The ungovernable city

You should all read David Freddoso's brilliant, angry, hilarious piece on the DC gun ban.

I hope that now you can understand where I am coming from when I read District of Columbia Attorney General Linda Singer’s hysterical court filing in the Heller case, which may strike down the District’s 31-year-old comprehensive ban on gun ownership.

“Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees,” wrote the District’s chief law enforcer, “it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die.”

What an excellent example of unintended humor — the District’s government is a national leader in standing by while its citizens die. Our homicide rate hit a 20-year low in 2005 — just 29 victims per 100,000 residents. That is slightly better than New York City’s rate (30.7) under Mayor David Dinkins in 1990, when the Big Apple suffered 2,250 homicides.

In 1991, the D.C. murder rate reached an astounding 81 per 100,000 — that was two years after Mayor Marion Barry famously told the Washington Press Club, “Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

D.C. residents are strictly forbidden from owning handguns, even in the privacy of their homes. Any long guns must be registered and kept “unloaded and disassembled.” It is not even legal, strictly speaking, to assemble and load your gun when you hear an intruder downstairs. A lower court ruled the ban unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court will decide later this year whether to take up the case.

In the debate over the gun ban, there is a strong statistical case that an armed citizenry is safer than one disarmed by unconstitutional laws, but this argument is not even necessary. There is absolutely no valid case that the District’s gun ban makes me safer as a District resident. When Singer and Mayor Adrian Fenty (D., of course) penned a September 4 Washington Post op-ed stating that “The handgun ban has saved countless lives,” were they really suggesting that without the ban there might have been 1,000 murder victims in 1991, instead of just 482? The implication is that D.C. is so totally ungovernable that only a total deprivation of constitutional rights can make it barely livable.

Comments

if the 13-year olds on my block manage to have handguns (which they do), I can't see how the gun ban is operating in any way except to assure would-be criminals that their victims are unarmed (unless their would-be victims are themselves criminals, I suppose, but it's pretty easy to pick out good victims where I live). am I a little scared by the thought of lots more guns in my city? yes. But I don't think that fear is logical. Until someone makes a compelling statistical case, we should err on the side of constitutionality, no?

Posted by hugo | October 11, 2007 3:22 PM

"The best antidote to guns in the wrong hands is guns in the right hands. Lott’s data show that states with concealed-handgun laws enjoy a 69 percent lower rate of mass murders in public places than states without such laws, all other things being equal.

Despite the high level of statistical sophistication in More Guns, Less Crime, the book is pleasant to read. Lott lays out the data in an accessible manner, building from simpler statistical models to more complex ones. The book serves not only as a guide to firearms policy, but as a readable introduction to multivariate statistical analysis.

The most interesting part of the book, however, is the chapter in which Lott addresses the criticism of his research. In marked contrast to the anti-gun researchers funded by federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lott has made his data readily available to any and all researchers.

To the anti-gun movement, the statistics on crime deterrence are irrelevant. But anyone with an interest in rational firearms policy ought to thank John Lott for writing this excellent book. More Guns, Less Crime would be a fine gift for your state representative, local newspaper editor, or public library."

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=3813

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | October 11, 2007 3:40 PM

Gun laws (like drug laws and any other ban) only affect those who have an elastic demand for the product; people who have an inelastic demand for the product will still get the guns.

In the case of guns, people with elastic demand are people who we would usually call law-abiding citizens; people with inelastic demand are people who we would usually call criminals (usually of the drug-dealing type). Criminal demand for guns will continue to be particularly inelastic as long as the War on Drugs is prosecuted heavily, thereby creating a black market in which property rights are unenforceable and making violent crime the primary way of protecting one's "property" (aka street corners, stash houses, etc.).

Posted by Mark | October 11, 2007 4:14 PM

There are very few circumstances where a local gun ban makes sense. It's just too easy to buy loads of guns anywhere else. For a ban to be effective, it needs to be enacted in a region with a border with customs.

A local ban could be useful if you wanted an excuse to lock people up. If DC had a lot of extra room in its jails, police could arrest people for illegal possession of guns. Then the law would be a deterrent to would-be criminals owning guns illegally. But they don't have room. They don't put people away for owning guns illegally. They only deter people who would prefer not breaking the law.

If it were up to me, I would certainly implement a federal hand gun ban. I'm no fool though. The 2nd amendment isn't going to be repealed, and even if it were, or were reinterpreted, a national gun ban is never going to be law.

It is far more productive to find other ways to reduce gun violence. Ban weapons that are overtly designed for criminal purposes - like the plastic guns the NRA originally insisted should be legal (that's been done, BTW). Ban civilian ownership of weapons with primarily military applications, like autofire weapons or armor piercing shells. Require licensing. Require custodianship - irresponsibility in losing your gun should be at least the equivalent of a serious traffic offense, costing you money and endangering your gun ownership rights. Register transactions of guns like we do with those other weapons we like, cars. Impound the guns of people who do not comply with the laws, like we impound cars. And get people out of jail who have committed minor drug offenses so we can keep gun wielding criminals there longer.

These are reasonable steps that would,if enacted nationally, probably do more to keep guns from criminals than an outright ban does locally.

Posted by Njorl | October 11, 2007 4:56 PM

Yes, if a city wide gun ban is not working we should expand it to a national gun ban. Interestingly, England has done this and they are experiencing skyrocketing gun crime.

Posted by cdeegan | October 11, 2007 5:05 PM

No discussion of gun laws is complete without mentioning the two positive effects of widespread gun ownership: making armed rebellion possible should the government get bad enough, and making it possible for the weak to resist the strong by equalizing the force available to each.

Though out of self-interest, as a largish male trained in martial arts, I suppose I should support a gun ban.

Posted by Lorenzo | October 11, 2007 5:28 PM

David Freddoso implies that he had been better off if had had a gun when his mugger approached him. I think this is arguable: if the mugger had realized that David had a gun, he probably would have instinctively assumed that David is going to shoot him. As a result, the mugger would have most likely have made at least an attempt to shoot David first, even if he had no such intentions to begin with.

But the depressing part about gun debates is what an inadequate job gun contol advocates make of presenting their case. The most important reason why open societies should not allow private hand gun ownership has nothing to do with crime. It has to do with the effect that private gun ownership has on other freedoms and governmental powers.

Since guns are so much more convenient for the perpetration of violent crimes than any other object citizens may have access to, the citizens develop a legitimate fear for their safety. As a result, they grow to accept intrusive increases in governmental powers that attempt to restore public safety. For example, schoolchildren in the United States have been deprived of virtually all protections against unreasonable search and seizure of their property while in custody of school officials. Yet, the punishment they face for even juvenile "threats" are much the same that adults would face for making real threats. This misbalance between rights and punishments is unfit for a democracy.

There is no evidence that private gun ownerhip is a deterrent to tyranny, as those who advocate lax gun regulations often claim. If the United States were to be invaded by a foreign enemy that the citizens of the United States generally recognize as an illegitimate ruler, then firearms in the hands of citizens may be useful.

