The first thing that we need to do is to get rid of laws that make criminals out of people that do not initiate force or fraud against others and do not intrude on others and their property. Why should someone be arrested for smoking pot or using his/her body to earn money in a voluntary transaction? Getting rid of such laws would eliminate 90% or more of criminal charges in the system. That would leave resources to ensure that the laws that are left are taken seriously and punished fully.

The second thing that is required is to get rid of the state as a party that has primary standing when a crime is committed. When a con artist steals from a family the state is not a victim so it should not be the primary determinant of the appropriate punishment. It should not be the State of XX vs Jones but the Victims vs Jones. The federal government and states should certainly should not be collecting and keeping ‘fines’ when companies take actions that harm individuals because those fines need to go to the real victims instead.

Anon21:
Ah, it appears Ricky subscribes to the Lou Dobbs, evidence-free article of faith that illegal immigrants contribute significantly to crime, rather than mostly refraining from violations of (non-immigration) laws for fear of deportation.

How do you think Cocaine, Heroin and (some) Meth enter the country? Have you heard of gangs like MS13?

MOST illegal aliens who come here are good and decent people (relative to their culture anyway) who want nothing more than a better life for themselves. These people should be provided with legal channels. A small percentage (*probably* close to 10%, I’ve heard estimates from police officers of 10%) of illegals are “problem children” of either the petty variety (drug dealers) or the more serious (B&E, gang activity etc.).

The biggest part of the problem is that this minority hides in, and preys on the majority that ARE decent people, and since they are here illegally they are often afraid to go to the police for help.

So yes, border enforcement–aka “controlling the border” is important in managing petty crime.

Soronel Haetir: There is a general requirement that all charges that stem from a particular course of conduct be tried at the same time, so I’m not sure this would be allowed.

If the felon-in-possession charge was federal, and the others were state, then there would have to be separate trials at different times anyway. Not that I think that it makes sense to have so many federal criminal statutes…

How binding is this general requirement? I suppose that a federal judge could rule that violating it would be a violation of due process, and I’m fairly confident that the 9th Circuit would agree, but has the Supreme Court ever ruled on it?

Pintler: 3)Make them. I’m not joking. I’m a mediocre hobby machinist and I have made a 1911 frame, starting from a solid block of metal. This is on manual machinery older than I am. Google around and you can find places where you can download the CNC code so your modern (made in the last 20 years) CNC machine can crank them out by the dozens. If you’re not into machining, you may think that you need a huge factory to make guns, but that’s not true any more than you need a huge distillery to make booze. Any mom-n-pop machine shop could crank a few dozen after closing one night. Sure, they’d be a little more expensive, but probably not much. Since our gun bootlegger wouldn’t be concerned with warranty returns or being sued for a bad design, they could simplify the design, skimp on the heat treating, and so on.

In the Philippines, there are artisans who start out with a gun to copy, a block of steel, and a hand file. It may take them a week or two, but the copy is functional. Not pretty, and not terribly accurate, but functional.

“closing the private sale loophole”

This debate seems to forget that crooks will actively try to find ways to circumvent the law. Here’s three ways to get around background checks:

1)If I am willing to transfer legally acquired firearms to felons, today I just sell them, and if the police ever ask what happened to the gun, I say “I sold it to a guy, I didn’t get a name, but he was wearing a blue jacket”. When FFL transfers are required, I will just be careful to make sure the gun is ‘stolen’.

2)As the old joke goes, smuggle them into the country hidden under drug shipments.

3)Make them. I’m not joking. I’m a mediocre hobby machinist and I have made a 1911 frame, starting from a solid block of metal. This is on manual machinery older than I am. Google around and you can find places where you can download the CNC code so your modern (made in the last 20 years) CNC machine can crank them out by the dozens. If you’re not into machining, you may think that you need a huge factory to make guns, but that’s not true any more than you need a huge distillery to make booze. Any mom-n-pop machine shop could crank a few dozen after closing one night. Sure, they’d be a little more expensive, but probably not much. Since our gun bootlegger wouldn’t be concerned with warranty returns or being sued for a bad design, they could simplify the design, skimp on the heat treating, and so on.

