In working on my article on the regulation of stun guns and irritant sprays, I came across this editorial from the Annapolis Capital, June 27, 1985:
Council Should Ban Stun GunsGuns often fall into the wrong hands or are misused. Why make it possible for people to misuse a new technology weapon, the electric stun gun?
County Council members Carole B. Baker and David G. Boschert are proposing that the sale, possession or use of stun guns be prohibited for private citizens in Anne Arundel. We think the council should go one step further and ban the use of stun guns by on-duty police officers as well. That position is endorsed by Annapolis Police Chief John C. Schmitt. State, county and city law enforcement officers currently are not permitted to carry stun guns on duty, and we don’t think they need the weapons to perform their services or defend themselves.
A stun gun is a pocket-sized, battery-charged device that temporarily incapacitates a person with a 50,000-volt electric charge when it is pressed against the body. Though on the market only a few months, there are already reports of the device being used for purposes other than legitimate self-defense.
In February, a Maryland state trooper who was carrying a stun gun without authorization was reprimanded after he zapped an unruly (but handcuffed) woman four or five times with the device. This spring, five New York City police officers were accused of using a stun gun to torture a prisoner.
We feel that police don’t need this weapon. They already have sufficient equipment to subdue people when necessary.
We realize that in a violence-prone society, citizens need to protect themselves. We also must remember that weapons meant to protect us often are used against us. Why make crime easier for muggers and rapists? It seems the stun gun has more potential for serious injury and abuse than, for instance, chemical Mace.
The National Rifle Association and other pro-gun rights advocates shouldn’t equate stun guns with projectile weapons. Besides, any self-respecting NRA member would never depend on a stun gun for self defense.
This isn’t quite self-defense-blindness; the editorial does acknowledge that “citizens need to protect themselves.” But what does it say to explain why citizens should be denied this defensive tool? That the tool may be misused by criminals — but of course all defensive weapons can be misused by criminals.
Nor does this logic stop at stun guns, despite the nod in the direction of the legitimacy of Mace and guns. Exactly the same argument could be made against Mace and pepper spray; and of course in Maryland both then and now guns were largely unavailable for citizen self-defense in public, based precisely on the logic that the editorial reveals.
So this is the implication of the weapons control argument: It doesn’t stop at guns, but goes on to stun guns as well, and if taken to its logical conclusion (which it has been in England, Canada, New Zealand, and much of Australia, but fortunately not in the U.S.) to Mace and pepper spray as well. Never mind that people willing to violate laws against robbery or rape will likely be willing to violate laws against carrying weapons, so that weapons bans disproportionately affect the law-abiding. Never mind that the special arguments focused on the volume of gun deaths in the country — undoubtedly a serious problem, even if one thinks (as I do) that gun bans are an unsound way of dealing with it — don’t apply to stun guns or irritant sprays. Self-defense, even when acknowledged, is in practice casually sacrificed to the largely futile attempt to disarm the criminals.
It’s no accident, I think, that of the ten states in which law-abiding adults generally can’t get permits to carry guns concealed (California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin), seven also ban either possessing stun guns or at least carrying them in public. (California allows stun guns, as does Delaware outside Wilmington and Maryland outside the Annapolis/Baltimore area.) The arguments for gun bans could indeed be limited to guns, and not to other weapons. But the “those weapons can be misused, and never mind their value for self-defense” philosophy is in practice not easily cabined to guns.
PersonFromPorlock says:
Very true. I’ve sometimes wondered what would happen in a gun-control debate if the pro-gun speaker refused to talk about guns and instead challenged his opponent to defend all the other prohibitions that usually go along with gun control – and which show how gun control really reflects a belief in the irresponsibility and incompetence of ordinary people.
September 30, 2009, 3:13 pmE-litist says:
I fault myself for not being an avid follower of this blog, and likely missing your past explanations that may cover my ensuing query, But:
You do lightly sidestep the fact that the countries you mention, which take gun bans to the logical conclusion, have statistically fewer gun related deaths and crimes. Correlation, I admit, is not causation, but remains persuasive. Why do you dismiss the US’ lighter restrictions on guns as being at least part of the reason for the “undoubtedly serious problem”? It seems to me you make as serious error in overstepping this premise as the editorialist does in dismissing the self-defense qualities of unconventional weapons.
September 30, 2009, 3:20 pmCurt Fischer says:
Well admitting that guns or other weapons have a self-defense value is at least a start. Sometimes people don’t even get that far. Imagine if the article at my link actually said this:
September 30, 2009, 3:26 pmghHorse says:
Rocks and as we have been recently shown, large boards can be weapons. Let’s ban them.
The lefty ninnies want you to not have any responsibility, you remove people’s responsibilities, you have no rights left.
