of infringement to handle guns and gun ownership the way we handle driving and car ownership: require registration, demonstrate proficiency before being allowed to operate, etc.
Comment 6/29/2008
That’s pretty much my feeling as well. Although I am willing to allow DC to ban handguns if they so choose.
Comment 6/29/2008
I wanted to do a bit of research to respond to an exchange I had with Nomen above. It went like this:
me: Am I willing to forgo the right to own a handgun if there is a chance that by doing so, some kid somewhere will get to live beyond age 14? For me, that is a reasonable trade off.
Nomen: i agree. show me the kid, and i’ll even contribute to his or her college fund. but if you want me to forgo a real, tangible, right just for some hypothetical kid, then i do not agree.
Here is a link to a US DOJ site.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/guic.pdf
A couple of facts: about 350,000 hand guns are stolen each year. There is currently a database of over 1,200,000 stolen handguns. Clearly handgun theft is not hypothetical.
According to the 1991 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those inmates who possessed a handgun, 9% had acquired it through theft, and 28% had acquired it through an illegal
market such as a drug dealer or fence. Of all inmates, 10% had stolen at least one gun, and 11% had sold or traded
stolen guns. Studies of adult and juvenile offenders
that the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services conducted in 1992 and 1993 found that 15% of the adult offenders and 19% of the juvenile offenders had stolen guns; 16% of the adults and 24% of the juveniles had kept a stolen gun; and 20% of the adults and 30% of the juveniles had sold or traded a stolen gun. From a sample of juvenile inmates in four States, Sheley and Wright found that more than 50% had stolen a gun at least once in their lives and
24% had stolen their most recently obtained handgun. They concluded that theft and burglary were the original, not
always the proximate, source of many guns acquired by the juveniles.
So, let’s be clear and honest here. Law-abiding hand gun owners inadvertently provide about 300,000 weapons to criminals each and every year, and these guns are frequently used in crimes. That’s pretty tough to get around.
Comment 6/30/2008
Ted,
You’re missing something critical: What change in gun policy would reduce the number of guns lost by the general public to gun thieves?
Do you want to stop the manufacture of all guns in the country? Would that even work? Do you want to disallow citizens from keeping guns in there homes? Would that even change the number of guns stolen, rather than just changing who and where they were stolen from? Do you want to disallow any citizen from keeping guns? Is there any evidence that that’d work?
Comment 6/30/2008
Dan M, sorry, I thought the diots were bold enough to be connected. I’ll do that. A nation-wide handgun ban would cut off the flow of over 300,000 stoolen hand guns per year into the criminal community. I believe that would save a few lives. You ask for evidence. The statistics are my evidence.
I know this will never happen, I just want to everyone who is against it to understand that there is a real price that is paid in terms of lives. As to the “oh, the guns will just come from somewhere else” argument - do you have any evidence this is true?
The effects would take time to pan out. So to with energy independence and climate change. It’s an excuse to not take action, but not a valid reason.
Comment 6/30/2008
on the topic of preventing gun thefts, i’m quite conflicted about safe storage requirements, myself.
on one hand, they’re plainly a good idea — high-quality gun safes and locks not only reduce accidents, but slow down thieves who are specifically looking for firearms, and can just about eliminate thefts of opportunity. whatever firearm one chooses to keep for home defense and self defense can be kept controlled through, well, being in physical vicinity to its owner whenever that owner is at home, and locked up in the safe with any and all other guns at other times.
on the other hand, good safes are expensive, and requiring them in every case would strongly discriminate based on income. that sets my egalitarian teeth on edge.
tax credits are useful only to people who pay net taxes. i don’t even do that every year, and i’m in the bottom of the middle class already. government vouchers for gun safes are obviously a political impossibility, no matter how much it would improve safety.
i don’t have a good answer to this issue, much as i would like to.
Comment 6/30/2008
All your statistics demonstrate is an ability to ignore the other side of the argument. A good portion of the human rights argument here is that removing guns removes the ability to defend yourself from aggressors. Even where there was a decrease in gun murderers, it has always been accompanied by an increase in total murders, as there is little way for the most vulnerable members of society to defend themselves from murderers (who are statistically in better-than-average physical shape) without firearms.
