Feeling Safe
Jesse Walker | April 17, 2007, 10:07am
This is
all over the Internet already, but since we're already hearing
demands for
new gun
laws it deserves to be mentioned here too. From the
Roanoke Times, January 31, 2006:
A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly....
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
With that grim irony noted, let's not forget an important fact: School shootings are rare. They're especially rare at Virginia Tech. National Review reports that in "2005, the last year for which data are available, the campus had no murders, forcible thefts, or aggravated assaults. Almost no cities of 25,000, Virginia Tech's student enrollment, ever have had a year that safe. Despite a single horrific day nothing fundamental has changed." Anecdotal evidence, even really gruesome anecdotal evidence, isn't the best argument for any sweeping policy change -- including changes, such as concealed-carry permits, that I happen to support. The Virginia Tech shootings are a lousy argument for gun control, but that doesn't mean they'll turn out to be a strong argument for anything else.
As Ilya Somin notes, "The extreme rarity of such incidents should be kept in mind as we decide what, if any, policy changes should be made in response to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Some changes may well be warranted, but we should guard against costly overreactions such as the draconian 'zero tolerance' policies implemented in many schools after the Columbine attacks in 1999."
VM | April 17, 2007, 11:29am | #
MC | April 17, 2007, 11:07am | #
What kind of moron wants to carry a concealed gun around on a college campus, especially if school shootings are rare?
The type of moron who would rather fight back against a psycho than stand there waiting to die.
oooh! less than 10% chance of rain. Gonna walk around in a drysuit. not gonna get wet! Look! It's fucking SECRET AGENT MAN! You're as fucking lame as the guy who gets into a martial arts stance everytime someone walks by - "just in case".
There's a better defense of concealed carry than that. That's as silly as the anti GM arguments. In fact, it doesn't need justification. It's legal. And I believe it is unrelated to this case.
It's really fucking lame to have these faux macho fantasies.
The image of everybody running around like James Bond is really silly. And the "judged by twelve than carried by six" argument is also really lame.
You're not gonna be in that situation. Ever. You're not gonna win the lottery. And Penny Sue will NOT, repeat NOT, call you even though she smiled at you in homeroom.
This asinine argument, "this proves that I should carry" vs "this proves guns are bad" don't get anywhere.
Argue from a different perspective. By even floating these situations as your justification, you're giving the control people ammo, ahem - as it were. You don't need to justify concealed carry. At all.
These terrible shootings have nothing to do with your right to own, possess, or carry a gun. Unrelated.
In fact, you're the moron of the day. You're the daily equivalent to that idiot who had a toothache and figured he could stand up to Iran, unlike those "treacherous" Brit sailors. Tool.
Brady - that's a completely misunderstood, unfair characterization of Mediageek. I suggest you understand the regulars here before you embarrass yourself more.
Mediageek is a responsible, knowledgeable gun owner. He explains safety issues, laws, mechanics etc all the time.
He wasn't spewing any macho shit, unlike MC.
I take it back, MC. You're tied with Brady for moron of the day. And please heed Mr. Jake Boone's advice! He speaks clear minded!
Other Matt | April 17, 2007, 11:35am | #
Some ideas:
- strict compensatory liability for gun manufacturers to victims. let the gun manufacturers decide who is worthy, and give them incentive to be stingy in bestowing that honor.
How about we do the same with cars, pools, hammers, and any other thing which has ever been used to murder someone? If you're up for that, let's do it. By the way, I get to be the guy that sells you your food.
- make gun owners sign a Fourth Amendment waiver. If you carry a gun, then all searches are "reasonable" and consensual.
Bullshit. Are you willing to sign a waiver that since you post here, exercising your first amendment rights, all searches are consentual?
- better enforcement of laws requiring people to secure their guns. (In conjunction with last point), random, warrantless searches to make sure the gun cabinets stay locked. On pain of jail time.
Why? How about random, warrantless searches to ensure that your medicine cabinet stays locked? You simply don't grasp that a firearm sitting about is not going to jump up and kill someone, and there are many ways to kill someone that don't involve a gun. There has to be someone pulling the trigger. It's tragic when a kids shoots another, just as it's tragic when a kid beats another to death. The latter is more likely to happen. It's tragic when a kid gets killed with scissors, that's more likely yet.