But private handguns would be not of much help if a tyrannical internal group were attempting to overthrow the democratic government of the U.S. Our democratic institutions have survived because of the widespread support that they enjoy form our citizens. The only way that an internal group would be able to overthrow our democratic institutions is by commanding the support of a significant part of the citizenry, or at least by reducing the involvement of most of our citizens to indifference. In such a case, gun ownership in the hands of those who still care about democracy would not be able to resist despotism.

Posted by Jeff Goldman | October 11, 2007 5:46 PM

"There are very few circumstances where a local gun ban makes sense. It's just too easy to buy loads of guns anywhere else. For a ban to be effective, it needs to be enacted in a region with a border with customs."

Oh, I dunno. Last time I checked there were quite a few drugs that are illegal nationwide. Yet, mysteriously , they're not hard to come by.

In the good old USA, if there's a market for something illegal, it's going to be available. Liquor, prostitution, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, meth, crack, X, acid, shrooms, you name it. You can't make things go away here by making them illegal. Hell, they couldn't make these things go away in the old Soviet Union, and that really was a totalitarian police state.

Posted by rhinoman | October 11, 2007 5:50 PM

to Jeff Goldman,
An impressive argument. I'd hire you as a lawyer in a millisecond, especially if I was guilty.

As I just posted, guns are freely available to those willing to break the law. All we're asking for is the right, as law abiding citizens, to own them too. I grew up in a town where everybody owned guns: rifles, shotguns, pistos. We weren't terrified of each other, it was the safest place I've ever lived. If you tried to tell these men (and women - they could shoot straight as well) that owning guns would make them more eager to surrender their constitutional rights, they'd piss themselves laughing.

Your schoolchildren example is ludicrous. The reason kids in school don't have any "protections against unreasonable search and seizure of their property while in custody of school officials" is that they're children, and the school official are in loco parentis. I don't know about you, but I sure didn't have any protection against unreasonable search and seizure of my property when my parents were involved. I complained, but they ignored me. Perhaps I was being oppressed or something...

As for your argument that: "he only way that an internal group would be able to overthrow our democratic institutions is by commanding the support of a significant part of the citizenry", you're nuts. Hell, just look at Iraq (before the whole Bush fiasco): you had a Sunni minority inflicting it's will on the Shiite majority. How did that happen? Oh, yeah, the minority had all the guns. Go figure.

Couple of questions:
Would the Jews in WWII Europe have been better off armed, like the resistors in the Warsaw Ghetto? Or unarmed?
Would the Tutsis in Rwanda have been better off armed, or unarmed?
Would the Muslims in Bosnia been better off armed, or unarmed?
Would the vicitms of the genocide in Darfur be better off armed, or unarmed?
I could keep listing examples, but you can read history books on your own.

Posted by rhinoman | October 11, 2007 6:08 PM

"Since guns are so much more convenient for the perpetration of violent crimes than any other object citizens may have access to, the citizens develop a legitimate fear for their safety. As a result, they grow to accept intrusive increases in governmental powers that attempt to restore public safety."- Jeff Goldman (above)

"attempt to restore public safety."(?)

"Once the attackers discovered the other two women, they had their sick, twisted way with all three of them for the next 14 hours (I will not describe any of the details). The women sued the District of Columbia, which argued that “a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.” The District won the case based on what is actually a long-standing legal principle.

Singer, with her silly, dramatic argumentation, has reminded us of this fact — something for which we should all be grateful.

It is our misfortune in Washington to be governed by such simpletons, but it is also a hidden blessing that their legal team shows this level of incompetence. It may be our best chance as District residents to take our safety out of their hands and put it back into our own."

— David Freddoso is an NRO staff reporter.

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | October 11, 2007 6:13 PM

"Since guns are so much more convenient for the perpetration of violent crimes than any other object citizens may have access to, the citizens develop a legitimate fear for their safety. As a result, they grow to accept intrusive increases in governmental powers that attempt to restore public safety."

Which is presumably why the founding fathers were so willing to accept the government intrusions of King George III.

Posted by Blackadder | October 11, 2007 6:59 PM

"David Freddoso implies that he had been better off if had had a gun when his mugger approached him. I think this is arguable: if the mugger had realized that David had a gun, he probably would have instinctively assumed that David is going to shoot him. As a result, the mugger would have most likely have made at least an attempt to shoot David first, even if he had no such intentions to begin with."

Or maybe he wouldn't have tried to mug him to begin with.

Posted by Blackadder | October 11, 2007 7:01 PM

"David Freddoso implies that he had been better off if had had a gun when his mugger approached him. I think this is arguable: if the mugger had realized that David had a gun, he probably would have instinctively assumed that David is going to shoot him. As a result, the mugger would have most likely have made at least an attempt to shoot David first, even if he had no such intentions to begin with."

Maybe, maybe not. Had he been armed he would have had the choice to resist or not. Unarmed, he had none.

Posted by cdeegan | October 11, 2007 7:16 PM

Bad, violent people will always have access to weapons. You can't enforce a ban on weapons in a free society. It's pretty easy to make guns in a relatively simple machine shop. It would be simple to make a little gun factory in a garage. So banning guns is just not possible.

As far as banning "plastic" guns... if you're talking about a true all-plastic gun, then you're talking about some weird spy gun that is probably a one-shot gun. The partially plastic guns that some gun control advocates were all up in arms about still had a steel barrel and slide and were quite easily detected by a metal detector.

The assault weapon ban was also pretty stupid. It was based purely on cosmetics. The banned weapons were actually less powerful than hunting rifles but most gun control advocates seem to have no clue about guns except that they're skeery.

EI

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | October 11, 2007 8:23 PM

Say, Megan, didn't you post something after this one? Something about "Ezra?" What happened to it?

Posted by Clem | October 11, 2007 8:33 PM

Rhinoman, thanks for the compliment about hiring me as your lawyer. Usually online discussions degenerate into name calling over even much less contentious issues than gun control, so that wasn't a pleasant surprise.

My point about the rights of children in school was not so much about decrying a lack of rights that children have. Perhaps schools should be viewed as a second set of parents that temporarily assume much the same powers (though probably not quite as much). What is unfit for a democracy that at the same time children face criminal prosecutions in adult courts for "threats" that they made. It is bad enough that most of these threats were probably not thought through, and in the vast majority of cases did not present real dangers. But due to the widespread availability of handguns, there is this fear in the public that any utterance that indicates a child with emotional problems could end up in a school shooting.

Posted by Jeff Goldman | October 11, 2007 9:04 PM

Jeff Goldman:
OK, mea culpa. Name calling is juvenile; I apologize.