September 30, 2009, 4:24 pmMark N. says:
This attempt to make the opponent defend stronger implications of his argument is already what commonly happens, on both sides, isn’t it? Supporters of gun control get asked where they’d draw the line: would they defend restrictions on knives, mace, or other non-gun weapons? Meanwhile, supporters of gun rights get asked where they’d draw the line: would they defend a right to own machine guns, or grenade launchers, or short-range missiles? Each side usually tries to parry the implication, drawing a line (usually somewhat shaky) somewhere short of what they think will seem extreme.
September 30, 2009, 4:25 pmEH says:
Maybe this is the yin to Arizona’s yang of allowing guns in bars, starting today.
September 30, 2009, 4:45 pmShelby says:
Curt Fischer:
September 30, 2009, 4:49 pmThe article you link to does seem to report a rather asinine study — for example, it apparently doesn’t consider whether people who think they are at risk of being shot, might be more likely to therefore carry a gun. However, your analogy is rather clumsily constructed and confusing, making it ineffective. I recommend just attacking the logical flaws in the reporters’/researchers’ reasoning, rather than trying to illustrate them by parallel construction.
Pintler says:
One point you might want to investigate is to compare the murder rate in states with very lax gun laws (Vermont, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, …) with the rate in very restrictive jurisdictions (Chicago, until recently DC, …). Any of the books by Gary Kleck would be a good place to start.
September 30, 2009, 5:00 pmKirk Parker says:
E-litist:
Not really; not when the actual crime statistics vs firearms laws are all over the map–some places with much stricter laws nevertheless also have a higher rate of violence and/or suicide than we do. Furthermore, if you look at the data longitudinally, you find that the higher rate of violence between, e.g. the US and England was just as true back in 1900 when you could walk into a store in either London or NYC and walk out with a handgun, no questions asked.
September 30, 2009, 5:08 pmMatthew Carberry says:
“Guns in bars” is a bit of a misnomer, and for that matter isn’t particularly novel. Many states that allow carry allow “guns in bars” already, some even allow carriers to drink under the same impairment rules as they have for driving.
None of those states have higher levels of permit revocations than states which bar the practice (uniformly <1% for all causes, criminal and merely administrative). Restricting possession in bars, or even restricting "drinking while armed" more severely than the parallel standard for driving impairment, is yet another seemingly "common sense" restriction that turns out to have no statistically significant effect in reality.
AZ is hardly pushing any boundaries with their law as nobody else has had any problems with it yet. But heaven forbid a journalist actually note that.
September 30, 2009, 6:04 pmFat Man says:
A baton will do quite nicely. The argument is moronic. The TASER is intended to replace pistols, not night-sticks.
September 30, 2009, 6:15 pmFûz says:
“We think the council should go one step further and ban the use of stun guns by on-duty police officers as well.”
I’d like to see EV’s treatment of this topic separately.
“In February, a Maryland state trooper who was carrying a stun gun without authorization was reprimanded after he zapped an unruly (but handcuffed) woman four or five times with the device. This spring, five New York City police officers were accused of using a stun gun to torture a prisoner.”
Because this device is presumed ‘nonlethal’ its wielder is tempted to use it with less restraint than he would a firearm. “Less restraint” and “power of the State” mix about as well as gasoline and bourbon. For that very reason, I find the stun gun repugnant compared to a combat handgun or even a Class III firearm.
September 30, 2009, 7:17 pmmatt d says:
Fuz,
Are you lumping tasers into the category of “stun guns”? I think the old-style two-electrodes-with-a-spark stun guns are pretty useless for police work (or much of anything else), but …
Do you find a taser repugnant compared to a baton, an “unarmed” choke hold, or five cops piling on somebody? All of which are both more dangerous and less effective? Because without a taser, the police get to either pick one of those, or a gun.
Tasers result in fewer dead suspects and fewer injured suspects.
-m@
September 30, 2009, 8:21 pmLarryA says:
OTOH, what is the overall record for deaths and crimes? Murder is murder.
Also, when citing the U.S. national crime statistics you have to remember that a disproportionate share of those crimes take place in states and cities which have strict gun control, and among populations with low rates of legal gun ownership.
September 30, 2009, 8:39 pmNickM says:
E-litist – now compare the non-firearm homicide rate in those countries with the non-firearm homicide rate in the U.S. Correlation disappears.
Nick
October 1, 2009, 1:03 amRicardo says:
When tasers are used for “pain compliance,” one of the alternatives is most certainly not a gun. One alternative you didn’t mention is developing better people skills — anecdotally, I understand that the best cops who are really good with dealing with the public (including assholes, drunks and drug addicts) very rarely have excessive force complaints filed against them. That’s because they don’t actually have to use force as often as others. They are able to project a combination of alpha male personality, subtle physical intimidation (e.g. through body language and tone of voice) and charisma to get people to do what they are told.