I’m all for keeping guns away from crooks, but you have to think about how your opponents will try to game the system.

GaryC:
Why not try “swift and sure punishment” for felons in possession of a firearm? Reduce the sentence to 1 year, but hold the trial within 1 week, with the defendant held in jail without bail pending the trial, then sent to prison immediately upon conviction. The trial should be based on two decisions by a judge:1) Is this person a convicted felon?
2) Did he possess a firearm when arrested?That should take a few hours per case.If there are other charges pending, then the defendant remains in jail, where he gets credit for serving the felon-in-possession conviction, while the other charges wind their way toward trial.

There is a general requirement that all charges that stem from a particular course of conduct be tried at the same time, so I’m not sure this would be allowed.

John Seabrook, Annals of Crime, “Don’t Shoot,” The New Yorker, June 22, 2009, p. 32.

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF CRIME about David Kennedy’s Ceasefire strategy for curbing gang violence and public drug sales. Two high-profile shootings in Cincinnati in April 2006 created the perception that crime was out of control in the city. The police believed that many of the killings involved gangs and were related to the drug trade. That summer, the Cincinnati police force implemented a “zero tolerance” policy, arresting more than twenty-six hundred people. The policy reduced street crime but had little effect on the city’s murder count, which continued to rise. David Kennedy, a professor from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, went to Cincinnati in the fall of 2006 to pitch his program, which is sometimes known as Ceasefire. Ceasefire begins with the fact that a small number of hardened criminals commit a hugely disproportionate number of serious violent crimes. Kennedy explained that, in Cincinnati, the police would identify gang members who were on parole or probation and compel them to attend a meeting. There, the cops would demand that the shootings end, and promise that, if they did not, the punishment would be swift and severe and target the entire gang. The city would also make life coaching and job counseling available to those who wanted out of the thug life. The police were initially skeptical about the program, but in 2007, they began implementing Ceasefire with a team that included social workers and academics. Describes how information about gang activity was gathered and organized by the team. Gives biographical information about Kennedy, who grew up in Detroit and was a freelance writer before taking a job on a study of policing policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Tells about changes in inner-city policing during the crack epidemic of the nineteen-eighties and nineties and the widely imitated policies implemented in New York City by Mayor Giuliani and Commissioner William Bratton. In 1994, Kennedy and some of his colleagues received a grant to work out a problem-oriented approach to youth violence in Boston. Describes their work with Paul Joyce of the Boston Youth Violence Strike Force and the development of the Ceasefire program from that experience. Tells about the implementation of the program in Cincinnati; Providence, Rhode Island; and High Point, North Carolina, where it was most successfully used to deter public drug dealing. [Also successfully implemented in Minneapolis in the late 1990's.]

1. Roll back felony inflation. I’m guessing this would instantly reduce the number of felonies.

2. Abolish victimless crime laws. Eliminating whole classes of crimes would dramatically reduce the crime rate, as well as defunding criminal gangs.

3. Encourage gun ownership and CCW. Encourage victims to fight back. Career criminals commit many crimes a year, even a small increase in the probability of being injured during each crime will compound over the course of a year, resulting in criminals being incapacitated much earlier in their careers. And thus shifting the number of criminal encounters the public has to worry about downward.

Moda: How about mandatory 20 year sentences for felon-in-possession, with any plea bargaining on the charge not allowed?
Sounds like an ingenious way to overburden the courts. If you have no incentive to plead guilty, you might as well fight the charge tooth and nail. Prosecutors would be loathe to bring the charges but it would guarantee going to trial — even if you win, you already lost.

Why not try “swift and sure punishment” for felons in possession of a firearm? Reduce the sentence to 1 year, but hold the trial within 1 week, with the defendant held in jail without bail pending the trial, then sent to prison immediately upon conviction. The trial should be based on two decisions by a judge:

1) Is this person a convicted felon?
2) Did he possess a firearm when arrested?