Unless you wish to actually argue that being beaten to death with a crowbar is better than being shot, I think the discussion of total murders to be a lot more relevant.
For example, we quickly find that while the United States reports 12% more gun-related deaths than Mexico, according to your data, Mexico’s reported murder rate is more than 2.57 times that of the United States. Brazil, another one you considered better, has nearly five times the murder rate of the United States. Estonia, Argentina likewise have significantly higher murder rates, despite having lower numbers of ‘gun-related deaths’.
Oh, and the U.S. has more stringent reporting criteria than other Western nations, but that’s probably a minor thing.
The number of guns stolen from police and military sources? Situations such as the United Kingdom or Australia, where the number of handguns confiscated on islands have only increased since the year after they adopted their respective ban and near-ban-level registration and licensing on handguns? The ease and complexity which homemade guns have been created in places that tried to ban them?
Or the simple part where turning law-abiding citizens into defenseless and sitting ducks for criminals doesn’t require them to find guns to be dangerous and murderous?
Again, as I’ve pointed out, the United States does not have a problem with guns. We could magically transmute every single gun crime and gun murder into a crowbar crime and crowbar murder, and it wouldn’t make anyone safer but the average criminal. We have a problem with murderers and criminals.
Let’s get this over with right now.
Do you want to go down that road?
Why stop at guns? Let’s look at the other social differences that have made Japan the modern-day paradise it is, free from gun crime. Annual, warrant-less searches of all homes. A presumption of guilt during criminal trials. Refusing to spill the beans to police being an effective confession. A conviction rate (over 99%) that almost spells out kangaroo court. No right to a jury. The right to an attorney doesn’t apply until after indictment. Most cases involve a “confession” from interrogation sessions which can last months. Torture and mistreatment of prisoners — torture actually involving lasting physical harm — has lead Amnesty International to call the entire system flagrant violation of human rights. In effect, there is no right to privacy from street searches by police, and even evidence found during an illegal search is always permissible in court.
Xenophobia and second-class-citizen status for legal immigrants and the offspring of legal immigrants is well-documented and pervasive. Social and racial groups “prone to illegal acts” are routinely isolated and monitored to an even higher degree, regardless of the guilt or innocence of any one individual or even the existence of any given crime at the time.
But it self-evidently works. There’s nearly no rate of gun-related deaths at all. Surely we can’t stonewall progress!
Comment 6/30/2008
gattsuru:
This is admittedly “going from the gut,” but you seem to be arguing that the number and availability of guns has zero impact on the murder rate, and that seems plainly wrong to me. It’s simple physics that it’s easier to kill someone with a gun than it is to do so by other means. I simply don’t buy your argument that if guns were more widespread in Brazil in Mexico, the homicide rates in those countries would go down.
A determined killer is of course going to find a way to kill, but I suspect that at least in the US, most gun homicides aren’t of the “determined killer” variety. In fact, I have to reiterate my earlier statement that the entire culture of gang violence stands in direct contradiction to the “[potentially] armed victims reduce gun violence” meme. In the absence of guns, I don’t think you’d find very many drive-by stabbings.
Mind you, I’m nominally pro-gun rights (though by no means a “gun nut”), but I still find a lot of the arguments used by the rabidly pro-gun wing (as well as by the rabidly anti-gun wing) to be seriously lacking. Including several of those you’ve made here.
Comment 6/30/2008
Nomen, another significant drawback to the gun safe idea is that keeping a gun in a safe would tend to reduce the effectiveness of using it for self defense. There just is no easy answer to this question.
I appreciate and respect your discussion on this topic. In fact, with the exception of one person, this might qualify as the sanest, calmest discussion on guns in the US in years.
Comment 6/30/2008
You’re nominally “pro-gun rights” (last I checked, guns don’t have rights; people do), you just don’t care about a legal decision involving an effective ban on all operative weapons.
Yeah.
Well it’s good to know that you — a “nominally pro-gun rights” individual — are quite willing to categorically disregard an entire branch of thought before any evidence or information on the matter is raised.
Except you’re not going to get the “absence of guns” in the first place short of violating anything close to a right to privacy — I’ve got the materials to make a friggen gatling gun within a hundred feet of me, right now, none of them — so let’s drop that particular unsupported assumption now.