- require open carry rather than concealed carry. I would rather know who is carrying, me.
Why does it matter to you that you want so much to let people know where they can steal a gun? The inference is that you're scared of people that have them, it would follow that cops scare the crap out fo you.
I think your trust in fellow people, perhaps yourself, is quite lacking. I think your concerns would be much better addressed by saying "Anyone who has a predisposition to kill someone, wear a yellow triangle on the front of their garment". That would solve it, right? Therefore, even if someone wasn't carrying, but instead had a knife, hammer, something to kill you with, they'd be appropriately identified. By all means, pass this law, as it would undoubtably ensure safe living for all.
- make it a crime to have your guns stolen from you. Period.
Now this is just stupid. Someone steals your car, uses it for vehicular homocide, you want to assume liability? If yes, please do so. I don't.
- stiffer penalties for people who allow children unsupervised access to guns.
This is already illegal, but what would you propose? I don't particularly have a problem with this, as long as it's written precisely, so it can't be used as a broad brush attack on people.
I could go on, but you get the point.
No, I don't. I see a number of ill considered proposals that stem from irrational fears, not reality.
Andy | April 17, 2007, 11:43am | #
Dave W,
Since you went through the admirable trouble of posting this list, I wanted to give you some thoughts on it.
To all, sorry for any repeats to the countless people who’ve already answered him.
strict compensatory liability for gun manufacturers to victims. let the gun manufacturers decide who is worthy, and give them incentive to be stingy in bestowing that honor.
This idea strikes me as a non-starter, unless you’re going to allow compensatory liability for car manufacturers and alcohol brewers as well. A gun manufacturer doesn’t have any more control over who the gun is sold to than either of those (significantly more deadly, even in terms of pure “unreasonable use” deaths) products. Maybe if you wanted to talk about gun DEALERS facing compensatory liability in the face of demonstrable gross negligence, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t already fly in court. And regardless, if you’re comfortable with liability for responsible ownership of cars stopping with the owner thanks to extensive government licensing, I’m not sure why that changes here.
- make gun owners sign a Fourth Amendment waiver. If you carry a gun, then all searches are "reasonable" and consensual.
You can’t waive a Constitution right. There’s this pesky thing about the lack of alienability. Even if you could, this is just about the stupidest and most insulting thing I’ve ever heard, and I don’t own or want to own a gun.
- better enforcement of laws requiring people to secure their guns. (In conjunction with last point), random, warrantless searches to make sure the gun cabinets stay locked. On pain of jail time.
Again with the Fourth Amendment. While I can agree with upping the penalties, neither I nor any court of record is going to get behind that being a reasonable cause of search. And at that point, of course, it just becomes another excuse to up jail time for people caught doing something else, or who can’t quite be caught doing something else. Again with the “uniqueness” problem – if this is a reasonable cause for a search, so is ensuring that you’ve properly secured all potentially toxic cleaning chemicals from children, and that you don’t have any sharp or electrical objects in a position where a child or potential visiting child could access them. It just doesn’t make any sense.
- require open carry rather than concealed carry. I would rather know who is carrying, me.
I don’t really know or care much about this. I don’t really know why people want to conceal carry, so it’s not really for me to speak about whether or not they should be able to. Seems odd to me though that you can be comfortable declaring someone safe to use a gun, but that you have to be able to see it anyway.
- make it a crime to have your guns stolen from you. Period.
This is mind-numbingly stupid.
- stiffer penalties for people who allow children unsupervised access to guns.
What about a trained kid who wants to go hunting? I mean, of course, on face, no one’s going to argue that you should be penalized for letting a five-year-old play house with double barreled shotgun, or whatever, but in practice this doesn’t make total sense.
- make gun owners carry theft and malpractice insurance.