That should take a few hours per case.

If there are other charges pending, then the defendant remains in jail, where he gets credit for serving the felon-in-possession conviction, while the other charges wind their way toward trial.

The Watcher: I live near a black city that had about 60,000 residents left. The crime rate and murder rate exploded over the last 10 years, just as the police department downsized by about 30% to free up funds for social program grants (another story).The state and federal governments have tried your exact program. Targeting the major felons and gang leaders in the city. During this spring they struck hard, wrapping up evidence and busting most of the senior tier gang leaders and the hard core home invaders and robbers. That bought the city about 3 months of peace, then things exploded. Kids as young as 16 are now doing home invasions where they shoot everyone in the home including babies. Kids are shooting at cars they think look like cars of rival gangs driving by on state highways. All of the movie theaters closed years ago in their city, so they go to the cloest one outside the city. That police department patrols with a strong presence to keep violence down, some of the young next wave got mad about that and drive-byed the cops. Now that area has high power cameras run by the county sheriff, which flash blue stobes on top. Far from making thing safer, it tells the bangers where to go to get out of sight lines to car jack and commit armed robbery at the mall.In short, it turns out the senior gang leaders and hard core robbers had some incentive to keep violence at a moderate level. With them gone, the streets exploded and the violence is spilling over to the nearby better areas.If your think a 23 year old felon with some prison time is bad on the streets, check out what his 16yo half brother does with his pistol.

I suspect this is the reason for the suggestion that one ought not to try and eliminate gangs as a social institution but rather pressure them to keep violence down.

As far as targeting particular offenders or classes of offenders it’s a political, and potentially legal, non-starter. I mean sure we might ramp up enforcement disproportionately some places or put a few more police resources here than there but to be effective this kind of strategic use of police resources requires that we do two things.

1) Make clear, believable public statements announcing our intent to devout all availible police and prosecutorial resources to prosecuting certain kinds of law breaking by group X (say members of a particular school, social group, neighborhood etc..) even if it means letting people who aren’t in that group walk on more serious charges. Moverover, while not necessarily an immutable charachteristic, membership in group X must be pretty tough to change.

In other words not only would the police have to engage in the sort of unfair practices they are always being accused of but we would have to publicly embrace our intention to be radically unfair about who gets punished. The programs that get actually implemented are only targeted in the weak sense that they pick out a certain kind of criminal activity for extra attention or focus on high ranking members of existing criminal organizations. That’s not particularly helpful since it just incentivizes criminals to move into different sorts of offenses and to avoid centralized power structures. You only get the benefit from targeted enforcement when some class of people knows they can’t stop the police from prioritizing enforcement against them so they have no choice but to behave or go to jail. Even if the voters were ok with arbitrarily picking on one group as the initial police priority in such a severe way it might fall afoul of various non-discrimination laws.

2) Inform the public where the line between minor infractions the state isn’t going to bother pursuing seriously and crimes that trigger a serious expenditure of police resources.

If the deterent effect of targeted policing is going to work people need to know how well they need to behave to avoid drawing the wrath of the targeted punishments and this needs to be drawn at a plausibly achievable level. If you throw the book at people who swipe a candy bar from the drugstore or sell some drugs then a significant minority of the tageted individuals will start to feel the situation is hopeless and the police are going to come down hard on them whether or not they improve their behavior.

Implicitly the police already kinda do this but people only have a vague sense of where the line is between minor things and major ones, and this line might be different for different police and prosecutors. However, the public would see an explicit statement of this policy as saying it’s okay to go steal a $5 candy bar. I mean hell this is why we still have drug laws despite how obvious their harms are, people feel that repealing them would be tantamount to an endorsement.

Oren: Gun registration and background checks on private sales are a small price to pay for shall-issue reciprocal CCW.

A concealed carry license will be really useful after the registered guns are confiscated.