You might reduce the number of guns owned by active criminals, at the cost of completely removing the number of guns owned by lawful citizens. You might consider this a small distinction, but I think there’s a rather significant difference between an absence and a reduction.
But, for the sake of the argument, let’s presume you can magically make all guns disappear, gunpowder and the dozens of other practically similar chemicals stop working, and pipes magically stop working when used as a gun. There are or are going to be absolutely no “determined killers”. People who previously did drive-bys will now not be able to kill people without stopping. Let’s assume all of this is about attacks of opportunity.
I know you don’t think every single murderers are going to stop, just because one form of opportunity is not longer available, or even the massive number necessary to get the American per capita “gun-related murder” rate on the same scale as the enlightened countries.
So the question is left to what old attacks of opportunity would be removed, and new ones would exist.
That’s not encouraging, though. The nature of disarming law-abiding citizens widely increases the number of available attacks of opportunity, and more problematically makes previously non-AoO situations much more viable for assault, especially in pro-CCW parts of the country. In these places, individuals unknown to the target with no history of previous felonies have a non-trivial chance of “making their day” should someone attempt to attack them (between 0.5% and 2%, depending on area). The Brady Campaign admitted to over a hundred justifiable homicides annually a decade ago, and significantly more non-lethal self-defense uses of guns, so we’re not talking a hypothetical here. Kopel’s and Lott’s studies are obviously about as useful in a conversation as a bicycle to an octopus, but Clinton-era DoJ numbers suggest a fairly high number.
The other side would be the number of attacks of opportunity in which guns are the only reason that the attack fits an AoO. We can easily confirm this is a non-zero value, and given the circumstances of most murders in the real (non-magicantigunwand) world, where many murders are committed without guns, and because of the various statistics in which current AoO occur (felon record of murderer, victim is typically physically less powerful, victim typically in relatively isolated area), and the statistics of other countries that heavily regulate guns yet still have high crime rates with few vastly different structures.
It’s not something you can just chug down the numbers for and spit out a really good number. It may well be very close.
But it’s not very close on the side of drastically pro-gun-control, even before you consider the whole “value of bill of rights” thing.
Comment 6/30/2008
According to DOJ study cited above, 70% of all murders involve firearms.
As for the 100 justifiable homicides per year, one might also consider the fact that gun owners use their guns to kill themselves to the tune of about 16,000 corpses per year. So one is a couple of orders of magnitude more likely to kill oneself with that new gun than to kill someone else in self defense with it.
So, by my accounting, on an annual basis, we have 320,000 stolen hand guns, 16,000 gun suicides, 15,000 gun murders, and a solid 100 justifiable homicides. Let the debate continue.
Comment 6/30/2008
Christ, gatt, you’re all over the place. I’d respond, but I can hardly make sense of your latest response.
You’re nominally “pro-gun rights” … you just don’t care about a legal decision involving an effective ban on all operative weapons.
And this fails to make sense exactly … how? This may strike you as “unpossible” to use Uncle’s favorite word, but it’s entirely possible to support gun rights (with that term used in the same context as “free speech rights” or “property rights,” for those too dense to understand basic English) without having gun rights be a top-tier, hot-button issue. I’m already on record saying that I think the court got this decision right, even if I’m not entirely sure I like the logic by which the decision was reached. If that’s not good enough for you, you can go Cheney yourself. If you’re looking for people who are going to join you in jerking off over Scalia’s majority opinion, there are any number of gun blogs where you can find like-minded individuals.
Well it’s good to know that you — a “nominally pro-gun rights” individual — are quite willing to categorically disregard an entire branch of thought before any evidence or information on the matter is raised.
Well, considering that (A) it defies common sense, and (B) you haven’t bothered to raise any, I don’t really see what’s wrong with that, either. Of course, if you’d like to disagree that guns make it easier to kill people (intentionally or otherwise), you can go right ahead, but then you’d have to explain to me why you’d even want one if that were the case.