Eh, no real problem with this. At least in a sense that would be equivalent to car insurance. So to say no to theft, but yes to safety insurance.
dhex | April 17, 2007, 11:59am | #
some reasonable steps in discussing this issue:
1) separate gun deaths and gun suicides. as the high suicide rate in many countries where weapons bans are strong, as well as in a country like switzerland where guns are plentiful strongly indicates that suicide should be separated when talking about gun availability. israel has a low suicide rate - finland a high suicide rate, but their legal approaches to firearms are radically different.
2) depending on who is doing the talking (and believing) there seems to be a huge divide on what actions cause what effects in terms of crime resistance and injury. while this is not surprising, it becomes difficult to suss out what's crap and what's not, even if we take the primary step of eliminating the demagogues and jerkoffs (i.e. the brady campaign, john lott, etc). invariably people believe what they want to believe. my take on it is that legal handgun ownership and usage seems to help certain populations (women, minorities) in certain categories of crime (rape, armed robbery and home invasion) avoid greater injury and crime completion. the rates are not tremendous, but they are somewhat more positive than passive resistance. (This data is reflected in many women's self-defense courses in the united states now, in which active resistance is stressed over passive resistance; neither is a byword for "suicide" regardless.)
3) as a group, CHL holders seem to be extremely law-abiding, with crime rates far below the general population (outside of the obvious, like not storing their licensed guns properly and other infractions that only apply to CHL holders).
4) keep in mind that this "debate" is dominated by fear and that's what brings it to shaivo-esque levels of insanity. so don't take it personally, and be not afraid.
5) a question: why is gun violence considered a public health issue, at least as far as the academic reviews are concerned? that seems...odd. maybe it's a funding thing? the suicide aspect makes sense, but actual gun crimes seems to be a criminology issue, not a public health issue.
and as requested, a partial bibliography:
Committee on Law and Justice, National Research Council. “Firearms and Violence: A
Critical Review.” Wellford, Charles F., Pepper, John V. and Carol V. Petrie,
Editors. Washington, DC. National Academies Press, 2004.
http://newton.nap.edu/catalog/10881.html
Centers for Disease Control. “First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for
Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws.” October 3, 2003. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm.
Kleck, Gary and Don B. Kates. Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control. New York:
Prometheus Books, 2001.
Synder, Jeffrey R. “Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense and the Right to Carry a
Handgun.” Cato Institute, October 22, 1997. https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-284.html.
Texas Dept. of Public Safety. Concealed Handgun Licensing Bureau.
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/chlsindex.htm.
Texas Dept. of Public Safety. Concealed Handgun Licensing Bureau. “Conviction Rate
Breakdown for CCW Licensees.” http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm.
Texas Dept. of Public Safety. Concealed Handgun Licensing Bureau. “Demographic
Summary.” http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/demographicsummary.PDF.
Reynolds, Morgan and H. Sterling Burnett. “Carrying Concealed Weapons Reduces
Crime.” At Issue: Gun Control. Tamara L. Roleff, Ed. Chicago: Greenhaven Press, 2000.
World Health Organization. Suicide Prevention and Special Programmes.
http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html and http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/unitstates.pdf.
Cain's Ability | April 17, 2007, 12:01pm | #
Right! I'm going to try posting this one more time, because I think I have something valuable to write--you may disagree.
I think the gun issue is a red herring.
Dennis Prager and his ilk would say, and have said, that the murderer was evil. I, for one, do believe that evil exists. But, that seems too hopeless. Lucifer was evil, but not even God could change that. So everyone suffers.
"Leftists" (for lack of a better term) like the psychologists on the morning verbal diarrhea shows say that the murderer was insane/troubled/infantile/isolated/[substitute-mental-disease-of-the-month-here]. Well, granted, I think we can all agree that mass murder is not a normal reaction to anything. But that seems to excuse this behavior too readily. We've all had our problems, and many of us even have genuine mental dysfunctions, but we do somehow manage not to murder dozens of people.
The guns are a red herring, I think, because any weapon would have served this guy's purposes. Guns just mean a higher body count, but any weapon from "Clue" would have still resulted in at least one corpse. We're still left with the problem of why the fuck did he kill them?