When Canada was debating its long gun registry reporters noted that handguns had been registered for more than sixty years. They went to the registry and asked for a couple of stories where registration had solved crimes, to serve as a good example for the pending legislation. Unfortunately the registration folks couldn’t come up with a single case where their system had done so.

Oren: Matt, you can be required to get a permit before giving a public speech. See, e.g. Ward v. Rock Against Racism.

You have to get a permit to give a public speech, but you don’t have to register your voice prior to giving the speech. I have to have a license to carry concealed, but not to possess the firearm I carry.

Oren: A quick background check should add no more than $20 to the cost of a gun, a relatively small price to pay to ensure that felons are properly excluded.

If we’re going to let anyone with $20 run a comprehensive background check, why don’t we just post everyone’s criminal, drug abuse, family violence, military, and mental health history on the internet?

1. End drug war.
2. Focus police and DAs on the handful of repeat offenders of serious crimes (i.e. traditional felonies).

Also, your “private sale loophole” is a terrible idea. It is going to be yet another gun law that makes felons of innocent men without providing any social benefit. It’s the kind of law that the average person is going to violate without realizing it. Dad’s going to give his son a gun and end up being a felon. And don’t tell me that a liberal DA isn’t going to drool over the prospect of adding a “gun crime” conviction to his resume.

Jim W:
> violent criminals can be readily rehabilitated. The evidence suggests that incapacitation is the best we can hope for. Even with our current “harsh” punishments that incapacitate far more than the OP would prefer, most offenders are repeat offenders– those that were previously caught and have supposedly been rehabilitated. Obviously it doesn’t work.

All this indicates is that our current prison system is terrible for rehabilitation. Positive behavior changes are easiest to bring about in a context of low stress, social support and community, and stability and control over living situation. Prisons offer none of these things.

Teh Anonymous:
Having a nursing license has nothing to do with knowing how to care for a baby.

Presumably he was talking about creating another type of agent (such as a nurse or social worker) who specializes in working with new mothers.

Teh Anonymous:
How does this help to reduce crime?

If you have the time, acquaint yourself with the concept in developmental psychology known as patterns of attachment. If not, here’s the basic premise.

The young of most species that exhibit parental caregiving will experience attachment. Ducks are a good example of this. A duckling is mobile and curious long before it is able to survive in the world on its own, so it is born with behavioral programming to cause it to stay near its mother. While its mother is around, it keeps her in sight and uses her as a secure base to explore its environment, never straying too far. When its mother is not in sight, the duckling will start peeping in a particular rhythm to signal distress and summon it mother, who it is anxious to rejoin. The mother has similar programming to respond to her lost duckling’s cries.

In human beings, this system is most important when children are toddlers – mobile, curious, but still helpless against danger. Depending on the mother’s internal state, her feelings and behaviors may be ‘out of sync’ with the baby’s behavioral programming, and this will influence the way in which the baby attaches to her. A secure-attached infant knows that all he must do in a time of danger is summon his mother, and all will be well. But if the mother’s actions are altered or clouded by misperceptions – say, for example, she is physically uncomfortable with herself and others, and rarely holds her baby close for long periods – then the baby needs to not only worry about summoning her, but also about how to modify his own behavior to get what he needs from his mother.

There are multiple types of insecure attachment. In the example above, the baby would learn not to expect physical comfort from his mother. When she is absent, instead of crying for her, he would pretend not to care about her presence. At all costs, he has to avoid letting his attachment system be activated to spare himself the pain of crying for comfort that will not come. This type is known as avoidant attachment in children. It can be readily observed as young as a single year of age. Avoidant one-year-olds bully their peers over an order of magnitude more than secure one-year-olds do (see the works of Alan Sroufe).

About 80% of these ‘avoidant’ babies will grow up to be the same, now labeled ‘dismissive’ adults. They have difficulty with intimacy, poorer impulse control, and are more likely to experience substance abuse, anxiety, and depression. Dismissive adults are most likely to get divorced, most likely to engage in domestic violence, and make up a greatly disproportionate number of violent criminals, especially rapists and murderers.