Except you’re not going to get the “absence of guns” in the first place short of violating anything close to a right to privacy
Of course not, but then I never said we could or should do anything of the sort, now did I? I was simply using that hypothetical to point out the absurdity of your implied premises. You can argue that guns simply aren’t going to go away, and that as such, as long as criminals can get them, ordinary citizens who are so inclined ought to be able to have them to defend themselves, and you won’t get much argument from me. But when you start making the argument that guns (especially in the wrong hands) do nothing to exacerbate problems of violence, or that every single gun murder today would have been replaced with a non-gun murder if the people involved didn’t have access to guns, then you’re treading into an area I like to call “obvious bullshit,” and I’m going to call you on it, whether or not I agree with your positions otherwise. I defy you to explain to me how Columbine happens if the perps have crowbars instead of guns.
You might reduce the number of guns owned by active criminals, at the cost of completely removing the number of guns owned by lawful citizens.
Why do you insist on attacking positions I simply haven’t taken? This is the problem with you gun nut S-O-B’s: you assume that everyone who hasn’t consumed every last drop of the Flavor-Aid you’ve consumed must somehow be the “enemy” and spout from your script of talking points. You guys ridicule the “reasoned discourse” canard, but you aren’t exactly shining paragons of reason when it comes to such things. The term “reactionary,” I think, is a gross understatement.
The nature of disarming law-abiding citizens widely increases the number of available attacks of opportunity, and more problematically makes previously non-AoO situations much more viable for assault, especially in pro-CCW parts of the country
Sorry, but I don’t accept your say-so on this. And all of the data that I’ve seen suggests that the difference is statistically insignificant. In plain English, whether or not CCW is allowed, or the general public is more likely to be armed rather than “defenseless,” simply doesn’t make a damn bit of difference one way or the other in terms of crime statistics. Now you can argue that since it doesn’t make things worse, we should err on the side of personal freedom, and I’d be inclined to agree with you. But when you start arguing that it actually makes a meaningful difference in the aggregate, that it actually reduces the number of “victims,” then I’m afraid I have to call bullshit.
Again, I don’t spend a lot of time on this because it just isn’t a hot button issue for me. But nonetheless, I despise these debates because it’s just impossible to have any kind of rational discussion about it without people from one side or the other pulling out facts that are spun every which way from Tuesday, excessive demagoguery, etc., etc.
Comment 7/1/2008
Yah, after all, Japan’s suicide rate sure has stayed low what with their ubereffective gun ban, hasn’t it?
Your DoJ study either is misinterpreted or misremembered.
In 2005, there were a total number of 15,495 murders, by any cause. Around 10,100 of those involved a firearm of any kind. So, thank you for being a bit misleading to start with.
In addition to over a hundred justifiable homicides, we have cases of self-defense where a gun was not used. The lowest reliable number was a poll suggesting that only 764,000 individuals used a firearm to defend themselves from violent criminals. Assuming that gun owners are no more or less likely to be attacked by someone intending to murder than the average individual (if they are less likely, we can simply toss this in the win box now), we’re talking roughly 1,473 cases where the gun was used to prevent a murder. An additional estimated 4,600 violent rapes would be thwarted.
I’d say that’s a bit closer, and that’s before any potential detterence effect.
That’s a statistical analysis, rather than a practical one, based by taking dividing the numbers of that particular crime by the number of all violent crimes, and multiplying by the number of polled self-defenses with guns. I’d expect gun owners tend to avoid getting into situations where they’re at risk from a violent rapist or murderer in the first place. But you’re no less HIV positive or dead, it doesn’t really matter whether that’s because of a first-level cause or a second-level one.
Comment 7/1/2008
Okay, am I the only “liberal” who thinks that in the absense of strong evidence of a huge trade-off between murders and armed citizens, we should err on the side of the armed citizenry, specifically so we retain the ability to kill government officials as necessary?
It’s not what the second amendment says, but it’s why it’s there. Citizens need guns in order to kill their governors when government does enough harm. It’s part of our social contract. You need a lot of dead gang members and tourists to break that contract.
Comment 7/1/2008
By the way, Ted, the dots that I don’t think you’ve connected very well are between plausible policies and changing the number of guns available to criminals. Yes, a total ban would have some effect. How much effect? And is there any way in which a total ban is plausible? (And if it is, isn’t that a much worse sign for our society than any number of murders?)
Comment 7/1/2008
I suppose calling someone a “gun-nut SOB” is polite discourse, while suggesting that denying an entire branch of thought *because you haven’t bothered to look for evidence one way or the other* might not be logical is a sign of insanity?