I agree that the hysteria over what used to be silly threats by kids is nutty. If children are really being tried as adults over verbal threats, that's just damnfoolishness.
But blaming this on the legality of firearms is a bit of a stretch. They're available whether they're legal or not. When I was in high school, one could obtain pretty much any illegal drugs one wanted, in any quantities. I'm sure we could have gotten our hands on a gun, legal or illegal.

In fact, the curious thing is that school shootings like Columbine never happened when I was in school, and we were a generation reared with easy availablitly to firearms. We were also taught to fight with our fists, and schoolyard bullying was just something you had to deal with. It's the next generation, reared to abhor violence and weapons, that tends to shoot up the classroom. I wonder why that is? (Actually, I'm not making some snide point here. I really do wonder why that is).

Posted by rhinoman | October 11, 2007 9:22 PM

How long until some enterprising attorney argues a racial angle on gun ownership, i.e., why do rectangular states with mostly whites have liberal gun ownerships while cities with mostly blacks don't?

Posted by Juan | October 11, 2007 9:30 PM

YOu have to have a lot of faith in your betters to give up your guns. I mean after you give up your guns you are totally at the mercy of the political process - the process that turned away Jews during WWII and locked up the Japenese, that put African American in separate schools, that decided a homosexual should not be allowed to enter the country for resident status, that a person who takes pot deserves no liberities but a rock singer or movie star gets probation,

Everyone steps more carefully than they would otherwise agains a potentially dangerous opponent. A disarmed opponent is grist for the mill.

Posted by Doug_S | October 11, 2007 9:46 PM

"that put African American in separate schools..."

Did you read the cover article in today's WSJ about segregation in MA? Maybe that's what the blacks need: to arm themselves and force their way into white schools like the prep school Matt Yglesias went to and demand their right to an equal education. Imagine the cinematic possibilities! Matt's dad ought to write a screenplay about it, if his union hasn't struck yet.

Posted by Fred | October 11, 2007 10:23 PM

Because the arguments for gun ownership here are so tedious, it seems I must step in to point out that widespread private gun ownership has not reduced the level of violence in Iraq, Somalia, South Africa, Colombia, or, indeed, the United States. The "explosion in gun violence" cdeegan claims has occurred in Great Britain must have started from quite a low level indeed: last year, 73 people were killed with guns in Great Britain; over 11,000 were killed in the United States. The rate of death by firearm in the US, in other words, is 30 times higher than that in the UK.

If criminals all have guns regardless of the restrictions, and the best way to deter a criminal from shooting you is to have a gun yourself, then why is it that the majority of people the criminals shoot are other criminals? Shouldn't the criminals be deterred by the likelihood that the other criminals have guns too? I mean, why do gang members ever shoot other gang members? Don't they realize the other gangs have guns?

I predict the loosening of gun control laws in DC will not change the gun murder rate much, one way or the other. Given that guns are already widely available, the important variables are economic opportunity and better policing.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 11, 2007 10:27 PM

I find this debate about school shootings curious. It can't be explained by simply looking to a supply/demand analysis of the drug war or violent crime more generally, but as rhinoman points out, they seem to be a relatively recent phenomenon, in a period when gun control laws became common. On this, I also can't buy the argument of some pro-gunners that the problem arises from the fact that the kids know no one is armed to stop them (which is of course a preposterous argument). Certainly, you can - in small part - blame a glorification of ultra-violence in our culture for some of the problem, but as Progressives will quickly (and correctly) point out, plenty of other nations have an even greater amount of ultra-violence in their culture. One of things that is so frustrating with the debate that always follows a school shooting is that it always involves rounding up the usual suspects: if you're on the political left, you blame weak restrictions on guns; if you're on the political right, you blame Hollywood and video games. But I think both these answers are far too simplistic and might each be totally irrelevant.

Certainly bullying is usually closely related to these events which, while more frequent than they ever were before, are still extraodinarily rare on the whole; but bullying has been around for a long time. Part of it, I think, is our increasing emphasis on pressuring kids to get good grades, and get into the right college (remember, it was just a few years ago that any four-year college was reserved for the privileged; now it is viewed as essential even though it is pretty much irrelevant for most jobs). In fact, I think this is the biggest part of the problem- kids who aren't jocks buffing up their extra-curricular activities or honors students buffing up their grades are truly looked down upon. In the past, these kids might have been appreciated for their skills as an auto mechanic, or respected for going on to learn a trade after high school- or even during high school, if they went to a Vo-Tech. So, I think that plays a big role in the spate of violence.

But I would love to hear other theories, because it is an issue that is only ever used as fodder for political talking heads with pet issues. Unfortunately, I suspect that the real answer isn't one that the talking heads will ever find politically advantageous.

Posted by Mark | October 11, 2007 10:31 PM

Mark left a comment...

On this, I also can't buy the argument of some pro-gunners that the problem arises from the fact that the kids know no one is armed to stop them (which is of course a preposterous argument).

I am very curious about this since you don't provide any basis for your position. It is a "preposterous arguement", you say, and simply dismiss it. How did you reach your conclusion?

There is evidence that lends credence to the idea that school shootings increased because guns are banned on school grounds. The Gun-Free School Zones Act was passed in 1990, and the number of school shootings started to climb a few years later.

Eugene Volokh once pointed out that school shootings are rare and, statistically speaking, schools are a very safe place for our children. But school massacres seem to be omnipresent through media hype. (I have to go to work and can't look up the relevant post right at the moment.) Sort of like the "Summer of the Shark" in 2001, where fears of extremely unlikely shark attacks were inflated out of all proportion through constant news items.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | October 11, 2007 10:51 PM

I've been mugged multiple times. My attackers have never claimed to have guns but trust me, they didn't need them. Yes, these incidents have resulted in gun fantasies. I've wished I'd had a gun to whip out.

But really. Folks. You want a gun next time you're mugged? Someone threatens you, the adrenaline starts flowing, you grab your weapon and before you know it you've killed someone. I wonder if you've all thought that through sufficiently.

Posted by J-Ron | October 11, 2007 10:52 PM

J-Ron left a comment...

But really. Folks. You want a gun next time you're mugged? Someone threatens you, the adrenaline starts flowing, you grab your weapon and before you know it you've killed someone. I wonder if you've all thought that through sufficiently.

This is a fallacy that keeps getting repeated by the proponents of gun control, that people who legally carry concealed weapons won't be able to control themselves in a stressful situation. But it seems that those who legally carry concealed are certainly more level headed than the general population.

So why do people who support gun control keep insisting that the law abiding civilians who carry firearms for their defense are constantly on the verge of exploding into petty, rage fueled violence?

Heck if I know. But I do have to admit that, considering the lurid first-person fantasies they are always trotting out to support their positions, I'd support any gun control measure that would keep weapons out of their hands!

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | October 11, 2007 11:07 PM

Responding with violence to a mugging or another unexpected, high intensity, threatening situation is not "exploding into petty, rage fueled violence" as James Rummell has it. It's about fear, not rage, and it's certainly not "petty." People who are really afraid often make bad decisions.

