Free Fire Zone
By Mitch Berg
As the Parker case – on the DC gun ban – wends its way to the Supreme Court, it’s worthwhile to note some Jhistorical and social context, via John Lott:
It is one of the benefits of being a politician. While handguns are banned for citizens in Washington, D.C., congressmen are allowed to have a gun for self-protection on the Capitol grounds. Well-known liberal politicians such as Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have armed bodyguards. The wives of politicians, such as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s wife, Linda, also have bodyguards. Undoubtedly, these politicians and their families have extremely good reasons for this protection, but many other Americans, especially those living with the high crime rates in D.C., also feel the same way…While these politicians have protection both in their homes and as they travel around in public, since September 24, 1976, other D.C. residents have lived under the nation’s most restrictive gun laws. Police enforce a citywide handgun ban, and local statutes require residents to keep long guns disassembled, unloaded, and locked up. Yet, with a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 people in 2002, the District easily holds the title of the U.S. murder capital among cities with over 500,000 people.
But I’m sure the ban solved an even worse problem – right?
This was not even close to being the case prior to the ban.
Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington’s ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. During this same time, robberies fell from 1,514 to 1,003 per 100,000 and then rose by over 63 percent, up to 1,635. The five-year trends are not some aberration. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the almost 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976.
One of the bromides the left likes to throw out about the carnage in DC is that it’s all about the availability of guns in Virginia. But then, wouldn’t one think Virginia would have a gun death rate bordering on Stalingrad’s, too?
These pre-law drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, the District’s murder rate fell during the same five-year period from 3.5 to 3 times more than in the neighboring states and rose back up after the ban to 3.8 times more…
How does one explain this?
Surely the ban cannot be blamed for all the District’s crime problems. The police department has had severe problems over hiring standards and there have been management and morale issues.
Is it just DC? Of course not:
But even cities with far better police agencies have seen crime soar in the wake of handgun bans. Chicago, whose ban on new handguns started in 1982, has police computer systems that are the envy of the nation, a bevy of shiny new police facilities and a productive working relationship with community groups. Indeed, the city has achieved impressive reductions in property crime in recent years. But the gun ban didn’t work at all when it came to reducing violence.
Chicago’s murder rate fell from 27 to 22 per 100,000 in the five years before the law and then rose slightly to 23. The change is even more dramatic when compared to five neighboring Illinois counties: Chicago’s murder rate fell from being 8.1 times greater than its neighbors in 1977 to 5.5 times in 1982, and then went way up to 12 times greater in 1987. While robbery data isn’t available for the years immediately after the ban, since 1985 (the first year for which the FBI has data) robbery rates soared.
…Proponents of the bans claim that the laws failed because guns leaked into the District and Chicago from neighboring areas, but there was not even the smallest reduction in crime.
And the conclusion? Same as the old conclusion:
We all want to take guns from criminals. The problem is that gun bans appear to have disarmed only law-abiding citizens while leaving criminals free to prey on the populace.
Of course, with cops like these running the show in the nation’s capital (via KB)…:
Speaking on why it would be a terrible mistake to overturn Washington DC’s 31-year old ban on handguns, Assistant police chief Alfred Durham said today:
The ban on handguns is a matter of life and death because 80% of the murders in DC are caused by handguns.
Is it possible for a non-sequitur to be so non that it becomes an anti-sequitur?
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 am
But Mitch, Teddy K and Chucky Schumer are important people. We simply must have parallel rules. Ask Rosie O’Dopnnell.
November 24th, 2007 at 12:51 am
As the 2nd amendment has never been incorporated, and certainly isn’t required to enforce the 14th, the states may pass any law they please. However, if the court chooses to enshrine the Constitutional Right to Hunt, then any of you neo-cons out there who claim to stand for ‘non-activitist’ jurists, must either declare the decision as fraudulent as Clarence Thomas’ pitiful mind, or eat your hypocritical shorts.
November 24th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Peev,
Do you actually think about what you’re writing?
The Second Amendment hasn’t been incorporated because a) all of the relevant litigation took place before the doctrine became accepted and b) lack of incorporation doesn’t necessarily mean a right is not incumbent on the states, merely that it hasn’t been litigated.
And your thought process is clearly as flawed as the frothy-drooly-left’s vision of Justice Thomas’ mind if you think that taking a constructionist view – that “states rights” to regulate guns don’t extend to depriving the right “of the people” to the people – is “activist”.
What part of “right of the people” is so hard to understand?
There’s nothing “neo-con” about supporting civil liberties; not sure what you’re, um, shooting for with that little crack, but it tends to make you look like a bit of a zealot.
Finally; what is it with the word “hypocrite”? You seem almost pathologically eager to use it, even when it is clearly inappropriate.
November 24th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Peevy misses one additional point. In Minnesota the Constitutional Right to Hunt already exists. We passed an amendment under Governor Ventura to that effect. It doesn’t much more enshrined than that.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:09 am
It’s the “right to hunt” reference that makes me think Peev is basically doing this all tongue-in-cheek, a la Angryclown – but that his tone just goes horribly awry.
November 25th, 2007 at 2:49 am
Actually Mitch, it’s you who needs to read, you imbecile. 1876 Kruikshanks said EXACTLY what I just said. The later decisions only clarified that states cannot completely disarm the citizens thereby preventing a reserve army, that’s it.
When you pontificate and pretend to be some sort of condescending ass, you might want to know your subject matter. Your incipid and incessent insults and incivility only serve to highlight that you are incapable of forming a valid opinion most of the time, and only engage in discourse when you THINK you have some sort of way to twist the argument in your direction. You so clearly DON’T know this subject matter.