Saying "he was just an evil murderer" leaves us with the very real possibility that we're overlooking a problem. Saying "there are psychological underpinnings" places us as sheep who must submit to therapy, minus free will and responsibility, from now on. Neither position, IMH(umble)O, will ever answer the question "Why?"
I have no idea where I am with this. I still have no idea where I am with Tim McVeigh, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or Mark Chapman, or even Jack the Ripper. All I can say is that evil exists, and this is evil. Guns are irrelevant. The questions for me are not why evil exists, but rather why did Lucifer succumb to it, and why was God not more persuasive?
Dave W. | April 17, 2007, 12:18pm | #
Well, I wanted a non-polarized dialogue on gun law here and now it looks like I got one. My responses to the responses:
- strict compensatory liability for gun manufacturers to victims. let the gun manufacturers decide who is worthy, and give them incentive to be stingy in bestowing that honor.
This idea strikes me as a non-starter, unless you’re going to allow compensatory liability for car manufacturers and alcohol brewers as well. A gun manufacturer doesn’t have any more control over who the gun is sold to than either of those (significantly more deadly, even in terms of pure “unreasonable use” deaths) products. Maybe if you wanted to talk about gun DEALERS facing compensatory liability in the face of demonstrable gross negligence, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t already fly in court. And regardless, if you’re comfortable with liability for responsible ownership of cars stopping with the owner thanks to extensive government licensing, I’m not sure why that changes here.
Cars aren't designed to kill people and they are not particularly good at killing people. That is why I want "strict liability" for guns and not cars. To put it in commonlaw parlance, I see guns as a dangerous instrumentality, but not cars. Furthermore, the manufacturers choose who the dealers are, and they have more money to lose if some Korean goes off at all the boy engineers. This would incentivize manufactures to choose dealers who will choose responsible customers. If you place this responsibility only upon the dealer, then the dealer will just declare bankruptcy. Manufactuers don't have that option. they are well capitalized and therefore cannot easily evade responsibility if someone sells to an idiot or evildoer. their safeguards against selling to idiots and evildoers are more likely to be economically efficient because they will have a lot of transactions over which to spread the risk.
- make gun owners sign a Fourth Amendment waiver. If you carry a gun, then all searches are "reasonable" and consensual.
You can’t waive a Constitution right. There’s this pesky thing about the lack of alienability. Even if you could, this is just about the stupidest and most insulting thing I’ve ever heard, and I don’t own or want to own a gun.
Some searches are presumptively reasonable. Although, traditionally searches of gun owners are not considered presumptively reasonable, I think the Framers meant for what is "reasonable" to depend more on contemporary context, rather than original intent. I think that is why they used the word "reasonable" in the Fourth Amendment, so as not to put that particular amendment in a 1791 time freeze. Given the number of gun murders in the US, and also the increased safety of society otherwise, I think searches of gun owners are reasonable. Maybe someday a creative prosecutor will make this argument for SCOTUS and we will see what they think.
Now, consensual searches are a whole nother thing. Consensual searches, under 4th Amendment law don't have to be reasonable. they just have to be consented to. You say that you cannot waive a Constitutional Right. That is just plain wrong, as a Con Law matter.
- better enforcement of laws requiring people to secure their guns. (In conjunction with last point), random, warrantless searches to make sure the gun cabinets stay locked. On pain of jail time.
Again with the Fourth Amendment. While I can agree with upping the penalties, neither I nor any court of record is going to get behind that being a reasonable cause of search. And at that point, of course, it just becomes another excuse to up jail time for people caught doing something else, or who can’t quite be caught doing something else. Again with the “uniqueness” problem – if this is a reasonable cause for a search, so is ensuring that you’ve properly secured all potentially toxic cleaning chemicals from children, and that you don’t have any sharp or electrical objects in a position where a child or potential visiting child could access them. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Toxic cleaning chemicals are not designed to kill people and are not particularly good at it.
Explosives are more akin to guns because they are designed to kill and are effective at it. Explosives do entail special insurance, premises inspection and strict liability in tort, which is part of the reason that I suggest this would be appropriate for guns, too. As a matter of fact, I would not draw a categorical distinction between guns and explosives for second Amendment purposes. I think both should be considered as "arms" for Con law purposes. Which makes even clearer the Constitutional permissibility of my proposals here.