Posted by J-Ron | October 11, 2007 11:21 PM

Brooksfoe:
You have to distinguish between high gun ownership and weak gun laws- the two are not necessarily co-extensive. Additionally, the countries you cite, with the exception of the US, all have fairly weak protections of private property rights amongst the segment of the population engaged in the violence (meaning offenders are essentially protecting a legally unenforceable property right) or an ongoing "civil war" of sorts, meaning gun control laws wouldn't be very effective in any event. Similarly, gun violence in the US is, as you say, primarily the province of criminals against criminals- as I suggested in my original post, legal protections of private property don't exactly exist when you're talking about a black market like the drug war.

There are additional problems with your examples:
First of all, I cannot find any statistics on actual gun ownership rates in Iraq, Somalia, and Colombia; South Africa's rate of gun ownership is 8.4%, or about one-quarter the US' rate (the highest in Africa, but according to the BBC, also artificially high due to the fact that much of that ownership is wealthy white landowners, a legacy of apartheid; the rest is a result of the fact that the place is so dangerous to begin with that people feel they need to own guns for protection).

Second of all, the guns actually used in crime in South Africa are most frequently guns that are reported "lost" by the police and security forces, or political parties, or are smuggled in from Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

As for Somalia, that country was a complete anarchy for 10 years or so, with no established rule of law other than cultural traditions- no one knows any statistics for anything during that period, although there is actually a lot of evidence that life improved dramatically for most Somalis during that period of time; we do know that now that there are two groups again fighting for power (thanks to foreign countries trying to install governments that no one asked for), the country is insanely dangerous- but civil war has nothing to do with gun control.

Colombia and Iraq both obviously have active insurgencies or ongoing civil wars (depending on your preferred nomenclature), combined with Colombia's major drug war issue. So we're not exactly talking about situations where gun control would have any effect (if you're already fighting the government in a war, why would you obey that government's gun control laws?).

Posted by Mark | October 11, 2007 11:21 PM

James:
As you ought to be able to tell, I am quite vehemently pro-gun, and know quite a bit about the subject from a legal standpoint. But I cannot buy into the argument that guns in schools makes for safer schools- as you and others (including me) have pointed out, school shootings, while more frequent than they were 50 years ago, are still exceedingly rare- too rare to use as the basis for making policy. But...your statistic doesn't support anything- that list simply provides no information prior to 1996- it's specifically a "timeline of recent school shootings." Plus, school shootings are so rare that I'm not sure it's even possible to draw a valid statistical correlation.

It may well be that prohibiting guns in schools is irrelevant to safer schools (and thus the Gun Free School Zones Act is worthless), but this is not the same as saying that permitting guns in schools deters school shootings from happening in the first place. The latter is the argument I find preposterous- I am not aware of a single one of these mass shootings where the killers didn't intend (and ultimately commit) suicide; the threat of being shot in the act by an armed teacher just isn't going to deter someone who has a deathwish in the first place. It may reduce the final casualty count, but my concern is with learning what causes these shootings in the first place.

Posted by Mark | October 11, 2007 11:39 PM

You know, honestly, I don't think the data backs either side up on the gun-law debate. You can make a convincing case either way, which suggests to me that gun laws (or the lack thereof) have at best a tangential relationship to issues of crime and safety.

When times and the environment are bad, like NYC in the 70s, violent crime rises. When times and environment get better (like most of NYC these days), crime goes down. I don't think having a gun made you any safer back then, and I don't think not having a gun makes you any less safe today.

Which is all a long way of saying that I fail to understand how this is an important issue at all. A politician's position on gun laws is about the last thing I would take into consideration when considering how to cast my vote.

Posted by Peter Bautista | October 12, 2007 12:09 AM

Peter: I would tend to agree that you can make a persuasive case either way- the old lies, damn, lies, and statistics thing. But that doesn't make the debate meaningless- if we are focusing on the wrong issue, then we are missing important insight as to WHY the violent crime rate rises and falls so significantly, and thus forgoing an opportunity to actually lower the peaks and valleys of violent crime.

Something worth mentioning along these lines, by the way, is that- not surprisingly- violent crime rates are almost perfectly correlated with rates of illegal drug use.

Posted by Mark | October 12, 2007 12:20 AM

"Oh, I dunno. Last time I checked there were quite a few drugs that are illegal nationwide. Yet, mysteriously , they're not hard to come by."

Try sticking a glock up your a$$ and smuggling it somewhere.

A single mule can smuggle half a million worth of heroin or coke while walking right through a metal detector. They couldn't even carry a half million worth of guns.

Posted by Njorl | October 12, 2007 12:48 AM

Rhinoman asks if the Jews in World War II would have been better off if they had owned guns. I can't be certain, but I doubt it. Imagine a situation where a Jewish household does have a firearm. When the German police come and pick them up or order them to the town square, the father would have an option to attack the Germans or not. I doubt that anybody would have chosen to attack. Yes, you may kill a German soldier or two, but you know that your entire family will be killed on the spot. On the other hand, if you don't shoot, maybe you will make it through whatever plans the Germans have for you.

This is why guns are not an effective tool against tyranny: tyranny is something that creeps up on you. For example, recently The Economist had an editorial about how the enablers of the prosecutor in the Duke rapist case (by which they mean much of the faculty of Duke University) are just as racist as Southerners were in the 50's. In the 50's blacks were guilty by default, now it is whites. Tyranny against whites is on the march, but most people don't even realize it. No, I am not saying the situation of white people is as bad as was the situation of the Jews in WWII, but there are definitely undemocratic principles being applied against whites. Would any of those students who were falsely accused of rape been better off if they had had a gun?

Now in some of the other cases that Rhinoman mentions guns may have been useful (in Darfur perhaps, but I would have to study the issue more). But guns are only useful if a group of people who form a demos recognize a foreign tyrant. In most cases when tyranny is on the march, it is an internal march and it is unrecognized.

Posted by Jeff Goldman | October 12, 2007 12:59 AM

Njorl, if you really believe that the quantity of smuggled drugs that are consumed in this country were smuggled via human orifices in any significant percentage, well, you are being extremely silly.

Posted by Will Allen | October 12, 2007 1:01 AM

Mark wrote: ...but this is not the same as saying that permitting guns in schools deters school shootings from happening in the first place. The latter is the argument I find preposterous- I am not aware of a single one of these mass shootings where the killers didn't intend (and ultimately commit) suicide; the threat of being shot in the act by an armed teacher just isn't going to deter someone who has a deathwish in the first place.

Really? If all the person has is a deathwish, suicide is conveniently available at home. If all the person has is a deathwish garnished with publicity, then it's pretty easy to commit suicide in a public place. A good two-hour police standoff with the gun to your head gets way more live attention than a fifteen-minute killing spree.

