Author Archive
‘Textbook Case’ for Handguns in DC
In today’s Washington Post, Courtland Milloy says a recent stabbing in DC provides a ‘textbook case for legalizing handguns in the District.’ Here’s an excerpt:
Someone like Wright would never have been able to prove that he needed a gun to walk his dog — until Sunday, that is. By then, of course, it would have been too late.
To better understand the benefits of a “concealed carry” firearm, consider how the encounter between Wright and Colbert might have unfolded if Wright had been armed and followed a basic self-defense protocol:
According to police reports, Colbert comes out of his house with a knife in one hand and a stick in the other. Being alert to the approaching threat, an armed Wright would now have several options. He could pull his gun, say, a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic, which speaks volumes without firing a shot: “Never bring a knife to a gunfight, pal.”
Or he could just wait until the assailant gets close enough to meet the legal definition of justifiable homicide. …
Say what you will about the perils of gun ownership, but nobody can doubt that Wright would be alive today if he’d had one.
Read the whole thing. Related posts here, here, and here.
Check out the new Cato study on defensive gun use, Tough Targets.
Second Amendment Victory
The landmark Heller ruling said the Constitution protects a person’s right to keep a gun in his home for purposes of self-defense, at least as against the federal government (the case was filed in the federal capital city, Washington, DC). Next, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to keep a gun in the home also had to be honored by state and local governments. The litigation has now moved on to consider whether, and to what extent, the right to keep and bear arms must be honored outside the home.
Yesterday, a federal court invalidated a Maryland law that granted carry permits only to those who could show a ”good and substantial reason” for carrying a gun (general worry about the possibility of a criminal attack was inadequate). The Court said the Maryland law “impermissibly infringes the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment.”
Last month Cato released a study concerning the frequency with which persons use guns for self-defense—way more often than the average person realizes.
Cato associate policy analyst David Kopel, has more over at the Volokh blog.
James Q. Wilson on Crime and Drugs
James Q. Wilson, the prominent scholar on political science and crime, has died. His most well-known work was an essay that he co-published with George Kelling in the Atlantic, “Broken Windows” (which is not to be confused with the broken windows fallacy that is so well known in libertarian circles). The gist of that article was that our social order can be pretty fragile. If a broken window is not promptly repaired/replaced, the other windows of that building will soon be intentionally broken–and if nothing is done about that, the neighborhood might well spiral downward and will soon be regarded as a lousy area. The article is now a classic. In my opinion, it was his best work.
Dr. Wilson wrote on a wide range of subjects, but I am most familiar with his writings in the criminal law field. He was a neoconservative — so it will not surprise anyone that I found his record to be mixed. He skewered the liberal ideas that (1) poverty “causes” crime and (2) that prisons are passé. And he cautioned policymakers bent on more gun control laws, pointing to the growing body of evidence that armed citizens thwart a lot of criminal mayhem.
But then there was his approach to drug policy. When Bill Bennett needed academic support or intellectual guidance, he seemed to turn to James Q. Wilson, who, before the creation of the drug czar’s office, called for the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the Nixon period. Like many of the zealots who pushed for alcohol prohibition, he saw the police effort against drug use as a moral crusade: “[D]rug use is wrong because it is immoral and it is immoral because it enslaves the mind and destroys the soul.” For years and years, he championed the conservative program of more police, more prosecutors, more prisons, stiffer penalties. Despite the escalation, drugs remain readily available. And the gang violence–especially in Mexico–is getting worse.
Dr. Wilson was also a big proponent of police “stop and frisk” tactics–the idea that cops should stop pedestrians in the city and frisk them for weapons. For white, middle-class Americans, think about having to endure a TSA airport search on your trips to the grocery store or on your commute to work! (For background, go here and here.)
I never met Dr. Wilson in person, but we spoke several times on the phone after he accepted my invitation to prepare an essay for my book, In the Name of Justice (2009). He was a gentleman-scholar who influenced many.
A Jury’s ‘Secret’ Power
This month’s Wisconsin Lawyer has an article entitled “Nullification: A Jury’s ‘Secret’ Power,” by Erik R. Guenther. Here is an excerpt:
When “[t]he purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power – to make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps over-conditioned or biased response of a judge,”should the jury be kept in the dark about its fundamental power to decide the justness of the law as applied in a particular case? Should the power remain a secret (which is referred to only by a pejorative – nullification) rather than be acknowledged as an inherent, appropriate, and recognized part of the jury function?