With about 80% accuracy (again), by interviewing a pregnant mother, you can predict the attachment type of her child. These patterns of behavior are passed from generation to generation. If your mother tells you that you should be proud of your one-year-old for not crying when you leave him alone, you’re likely to believe her. Pity.

Current studies are showing that training programs for foster parents to emulate the behavior of a secure parent are highly successful. Sroufe also identified a number of factors common to the 20% who do change, and grow up to be secure despite an insecure parent. Presumably, if we teach some of these concepts to parents, we could reduce the number of dismissively-attached adults with every passing generation.

Strict:
I don’t think he’s a good example of a rapist that “we are currently letting run around.”

Studies suggest that a majority of sexual assaults are never reported, much less concluded with a conviction. Just sayin’.

Jim W: Fuck’em. Part of being a good parent is not committing felonies. If you don’t care enough about your kids to keep your nose clean, why should we? Or perhaps you’re arguing that having kids at home should be a legal justification for committing crimes?

You don’t understand. I was merely pointing out that you just can’t go around saying that locking up people doesn’t have any effects, because it clearly does.

Oren: Gun registration and background checks on private sales are a small price to pay for shall-issue reciprocal CCW.

No, it’s not, because as I pointed out, gun owners have no rational reason to suppose they’d get the shall issue reciprocal CCW, and wouldn’t get some kind of attack on their rights utilizing the government’s enhanced knowledge of who they were.

Again, we’re coming off a decades long effort on the part of the government to attack this civil liberty. Many of the perpetrators are still in place, and show no real sign of having changed their stripes. The circuit courts are still resisting, and it’s far from obvious how much will the Supreme court has to force them into line. It would be massively irrational for gun owners to trust the government on this subject.

We’re not Charlie Brown, Lucy. Put down the football and back away slowly, and in a few decades we might think about kicking it.

Or perhaps you’re arguing that having kids at home should be a legal justification for committing crimes?

The vast majority of black people are capable of refraining from criminal activity and won’t be inconvenienced by this.

You mean aside from the sons of those in prison? Having that many people from a concentrated area going to prison does indeed cause problems. The problem is that NOT incarcerating those people would in most cases cause worse ones…

African Americans are burdened by crime and punishment disproportionately because the black population has a larger criminal sub-population and those criminals happen to prey mostly upon their black neighbors and relatives. “Shifting the burden” away from the black community won’t make crime go down, it will just allocate enforcement resources away from where they are needed most. We need more concern for potential black victims of crime than for the scumbags that are rotating in and out of the prisons. If safe streets require a 50, 70, or 90 percent permanent black prison population, then so be it (ie, the prisons are 50 percent black, not 50 percent of black people in prison). The vast majority of black people are capable of refraining from criminal activity and won’t be inconvenienced by this.

Kleiman knows little about guns or gun laws and he should keep his mouth shut about the issue. There are reams of research available that he has apparently not bothered to consult and the proposals he is making in this area have been made (and rejected) countless times before. It makes him look like an anti-gun shill.

James T. Carrington:
poor guy, i guess you watched too much Clockwork Orange or something? Are we currently letting a lot of rapists run around out there? I thought the current punishment scheme was sufficient to felonize and brand them forever as an offender…

Are you trying to imply that we should focus efforts on tax cheats because all the rapists have been caught, or because the extra resources wouldn’t produce a higher rate of detention or prevention? It’s not as if it’s just some fantasy problem from the movies. http://www.wichita-massacre.com/

Cato The Elder: Why did this become a gun-control thread?

Because pointing out major problems with the OP was so easy that people were getting bored?

Oren: Not having to reapply for a CCW in every State that I want to visit is a huge decrease in costs.

You don’t Oren and I believe you already know that. Get a Florida permit. Five years, 33 states. One fee that works out to about $20/year. http://handgunlaw.us/states/florida.pdf

DonP.: “Gun registration and background checks on private sales are a small price to pay for shall-issue reciprocal CCW.”