- require open carry rather than concealed carry. I would rather know who is carrying, me.
I don’t really know or care much about this. I don’t really know why people want to conceal carry, so it’s not really for me to speak about whether or not they should be able to. Seems odd to me though that you can be comfortable declaring someone safe to use a gun, but that you have to be able to see it anyway.
The idea is that if someone who you see carrying a gun about on a daily basis starts acting crazy, then you will be quicker to report him to the authorities. If the Korean who shot up VT had been openly carrying for a couple years, then he might have been reported even before he got to his ex-girlfriend's dorm room yesterday morning.
there may also be an enhanced deterrence effect with open carry, although that is subject to debate and empirical study.
- make it a crime to have your guns stolen from you. Period.
This is mind-numbingly stupid.
I know you are, but what am I?
- stiffer penalties for people who allow children unsupervised access to guns.
What about a trained kid who wants to go hunting? I mean, of course, on face, no one’s going to argue that you should be penalized for letting a five-year-old play house with double barreled shotgun, or whatever, but in practice this doesn’t make total sense.
I have faith that a statute could be crafted to bestow criminal liability in one situation and not the other. remember, this is not one of those polarized dialogues that all those other gunnuts and bleeding hearts wanna have. this is us talking.
- make gun owners carry theft and malpractice insurance.
Eh, no real problem with this. At least in a sense that would be equivalent to car insurance. So to say no to theft, but yes to safety insurance.
a tiny sliver of common ground, then. Nice grace note to end on.
VM | April 17, 2007, 2:12pm | #
1/2 a B: d'oh! haven't read those comments (ohnoes!), that's why. I'm sorry I missed them! Thank you for the heads up! So - to all of them, too: this is not about guns. And it shouldn't be made to be so.
TJ - his "suck it" only shows that it's an emotional issue for him, and that makes his arguments just as good as the anti gun freaks'.
The pathetic thing is that you don't need that kind of argument. Cuz the issue here isn't the perfectly reasonable right to concealed carry.
It should be and should remain legal. Cherry picking events to "prove" that which needs no proving, especially at such an emotional level is weak.
Remember that lunatic who shot at the White House back in Oct 1994 - he was subdued by unarmed passers by. Does that "disprove" anything? Of course not.
That is also irrelevant to the gun issue. To argue the merits and philosophical justifications using these anecdotes to strengthen your case distracts from the issue, and it brings the "debate" to the anti gun level. (purely emotional, relying on irrelevant anecdotes).
So the "suck it" didn't prove anything. Except for maybe he's emotional today. Or that it's an emotional issue for him. Dunno.
Keep the right to keep and arm bears out of these discussions. They're not relevant.
Between his desire for sucking and MC's desire to jump around like Ninja Bond LXVIV, it distracts from the issue. It gives the appearance that guns are central to the issue (they're not - a fucking loonie is and an administration that knows not its elbow from its ass).
People trying to link the two with "ah ha! more guns" give assholes like Brady and Xanadau (or whatever the fuck he calls himself) unintended ammo.
All of a sudden, they have a relevant context where they can use "fewer guns fewer guns", when guns aren't even the issue! Ninja warriors and orally fixated angry people make it relevant.
Andy | April 17, 2007, 3:19pm | #
Dave W,
In order to save space on the screen, I have labeled each of your bold points with a number, and will respond to your comments and expand upon my own under that number. As such 1) will stand in for the entirety of the previous discussion under the points beginning “strict compensatory liability.” Hopefully that works out ok for you.