Which is why I think you're missing the point with that hasty dismissal; the purpose of committing any act of mass violence, even if it ends in suicide, clearly has other motvations -- power, hate, vengenace, etc. The value of that is removed if the shooter knows that the first thing that happens when the gun comes out, is that he gets dropped dead. And furthermore, even if suicide wasn't fully on the table before the event, it sure is afterward, when you're staring at the depressing horror of a pile of bodies and blood, and realizing the only other option is a lifetime in a federal penitentiary.

Wanting to know the root causes is an important facet of preventing future events, but I see no reason to disbelieve the old "an armed citizenry is a polite citizenry" saw, even if it is unfortunate that we've come to the level of seeing it applied in schools.

Posted by anony-mouse | October 12, 2007 1:07 AM

Rhinoman asks if the Jews in World War II would have been better off if they had owned guns. I can't be certain, but I doubt it. Imagine a situation where a Jewish household does have a firearm. When the German police come and pick them up or order them to the town square, the father would have an option to attack the Germans or not. I doubt that anybody would have chosen to attack. Yes, you may kill a German soldier or two, but you know that your entire family will be killed on the spot. On the other hand, if you don't shoot, maybe you will make it through whatever plans the Germans have for you.

Hmm...ever hear of the term "Organized Resistance"? When there is a clear and present danger to one's safety, what makes you think people would sit around and wait to be picked off one-by-one?

At some point, when gun control or some similar topic came up on Megan's old site, someone shared a family history incident in which the family patriarch of an earlier generation received wind that the Klan was planning to drop by the next evening, and burn the little farm to the ground.

The next night a number of Klansmen showed up right on schedule, but found themselves facing a couple dozen very sober men, bristling with somewhere between fifteen and twenty shotguns. It was politely but firmly suggested that the unwelcome parties leave, and never return. Both requests were honored and no further trouble was encountered.

Posted by anony-mouse | October 12, 2007 1:18 AM

Njorl:
As plenty of people elsewhere have pointed out, it's not horribly difficult to manufacture a gun if you have the wherewithal. Gun smuggling is really quite easy and common- see, e.g., South Africa, as well as any country where there is a civil war, and you get the point. Hell, the AK47 is essentially designed for smuggling and use by people who aren't particularly well trained. And this says nothing of the fact that the military and police forces will always have access to guns, as will their suppliers- it doesn't take many who are willing to take a few particularly nice bribes for a bunch of guns to reach the hands of criminals (again, South Africa shows this point fairly well). Finally- we're still trying to figure out how to inspect shipping containers for nuclear material; how do you propose we will be able to inspect containers for guns with any kind of success ratio (since guns are pretty much impossible for a dog to sniff out- unlike drugs- and can be easily hidden in a shipping container).

Jeff:
I think you're probably right that in most cases tyranny comes slowly, and not by force; you're probably also right that even when it does come by force, it's unlikely that firearms will allow the victims to mount a successful campaign a la the American War for Independence.
However, firearms ownership at least "raises the bar" for what tyranny must overcome before it can claim power. Think of it as an additional cost for potential tyrannies to consider in their march to power.
This also applies to the "creeping tyranny" scenario, although on a different scale- more the individual angry Constitutionalist fighting the cops against his impending unconstitutional arrest. Knowing the guy is going to put up a fight again raises the bar for what the tyranny must overcome to make the arrest- maybe to the point of deciding to let the guy slide.

Posted by Mark | October 12, 2007 1:22 AM

Mark left a comment...

It may well be that prohibiting guns in schools is irrelevant to safer schools (and thus the Gun Free School Zones Act is worthless), but this is not the same as saying that permitting guns in schools deters school shootings from happening in the first place. The latter is the argument I find preposterous- I am not aware of a single one of these mass shootings where the killers didn't intend (and ultimately commit) suicide; the threat of being shot in the act by an armed teacher just isn't going to deter someone who has a deathwish in the first place.

Those involved in law enforcement call it "suicide by police". It is where some idiot, twisted with rage and self loathing, decides to rack up a body count before going off to meet his maker. They usually commit suicide in order to make sure that they avoid capture, but sometimes they decide to fire a round or two at the SWAT team and let the taxpayer pay for the lethal round.

But no matter how they elect to go, they want to cause as much pain as possible before they check out. That is why they seek out places where firearms are prohibited, so they can kill as many helpless people before their time runs out and they have to go themselves. (See the Luby's Diner massacre for an example of a killer who carefully chose his killing ground to maximize the number of victims, and then committed suicide before capture.)

I'm sorry if this gives offense, but your statement that allowing concealed carry on school grounds is "preposterous" doesn't line up with the facts. It is very probable that one of these killers would go somewhere else if teachers were allowed to carry concealed, and I would even say that it is likely considering what I know of these spree killers.

And, as you said, having a few armed teachers around could very well limit the body count since they would be able to resist the killer.

James

Posted by James R. Rummel | October 12, 2007 1:23 AM

Njorl wrote: A single mule can smuggle half a million worth of heroin or coke while walking right through a metal detector. They couldn't even carry a half million worth of guns.

Interesting, because I'm pretty sure I could hide a half million worth of illegal guns on a freighter truck without getting even one yip out of the drug-sniffing dogs or, for that matter, the border guards.

Posted by anony-mouse | October 12, 2007 1:27 AM

Mark: the high ownership of guns among white South Africans is precisely the point. Given crime rates in South Africa, gun ownership by whites is obviously failing to deter crime.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 12, 2007 4:03 AM

The problem here is with terminology. Calling it a ban makes it seem as if the choice is between a world with no guns and a world with guns. A world with no guns would be great, but that's really not possible at this point. What they should say is that they're passing a law that increases the ratio among hand gun owners of criminals to law-abiding citizens. Because that's what they're doing.

Posted by Josh | October 12, 2007 6:19 AM

Brooksfoe:
If you had read my arguments, you would have seen that I am not a particularly concerned with the argument that gun ownership inherently prevents crime; my point is far more that legal gun ownership rates are irrelevant to preventing violent crime, and that banning guns only succeeds in removing guns from the hands of law abiding citizens.
Again, the vast majority of guns used in crimes in South Africa are illegally smuggled in or are stolen from security forces of various sources. All banning guns usually achieves is the removal of guns from the people who aren't criminals to begin with.
Moreover, even if you want to use South Africa as an example, the legal gun ownership rate there is only 1/4 the rate in the US yet violent crime is far worse than in the US. Finally, the areas of South Africa that are considered by far the most dangerous by comparison are the overcrowded townships, meaning the lion's share of the crime is black-on-black. So high rates of legal gun ownership amongst whites are totally irrelevant to preventing most of the violence.

Posted by Mark | October 12, 2007 8:53 AM

"Interesting, because I'm pretty sure I could hide a half million worth of illegal guns on a freighter truck without getting even one yip out of the drug-sniffing dogs or, for that matter, the border guards."-Posted by anony-mouse

Wow, that's amazing. I bet you could smuggle watches into Switzerland too.