Read the whole thing. The feds are still fighting hard to keep the jury’s power ‘secret’—so hard that free speech must be punished.
Courtland Milloy’s Self-Defense Quiz
Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy mentions the new Cato study, Tough Targets, in his latest column.
The article begins with this self-defense quiz:
Say you’re sitting at a bus stop in the District, alone at night, when a suspicious person approaches. There have been more than 475 robberies in the city this year — a 70 percent increase over this time last year — and many involve the theft of electronic devices such as smartphones.
But your chances of being victimized are greatly reduced because:
a. Your smartphone has a disabling device that makes it worthless to robbers.
b. More police officers have been assigned to street patrol.
c. You have a gun.
The local police chief says the correct answer is (a) & (b). In the comment section, however, an astute reader notes that the correct answer is all of the above, including Milloy’s point (advanced at the conclusion of his article) that “risk avoidance” should be a part of a sensible personal safety plan.
Broken Windows and the Unseen Crime Victims
Jack Goodwin was at home listening to a Lakers basketball game when he heard someone breaking one of his windows. He retrieved his handgun and then saw two intruders trying to gain entry at which point he fired, hitting one criminal. The other intruder ran away.
John Stossel and others have made the point that broken windows do not stimulate economic growth. Appearances can mislead—so we need to be mindful about where the money spent fixing the window would have been used if the windows had not been broken. Jack Goodwin’s broken windows provide us with a similar lesson: we need to consider what would have happened if this elderly man had no gun in his home because of a government policy overriding his option/choice.
The new Cato study, Tough Targets, describes scores of such instances where citizens were able to stop attempted murders, rapes, and robberies. And we are now tracking such cases on our new interactive map. Co-author Clayton Cramer recently had this piece in the Washington Times. More here and here.
Milwaukee Man Shoots Armed Robber
A Milwaukee man only recently acquired his permit to carry a concealed handgun and then found himself in the middle of an armed robbery. As the robber threatened a store clerk with a shotgun, the permit holder was able to draw his weapon and shoot the culprit. The Milwaukee District Attorney said: “He disrupted an act that potentially exposed himself and others to great bodily harm.”
Last week, Cato released a new study concerning the frequency with which citizens use guns in self-defense, along with a map to track such events. We’ve already received many suggestions from readers all over the web and we’ll be updating our map regularly.
(H/T Ann Althouse)
New Cato Study: Tough Targets
Today, Cato is releasing a new study, Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens, by Clayton Cramer and David Burnett. The paper makes use of a news report-gathering project to explore in more detail how Americans use guns in self-defense.
The paper makes many excellent points, but I’ll mention just three here. First, the average person tends to imagine that these self-defense situations involve criminals getting shot. Such cases do occur, but the overwhelming number of self-defense cases involve situations where the gun is never fired.
The second point relates to the first. The average person usually does not hear about defensive gun cases because news media organizations do not consider the incidents worthy of coverage. If a burglar runs away from a break-in when he discovers that someone is at the home and is armed, it may only garner a terse mention in the paper, if it makes the newspaper at all. With no shot fired, no injuries, and no suspect in custody, newspeople typically decline coverage. The point here is not to criticize the news media’s handling of such incidents–rather it is just to remind readers that we tend to hear about criminals using guns to perpetrate crimes, but we do not hear about many self-defense cases. In this milieu, it is understandable why many people would develop negative opinions about guns.
Third, when a gun owner does shoot a rapist or is able to hold a burglar at gunpoint until the police arrive on the scene, it is very likely that more than one crime has been prevented. That’s because had the culprit not been stopped, he very likely would have targeted other people as well.
Gun control proponents stress the idea of harm reduction. They say the enactment of firearm regulations will reduce accidents and the criminal use of guns. But if policymakers are truly interested in harm reduction, they must consider the number of crimes that are thwarted by gun owners. Each year gun owners prevent a great deal of criminal mayhem–murders, rapes, batteries, and robberies. Tough Targets gathers dozens and dozens of examples of ordinary people using guns to stop criminal attacks. The defensive use of guns happens much more often than most people realize.
In addition to the paper itself, we have a new page on the Cato web site that will track, to the extent we can, defensive gun cases around the country.