1)
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in any gun law argument, the “guns are designed to kill people and are thus somehow special” argument. I will offer several points here – the first is somewhat more rhetorical - I assume your laws would apply also switchblades, swords and the like. What about baseball bats? I find this to be an essential point, because guns do offer limited other uses, such as recreation, stress relief, hunting, and competition in shooting sports. A baseball bat is another object which offers only that range of purposes – fun in a controlled sporting environment, and physical violence outside of it. I do not think it is in any way a stretch to say that the use of bats for defense and violence is common. So where does this line appear? Additionally, this is why I chose the specific second example I did: alcohol dealers. Alcohol provides essentially the exact same beneficial functions as a gun – social facilitator and stress reliever. It certainly can’t be argued that it is “more beneficial” than a gun, and it kills a ton of people every year. (This is true even when limiting to “gross misuse” deaths, which don’t include auto fatalities or long-term health consequences.) Finally, this is where my toxic chemicals example below comes into play. One can clean their home using nothing but soap and natural ingredients (like citrus rinds) which are essentially harmless to a human being. All harsh, toxic chemical additives do is make that process more convenient and the cleanser less expensive. IF our central governing principle is that we have an obligation to remove danger where possible at the cost of some degree of benefit, they have to be considered in the same class of willful negligence to do so, because your decision to purchase them, rather than use safer, natural alternatives expose family members and visitors to an unnecessary degree of risk.
So it is on that note that I return to your call to place liability on manufacturers. The fact remains that a gun is manufactured and can be intended for use in several ways that aren’t killing people, and certainly at least to the same extent that a bat is. To place this liability on gun manufacturers opens up the door for all the products discussed above. Furthermore, you haven’t answered the challenge that gun manufacturers simply don’t, and can’t reasonably be expected to, shape the hands of the person into whom their guns end up. Your argument essentially boils down into “someone must be punished” – but nothing about it, or this policy change, suggests that it would change the means or standards of gun distribution. You simply hope to sue guns out of existence, which is not something that should be accomplished legislatively. You can bring a civil case against gun manufacturers, but I don’t think you’d be able to convince 12 jurors that the manufacturer should be held at fault without a law telling them to do so. And a law designed for no other reason than to allow for that eventuality, and in doing so, for suing gun industries to death, is tantamount to just banning guns. It’s not a reasonable middle step. The fact is, no matter how careful anyone is with distribution their product, it will be misused, and holding the gun industry to a higher standard because of high-publicity incidents like this doesn’t hold water.
Finally, the argument that “cars aren’t good at killing people” doesn’t seem particularly well supported. According to the CDC, 43,354 were killed in motor vehicle accidents in 2000, with 230 million cars on the road. 28, 663 people were killed by firearms, meanwhile, with 200 million firearms in America. This means that for every million cars on the street, 187 Americans were killed. For every million guns, 143 Americans were killed. Cars are actually a far more efficient killer than guns on a per unit basis. To argue that an invisible line of manufacturer intent to kill should link gun manufacturers to their product, but not to auto or alcohol manufacturers, does not seems supported by logic or statistics.
2) You are confusing ends and means somewhat in your Constitutional discussion. You cannot waive the Fourth Amendment. You can waive your right to be protected by a specific search, but even that isn’t the end of the story – you can still contest the search. You can not, however, waive your right to be protected by the amendment. What you are proposing is not a voluntary temporary waiver of the Fourth Amendment, but a waiver of your right to be protected by the Fourth Amendment. To act like those are the same is disingenuous. Furthermore, any waiver of Fourth Amendment rights must be determined to be free from coercion. Your assertion that one must waive Fourth Amendment rights to exercise Second Amendment rights, or vice versa, is clearly one of coercion. It’s simultaneously immoral and essentially impossible to defend in Court.
The problem with your Fourth Amendment detour, again, is the degree to which it guts liberty. No one would contend that unsafe driving isn’t responsible for far more deaths in the United States than firearms – by your logic, the government should be allowed to install a video camera in every car, that will operate and feed into a monitor bank to ensure that you are driving at the optimum level of safety at all times. Hey, maybe you’re comfortable with that, but if that’s the case, it is my personal opinion (and I believe would be the opinion of every Supreme Court in US history) that your fetishization of safety goes beyond Constitutional grounds.
3) Again, we come back to your “guns are special” argument. As mentioned above, it is not necessarily that toxic cleaning chemicals are designed to kill, it is that they provide no other benefit than killing. You seem to equate these concepts, and to do so is misleading. If we were to eliminate all inventions that were invented to kill, we’d be starting all over. The realistic test you’ve offered is some sort of ill-defined line of the risk of violence from the product versus the potential benefits it has offered. Toxic home chemicals, in most case, do not offer such significant advantages over their natural equivalents that they would pass any reasonable test on those grounds.