There isn't a real serious effort to keep guns out. If there were, it would be much easier than keeping drugs out. Intrinsic to all guns is the presence of a metal tube. You could easily scan any truck, boxcar, cargo container in seconds for any guns with some accoustic resonance scattering technique. There would be ways to defeat it, but they could be detected and countered.

Posted by Njorl | October 12, 2007 8:53 AM

Njorl,
They don't have to be smuggled at all. Everything needed to make them is available at any hardware store.

You also assume that in smuggling, one has to render them invisible to a security check. Sure...if you're goofy enough to actually walk up to the security checkpoint with large amounts of contraband. This country has 10,000 miles of borders - it's not hard to find a place on the border to bring in a large box unnoticed.

On top of that, police and military will ALWAYS have them ... and it's amazing how much those guys manage to "lose".

Final observation: there's 100,000,000 of them in this country already. You're not going to confiscate all of them.

Upshot: no matter how you look at it, they'll be available to anyone who wants one enough - legal or illegal, retail or private sale, purchased or smuggled or stolen, or even homemade. Any notion that involves making them go away totally, completely, forever (or anything close thereto) is preposterously naieve.

Posted by Carl Donath | October 12, 2007 9:25 AM

Njorl:
Wow. So, you are going to have every single shipping container scanned for metal tubes? And, every container that turns up metal tubing, I assume you're going to give it a top to bottom inspection? You obviously have never seen the inside of a packed shipping container; suffice it to say that even a cursory version of such an inspection would take several people many hours to complete. I suppose this would be fine, except: 1. Metal tubing isn't exactly what you would call an unusual shipping item; and 2. The "tube" (aka the barrel) can be so small as to be indistinguishable via scan; it can also come in about an infinite variety of shapes and sizes; and 3. this says nothing about the fact that many guns have interchangeable parts and can be shipped as separate pieces- so good luck finding the "action" part of the gun.

As for your argument that the problem is that the guns are made here, I guess you're suggesting that we tell the cops that they can no longer purchase pistols from Smith&Wesson, Colt, Sigarms, etc.- nothing but Glocks for them from now on! And the military can forget about the M-16- nothing but AK-47's from now on.

Posted by Mark | October 12, 2007 9:26 AM

If we have to give up a civil right in order to be safer, maybe we could have a conversation about whether a gun ban or the right of the government to inspect our library records is the greater intrusion.

I don't own a gun, and I do own a library card, but I'd rather give up the right to library privacy than the right to own a gun.

Posted by J Mann | October 12, 2007 9:51 AM

Bans on easily manufactured items are always going to be ineffective at keeping such items out of the hands of criminals. I don't care if you ban them locally, nationally, or globally.

National gun bans will be less effective than many of the drug bans like the prohibitions against marijuana, heroin, or cocaine since those items must be grown outside or indoors with large energy consumption and heat profiles that are difficult to conceal.

If you really want to cut down on the gun violence, you should end the prohibitions against drugs. It is this that is the primary driver.

Posted by Yancey Ward | October 12, 2007 10:28 AM

Mark,
It would not be difficult to perform accoustic spectroscopy on gun barrels so that they are distinguished from other tubes. This would not detect individualized guns, but if you eliminate standardized production from the supply, you've won the battle.

All of the scenarios mentioned - homemade guns, legal guns obtained corruptly, smuggled guns - would still result in a reduction of the presence of guns by multiple orders of magnitude. The price a criminal has to pay to have a gun would go up dramatically. With higher prices, demand would decline. Criminals would no longer consider the cost of a gun to be a small additional marginal cost that provides a large benifit.

Guns, unlike drugs, are a self catalysing market. Criminals want guns primarily because other criminals have guns. Decrease the likelyhood that drug dealers get shot by other drug dealers, and you recuce the profit margin for some illegal gun suppliers to below cost. Drugs are differnet. Cut down on the drug supply, and you increase the profit margin for illegal suppliers.

Posted by Njorl | October 12, 2007 11:39 AM

Yes, I think there would be even more murders if DC didn't have a ban on guns. It is a good thing that the police can approach someone that is slinging, and arest them for having a gun. I would never say that places that don't want gun control should have it. Communities that don't want gun control tend to have positive gun culture. People who are not criminals have guns, and know how to use guns.

DC is a city without a positive gun culture. There are no places to use guns for sport. Most non-criminal residents would prefer the security of fewer guns on the street to the security of carrying a gun they don't have the oppurtunity to use and engaging in armed combat with criminals. Fantasies and realities of armed grannies standing up to armed muggers, being able to arrest someone for carrying a deadly weapon is a powerful law enforcement tool for a dangerous city.

Posted by Michael Foody | October 12, 2007 11:44 AM

The second admendment is the only place in the constitution where government regulation is specifically called for as being 'necessary'. The people being 'regulated', by need, are gun owners.

If we took the second admendment seriously and insisted on the well regulated part we would have far fewer gun crimes, and probably far fewer guns as well.

Posted by ken | October 12, 2007 11:56 AM

Yancey Ward hit the nail on the head.

One would think, given the fact that the War on Drugs is an unmitigated failure and disproportionately waged against poor blacks, that the Democrats would be calling for its abrupt demise.

The fact that the Democratic Party continues to support the WoD leads me to believe that they don't really care about violent crime or the black community as much as they say they do.

Posted by Christina | October 12, 2007 12:11 PM

Ken, look into the history of the word regulated. What it really meant back then was skilled in the use of guns, specifically skilled in using them as a group. While you are at it, see if you can remember what you were taught in 7th grade about the effect of a subordinate clause on the overall meaning of a sentence.

By the way, the last time United States citizens took up arms to overthrow a government and restore democracy was in 1946.

Posted by triticale | October 12, 2007 12:14 PM

The framers of the U.S. Constitution were most concerned with the tyranny of government over its citizens with respect to the individual guarantee to have and bear arms. If the right (of the people) was not to be abridged, then it must have necessarily existed before the Constitution was written. What D.C. has done is criminal and is effectively, the disarming of its law-abiding citizens. This illogical nonsense about gun control is just a veiled attempt to totally disarm the citizens of our republic. Ultimately, the "game" is federal, universal registration, a few buybacks like being touted right now in Washington D.C., followed by confiscation and destruction. This leaves guns in the hands of those who would do us harm and creates great gun-free zones in which citizens may have their lives snuffed out. Great Britain, Australia and Canada are already having some second thoughts of their choices, or at least choices imposed on their citizens. My sense is that Americans should wake up and see what is happening in the deliberate, gradual disarming of America as accelerated in the mid 1970s to date and has resulted in people in our Capitol unable to effectively defend themselves in their own homes. Anti-gun individuals and organizations have a very hard time explaining why violent crime is down in right to carry firearm states, and is very high where 2nd amendment rights have been denied. Could it be that the idiots took away guns from the good guys and left the criminals fully armed"? These anti-gun zealots who are systematically disarming America are not misguided or misinformed, they are genuinely stupid and have learned nothing in D.C. over 30 years of high crime rates and their citizenry unable to defend their own life and property in their homes. Could this be what the framers of the Constitution were worried about? The problem may end up being not one of crime or terrorists or much earlier, the Russians coming over here, it could be the attempted disarming of Americans that is our ultimate downfall. The answer is fairly simple, Don't Do It.