Tasers can easily be abused by lazy, incompetent cops who don’t want to have to interact with some asshole on the street who is mouthing off at them beyond shutting him up with a shock of 50,000 volts. Thing is, dealing with abusive, disorderly and uncooperative people is part of the job description. If you don’t want that as part of your job, study accounting.
October 1, 2009, 1:25 amseattle law student says:
That is not a valid argument. It is very well established that Guns move from those states with lax gun laws to the states with restrictive gun laws. Street criminals in Chicago and NY are getting their firearms through straw purchasers in those “lax” states. The strong NRA lobby in VA and elsewhere keeps guns flowing to street criminals elsewhere.
October 1, 2009, 4:37 am11-B/20.B4 says:
In what way is it not a valid argument? You’re suggesting that (gasp) criminals smuggle guns into areas where they are not legal? Other than the distance covered and the intricacy of the operation, there’s no real difference between having your cousin in another state buy you a gun (a violation of federal law btw) and having a shipment of AK’s smuggled in from Djibouti. You still don’t answer the charge (well supported I might add) that more restrictive gun laws in states or cities are often correlated with higher violent crime stats. If I might offer you a better argument (one that isn’t one big fallacy) you might try the line that higher crime areas are more likely to restrict guns. Of course, there’s a bit of evidence that shows that high crime areas experience a drop in violent crime if they enact right-to-carry laws, but at least you wouldn’t come off like someone who doesn’t know his logical fallacies.
October 1, 2009, 5:50 amPintler says:
@seattle law student:
I am not suggesting that a criminal in Chicago or Detroit has a problem getting guns. I don’t think criminals, especially the worst of them, have a problem getting guns anywhere (‘Q: If guns are banned, where will crooks get them? A: Smuggle them in hidden under the drugs’).
The posited position was that countries with severe gun restrictions have lower murder rates than the US, and that the correlation might imply causation. Let’s look at some actual murder rates:
Here are some national numbers that look like they back up the assertion that access to firearms might cause a high murder rate:
US 5.6
Canada 1.9
Norway 1.0
UK 1.4
(although including numbers from Finland and Switzerland might be interesting)
Here are some city numbers. Now the picture is getting muddier – are there a lot fewer guns in El Paso than Baltimore?
El Paso 3
Baltimore 45
Los Angeles 10
Detroit 46
NYC 6
How about by state? Let’s look especially at MD, DC, and VA. VA has very loose gun laws, MD has fairly restrictive ones, and DC has draconian ones. Of the three, why does VA have the lowest murder rate? Again, I’m happy to concede that every crime gun in MD or DC came from VA, but why aren’t Virginians killing each other with the guns the straw purchasers left behind? What about WY – Lord knows there is no gun shortage there – why aren’t they shooting each other?
DC 35.8
Delaware 2.0
Idaho 2.2
New Mexico 8.9
Maryland 9.4
Pennsylvania 5.2
Virginia 5.2
Wyoming 2.2
The US rate in 1991 was 9.8, and in 2005 it was 5.6. Has gun availability dropped that much?
The numbers (not just these examples, but all of them) just do not exhibit any significant correlation between gun availability and murder rates.
October 1, 2009, 6:11 amseattle law student says:
correlation is not causation. Lacking the time or inclination to look it up, I’ll argue that the gun restrictions followed violent crime rather than the other way around. Either way the issue is that gun restrictions will fail until and unless bad dealers are policed adequately.
October 1, 2009, 6:17 amJRL says:
Now you’re just being silly. A ban on rocks and boards is absurd, when a 7 day waiting period would be sufficient.
October 1, 2009, 6:24 amPete Freans says:
Tasers can easily be abused by lazy, incompetent cops who don’t want to have to interact with some asshole on the street who is mouthing off at them beyond shutting him up with a shock of 50,000 volts.
Well, removing tasers from a police officer’s force continuum will only produce more tragic consequences. Better people skills won’t neutralize a so-called “asshole” when that “asshole” is not complying with police commands and threatening officers with bodily harm.
If our taser-less officer employs verbal commands and they do not work, physical restraint fails, and pepper spray blows in the wind, guess what weapon will then be drawn?
“Abusive, disorderly and uncooperative people” do not respond to logic and deliberative processes. They seem to respond better when 400,000 volts are pulsing through their nervous system. Following an officers’ commands will allow the process to go much smoother. Challenging your detention in the street however will almost never produce an positive outcome. Your options are much more productive in the courtroom.
October 1, 2009, 6:27 amLarryA says:
That was an excellent argument twenty years ago. But the state laws we’re discussing were passed back in the 1960s and 70s, with the promise that “reasonable restrictions” on legally-owned guns would yield reductions in those crime rates. It’s now 2009, and we’re still waiting.
