An excellent take on gun control

Today I stumbled across this excellent take on gun laws. It was written by John Casteen for Slate in response to Dick Cheney's lawyer massacree, but it's eerily relevant to the Virginia Tech case, revolving as it does around Virginia gun laws.

First, the ugly from the gun lobby side:

The roster of proposed gun bills in Virginia reads like a long series of bad jokes: One bill would do away with the concealed-weapons permit altogether; anyone at all could carry one, as long as they so inform the police if they're ever detained. This law is a shootout waiting to happen, since one can't exactly reveal a weapon without reaching for it. Another bill would prohibit health-care professionals—in the course of educating parents about home safety hazards like drain cleaner and gateless staircases—from suggesting a family may want to keep its guns away from children. And the states also legislate downward: Two proposed laws would repeal all gun ordinances passed by localities before 1995 and forbid them any further regulation of the discharge of weapons within their jurisdictions.

Then, the good:

The gun lobby does, in fact, present solid statistical evidence that armed people defend themselves and others against significant numbers of violent crimes. It also argues, correctly, that terrorist incidents in public buildings and rampage shootings in schools might be resolved more quickly by armed citizens within than by SWAT teams entering from without. There are good reasons for a decent, law-abiding person to own and carry a gun for purposes of recreation or self-defense. Her rights are just as precious as those of a non-gun-owner, and she shouldn't be treated like a criminal until and unless she behaves like one. No good law can erode her right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of skeet merely in the interest of keeping others with darker motives from getting their hands on a gun.

The core of the problem:

Evaluating the various bills proffered by the gun lobby should simply be a matter of totting up these rights and measuring them against issues of public safety. But such evaluation currently relies on a risk-benefit analysis that's skewed by state politicians' reliance on the gun vote. Perfect honesty, for instance, might force us to acknowledge that the threat to public safety these pro-gun laws pose probably far outweighs whatever value they may hold in preserving individual liberties, since criminals would be as likely as lawful gun owners to avail themselves of their right to bring a gun on their next trip downtown.

Now, the bad from the gun-control side:

Two examples of poorly conceived gun-control tactics are the federal assault-weapons ban and liability lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers. Even the nomenclature of the former—which expired in September 2004—is misleading, since Americans legally bought and owned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and combat accessories for the duration of the alleged "ban." The bill did nothing to keep these weapons off the street, but the gun-control community claimed it as a major victory; the law didn't need to be effective in practice to be helpful in raising money from the left-leaning public. Again in the interest of candor, one would have to agree that's a cynical and dishonest approach.

The same is true of liability suits, which simply don't target criminals; they target companies, American ones, who provide skilled jobs to American workers. Suing Smith & Wesson as a result of a shooting is like suing GM because of a drunk-driving arrest (or Prada because someone wears white shoes after Labor Day … ). Responsibility should fall to individuals who make dangerous decisions, not to corporations that make inanimate objects.

Finally, his proposed solution:

Universal background checks. The Brady Law already mandates FBI background checks when anyone buys a gun from a federal firearms-licensed gun dealer. There's no question that Brady is constitutional, and that Congress had the right to pass it. Given sufficient legislative spine, then, it follows that they could mandate the same check on all private sales as well.

These off-the-books sales in the secondary market account for roughly 40 percent of annual gun transfers. They make possible the gun-show loophole and straw-man purchases like the one that gave the Columbine killers the semiautomatic pistol in their cache. In fact, the only lawmakers who could possibly oppose universal checks are those who'd argue that known terrorists, sex offenders, felons, maniacs, drunks, drug addicts, and domestic abusers should be able to skip the FBI check and buy their guns from private sellers. That's what our current law allows, which raises the question: Why is the gun-control community not focused on a straightforward law that would directly address one of the main sources of guns used in violent crimes?

I can imagine several practical obstacles to such a measure, mainly the difficulty of enforcing it and the bureaucratic hurdles it puts in the way of a gunower trying to get rid of a gun. Can Joe Citizen call the background check database and get a quick answer? And if so, what happens to privacy? What's to keep Mrs. Kravitz from calling up, pretending to have a gun she wants to sell, and checking on the criminal and mental status of all of her neighbors?