That’s not suggested by the evidence, or by logical arguments based on your own assumptions.
Texas? Murder rate dropped to nearly half its previous value with the adoption of shall-issue CCW, within four years. The CDC’s WISQARS system makes it rather easy to see how CCW affected a state’s murder rate, and it shows things to have gone rather impressively well in Oregon and Pennsylvania, as well, more so than surrounding states. Even in Florida, where the murder rate did increase after the state adopted shall-issue CCW, you’ll notice it increased less than the rates of surrounding states or the entire country.
The same thing can be discovered from anecdotal data on a large scale. To take, again, the sample of Florida, the state’s adoption of CCW laws resulted in a sudden boom of attacks on individuals with rental or out-of-state license plates, enough to produce a outcry and eventually a law mandating that rental cars could no longer identify themselves as such. Surveys of the prison population has shown violent criminals to want to avoid individuals associated with the “2nd Amendment” movement.
Well, if the kids were smart, their bomb would have actually worked and killed far more than their guns did. Thankfully, smart and mass murderous tend to be a rare combination.
But if you do want an example of non-gun mass murders, that’s still not that difficult.
Comment 7/1/2008
The DOJ report, which is linked above, is for 1995, so the murder rate could well be off by some amount. The suicide numbers are from a report released today.
Dan, as I have said above, I don’t think a total ban is realistic. But, as I have said above, that does not mean that allowing people to own guns, especially hand guns, does not come at a cost in lives. Gatt will argue that is not proven, I will argue it falls under the heading of freaking obvious.
We will have an unscientific test case in DC over the next couple of years. Use B’more as the control. If gun murders go down in DC after the ban is eliminated (normalized for trend in B’more) that will be one piece of data to support he more guns means less gun murders argument. If the opposite is true, then it’s a data point in favor of the gun ban. Margin of error obviously will be very high regardless. And of course with DC being such a small area surrounded by non-ban locations, the impact on criminals to date has been small relative to the impact on law-abiding citizens. I don’t deny that.
Comment 7/1/2008
Gatt, can you please state the years you are referring to in Texas case? State by state the murder rate can be pretty volatile.
Comment 7/1/2008
Can’t find more recent data, but here is a table comparing states with and without right to carry.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_rtcstates.html
1998 May-Issue (Rates are per 100,000)
Violent Crime Homicide
State Population Total Rate Total Rate
California 32,667,000 229,883 703.7 2,171 6.6
Colorado 3,971,000 15,008 377.9 183 2.8
Delaware 744,000 5,672 762.0 21 2.8
D.C. 523,000 8,988 1,718.5 260 49.7
Hawaii 1,193,000 2,946 246.9 24 2.0
Illinois 12,045,000 97,291 807.7 1,008 8.4
Iowa 2,862,000 8,916 311.5 54 1.9
Kansas 2,629,000 10,438 397.0 154 5.9
Maryland 5,135,000 40,903 706.6 513 10
Massachusetts 6,147,000 38,192 621.3 124 2.0
Michigan 9,817,000 60,947 620.8 721 7.3
Minnesota 4,725,000 14,656 310.2 121 2.6
Missouri 5,439,000 30,222 555.7 399 7.3
Nebraska 1,663,000 7,507 451.4 51 3.1
New Jersey 8,115,000 35,717 440.1 322 4.0
New Mexico 1,737,000 16,700 961.4 190 10.9
New York 18,175,000 115,915 637.8 924 5.1
Ohio 11,209,000 40,628 362.5 443 4.0
Rhode Island 988,000 3,084 312.1 24 2.4
Wisconsin 5,224,000 13,009 249.0 190 3.6
Totals 135,008,000 796,622 590.1 7,897 5.9
1998 Right to Carry (Rates are per 100,000)
Violent Crime Homicide
State Population Total Rate Total Rate
Alabama 4,352,000 22,286 512.1 354 8.1
Alaska 614,000 4015 653.9 41 6.7
Arizona 4,669,000 26,984 577.9 376 8.1
Arkansas 2,538,000 12,442 490.2 201 7.9