Posted by Vir Quisque Vir | October 12, 2007 12:21 PM

The framers who wrote the second admendment knew that having armed bunchs of people without any leadership, regulations, or training was nothing less than having armed mobs. No one wanted that.

So they specifically said that gun owners were to be 'well regulated'. They put it in writing in the second admendment to the constitution.

The problem is not that we have too many guns, the problem is that we have too little regulation on the people with guns.

If we took the second admendment seriously we could cut down on gun crimes and probably reduce the number of guns as well.

Posted by ken | October 12, 2007 12:47 PM

Njorl wrote:
"Guns, unlike drugs, are a self catalysing market. Criminals want guns primarily because other criminals have guns. Decrease the likelyhood that drug dealers get shot by other drug dealers, and you recuce the profit margin for some illegal gun suppliers to below cost. Drugs are differnet. Cut down on the drug supply, and you increase the profit margin for illegal suppliers."

This is more than a little debatable. Take a look at Mexico, for instance, which has extremely restrictive gun control legislation (and to my knowledge no domestic gun manufacturers), and yet a firearms homicide rate almost three times that of the US- almost entirely due to smuggling. Or take Northern Ireland circa 1994, which had a tiny legal gun ownership rate, but a much higher homicide rate than the US. In fact, if you look at a graph of gun supply in the US over time compared to a graph of homicide (and especially firearms-related homicide), you will find that there is no correlation one way or another between the two.

The better explanation for why criminals need guns is that they are a necessary part of the criminal enterprise- again, if you are a criminal, you don't have what we would call property rights vis a vis other criminals. So guns become the best possible way of defending your "property" rights or of taking the "property" of rival criminals. Demand for guns may not be perfectly inelastic, but then again, neither is the demand for drugs- but they are pretty close.

Posted by Mark | October 12, 2007 12:53 PM

The biggest problem I see in the calls for gun bans, other than the obvious constitutional debate, is that usually this is viewed to be the only method required to solve a crime issue which goes well beyond only firearms crimes. What is many times a complex cultural, economic and educational issue, cannot be solved with a knee-jerk law based solely on emotion. It's like trying to cure a compound fracture by putting a bandage over the exposed bone. It doesn't solve anything, but looks like you're doing something.

Rather than simply trying to do an apparently ineffective ban on physical items, cities such as DC, Cincinnati, New Orleans and others with similar issues, they would be much better served by putting all that money and effort into proven crime fighting techniques such as improving the under-supported police forces and court systems.

And as others pointed out, no bad will be effective if there is a large enough demand by criminals. The current trends in the UK is for arms to be smuggled in from Eastern Europe. There has been at least one case in Australia of a widespread firearms manufacturing ring. Shipping containers of Chinese weapons have been seized in LA. Palestinians are manufacturing huge numbers of effective anti-tank weapons such as the Yasin pattern rockets rom common household item.

Posted by Hans | October 12, 2007 12:58 PM

I dont totally agree with the tyranny arguement only on the basis that it will probably never happen. i like to defend gun ownership using logic. Gun control has mixed results throughout the world. In the UK, murders and gun crime have gone up since inacting gun control, but in austria, gun crime is down, but other violent crime is up. Then in the US there seems to be no correlation between gun control laws and murder rate/crime rate (just wikipedia homicide rates by country). I dont buy the suicide arguement when it comes to gun control either. You can't seriously believe that an adult will be stopped from harming themselves if they dont have access to a gun. What about a car, just turn on the heat and go to sleep forever. Look at japan, whose suicide rate is highest in the world with very limited firearm ownership. Dont use the arguement also that other suicide methods are less deadly- people who truly want to kill themselves will use lethal means, the only people who use such things as overdosing are just looking for attention, if you are using a gun, you truly want to kill yourself- dont have the gun, then you might suffocate yourself with your car or jump infront of a train. My next problem is with the accident reasoning for gun control-especially with children. in all honesty, a child is more likely to die from drowning then an accident with a firearm so i dont believe that is a valid reason to start controlling arms more strictly. and what about murders you say...crimes of passion between spouses. well first murders can be done with any other weapon. and the spousal arguement is misguided because in many instances where there is no gun, a kitchen knife is used and using the arguement that a kitchen knife is less deadly then a gun to ban guns is like saying to a person who got hit by truck going 50 miles an hour and died "atleast it wasnt a passenger train." Our society errs on the side of freedom, just look at our justice system- innocent till proven guilty- do you know how many times NY mobsters went free because we couldnt prove they were guilty, even though we knew in our hearts they were. Gun control advocates need to prove that gun control makes us safer and until then we will err on the side of freedom and limit governmental control on guns. I also find that gun control advocates going after guns as a crime fighting method is like a drivers ed teacher going after shaving while you drive as a method to prevent accidents. Yes shaving while you drive increases your chance of being in an accident- it isnt the major cause only a minor one- speed is a major cause. What i am saying is to solve the root problem of gun crime- socioeconomic, takes a lot more work to accomplish- so our politicians go for the easier route.

Posted by Alex | October 12, 2007 1:33 PM

Ken- do you know that lowering the number of guns in private hands will have almost no effect on gun crime. you would have to lower it by atleast 4/5 and that is an impossible feat. Just think about this, during the 1990's we saw the largest drop in violent crime in our history, plus an increase in our private arsenal of 50-75 million new firearms.

Posted by Alex | October 12, 2007 1:36 PM

"If we took the second admendment seriously and insisted on the well regulated part"

...then we would follow the lead of the Founding Fathers, who after enacting the 2nd Amendment promptly wrote the Militia Act of 1792, which declared that _all_ able-bodied males 17-45 would arm & equip themselves (at their own cost) to a minimum standard, and the local gov't would provide periodic training.

At the time it was written, "well regulated" addressed being equipped, skilled, capable and organized - very different from today's meaning amounting to "suppressed".

Posted by Carl Donath | October 12, 2007 2:06 PM

triticale,
A more recent example is Waco & Ruby Ridge. They happened within 6 months of each other, and heralded in a new era of dynamic raids by highly skilled & armed gov't teams acting on tax violations.
The citizens fought back. Hard. Armed.
Yes, the citizens in question lost the conflict.
But, it was a Pyhrric victory for the winners.
Such raids haven't been repeated for 15 years.