Given that, I'd be satisfied with a law that applied to gun shows and other semiformal venues, which accounts for most of the problem anyway. The idea is simple: Make it more difficult for guns to get into the hands of people who should not have them, without unduly hampering the rights of the rest of us to own and carry guns if we wish.

I'd also advocate laws that have nothing to do with gun ownership and everything to do with gun safety. For instance, you should not be able to buy a gun -- especially a handgun -- without undergoing training in its use or showing you have had such training. It might also include an "is a gun right for you?" section, where alternatives -- door locks, an alarm system, guard dogs, baseball bats, whatever -- are discussed, along with their advantages: less dangerous, cheaper, etc. The goal is to have only educated gunowners, who understand clearly why they own a gun and how to use it.

That education should include information on safely storing the weapon. If it's a gun intended for recreational use, then I think it's fine to mandate that it be stored unloaded, or in a locked case, or with the ammo separate, or with a trigger lock, or all of the above. If it's a gun intended for self-defense, however, when it's needed it's needed fast, and you don't want to be fumbling with a lock or loose ammunition. In such a case, the law should be more flexible: mandating that the gun be stored out of sight with the safety engaged and the chamber empty, perhaps, but otherwise simply urging the gunowner to store it as safely as possible while still meeting their needs.

I also think certain crime-solving measures -- like chemically marking the powder in bullets and explosives to help identify their origin -- are reasonable and unobjectionable if technical hurdles can be overcome at a reasonable cost.

The point is, again, to make punishing perpetrators easier without unduly inconveniencing the rest of us.

What about accidental shootings? Sadly, we cannot expect to eliminate them entirely, and attempting to do so could render the gun unusable when you need it most. I think the best we can do is require gunowners to attend safety classes, then hope that their sense of responsibility and love of their children will do the rest. That, and prosecuting them when they are negligent with their firearms.

Concealed carry? Fine, if the applicant otherwise qualifies to own a gun and passes additional classes and more stringent background checks.

These measures aren't going to solve the problem. But it's doubtful the problem is solvable in a conventional sense anyway. It is clear that people are constitutionally allowed to have guns. And given that, it's clear that there will always be a certain number of gun-related accidents and crimes. Gunowners need to accept reasonable restrictions in the name of accountability and public safety; gun-control advocates need to recognize the legitimate concerns and rights of gunowners. And all of us should hope that continued improvements in forensics and policing will make much of this debate moot by continuing to reduce crime overall.

gun control, politics, midtopia

Nobody's going to win with Virginia Tech

It's time to apply some math to the Virginia Tech shootings.

Gun-rights advocates point to it and say, "If one of those students in Norris Hall had had a gun, this might have been prevented."

Gun-control advocates point to it and say, "If guns weren't so easy to get, Cho wouldn't have been able to kill so many people."

But both arguments miss the point. Because such massacres are extraordinary events, and not particularly relevant to the debate.

I have no doubt that armed citizenry have, on various occasions, stopped or prevented crime. But a school shooting is less than a once-in-a-lifetime event for any given town or location. The odds of any of us being in one are vanishingly remote; the odds of being in more than one are so astronomical as to be zero.

Wait, you say: I know of at least a dozen school shootings in recent memory. What do you mean, "they're rare"?

This is where the math comes in.

There are 94,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Add in the 28,384 private schools, and then arrange the 4,100 colleges, community colleges and universities as a garnish. That gives us a total of 126,000 schools.

There have been 36 school shootings in the United States in the past 11 years, for an average of about three per year.

If my math is correct, that works out to a 0.002 percent chance in any given year that your school will be attacked.

Over the course of an 80-year lifetime, the odds increase to 0.2 percent.

Over 1,000 years, the odds of any given school being attacked reach a whopping 2.4 percent.

Thus by any rational measure, a shooting at your neighborhood school isn't something to worry about except in the context of developing contingency plans as you would for any other highly-unlikely-but-very-bad-if-it-happens event -- like an asteroid strike.

So the question is not "can a gun (or gun control) stop a shooting rampage." We all can envision scenarios where both do just that.

For gun-rights folks, the question is, "Given that such rampages are vanishingly rare, how much carnage are we willing to put up with in the meantime in order to ensure that there's an armed citizen on the scene if and when such a rampage occurs?" The carnage is not small: Each year, firearms are used in about 10,000 homicides, 17,000 suicides and 800 or so accidental deaths. Another 75,000 are injured but not killed.

