Anyway, so the D.C. Court of Appeals has thrown out the city's gun ban on the grounds that it violates the second amendment. Fairly unprecedented if I understand it correctly, but I really don't because I'm not a lawyer, I haven't read the court documents, and I'm not going to. Unlike a lot of commentators, I'll admit that.
I have to agree with Radley that the Washington Posts editorial on the subject is indeed shrill, and seems to assume that gun control works without a whole lot of evidence.
Take this section:
The NRA predictably welcomed yesterday's ruling. According to its myth, only criminals have had guns in the city and now law-abiding citizens will be able to arm themselves for protection.
Myth? Isn't that kind of self-evidently true? If it was, in fact, illegal to have a handgun in the city, you would be a criminal for carrying one. And Radley pointed out (although the link he cites is dead, or at least not accessible from China), the NRA opposed the lawsuit, though why it did is beyond me.
Let me lay out a few thoughts on the subject:
1) It's easy to get guns into DC if you don't mind breaking the law. All you do is go to Virginia, which doesn't have such laws, and bring them back. There aren't any checkpoints, to my knowledge. And if you don't think that in a nation where you can buy identities online, and drugs on any street corner, that there's a black market for guns, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. Incidentally, this is also true of basically any other state or city with strict gun laws.
2) If you're planning on shooting someone, you don't care about violating gun control laws. This just seems obvious to me. Even if you aren't going to shoot someone, but you need a gun because you run drugs, are in a gang, or are a gun nut, you're not going to care either.
Given those two postulates, what reason is there to think gun control laws have a chance of reducing violent crime committed with guns? And the idea that criminals don't fear getting shot when they rob a liquor store or mug someone is ludicrous. Why do gang members carry guns for PROTECTION?
Now, I don't completely buy into the 'more guns=more safety' line. It seems to me that if there are more guns in (generally) law abiding citizens' hands, there are going to be two results. A) there will be some deterrent effect on criminals, who are as afraid of getting shot as anyone, and B) there will be some disputes (say in bars) that because of the presence of guns will result in shootings where there otherwise wouldn't be. The question is which of these two effects will be larger. There are apparently some good studies showing that more guns does lower the crime rate, and others showing the opposite. I simply don't know enough to tell which ones are better or why.
But consider this: DC has had (and still has - the ruling does not go into effect yet) these very strict gun control laws. Why then does it continue to have such a high crime rate and so many shootings?
UPDATE: Davin points out that another effect of increased gun ownership will be more family members of gun owners getting shot.
2 comments:
I was wondering when you'd get to areas where I disagree with you. ;) Actually, I don't really disagree with anything you've got here, and I too have basically zero intelligent data to add to the discussion. That said, the one thing I'd like to add is that you're overlooking Effect C: a lot more innocent family members of gun-owners are going to be shot from now on. O'course, I can't cite any stats for that either, but isn't the conventional wisdom that "a gun in the house is three (or whatever) times more likely to be accidentally used on a family member than on an intruder"?
Yes, I think that's true - definitely read that somewhere.
Of course, it's also true that you're more likely to kill your family by putting in a swimming pool than owning a gun. Read that in Freakonomics.
But I'd place the responsibility for those deaths on the gun owner. Of course, the victim is still innocent, and that's troubling, but I still don't want the government interfering.
I don't think a paternalistic government should save us from ourselves with respect to drugs, guns, or anything else.
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