Posted by Carl Donath | October 12, 2007 2:11 PM

re: Mark E Hoffer's posted quote from a review of "More Guns, Less Crime"

If it weren't for the fact that Lott's results disappeared when coding errors in his data were corrected, or that he tried to bring the results back by dropping the control for clustering; or that his subsequent analysis of the data requires hilarious leaps of reasoning totally unsupported by the existing literature; or that Lott himself has been known to promote himself online, even going so far as to create a persona known as "Mary Rosh" to talk about what a wonderful man he is; or that basically, his work is of extraordinarily poor academic standards... that review would be accurate. Alas, it's not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a supporter of the Second Amendment. It's just that Lott's work is among worst, from a statistical standpoint, I have ever read, and I consider him to be a liability to the cause he champions. There are plenty of entirely valid arguments against gun bans, so it's not necessary to use his.

Posted by Matthew | October 12, 2007 2:16 PM

If we are going to have a 'well regulated' armed populace we need to organize, train and give them leadership. The second admendment says as clear as day that regulating people with guns is a necessity.

If we would only take the second admendment seriously we could reduce the amount of gun crime and probably the number of guns as well.

When people are members of an organized group that is well led and well trained they will be less likely to pull a gun out and shoot someone. They can be educated as well about gun rules and laws and the consequences of breaking the laws and rules. Crime will go down. So will gun ownership. Everyone wins.

Posted by ken | October 12, 2007 2:27 PM

By the way, the Second Admendment is the only place in the constitution that demands a group of people be 'well regulated'. Unfortunately we have not lived up to our founders expectations in this regard. But we can and should turn this around and start providing the regulation gun owners need right away. A decent respect for the constitution demands nothing less.

Posted by ken | October 12, 2007 2:39 PM

Njorl:

I doubt the part about the watches. I do think, however, that you are pretty naive about the many ways guns can be transported; we can't even keep people from crossing the southern border in droves, so you can no doubt come up with some clever transport schemes to use humans as disposable, untraceable mules to carry firearms in exchange for promise of a cash payment. Or you can smuggle guns inside large industrial equipment. Or cars. Or just about any other large, complex metal object where a little extra metalic content will go completely unnoticed unless someone has a specific reason to search. Or you could ship them inside large barrels of innert industrial chemicals, mineral oil being the most friendly.

In many of these cases, if you set up your scheme right, the front organizations can be dealing in enough legitimate business to avoid suspicion, and the mules could be innocent third party shipping contractors who have no clue what is inside their nominally-legitimate cargo (and are thus unlikely to act in ways that would tip off the border guards). Or you can go for the sporadic approach, and simply make ad-hoc shipments at random intervals so as to minimize risk of detection. Whichever suits.

This is before we get into the problem of enormous shipping containers arriving daily by the tens of thousands on both coasts. Yeah, you can come up with complex imaging techniques that are technically capable of reading and graphically reconstructing the contents of a shipping container, and even highlighting known item shapes (modern airport carry-on scanners already do some of this). But you're going to have a terrible time distinguishing the parts of a disassembled gun from legitimate stocks of other goods, and you haven't even addressed the problem of actually scanning every shipping container. As someone already noted, we haven't even found a good way to monitor shipping containers for purposes of mitigating the threat of nuclear terrorism. And you think you've got a good idea for trapping smuggled arms?

Your reasoning is evidently parallel to claiming that forest fires shouldn't be an issue because we know water puts out fire and we have pumps that can propel water. It shows a legitimate grasp of the technical basics, but no clue of the scope of the problem or real-world implementation difficulties.

Posted by anony-mouse | October 12, 2007 2:47 PM

Ken wrote: The second admendment says as clear as day that regulating people with guns is a necessity.

No, it speaks of a "well-regulated militia". As has already been noted in the thread, this says nothing about individuals on their own time, and the founding fathers' own behavior clearly indicates that the collection of people together into the militia was the part that was to be well-regulated, not the individual ownership (the uninfringed right to bear arms) which was pre-requisite to forming a militia.

You shouldn't speak sanctimoniously of "a decent respect for the Constitution" if you're not going to provide a demonstration in your own use of it.

Posted by anony-mouse | October 12, 2007 2:52 PM

A kilo of heroin has been metabolized soon after crossing the border, and its buyers want more of it more than they want anything else. A gun, whether smuggled or made domestically, has a very long shelf life: my oldest was made in 1917. If I had the money, today I could buy a Revolutionary War-era rifle and shoot it before it gets dark.

Yes, England has a low murder rate even after the recent increases. They had an unbelievably low murder rate a century ago, when anyone but the police could carry guns. Despite this fact, England has decided that gun control is the reason for their safety. If you attribute a good harvest to the human sacrifices made that year, not only are you unlikely to advance much in agronomy, but you'll probably respond to the next crop failure with increased funding for the sacrifice program.

Posted by Bambi | October 12, 2007 4:44 PM

Matthew,

Thank you for pointing that out. I chose Lott's work, primarily, for it's simple premise: "More Guns, Less Crime", one I happen to agree with, btw.

http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Lott+statistical+errors

No doubt we should be careful to do our own homework. "Experts" may not be reliable.

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | October 12, 2007 4:50 PM

When ever I hear the gun control people speakingof unarmed schools as "safe" schools and armed schools as potential killing zones I can't help but recall my own childhood. Growing up in rural Idaho I can well remember the parking lot of the high school filled with cars, and many of them with gun racks and people's hunting rifles and shotgun's stored in those gun racks. Alot of us wore buck knives, or multi tools or carried pen knives in our pocket's yet we never had anyone pull a gun or knife on anyone else. If we had a difference it was usually settled with unarmed posturing and heated words, occasionally with fists. Now some may think I am talking of the distant past, yet I graduated in 1994. Furthuremore the gun control folks decry loosening gun control as turning back the clock to the "Wild-west". Yet this arguement seems childish when you look at the fact that gun-ownership in the period of 1870-1900 (the historical Wild-west) was greater than 90%, yet the crime rate was extremely low. It also was extremely rare, contrary to Hollywood's portrayal, for criminals to "tree" a town. A great portion of the adult males had come to age fighting on the fields of the Civil War and were quite adapt at handling firearms for personal defense. As for the definition of a militia, we must look at the 18th century concept of militia to determine the founding fathers intention. A militia was conceieved as a group of private citizens (armed at their own expense) who upon the sounding of the alarm would gather to take part in what ever emergency was presented and would just as likely fight of a Native attack or foreign invasion, as take on a group of armed criminals. They did drill, but it was an ad hoc event, with no mandatory participation. Granted many states did have an organized cadre that was labeled as a militia, but the purpose was to act as the framework in which local militias could be assimilated into once they were needed for a national or state emergency. The National Guard was not founded until the 1890's and the Army Reserve until the early 1900's, though both branches try and claim decent from earlier militias. Both forces are considered to be a branch of the US Army and are paid for from National coffers, are armed by the National governemnet and have obligatory drills, in which a person can legally (though rarely) be prosecuted for not attending. The founding fathers were not fans of a strong federal army and envisioned a small federal Army being supplemented by a large,