For gun-control advocates, conversely, the question is, "Given that such rampages are vanishingly rare, how many restrictions on gun ownership are we willing to impose on the population at large in order to keep a potential mass murderer from carrying out such an attack?"

And at base, the question for all sides is: "Does gun control (or armed citizenry) actually reduce violence (or crime) overall?" That's a far more complex question, of course. It's quite possible, for instance, that increased gun ownership reduces crime overall, but at the price of increased violence or accidental deaths. It's possible that gun control reduces deaths but at the price of increased crime. It's also possible that neither is actually a major factor in crime or violence.

I won't pretend to have the answer, but in my next post I discuss some reasonable gun laws that I think most people would support.

gun control, politics, midtopia

Could Virginia Tech killer have been stopped from buying guns?

Sadly, the answer is apparently yes -- if our background-check system weren't being sabotaged.

I'm not a big gun-control advocate. I grew up shooting guns. Then I joined the Army, where I got to shoot really big guns: M16s, M60s, SAWs and, of course, the 105mm main gun of an M1 (that final detail dates me, because M1s have since been upgunned to 120mm). I have no problem with reasonable restrictions on firearms, but I don't think there should be hugely cumbersome barriers to gun ownership.

That said, sometimes gun nuts make me mad.

A judge's ruling on Cho Seung-Hui's mental health should have barred him from purchasing the handguns he used in the Virginia Tech massacre, according to federal regulations. But it was unclear Thursday whether anybody had an obligation to inform federal authorities about Cho's mental status because of loopholes in the law that governs background checks....

The language of the ruling by Special Justice Paul M. Barnett almost identically tracks federal regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those rules bar the sale of guns to individuals who have been "adjudicated mentally defective."

The definition outlined in the regulations is "a determination by a court ... or other lawful authority that a person as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness ... is a danger to himself or to others."

There's nothing in Virginia state law barring the mentally ill from buying guns, unless they're committed to a psych ward. But federal law is tougher.

About that loophole:

George Burke, a spokesman for Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, said millions of criminal and mental-health records are not accessible to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, mostly because state and local governments lack the money to submit the records.

McCarthy has sponsored legislation since 2002 that would close loopholes in the national background check system for gun purchases.

Initially states were required to provide all relevant information to federal authorities when the instant background checks were enacted, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling relieved them of that obligation.

So it's not so much a loophole, as a lack of money. But there is nothing requiring states and localities to share information with the Feds, so without proper funding, many don't. Meaning the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has some big holes in its database.

McCarthy's efforts to change that have gone nowhere, thanks in part to opposition from groups like Gun Owners of America. Each time, her bill has passed the House but died in the Senate.

Notably, the NRA has not opposed the measures. That said, the NRA has not been entirely on the sidelines here. Besides fighting efforts to institute background checks at gun shows, consider the "Supreme Court ruling" referenced in the article.

That line is somewhat inaccurate. The 1997 case, Printz v. United States, involved temporary measures intended to facilitate background checks between the time the Brady Bill was passed (in 1993) and 1998, when the NICS database would be established. It was rendered moot when the NICS went online.

But the basic facts remain: The NRA funded the lawsuit, which opposed Brady Bill background checks. Their specific legal argument was essentially that it was an unfunded mandate on local police and sheriff departments, and they won on those grounds; but their purpose was to stop background checks. Since then, the NRA has fought aspects of NICS, notably the length of time that records can be retained after a purchase. It's down to 24 hours from the original 180 days. That means the FBI has just 24 hours after a purchase to find and fix a mistaken approval.

It's worth asking: If gun groups weren't so busy damaging the machinery of the background-check system, would 32 people be alive today? We're not talking gun bans -- we're talking about making sure we have a working system to keep guns out of the hands of people like Cho, on whom red flags have already been planted.

Gun Owners of America, in particular, should be ashamed of themselves.

Update: An article from CNN contradicts the premise of this thread (and the article it is based on), claiming that only involuntary committment to a mental ward would have put Cho into the NICS. One of them is wrong.