Connecticut 3,274,000 11,993 366.3 135 4.1
Florida 14,916,000 140,016 938.7 967 6.5
Georgia 7,642,000 43,762 572.7 618 8.1
Idaho 1,229,000 3,468 282.2 36 2.9
Indiana 5,899,000 25,423 431 454 7.7
Kentucky 3,936,000 11,180 284 182 4.6
Louisiana 4,369,000 34,057 779.5 560 12.8
Maine 1,244,000 1,565 125.8 25 2.0
Mississippi 2,752,000 11,302 410.7 315 11.4
Montana 880,000 1,221 138.8 36 4.1
Nevada 1,747,000 11,244 643.6 170 9.7
New Hampshire 1,185,000 1,270 107.2 18 1.5
North Carolina 7,546,000 43,723 579.4 612 8.1
North Dakota 638,000 570 89.3 7 1.1
Oklahoma 3,347,000 18,053 539.4 204 6.1
Oregon 3,282,000 13,778 419.8 126 3.8
Pennsylvania 12,001,000 50,470 420.5 633 5.3
South Carolina 3,836,000 34,647 903.2 306 8.0
South Dakota 738,000 1,139 154.3 10 1.4
Tennessee 5,431,000 38,832 715 460 8.5
Texas 19,760,000 111,566 564.6 1,346 6.8
Utah 2,059,000 6,599 314.2 65 3.1
Vermont 591,000 628 106.3 13 2.2
Virginia 6,791,000 22,115 325.7 422 6.2
Washington 5,689,000 24,380 428.5 224 3.9
West Virginia 1,811,000 4,503 248.6 78 4.3
Wyoming 481,000 1,191 247.6 23 4.8
Totals 135,247,000 734,422 543.0 9,017 6.7
Sorry about format.
Bottom line, CCW atates: homicide rate 6.7
nonCCW: homicide rate 5.9
This doesn’t prove much though, would need to know rates before CCW was allowed.
(Did I mention I am an insomniac these days…)
Comment 7/1/2008
gatt:
I suppose calling someone a “gun-nut SOB” is polite discourse, while suggesting that denying an entire branch of thought *because you haven’t bothered to look for evidence one way or the other* might not be logical is a sign of insanity?
#1, I never said anything about “polite.”
#2, Where I come from, the burden of proof is on the person who makes the assertion in the first place. You don’t just get to make a sweeping generalized argument (e.g., the presence of guns has no impact whatsoever on the ease and frequency of homicide) and then say “prove me wrong.” That’s not how it works.
Texas? Murder rate dropped to nearly half its previous value with the adoption of shall-issue CCW, within four years.
Oooh, how to lie with statistics, my favorite game! Your analysis here makes two critical mistakes: it confuses correlation with causation, and it lacks a proper control. The truth is, these declines in murder rate that you talk about were consistent with a greater nationwide trend. Texas is a particularly convenient example, because its murder rate was unusually high to start with. But populous non-CCW states like California and New York experienced similar declines in murder rate during the same period (and, indeed, California’s decline was steeper than Texas’s). Perhaps the murderers in those states were afraid that the CCW holders from Florida and Texas were visiting?
And, of course, you have to be careful about that correlation-to-causation problem. I could just as (un)convincingly argue that since the decline in murder rates was pretty consistent nationwide, then it must be a federal law that made the difference. And from there, I could point to the 1994 AWB, one of your favorites. It would be complete and total bullshit, of course, but it would be just as well-argued (poorly-argued, really) as what you’ve just given us.
(In truth, the economic boom of the 90’s had a lot more to do with it than any laws that went on the books.)
Ted:
CCW passed in Texas in 1995. So I’d look at 1993-1999, if you can find the stats. Unfortunately, the stats I have now start in 1996 — they used to have this back to 1992 or so.
Dan M:
I agree with you in the abstract: it’s pretty clear that the original intent of 2A was twofold: to make it possible to quickly raise a citizen militia to defend the country, and to make it possible for the citizenry to revolt against an oppressive government. It had nothing to do with hunting, nor did it have anything to do with personal self-defense. (The framers may have supported both of these, and in fact almost certainly did, but that’s not why the amendment is there.)