Except that what you’ll actually get, even if there was a bill in this format, is gun registration and background checks on private sales but no shall-issue reciprocal CCW.

Sort of like those times when they promised greater enforcement in exchange for amnesty over on the illegal alien front. The only thing that actually occurred was the amnesty.

I’m right there with you, as soon as you break the news to Mayor Daley and he regretfully nods his head and permits it in “his” city and state.

So you don’t want any government imposed prerequisites for gun ownership (background checks, etc.), except you do (citizenship requirement).

Actually what I want is for sub-moronic internet trolls to cease feigning pinpoint recognition of hypocrisy by playing retarded semantic games.

The Second Amendment speaks of “the people”, and I’m comfortable with the Verdugo-Urquidez exegis. I used the word “citizen” because “a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community” is unwieldy.

And the non-trivial chance that the street dealer will rob you. Or will sell you a faulty, non-returnable product. Or the huge chance that the guy on the street will refuse to sell a gun or arrange such a deal.

And he didn’t answer my question. I wasn’t asking if hypothetically buying a street gun is easier. I was asking about his real life situation. Is it really, actually easier to buy a street gun? If he’s really law-abiding, how does he know where to go on the street, and who to ask? What cross-section, and which guy do you approach to ask the question?

WalMart or Gander Mountain or a gun range is much easier…

Interesting. Why do you say “citizen”? Does the 2A say anything about citizens?

So you don’t want any government imposed prerequisites for gun ownership (background checks, etc.), except you do (citizenship requirement).

*you’re*

As to the rest of your parade of horribles, I’m actually for reducing the government “supervision” of your gun, once you prove that you are an upright citizen qualified to possess it.

And this is why you and many of the rest of us will never see eye to eye on this. Any policy that proceeds from the assumption that a citizen is not qualified to exercise his constitutional rights, and requires him to prove otherwise, is, for us, a non-starter.

Oren: As to the rest of your parade of horribles, I’m actually for reducing the government “supervision” of your gun, once you prove that you are an upright citizen qualified to possess it.

Your right, but your entire premise relies on the fact that you believe an interpretation of a right of the people that “shall not be infringed” permits a placing upon the people of a burden of proof that they are an “upright citizen qualified [to it].”

If I were to buy a gun on the street, that would be the end of it. Easy. Here’s your money, here’s your gun. If I were to buy it at the range, I have to deal with background checks, waiting periods, etc., not to mention government supervision of my possession and it’s whereabouts. I think it’s a relatively straightforward point. As for the costs, I think that’s even more obvious.

If we tack on some non-trivial chance of pulling a 20-year mandatory for buying a gun without the requisite check, we might then conclude that the inconvenience of the range is outweighed by the threat of prosecution.

As to the rest of your parade of horribles, I’m actually for reducing the government “supervision” of your gun, once you prove that you are an upright citizen qualified to possess it.

Simply by imposing costs you make it harder for non-felons to have guns (which you characterize as a “solution”).

Not having to reapply for a CCW in every State that I want to visit is a huge decrease in costs.

A. Dawson: I read through part of this… this guy makes me gag. It’s It has very little academic value and I am apalled that Dr. Volokh would allow this sort of diatribe to be posted on his blog.

Why? As someone already pointed out, what’s fair is fair, and we’re allowed to crap out ideas here, after all. It just supports my point that after all his public policy jargon, he knows no more than you or I do about how to manipulate everybody in society for our own good.

You addressed the fear of police and risks that the gun was used in a crime; that, to me, is a concern with post-initial sale use of the gun. This, I believe, is unnecessary, and I addressed it as such.

As for the fear of getting robbed by an arms dealer during the intial sale, I have none. Black market actors arguably have more of an incentive to keep good customers than legal economic actors, becuase there are less of them, and because contact with new customers is dangerous as they could be jailed for their economic activity. Anybody can rob you at any time. If anything, they should fear me robbing them.