Meanwhile there’s England. In the 1980s that country was one of the most crime-free in the world; perhaps the only major world power where the police seldom carried handguns. Then Parliament instituted strict gun control, virtually banning firearms, requiring the few legal firearms be stored in such a way that they couldn’t be used for self-defense, and pretty well outlawing self-defense as a response to criminal violence. Today England has one of the highest violent crime rates in the industrialized world, far higher than the U.S. And yes, they’re experiencing increases in the gun crime rate.
No one loads up their trunk with guns at a Virginia gun show and drives to England. Besides the problem of getting wet, there’s the economics. You can easily purchase a 9mm semiauto on the London black market for less than you can get a comparable pistol at a U.S. gun show. Or rent one for a fraction of the purchase price.
Parliaments response to this obvious failure? More gun control, just like Chicago and D.C. Only in England they’re down to banning pointy kitchen knives.
October 1, 2009, 8:20 amGabriel McCall says:
Adding tasers to the police repertoire has produced (plenty) (of) (tragic) (consequences). You’d have to go a long way to convince me that the alternative would be worse.
October 1, 2009, 10:37 amAllen says:
I really wish we could loosen up gun control laws and rules here in Louisville. The University of Louisville campus is going through a crime wave, every week I get about two emails notifying us of a robbery report on campus or immediately around campus involving a student. The admin reminds us that it’s against policy to bring a gun in the car on campus, if they catch you it’s an expulsion. Instead they tell us to calmly cooperate with the robber and give them whatever they ask for.
The university isn’t deploying officers to the areas being affected (even when it’s the same corner 5 times in a row) aren’t investigating after the fact and aren’t allowing us to defend ourselves. No wonder we’re getting robbed so frequently. 2 mins worth of work and they get a wallet with money and a 20% chance at a laptop.
October 1, 2009, 10:42 amluagha says:
I will mention that the common TASER that shoots the pronged dart and wires (or pronged dart and capacitor/battery) also has a ‘drive-stun’ mode where you press the front of the weapon against the target and hit the button – making it equivalent to the hand-held ‘stun guns’ you can buy at military surplus stores and knife shops in malls. (That’s what was used against the ‘Don’t Tase me, bro,’ idiot.
Also, gun violence, suicide, and per capita violence vary from country to country based more on culture than they do on guns and legality. For example, Japan’s per capita suicide rate is slightly greater than the US but it’s nearly all done with knives and swords as opposed to guns seemingly because of the influence of the samurai mystique. Every family in Switzerland has legal access to a fully automatic machinegun (with penalties if fired unlawfully) and yet despite the massive availability their per capita gun crim is low. Similarily Israel’s gun crime rate is very low even though gun ownership is encouraged to deter gun terrorism (and the vast majority of citizens have done some level of required military service).
October 1, 2009, 11:16 amRAH says:
Md had also banned body armor for the public many years ago. Tasers are still not allowed by the public or police in Howard County.
The premise seems to be that in most cases to not allow citizens equal standing with police on armor defensive weapons or offensive weapons.
Md is odd. They have LTC but only to special classes of people. With LTC the carrier can carry anywhere mostly in any fashion.
Also MD institued the ballistic bullet for new guns sold in MD. Md really has not increased a lot of gun laws. They sometimes have a push but have been stopped.
Self defense is OK at home or business, Just not while on the street or in public.
The recent case in Baltimore with a med student defending against a burglar with a sword and cutting the invaders hand off, there has been no arrest of using a lethal edge weapon longer than legal length. It may be because it happen at his home.
Castle doctrine has pretty much always been accepted in MD. Just don’t have any presumption of self defense or civil immunity.
However the state and counties have not tried to convict a self defense case since they lost with the brothers who laid in wait at their store and killed the intruders who had done repeat intrusion 3 nights running. The prosecutors know self defense cases the juries will not convict. So they don’t try.
There have been 3-4 cases in the last year or so of fatal for the intruder self defense cases. None of those were prosecuted.
Md has a lot of people who carry, federal employees such as FBI,SS and police so there is often a CC person around. It is just very discreet.
October 1, 2009, 7:31 pmPete Freans says:
You’d have to go a long way to convince me that the alternative would be worse.
Gabriel, if an officer is require to shoot suspect A with a firearm, and suspect B with a stun gun, suspect A will most likely die from his/her wounds if untreated, and suspect B will most likely not perish from his/her temporary injuries.
The alternative is most definitely worse.
October 2, 2009, 11:15 amconspiracyzach says:
Less-lethal weapons and minimal training requirements create a slippery slope. For now we can mitigate introduction of Tasers by requiring the government to buy the Taser with the video camera built in. Here are a couple videos showing police misuse of less-lethal weapons in Eugene, Oregon. http://www.youtube.com/luddite333
October 24, 2009, 5:27 pm