Your detour into explosives does not, I think, prove what you think it proves – explosives, chemicals, poisons, radiations and the like require those standards NOT because of the potential for lethality, but because they require expert knowledge for safe handling. Some objects can simply not be handled regularly and casually in an urban environment without that degree of expertise. If the application were that anything that could be used, with intent, to kill efficiently, you would be emptying American homes right and left. When it comes to the question of whether firearms should be included in this category, it is my opinion that we should look first to the framers. Of course, this is one of the rare situations where there is simply no doubt. Firearms, which at the time were MORE unpredictably dangerous, were explicitly allowed for home consumption.
I do think this is an interesting area for exploration of thought, though. Every fan of high access to guns should understand in his own belief system whether or not he believes it allows him equal access to, say, a mutated superflu. What about a hand grenade? And, if not, what the distinction is. I think any reasonably nuanced position would have very little trouble with the exercise, but it can still be interesting. For the sake of discussion I’ll introduce a side-track thought I have on that point. To me, if one believes in the basic concept of the American justice system, one must, to some degree, believe in the power of deterrence. It is this reason that mass killings like this or, more to the point, bombings like Oklahoma City are so devastating to the American psyche (aside, of course, from the sheer horrible loss of life.) The retributive, and thus deterrence-creating, mechanism simply doesn’t seem to be in place. How can one possibly make it any more not worth it to kill 100 people than 1 or 2? This looks like it may be a serious issue in this case, where the student may have committed those two murders of passion, and then snapped and headed in for a penny, in for a pound.
Regardless, apologies for the detour, nothing about any point you’ve made has made me any less sure of this train of logic following from yours. One does not NEED 409 in their home. If one wants to be allowed the privilege of accessing this dangerous, and potentially lethal device, either if accessed accidentally by someone unprepared to handle it or purposefully with malicious intent, one should be prepared to submit to all of the consequences you want to pile on gun owners.
4) On the concealed carry point, I’m more or less just going to leave this point alone. I understand your point about increased deterrence though, for what it’s worth, I think your argument about open carry increasing the chance of reporting suspicious behavior doesn’t really float. Many mass killings in the past have occurred by people who’ve been known to be violent or have access to weapons, many haven’t. I don’t think there’s any good proof that knowledge changes people’s innate action to leave the unstable to themselves. Ironically, I only see a clear need to become passionate about the right under your proposed system, in which if my gun is stolen I am held liable. Under open carry, some guy could just reach over, grab my gun, and shoot someone, and bam, I’ve just committed murder. That’s a pretty good argument not to advertise that I’m armed.
5) Sorry about the harsh words, but making having something stolen from you a crime is a really stupid idea. Someone posting above my original post went into plenty of detail on it, and when you finish it with a phrase like “period” you’re intentionally leaving out any room for any kind of reasonability standard. This is just, basically, another attempt to backdoor ban guns by disproportionately weighting the possible consequences of even responsible behavior beyond that of anything else.
6) I don’t know how much more I can expound here, assuming that by “stiffer penalties for people who allow children unsupervised access to guns” you mean it in a reasonable and honest way – if you leave your gun sitting on your end table while you’re passed out drunk and your kid shoots himself with it, you should pay, I would think anyone would be for it. Heck, ESPECIALLY responsible gun owners – just like a responsible dog owner should want the stiffest possible penalties for people who breed and abuse dogs for dog fighting. (Because that sort of behavior makes dog attacks more likely and thus endangers your furry friend, as well as the negative PR and the sheer frustration of someone who does not take something that important seriously.)
