Building The Safer Criminal
By Mitch Berg
Identify the quote:
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
Was it Charleton Heston, Ted Nugent, or Me?
Trick question, naturally. It was Thomas Jefferson. And he was as right 200 years ago as he is today.
The Second Amendment movement has made massive strides in the 25 years I’ve been involved; in 1983, eight states had shall-issue laws; today it’s 40 (and Vermont and Alaska require no permit at all to carry a concealed firearm). Gun control has become a third rail for Democrats; even they fear the NRA, with good (and justifiable) reason.
Of course, the controllers have gotten their due in states where they are still powerful, including Minnesota. Even in states with good, solid Shall Issue laws, they’ve managed to get “wins” like “gun-free school zones” and those dumb signs that you see (less and less frequently) around Minnesota barring guns from stores.
David Kopel writes today in the Wall Street Journal about the (lack of) value in these niggling controls:
In February of this year a young man walked past the sign prohibiting him from carrying a gun on the premises [in Salt Lake City] and began shooting people who moments earlier were leisurely shopping at Trolley Square. He killed five.
It might have been worse. But Utah has a shall-issue law (hence the sign):
Fortunately, someone else — off-duty Ogden, Utah, police officer Kenneth Hammond — also did not comply with the mall’s rules. After hearing “popping” sounds, Mr. Hammond investigated and immediately opened fire on the gunman. With his aggressive response, Mr. Hammond prevented other innocent bystanders from getting hurt. He bought time for the local police to respond, while stopping the gunman from hunting down other victims.
The value of the armed citizen in self-defense is shown daily (everywhere but the mainstream media, naturally), in incidents big (the Salt Lake City incident, the Pearl Mississippi and Appalachian College of Law shootings and many others) and small (estimates of firearms self-defense incidents ranging from the CDC’s half million a year up to Gary Kleck’s estimate of up to two million annual uses, most of which involve no shots being fired).
But let’s take a step back in time. Last year the Virginia legislature defeated a bill that would have ended the “gun-free zones” in Virginia’s public universities. At the time, a Virginia Tech associate vice president praised the General Assembly’s action “because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.” In an August 2006 editorial for the Roanoke Times, he declared: “Guns don’t belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.”
Actually, Virginia Tech’s policy only made the killer safer, for it was only the law-abiding victims, and not the criminal, who were prevented from having guns. Virginia Tech’s policy bans all guns on campus (except for police and the university’s own security guards); even faculty members are prohibited from keeping guns in their cars.
Virginia Tech thus went out of its way to prevent what happened at a Pearl, Miss., high school in 1997, where assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a handgun from his car and apprehended a school shooter. Or what happened at Appalachian Law School, in Grundy, Va., in 2002, when a mass murder was stopped by two students with law-enforcement experience, one of whom retrieved his own gun from his vehicle. Or in Edinboro, Pa., a few days after the Pearl event, when a school attack ended after a nearby merchant used a shotgun to force the attacker to desist. Law-abiding citizens routinely defend themselves with firearms.
In most of America – blue and red – the average schmuck in the street sees a gun as a tool with a specialized purpose; defending oneself (from criminals, deer and geese).
Gun control in America, for the past forty years, has been based on the elitist notion that a law-abiding common citizen somehow turns into blood-lusting cartoon the moment he gets a gun in his/her hands; it’s instructive to notice how many of those gun-ban-supporting elites, like Pinch Sulzberger and Diane Feinstein, consider themselves above that standard.
And yet, over and over again, Americans show they know better:
In Utah, there is no “gun-free schools” exception to the licensed carry law. In K-12 schools and in universities, teachers and other adults can and do legally carry concealed guns. In Utah, there has never been a Columbine-style attack on a school. Nor has there been any of the incidents predicted by self-defense opponents — such as a teacher drawing a gun on a disrespectful student, or a student stealing a teacher’s gun.
Israel uses armed teachers as part of a successful program to deter terrorist attacks on schools. Buddhist teachers in southern Thailand are following the Israeli example, because of Islamist terrorism…In many states, “gun-free schools” legislation was enacted hastily in the late 1980s or early 1990s due to concerns about juvenile crime. Aimed at juvenile gangsters, the poorly written and overbroad statutes had the disastrous consequence of rendering teachers unable to protect their students.
Reasonable advocates of gun control can still press for a wide variety of items on their agenda, while helping to reform the “gun-free zones” that have become attractive havens for mass killers. If legislators or administrators want to require extensive additional training for armed faculty and other adults, that’s fine. Better that some victims be armed than none at all.
As a commenter noted, best to let numbers rather than anecdotes drive policy.
Very well; the numbers all show that armed, law-abiding citizens do at least no harm, and at best help prevent tragedies like Tuesday’s carnage.