Update II: Using the NYT as a tiebreaker, the original story appears correct: he should not have been able to buy the gun, because while he was in accord with Virginia state law, he was ineligible under federal law.

The main problem, as noted, is reportage:

Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the federal check system, the statement said.

Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”

No matter where you stand on gun control, that disconnect needs to change.

Virgina Tech, gun control, politics, midtopia

Concealed carry: no big deal

A new study of Minnesota's liberalized concealed-carry law revealed no positive effect on crime.

Violent crime has risen 13 percent in the three years since the law took effect.

Firearm injuries and deaths have doubled.

There was only one instance of a permit holder using the gun under the "lawful and justifiable" provision -- and it didn't involve stopping a crime or self-defense.

So it seems pretty clear that the law isn't helping fight crime. But nor has it turned into the Wild West. Of 42,189 permit holders just 174 have been involved in a crime, only 23 of which involved a pistol. While that debunks the assertion of some supporters that "no permit holder has ever been involved in a crime" -- an assertion that is statistically ludicrous anyway -- it doesn't show rampant vigilantism either.

Whether you think the law is a problem depends on how closely you tie the rising crime and injury rates to the concealed-carry provision, and what weight you give to the various factors. To me, it's mostly a wash. I didn't feel unsafe before the law; I don't feel unsafe now. The most irritating part is constantly being confronted with those big, legislatedly ungrammatical signs warning that Company X "bans guns in these premises." Given the number of such signs, we probably could have saved a lot of money by requiring instead that businesses voluntarily opt-in with a sign that said "Company X welcomes concealed weapons."

gun control, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Webbgate

Amid all the attention being given to the Gonzales debacle, the usual suspects are floggin an embarassing little kerfuffle involving Democratic Sen. Jim Webb.

An aide to Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) was arrested Monday for attempting to carry a loaded pistol into the Capitol.

At approximately 10:50 a.m. the staffer entered the Russell Senate Office Building through the lower Delaware and C Street Door, according to Kimberly Schneider, spokeswoman for the Capitol Police. The X-ray machine revealed that the aide had a loaded pistol and two additional magazines of ammunition.

Upon questioning, the Capitol Police determined the staffer did not have a license for the pistol or ammunition. Consequently, he was arrested and charged with carrying a pistol without a license and with being in possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition.

Seems pretty small potatoes, right? An aide forgets he has a gun in his briefcase and runs afoul of security. The end.

Then it turns out it's Webb's gun. Webb was boarding a flight to New Orleans on Friday and gave the gun to his assistants because he couldn't take it on the plane.

Still small potatoes, right?

The aide, Phillip Thompson, was subsequently charged with a felony for not having a license to carry the pistol. But that's mostly because D.C. law is downright freaky about gun ownership -- so freaky that portions of D.C.'s gun-control laws have been ruled unconstitutional. If the offense was truly inadvertent, expect him to get off pretty lightly.

But now let the speculation begin.

Suppose Webb asked Thompson to carry the gun into the Capitol so he could have it in his office? Suppose Webb routinely carries a pistol in D.C., despite laws prohibiting it?

The latter is quite possible, but the former makes no sense, because Congress -- as they often do -- makes one set of rules for you, and another set of rules for themselves. It apparently is legal for Senators and Congressmen to have guns on federal property -- including the Capitol. So there'd be no point to Webb having his staffer sneak it in, and it would be doubly stupid because while Congress members can have guns there, aides can't. Why have your aide do something that's illegal for him but perfectly legal for you?

So it seems kind of impossible for this to be more than a mild embarassment for Webb's office -- not even Webb personally. It'd be kind of fun, though, to find out which airport Webb flew out of on Friday. If it was a D.C. airport, he has essentially admitted violating D.C. gun laws by having the gun with him in the first place.

Update: To clarify that last paragraph, if I had to bet I would wager that Webb regularly violates D.C. gun control laws. If so, he should be hammered a bit for it. But given that D.C.'s gun laws are so draconian, I don't think you're going to see many Republicans going after him on that score, unless they want to make him a hero to the gun lobby. Even many people who are sympathetic to reasonable regulation of guns aren't going to care, because D.C.'s gun laws are simpy too strict to be taken seriously.

Besides, there's probably a Congressional exception to it anyway.

gun control, Webb, politics, midtopia