Unfortunately, I think the realities of the modern world render both prongs mostly obsolete. Among other contemporary assumptions that no longer apply, in the framers’ time there weren’t any standing armies. You didn’t have a federal military presence in every state, with permanent bases, etc. (Side note: Why is it that the strict constitutionalist RKBA crowd never complains about the fact that the Army and the Air Force [and probably also the Marine Corps] are plainly unconstitutional?)
And to pick a nit, the weapons are to fight the government, not kill the governors. The latter (which is how you put it) sounds like targeted assassination, and I don’t really think that’s what the framers had in mind. They were far too civilized for that. You send a sternly-worded letter declaring your grievances and intentions, and you draw battle lines when your grievances aren’t met.
Comment 7/1/2008
I’d love to see Baltimore used as a test example, but I’ve conversed with and offered services to their police department. It’s not a fair example, and the police and anyone who’s seen the city knows that no matter what their policy on guns is, they’re going to screw things up bad. They’ve been bleeding experienced police officers for the better part of a decade, to the point where five years puts you damned high on the seniority list, they’re making the same mistakes on housing that screwed up the Section 8 system, and judges unwilling to enforce the law and rampant abuses of the early release and parole system are not going to help things. It’s not absolutely certain that the cities going to go tits up, but the good police officers and people and judges there don’t look near enough to stem the tide. ProGunProgressive has a better opinion of the place’s odds than I do, but when you can see hundreds of unoccupied houses falling apart, from the overpriced seafood and pasta tourist trap on the docks, you’ve got some long-term problems. Knocking them down and replacing them with overpriced stuff is just repeating the same mess that screwed over a lot of Section 8 housing areas. Heroin abuse is epidemic.
You know it’s bad when every entrance to the police headquarters is locked from the inside. Nice marble entranceway, locked glass windows.
As for the Texas numbers, using the CDC tool I linked to above, I got :
year Murder Rate (per 100,000)
1991 15.74
1992 13.11
1993 12.31
1994 11.38
1995 9.25
1996 8.07
1997 7.23
1998 6.99
The CCW law went into effect in 2005. Obviously the crime rate was already going down, but the 1998 values went significantly under what had been around since 1981. New Mexico, the most similar state culturally and ethnically, only got a small drop, which tended to bounce back and forth.
Comment 7/1/2008
gatt:
The CCW law went into effect in 1995, not 2005. And note a 41% drop from 1991 to 1995 (before the law took effect), as compared to only a 24% drop from then until 1998, after it took effect. Those stats simply don’t show what you say they show. Indeed, if anything, the decline in murder rate slowed after the CCW law passed. Otherwise, see what I wrote above.
Comment 7/1/2008
Thank you for correcting the typo, tgirsch. I also didn’t mean to imply causation, only correlation.
At least according to the CDC’s WISQARS values, from the link I provided above, Calfornia’s drop was not greater.
year Murder Rate (per 100,000)
1991 13.33
1992 13.32
1993 13.53
1994 12.24
1995 11.27
1996 9.37
1997 8.56
1998 7.11
You could argue that the difference in drop from 1994 to 1996 was statistically insignificant, but it certainly was not greater.
I suggest looking more at the culturally and physically similar New Mexico, where you might notice that the murder rate drop stopped at the same value as Texas’ early 1995 values were at.
Comment 7/1/2008
TG,
Sorry about “governors”; I simply meant those who govern. I was tired when I posted.
The standing army is (marginally) constitutional because of frequent budget bills. Anyway, the standing army isn’t the problem. The problem is the lack of matching citizen firepower.
As far as hunting and self-defense: Certainly, The Second doesn’t talk about them, per se. Certainly, The Second has only the obliquest relation to hunting in as much as disarmament could have been economic oppression when hunting was a livelihood.
But I think self-defense is quite closely tied to the RKBA, because not only where there no standing armies, there were no standing police, as it were. The RKBA was the right to be the part of society that had a right to defense.
Now, if you want to argue that a well-functioning police force obviates self-defence, I’m okay with that theory. But only once I can sue the police for not doing what I could have with my own (hypothetical) gun if I’m assaulted. But under current law, at least here in NY, there is no legal expectation that the police will actually protect the individual. (I’m not say that there should be, but it’s a necessary result of removing the RKBA in exchange for police.)
And of course, that assumes of course that the police aren’t part of the people who need to be shot. An especially implausible claim about DC.