I didn’t argue with you whether the people meant individuals, neither before, nor now. You bring up nonsense that wasn’t at issue. Your reading comprehension begins to boggle the mind in it’s impotence.
The fact is that the incorporation model, which you clearly neither knew about nor understand, is about whether a Constitutional amendment is applicable to the states. Kruikshanks firmly established neither the first nor the second amendment were. The first amendment was incorporated by other decision, the 2nd has NEVER BEEN, and I . just. don’t. get. why. you. can’t. get. it.
And Mitch, the right to hunt was part of the comments of Parker. So the tongue in cheek thing, it’s your tongue, firmly flapping in the wind. Read the text of Parker sometime.
Clarence Thomas has authored ONE opinion in his nearly twenty years on the bench. His veiws are essentially all over the board, and he is THE MOST activist jurist on the bench, bar none. My opinion is neither LEFT nor RIGHT, it’s that this guy is incompetent. He has the legal mind of your local administrative law judge. I’ve read excerpts from his recent interviews, I could right better in my sleep. The fact that he doesn’t understand the need for ‘stare’ is the first order of magnitude of indictment on the treatise that could be written of his unfitness for the bench. I have no great love for Scalia, but he’s 10 times the jurist Thomas is, 100 times perhaps.
The point of all of it Mitch is, like on Intelligent Design, Iraq, ‘the war on terrrrrr’, or this, you’re not just wrong, your ignorant beyond words. Your arguments are simpleton crap that doesn’t stand the test of time, let alone critical analysis. You cite Kruikshanks but don’t even understand what it said, namely, that the 2nd amendment is a prohibition against the NATIONAL government, and that the people should look to the states themselves for the defense of their liberties.
Do you now GET IT???! You’ve been proven wrong by me so many times I can’t even fathom trying to count it, and here again, you are proven wrong, wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong. If states provide for a way for individuals to provide arms for a reserve army (a militia), then they effectively can pass any dang law they choose. Parker deals with DC, not a state, and IF this SCOTUS is actually interested in the individual liberties you claim to stand for, but DO NOT STAND FOR, you don’t stand for a SINGLE ONE, NOT ONE, outside the 2nd, and only as it protects you, the 1st – but if this SCOTUS is better than you, and I think it is, I think Alito and Scalia, not Roberts, not Thomas, but the rest beyond those two (Brayer, Ginsberg, Stevens, Souter, Kennedy – and yeah, that was off the top of my head) I think they know full well that the 2nd has NEVER been applied to states, and has been refuted as being applicable to states by Kruikshanks.. and if they have any allegiane to the original intent, they’ll say, Parker is fine for DC, but it means nothing for the states.
Maybe someday you’ll figure out your arguments are simplistic crap, but I’m not holding my breath. You contradict yourself at every turn Mitch, EVERY LAST TURN, even your stance on captial punishment flies in the face of your willingness to allow the federal government to do whatever it wants to with foriegners, err Hamdi, or people who look like foriegners (Padilla).
Your opinion is meaningless any more. This whole argument shows just how little you understand. You argue ‘people vs. individual’ when that really isn’t the fundamental point – it’s always been about the fact that states could do what they please – ever since Kruikshanks. 1939 Miller only applied to a case against the National Firearms Act. Parker, at best, will turn over Brady, and that’s it, unless fools like Thomas choose to piss on Stare Decisis, piss on Kruikshanks, piss on separation of soveriegnty for that matter, and make a horrid decision (Parker) applicable to the states, and if they do, IF THEY DO, if you give a crap (which you don’t) about our government – you should be the first in line to say it was awful, but, you aren’t, because in the end, to you, it’s not about law or liberty, it’s about sucking up to political power.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:05 am
PB,
Maybe, if I’m seized with a maniacal urge to beat my head against the wall, I’ll answer the rest of this little brainfart of yours.
But this bit here:
The point of all of it Mitch is, like on Intelligent Design, Iraq, ‘the war on terrrrrr’, or this, you’re not just wrong, your ignorant beyond words.
I’ve never written about Intelligent Design.
Ever.
Not once
What in the hell are you talking about?
You are making this up as you go along, aren’t you?
Your arguments are simpleton crap that doesn’t stand the test of time, let alone critical analysis
“Test of Time?” What, you’re clairvoyant?
As usual, you substitute insult and ad-hominem for argument. And you do it very, very badly.
. You cite Kruikshanks
I DID NOT CITE the case! Merely mentioned it.
Do you now GET IT???!
Yes. You’re a know-it-all who substitutes volume and anger for reason. You’re not a dumb guy, Peeb, but you try to substitute bullying for the ability to present an actual case.
Or an attempt at a case. You say my approach to this issue is “simplistic”? No. It’s principled; rights “of the people” refer to people. Individuals. Not the unincorporated mass. And you can huff and puff and stomp your feet all you want; constitutional scholars from Laurence Tribe on down are coming around to agree. For good reason – it’s right.
Tone down the ad-homina, bigfella.
November 25th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Peev,
One more bit here, before I take a well-deserved day off:
I notice that once I answer your little crack about “incorporation” – or rather, show its relative meaninglessness for disposing this issue – you switch to the “peevish” ad-hominem attacks. You go after my intelligence (Mommy? Is that you?) and make broad slurs against me without ever really addressing the areas where I addressed your previous points.
Arguing with you, P, is kinda like going after a greased pig.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Next time Jason Lewis has John Lott on the show, Peev should call him up and (try to) rip him a new bass hole just like he (tried to) rip Mitch one here.
CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH: Peev vs. Laurence Tribe
Definitely one to torrent.