For more information, listen to a podcast interview with co-author Clayton Cramer, or see related Cato scholarship.
FDR and Executive Order 9066
Gordon Hirabayashi died on January 2, at age 93.
The Washington Post obituary notes that the federal government put him in a prison during the 1940s. President Franklin Roosevelt issued many decrees, but the one that would lead to Hirabayashi’s imprisonment, Executive Order 9066, said that thousands of Americans residing on the West Coast had to leave their jobs and homes and promptly report to certain prison camps (“relocation centers”). The feds said actual proof of wrongdoing was unnecessary.
Hirabayashi refused to go along with the program, so he was prosecuted for disobeying the president and jailed. The courts rejected his argument that FDR had exceeded the powers of his office. In an interview in 1985, Hirabayashi looked back on his ordeal and said, “My citizenship didn’t protect me one bit. Our Constitution was reduced to a scrap of paper.”
Even though there are written safeguards concerning due process, habeas corpus, and jury trial, presidents will sometimes assert the power to override all that. FDR did it. George W. Bush did it. And Barack Obama wants to reserve the option to do it.
On January 17, Cato will be hosting a book forum about FDR’s war policies and civil liberties.
Richard Branson: Time to End the War on Drugs
Entrepreneur Richard Branson has just blogged about his recent trip to Portugal where he was investigating that country’s drug policies. Branson cites Cato’s landmark study, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal,” several times in his post. Here’s an excerpt:
I will set out clearly what I learned from my visit to Portugal and would urge other countries to study this:
In 2001 Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.
Jail time was replaced with offer of therapy. (The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is much more expensive than treatment).
Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker, and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.
Critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem; the country has some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. The recently realised results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, suggest otherwise. …
Portugal’s 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users – not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use – not criminal retribution.
Read the whole thing. Check out the recent Cato conference on the Global War on Drugs here.
The Iraq War: 20 Years, Not 9
Here are two newspaper accounts about the conclusion of the Iraq war:
The New York Times: “Almost nine years after the first American tanks began massing on the Iraq border, the Pentagon declared an official end to its mission here, closing a troubled conflict that helped reshape American politics and left a bitter legacy of anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.”
The Washington Post: “Nearly nine years after American troops stormed across the Iraq border in a blaze of shock and awe, U.S. officials quietly ended the bloody and bitterly divisive conflict here Thursday, but the debate over whether it was worth the cost in money and lives is yet unanswered.”
There is a problem with those accounts. The United States has been at war in Iraq for twenty years, not nine! George Orwell warned us not to confuse war with peace, but we are clearly falling into that trap. More here.
Unconstitutional Patrols and Second Class Citizens
It does not happen in the suburbs, but in the city, the police will sometimes just pounce on people who are not doing anything wrong and if you complain or ‘mouth off,’ things can get much worse. Here is an excerpt from a ruling handed down today in DC.
What is most disturbing about this case is the result: a young man in the community . . . who was engaged in peaceful activities (mowing the lawn, smoking a cigarette) and who the police knew at the time they stopped him was not doing anything unlawful, is approached by aggressive officers engaged in aggressive unconstitutional patrols, and this young man ends up being punched in the face with such force that he receives a black eye, kicked numerous times in the back, thrown on the ground, sprayed in the eyes with pepper spray, and finally, he receives two convictions on his record for assault on a police officer. . . . But for this unconstitutional police policy, appellant Crossland would not have suffered a physical attack on his person and would not have had these convictions on his record. Instead, he would have had a rather ordinary day in his community mowing the lawn and smoking a cigarette, a day he probably wouldn’t even have cause to remember, and it is very disturbing that the police in this case are essentially being rewarded for their unconstitutional behavior and aggressive unconstitutional police policy which was the direct cause of a highly volatile situation which led to this young man’s eventual convictions for assaulting them.
The full opinion can be found here [pdf]. One judge says he hopes the police will be admonished for violating the rights of individuals–aggressively confronting people who are not doing anything wrong–and wonders whether he is being naive and unrealistic. Sorry to say that he is being naive and that’s part of the problem. If the young man had gone along with the illegal stop and frisk and the officer left the scene after ten minutes, there would have been no real legal remedy available and that’s why these tactics are used over and over again.
Author David Shipler spoke about this kinda thing at Cato a few weeks ago. Related Cato work here
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