Comment 7/1/2008
gatt:
At least according to the CDC’s WISQARS values, from the link I provided above, Calfornia’s drop was not greater.
See my above link; I was using different stats (source: the FBI, not the CDC) than yours. But your standard was, and I quote:
I read that as the period in question for comparison should be from 1995 (when CCW went into effect in Texas) to 1999 (four years later). My stats show that the murder rate in California was 6.0 in 1999, versus 6.1 in Texas. In 1995, the murder rate was substantially higher in California than in Texas (11.27 vs. 9.25, to use your figures), so the drop in California was significantly steeper. Sticking to just your figures and the period 1995 to 1998 (the last year you provided), California’s drop was 36.9% while Texas’s drop was just 24% (as previously mentioned). By the way, a 24% drop does not constitute “nearly half its previous value,” unless you want to argue that the CCW ban was so effective, it started working four to five years before its inception.
Now, upon thinking this through, I readily admit that I may have made an error in the start point. Perhaps what we should be discussing is the rate change from 1994 (the year before Texas’s CCW went into effect) to 1998 (four years after that). But the point remains. According to your numbers, Texas’s murder rate declined 38.6% during that period (still nowhere near half), while California’s was 41.9% — still a steeper (albeit similar) decline in murder rate in gun-hostile California as compared to gun-friendly Texas.
All of which, I think, conclusively demonstrates my point that CCW doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
I suggest looking more at the culturally and physically similar New Mexico, where you might notice that the murder rate drop stopped at the same value as Texas’ early 1995 values were at.
Sorry, but crime rates have a lot to do with population density, and New Mexico lacks the sort of dense urban centers that Texas and California have. So I don’t think it’s a terribly useful comparison. Also, where Texas and California (and, indeed, most states) demonstrate a clear downward trend, New Mexico is all over the map, so whatever dynamics are at play there are substantially different from both Texas and California. (And, for what it’s worth, New Mexico declines, too; it just starts a couple of years later than the other two, and doesn’t decline quite as steeply.)
Dan M:
Anyway, the standing army isn’t the problem.
Here you’re just flat wrong. The standing army is absolutely the problem. A citizen-based revolt is a lot more feasible if the government has to raise armies to defend itself — only the loyalists will answer the call, and there will be plenty of revolutionaries who don’t. But when you have a standing army, now you have people whose very livelihood depends on being in the army, following orders, etc. Different animal entirely.
I’m pretty sure the framers explicitly did not want standing armies precisely because they could be used by an oppressive government as a tool of oppression.
But I think self-defense is quite closely tied to the RKBA
Only obliquely, I’d argue. It’s important, but it wasn’t a motivating factor for the inclusion of 2A, as far as I can tell. In fact, earlier drafts of 2A had even more explicit provisions relating to military/militia service, indicating to me that personal defense wasn’t really a part of the 2A debate at the time of its ratification.
Now, if you want to argue that a well-functioning police force obviates self-defence, I’m okay with that theory.
I wouldn’t argue any such thing. We seem to be talking past each other, however. You’re talking about why RKBA is prudent, while I’m talking about why it’s in the Constitution.
Comment 7/1/2008
Tgirsch, thanks for the Texas numbers. Gatt, thank you for being a lot misleading to start with. 24% is “almost half”, and the four year decline leading up to the CCW law was steeper than the four years after. So, using the CDC data, the most obvious argument to be made is that CCW actually slowed the decline in the murder rate. A far cry from reducing it by 50%.
Of course the reality is we can not extract the effect of the CCW law from the data. So let’s not try.
Comment 7/1/2008
All right.
Anyway, a ‘clarification’ from the ACLU, insisting that Heller was wrongly decided. Can I call that pro-gun control yet?
Comment 7/1/2008
Since I kicked your ass so resoundingly on CCW efficacy, I’ll go ahead and concede the ACLU point.
Although I still draw a distinction between an organization that expresses an opinion while staying out of the matter, versus one that actively advocates and litigates on the issue. “Neutrality” probably isn’t the correct term to describe them, but I don’t know what the correct term would be. I’m not keen on “anti-gun,” because that description is more accurate when applied to the likes of the Brady Campaign, which actively advocates, seeks to shape policy, etc., on the issue.
Comment 7/1/2008