Where’s the argument?
April 19th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be much of an argument — even the “Citizens for a ‘Safer’ Minnesota” are no longer working on getting our carry law repealed.
April 19th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Let’s go back about, what, 3 years ago? The anti-CC people talked about how we’d have shootouts at the Metrodome and State Fair. I recall those types writing letters to the papers, saying they can’t go to the State Fair now as they may get shot by CC people.
I view the “No guns allowed on the Premises” signs as political statements, so avoid shopping at any of these businesses. It would be like if pro-life conservative business owners would put up signs saying “No abortions allowed on the premises”.
April 19th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Me, I look at the silly NO GUNS signs as free advertisement for those of us who teach carry classes. 🙂 (The thought hadn’t occurred to me until about the third time somebody mentioned that they’d looked into taking a carry class after seeing a cluster of those signs downtown.)
April 19th, 2007 at 9:18 am
I found this qoute particularly telling:
“because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
Ok. Great, they feel safer. He doesn’t seem to care if they actually are safer or not.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Mitch queried: “Very well; the numbers all show that armed, law-abiding citizens do at least no harm, and at best help prevent tragedies like Tuesday’s carnage.”
Mmmm…sophistry. Like Cho, tons of gun-owners are “armed law-abiding citizens.” Until they’re not, that is.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:52 am
No sophistry whatsoever; hard numbers.
People who own guns and demonstrably have no criminal, drug, alcoholism or mental illness record almost never commit crimes. In Florida and Texas (the two states where I’ve seen numbers) in the 5-10 years following the passing of “shall issue” laws, permittees were two orders of magnitude less likely to commit any crime than the general population. As in, less than one percent.
Cho was mentally ill. The data to show that he was, and shouldn’t have been allowed to buy a heater, was there and available. Why didn’t it get into the system that was built (at the behest of BOTH Brady and the NRA!) to serve as the clearinghouse for this information, precisely to ensure that people like Cho weren’t able to buy guns?
That’s the interesting question.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Actually, Jefferson was quoting the early Italian penal reform philosopher, Cesare Beccaria’s On Crime and Punishment. A longer version of the quote —
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty — so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator — and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve to rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventative but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Mitch said: “People who own guns and demonstrably have no criminal, drug, alcoholism or mental illness record almost never commit crimes.”
Well great, Mitch. People who don’t own guns and demonstrably have no criminal, drug, alcoholism or mental illness record almost never commit crimes. So what? The problem is the others. There’s no place on the form you posted where buyers are even asked about alcohol use. And if someone is mentally ill or uses drugs, there’s no way to find out about it, even in the best of all worlds, until they get declared incompetent or convicted.
So you’re comparing apples with, you know, some kind of non-apple-type fruit. You can trot out stats to show that if Mother Theresa gets a carry permit, she probably won’t use the gun to commit a crime. But then you have to set up a system to ensure that only people like Mother Theresa get to carry. Otherwise pick a number that has some relevance to the discussion.
April 19th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Otherwise pick a number that has some relevance to the discussion.
Those are the only kind I’ve put out there, Vobo.
People who don’t own guns and demonstrably have no criminal, drug, alcoholism or mental illness record almost never commit crimes. So what?
Exactly, and yet again you are in line with the NRA’s stance. Law abiding people are pretty much law-abiding people, with or without guns!
The problem is the others. There’s no place on the form you posted where buyers are even asked about alcohol use.
Right, because social drinking isn’t a problem. If people have had drinking or drug problems to the point where it’s caused legal issues, it should flag their application.
And if someone is mentally ill or uses drugs, there’s no way to find out about it, even in the best of all worlds, until they get declared incompetent or convicted.
Which is, as a general rule, the mentally-ill population you need to worry about. Generally the system works.
So you’re comparing apples with, you know, some kind of non-apple-type fruit. You can trot out stats to show that if Mother Theresa gets a carry permit, she probably won’t use the gun to commit a crime. But then you have to set up a system to ensure that only people like Mother Theresa get to carry.
Which is, largely, what we have. It’s not perfect (as we’ve seen this week, tragically so) – no system ever is, including complete gun bans! (some of the most violence societies on earth are the ones with the most comprehensive gun bans!). But it usually keeps legally-purchased guns out of the wrong hands.
As to the other kind? Well, Clown, here’s an area you might know about; many cities have (thanks to NRA lobbying) VERY strict laws against using guns in a crime; in Saint Paul, we have a really strong one. How often do those charges get pled away?
Once you have that answer, ask yourself; lawyerly pragmatics aside, do you think that’s a good idea?
You can probably figure my answer.
April 19th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
violence societies
Er, vioLENT societies…