7) I’ll revisit the point of civility once more. It would hardly be reasonable for me to compare guns to cars throughout the discussion, then balk at one of the central things that makes cars a slightly less terrible social investment. Insurance should be necessary, and it should be subject to the same kind of market factors car insurance is. You want consented searches – this is where I would like to see it. A reasonable gun insurance company would demand the right to see your safety precautions, hell, maybe even to put a webcam in your gunsafe to make sure they could see your guns in there when you’re not using them. People who were fastidious about safety would have great rates and nothing to fear. But try getting insurance with one “used gun as beer coaster” on your record. I tell you, those bean counters just don’t care how much your wife hates rings on the table.
Dave W. | April 17, 2007, 4:48pm | #
Spent too much time on this board today, so only have a chance for a couple response (but I do appreciate having a few non-shrill peeps around here to discuss this with):
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in any gun law argument, the “guns are designed to kill people and are thus somehow special” argument. I will offer several points here – the first is somewhat more rhetorical - I assume your laws would apply also switchblades, swords and the like. What about baseball bats? . . . toxic chemicals
Ultimately, this is an empirical issue for me. It depends upon how many murders there are, and also what weapons are being used to commit them. Right now there are too many murders in the US for my tastes, and guns are used in 70% of the murders near as I can tell (the FBI reports stats relevant to this). That is ultimately why I think guns are the problem that needs addressed (not banned, tho). If either the murder rate went down, or guns dropped drastically as a percentage, then I would no longer think of guns as somehow special. It is a numbers game.
If 10,000 people (not suicides) in the US were killed by defenestration, then I would want society to look into regulating high up windows. Let me know if that happens.
10,000 people are killed in traffic accidents, but we already regulate the hell out of the safety aspects of automobiles. If 10,000 people were killed by being purposely run over, then it would be time to start looking at new types of regulations for autos. Once again, wake me up when we get there.
You can bring a civil case against gun manufacturers, but I don’t think you’d be able to convince 12 jurors that the manufacturer should be held at fault without a law telling them to do so. And a law designed for no other reason than to allow for that eventuality, and in doing so, for suing gun industries to death, is tantamount to just banning guns.
The idea is that the utility of guns that people are willing to pay for needs to be greater than the damage they cause. With automobiles (including drunk driving), we do that with insurance. You pay a big auto insurance bill, by law, because the utility of driving is greater than the probabilistic risk you cause by being behind the wheel. Now maybe it would be better if the law required you to get two insurance policies: one before you could drink, and the other before you could drive. That way, the cost of drunk driving accidents might be more fairly allocated to drinkers, as a class, and your auto insurance would go down. Compensation schemes aren't always perfect, but the one for driving accidents is pretty good (less so up here in Canada where insurers get to run amuck on autos because they can't make it back on health insurance).
Now, we could cover gun damage with insurance. however, because guns are easier to conceal than cars, the uninsured gun problem would be even worse than the uninsured motorist problem. that is why it is probably best to handle the risk spreading thru the manufacturer. If you want one of their guns, then you can pay them the equivalent of an insurance policy on that gun when you buy it. that way, after your gun has been stolen, had the serial number filed off, been sold on the black market, and then sold again, we would still know which gun manufacturer was sitting there with the insurance "premiums" related to that particular gun. Manufacturer who were careful about their marketing channels could charge less for the insurance. Those who did not care who their customers were would need to charge more. It would not be equivalent to a ban. It would be a system that would encourage manufacturers to distribute with care and to limit production to reasonable quantities.
You are confusing ends and means somewhat in your Constitutional discussion. You cannot waive the Fourth Amendment. You can waive your right to be protected by a specific search, but even that isn’t the end of the story – you can still contest the search. You can not, however, waive your right to be protected by the amendment.
Got a case? There may be limits, in time and space, to the scope of a permissible consent, but I do not know the cases on that. at any event, in the context of exercising the right to bear arms, I think that the scope of consent should be allowed to be made co-extensive with the extent of your gun ownership. Because guns are that dangerous, empirically speaking.
Insurance should be necessary, and it should be subject to the same kind of market factors car insurance is.
Looks like we are not that far apart after all. Not all my proposals need to be implemented -- some are definitely duplicative. I explained above why I prefer strict mfgr liability to insurance. nevertheless, if insureds were willing to pay for the margin of damage caused by the uninsured margin of the market then insurance would work for me.
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSS
