Charles Lane, author of The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, writes in today's Washington Post about the import of Reconstruction for understanding the extent to which the Constitution protects gun ownership.
During oral arguments on Tuesday, the justices debated what the framers of the Second Amendment intended. The members of the court did not mention Reconstruction. Yet during this period, we the people gave the Union a second "founding" through constitutional amendments abolishing slavery, granting blacks citizenship and enabling them to vote. And, to clarify blacks' newly secured freedom, Congress wrote laws identifying the specific rights of individual U.S. citizens. One of these was the right to have guns.
Before the Civil War, gun ownership was a prerequisite not only of militia service but also of participation in sheriffs' posses and for personal defense. But it was a right for whites only. Southern states forbade slaves to own guns, lest they revolt. (Free blacks, in the North and South, could sometimes have guns under tight restrictions.) After the Civil War, the same Congress that made African Americans citizens through the 14th Amendment considered the antebellum experience and concluded that equal access to arms was a necessary attribute of blacks' new status.
The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866 promised that "personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens." This was no theoretical concern. As senators noted during the debate on the bill, many Southern states sought to reimpose legal bans on gun ownership by blacks -- leaving them at the mercy of Klansmen and other white terrorists.
With friends like that....
I always wondered why the firearms industry didn't respond to NAACP lawsuits about putting "minorities" at risk by instructing their dealers not to sell to them. Perfectly unconstitutional, of course, but what fun to watch the NAACP sputter!
I'm sure they did (I couldn't read them all). My point is a larger one: the people I saw who first raised this issue and who've supported it for at least 10 years or so are liberals. Most of the conservative discussion I've seen, including here, involves the founding era. If the better argument is based on the 14th A -- and to me, at least, that's VERY clear -- it would seem easy to raise that. But nobody does; all the debates get bogged down in minute details of the 18th C. It seems odd to me.
I always wondered why the firearms industry didn't respond to NAACP lawsuits about putting "minorities" at risk by instructing their dealers not to sell to them. Perfectly unconstitutional, of course, but what fun to watch the NAACP sputter!
Brilliant!
Yes....
I'm surprised that the author of the article didn't at least cite Cruikshank. I recall the facts were about some heavily armed Klansmen going to a lynching who were arrested under a state law. They appealed that they had a right to assemble under the 1st A. and a right to bear arms under the 2nd A. The court tossed them since under the Slaughterhouse cases those amendments weren't binding on state goverment action.
I live in Idaho and there are many beautiful wilderness areas in this state. However, since most of the state is sparsely populated and because of all the mountain ranges, there is NO cell phone coverage in the wild central part of the state. When I have liberal friends from out of state visit, and we go to take hikes in the Sawtooth Wilderness, they cringe as a pull out my revolver, load it, and put it in my fanny pack. They always tell me "we should just dial 911 if there's trouble" to which I reply "pull out your cell phone and tell me about the signal strength here". Generally the shut up after that.
But, hey, those were racist bans, right? The DC ban does not care about race, gender, disabilities, or even age - it bans across the board!
The 14th, and the Freedmen's Act, are valuable support - but better than the 2nd?
The District of Columbia is known as "the Chocolate City".
Unlawful no doubt, but not unconstitutional. The constitution restrains governments, not private entities such as firearms manufacturers.
In addition to the usual remedy of the courts, which can be corrupted by jury nullification, suborned witnesses, or threats against the judges, the Congress can itself punish a state from the security of the District of Columbia, if a state does not respect the rights of the people by removing congressional represenation.
The Yellowstone national park has a portion in Idaho, but the federal juridiction would required the trial to take place in Wyoming. Of course the Constitution forbids trial in one state for a crime committed in another.
So, best protect yourself if you go to the Idaho portion of Yellowstone.
In have on my desk in front of me a letter written by my great-grandfather in 1876 about how he and my grandfather used their trusty shootin' arns to hold off nightriders in South Carolina.
Of course, the nightriders had their own trusty shootin' arns.
A standoff, I reckon.
I have no strong opinions one way or the other about the 2nd Amendment, but the Walter Mitty fantasies of the gun nuts provide a good deal of amusement.
In the 19th century, the Sheriff and his deputies could not be counted on to protect the black freedmen, and might very possibly have been among the mob, under Klansmen's hoods. In more recent cases, we've seen the police choosing to leave minorites to fend for themselves. During the Rodney King riots an overwhelmed LAPD executed a "tactical retreat", leaving Korean shop owners to band together to defend their property from the mob. During Brooklyn NY's Crown Hights riots, it has been charged that the NYPD was ordered to "stand down" and the Hasidim were left to their own devices for a time. The latter case appears to be a case of a black Mayor, and a black Police Commissioner, making a conscious choice as to which ethnic minority they were more willing to piss off.
The more things change; the more they stay the same.
When seconds count, the police are only (at best) minutes away.
Response times in (say) the city of Los Angeles for an emergency 9-1-1 call average more than 5 minutes, even in very nice, expensive neighborhoods, and can reach 20 to 30 minutes regularly in other neighborhoods.
In rural areas (I live in rural northern Arizona right now) the response time for either of the two deputy sheriffs on duty on any given night (in a county of 8100 sq miles and 165,000 people) can be over an hour - if nothing really bad is going on somewhere else (like a traffic accident on the interstate).
Better, I believe, a nation of Walter Mittys, than A Nation of Cowards.
I linked to an essay by that title. You are under no obligation to agree with any bit of it. Take from it what you will.
If conservatives would admit that constitutional interpretation is more complicated than original intent, they could strengthen the claim for a right to bear arms. Of course, they'd also have to stop advocating the constitutionality of laws that throw gay people in jail, and perhaps the latter is more important to them.
Can you name even one conservative that "(advocates) the constitutionality of laws that throw gay people in jail" to support what is essentially a blanket statement about conservatives in general? I'm sure you'll come up with one or two names and claim that they've advocated it. They will either be nuts that any mainstream conservative would immediately reject, or you will need to misconstrue what a mainstream conservative actually said.
The sad thing is that you probably have such a distorted view of what conservatives believe, that you actually are convinced that they all "advocate the constitutionality of laws that throw gay people in jail." Such silly statements really diminish the likelihood that anyone will take your arguments seriously.
I certainly can't speak for all conservatives, but I are one. For many it is more about not ceding to the courts the power to amend the Constitution--rather than the people and their elected representatives--than it is about putting homosexuals and potheads in prison.
I certainly can't speak for all conservatives, but I are one. For many it is more about not ceding to the courts the power to amend the Constitution--rather than the people and their elected representatives--than it is about putting homosexuals and potheads in prison.
I believe that ship sailed when they put liberty in the constitution alongside property.
Ha. I made a 911 "my life is in immediate danger" call to the Oakland Police and they didn't show. I called again and the operator told me they were too busy. Finally after an hour two policemen showed up. I later found out Oakland had put my neighborhood on a low priority for responses. Years later an ex-Oakland cop told me in a bookstore that he quit in disgust at how poorly the department served the public.
The conclusion is "politically correct" in twenty-first century terms and, undoubtedly the only reason the WaPo published his piece, BUT totally at odds with the first 90% of Lane's commentary. It comes as a real discordant surprise. No Black in Colfax or among those Whites later trying to gain justice for them would want any local government holding any power to restrict the possession of firearms by responsible citizens. If anything, they'd all support the concept of "more guns, more Liberty."
Just this week a woman was killed in urban Southern California WHILE she begged a 911 operator to send help. It was true in 1781 and in 1876, is today, and always will be that when the criminals come for you, YOU are the only "police" there will ever be "on the scene." The choice is to dial 911 and die or protect yourself and survive.
I'm not very closely read on this subject, but I presume the law &economics people have their own theory of Constitutional interpretation. If you were going to argue that we really ought to be reading the contemporary equivalent of Social Statics into the Constitution, that would be a conservative interpretive theory, but would bear little resemblance to any form of originalism.
Maybe I'm missing something -- what about Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas in Lawrence v. Texas? They didn't advocate the wisdom of such laws, but they expressly advocated their constitutionality, no?
I'm sure glad that the DC Chief of Police isn't corruptible like the Colfax Sheriff or the Sheriff of Jonesboro, Louisiana. Looking the other way while oppression happens is just as rare as government employees digging through presidential candidates confidential information...
-Gene
If I recall correctly, conservative thinker Harry Jaffa engaged in a debate with Robert Bork on the pages of National Review over a decade ago in which he argued for both substantive due process and an originalism that valued reconstruction evidence, especially the place of the Declaration of Independence in the thinking of the reconstructors. My understanding is that he was also a vocal critic of the holding in Lawrence on interpretive grounds.
Jaffa comes off in the debates as more of a historian than a legal thinker, but the examples still seems to refute both the point that conservatives universally avoid reconstruction, and the idea that such a decision is made only to comport with a position on gay issues.
I think you mean the "Court" rather than the "court." But I quibble.
Harry Eagar:
Methinks there would not have been a stand-off had your grandfather and his friends not had "shooting arns" with which to hold off the nightriders. And it is possible that with no grandpa, there would be no...well...you. Walter Mittys, indeed.
At any rate, presuming from your statements that you are black, you might find the following interesting:
http://www.guncite.com/journals/cd-recon.html
http://www.guncite.com/journals/cd-reg.html
Enjoy.
I do capitalize "Court" when speaking of the Supreme Court, but either Lane or the Post did not, and I reproduced the Lane passage as it was published.
JHA
As noted upthread, one reason why some conservatives don't spend more time on the 14th Amendment and Reconstruction in trying to interpret the 2nd Amendment is probably because much (though certainly not all) of the relevant material relates to incorporation through the 14th Amendment. See, e.g., Sen. Howard's remarks introducing the Amendment. If, as Howard suggests, one purpose of the Amendment was to bar states from violating the rights enumerated in Amendments I-VIII, we still have to figure out what those rights are and what they protect. Thus, it does not necessarily eliminate the need to figure out what "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" protects. It depends on whether one believes that the 14th Amendment adopted a different meaning of the 2nd Amendment than was adopted in 1791.
JHA
Do federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over crimes committed in National Parks? Otherwise, the case could be tried in an Idaho state court, because it has general jurisdiction.
I made a 911 "my life is in immediate danger" call to the Oakland Police and they didn't show.
I was trying to locate on sfgate.com the melancholy story of a man in SF who was killed even though he had called 911 a half hour previously. Instead I found the story of the son of pro-gun control State Senator Bruce McPherson, who was shot and killed by an armed robber duo who targeted couples out strolling on dates.
Open carry is no longer allowed in Calif due to the intimidation factor of Black Panthers drilling with their rifles, back in the 60s.
The 14th Amendment "republished" the 2nd and other amendments, as detailed in The Racist Roots of Gun Control.
Thanks for the explanation. However, using proper Blue Book form, should not the double indented quote from Charles Lane have been preceded by a colon at the end of your introductory sentence?
Yes, this is exactly the crux of the issue. If conservatives don't believe it did, then I haven't seen that expressed; maybe it's implicit in the continued emphasis on 1791. If they do believe those in 1868 had a different understanding -- whether on this right or any other -- then they should help develop the historical understanding and flesh out the consequences of that change.
Suppose we say that the primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was to prevent states from infringing on rights protected by the Bill of Rights. Suppose the framers of the 14th Amendment had a different understanding of what the 2d Amendment meant than the framers of the original bill of rights. Theoretically that difference shouldn't have any significance for an originalist as to the meaning of the 2d Amendment, since it's only the original understanding of the 2d Amendment that counts. But in that case, what is "incorporated" in the 14th Amendment, what the framers of the 2d Amendment thought the 2d Amendment meant, or what the framers of the 14th Amendment thought the 2d Amendment meant?
The fact is that the evidence from the Founding Era about the individual rights nature of the Second Amendment is overwhelming.
There is new research, a book entitled The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms, that was cited a total of seventeen times to the Supreme Court in various pro-Heller amicus briefs and in the respondent's brief. The Founders' View contains considerable new information never before mentioned about the Second Amendment's development and purpose.
This new history of the Second Amendment comes from the editor of The Origin of the Second Amendment, the document collection that was cited over a hundred times in the Emerson decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The fact is that there are a lot of people opposed to gun control who are not up to speed on all of the historical information that is actually available right now about the Second Amendment.
Whether the Supreme Court justices will look at any of this new material is an open question. One thing is for certain, none of the justices is interested in producing an opinion that can easily be shown to be contradicted by everwhelming and directly relevant historical evidence.
For information on The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms, go to the link on this page: http://www.secondamendmentinfo.com
Correct sir. There are a lot of stupid laws that are constitutional. Anti-sodomy statutes--many of which applied to heterosexuals--may well be idiotic, but idiotic and unjust laws are less a threat to liberty than the SCOTUS amending the Constitution on its own initiative. Some things were intentionally left to the states, and to the people, to muck up.
You must be scads of fun at parties. Remind me to invite you to my next.
There are certainly plenty of stupid, constitutional statutes around, not to mention stupid executive actions, but I suspect you'll have a hard time convincing the imprisoned targets of such statutes that their liberty is at greater risk from the statute under which they are imprisoned than the supreme court decision ruling that the statute was an unconstitutional infringement on liberty or some other constitutional provision.
If the second amendment's right to bear arms has nothing to do with a well-regulated militia, why is the militia clause there at all?
If I shout a warning that I have called 911 and the police are on the way, and the intruder persists in breaking in, is it OK to shout that I have a gun?
If he still breaks in, and confronts me in my den with a knife, what is the recommended response?
If the Constitution does not secure the right to keep and bear arms as one of the Blessings of Liberty, why is the prefatory We the People sentence there at all?
Same-same for anyone falsely convicted of violating a perfectly rational law, under the most scrupulous procedural and evidentiary rules. I've no doubt I would be happy to have the court make new law to set me free from prison, in such a case, but the liberty interests of a specific individual cannot necessarily be used as the basis for a uniform system of justice. No general rule will ever be able to preclude the possibility of individual injustice.
I'd like to see the death penalty go away, but there are established rules for how that gets done. Best, IMO, that we stick to them.
"Open carry is no longer allowed in Calif due to the intimidation factor of Black Panthers drilling with their rifles, back in the 60s."
Check out
'At any rate, presuming from your statements that you are black'
No, white. The great-grandfather who stood off the white nightriders was a racist white man, but he disliked the Klan. In fact, later, once he swore his oath of allegiance and got his civil rights back, he became one of the 'Glorious Eight' who returned South Carolina to white supremacy.
The situation was way more complicated than the simplified version we have inherited.
Gene referred to the Deacons. I hadn't heard of the Deacons before, but as I read this thread I am reminded of another group of non-whites who used their 'shooting arns' to intimidate white southerners.
I don't know a written history of this story, but I got it from my Dad (a white antiracist who was doing business in the neighborhood when it happened). This would have been in the late '50s, early '60s.
The Klan was agitating around Lumberton, N.C., and held a cross-burning one night. Suddenly, they became aware that their little group was surrounded by a much bigger group of armed men, who turned out to be members of the Lumbee Indian tribe.
The white guys skedaddled.
Turns out, though, the Lumbees were not using their Second Amendment rights to make a statement on behalf of racial equality. They were aggrieved that the Klan was lumping them in with the local African-Americans.
My granddad, the one who stood off the nightriders in '76, later was a witness in a north Georgia murder case against the Klan. During the 13 months between indictment and trial, he slept with a loaded rifle on the floor beside his bed and a loaded and cocked pistol in his hand.
In his memoirs, he wrote that the Klan never attepted anything against him during that time, but he nearly shot his neighbor, who came home drunk and was fumbling at the wrong door.
I have mixed feelings about firearms.
I'd say most people do. We see they are necessry for protection against violence, but wish it weren't so.
If it were that overwhelming, we wouldn't be having these debates. There is "overwhelming" agreement on the age requirement for Presidents and on the number of Senators. There's no "overwhelming" evidence on most of the provisions in the Constitution.
I note that, other than Prof. Adler, nobody has yet addressed the substantive issue I raised: why are conservatives so resistant to relying on the 14th A? Is it because, as Dilan said and I suspect, that they are desperate to avoid the consequences of that reasoning on other rights?
These debates prove that those debating disagree. They may also prove that those debating like to debate or that those debating can make a living at debating. They do not prove that those debating are familiar with all of the historical evidence available.
The point of my post was to inform those obviously interested in the Second Amendment that there is a lot more historical information available than is widely known, even among those who consider themselves the most knowledgeable and pro-gun, and that it is available in a new book that has been cited to the Supreme Court in the Heller case.
While you can drag a horse to water, you cannot make it drink.
Some horses are apparently unwilling to admit that they've drunk their fill--if it weakens the argument for their preferred policies.
"I've never seen this answered satisfactorily:
If the second amendment's right to bear arms has nothing to do with a well-regulated militia, why is the militia clause there at all?"
Ans. - To clarify, the Second does not mention "the militia", it mentions "a well-regulated militia". There's a difference between "the something" and "a something". The militia clauses in the USC discuss "the militia" - i.e. armed individuals, not normally in public service, acting under the direction and authority of a valid public official. The militia clauses discuss something specific (hence the use of the definite article "the" preceding "militia"), the Second discusses a general concept (hence the use of the indefinite article "a", preceding "militia"). The Second mentions "a ... militia", because the Founders thought an armed populace better able to resist despotism than an unarmed populace. (You may agree with that belief or not). Also see EV's article on the meaning of the term "a free state".
Not surprising. Lumbees are widely believed to be of mixed white, black, and native american ancestry. They are akin to the Melungeons. David Lynch's Blue Velvet is set in Lumberton by the way.
Lane's non sequitur of laying out a good Reconstruction-era example supporting the individual right to keep and bear arms, but with a politically-correct anti-Heller coda grafted on the end, was anything but subtle. The ending was jarring enough that I wonder if some editor added it to make sure that the conclusion of the staffer's piece matched the newspaper's official editorial position?
Tho it will be fun to read cites to Lane's book in the first post-Heller Second Amendment incorporation case...
Incidentally: not surprisingly the quality of comments on Lane's piece on Volokh is vastly higher than on the Post's own reader comment page. Go figure...
Plenty of conservatives have mentioned the 14th amendment in relation to the 2nd. In fact, many of the briefs submitted to the Court did just that so I'm sure the Justices are aware of it. In perhaps the most famous amici, that of the Senate, the House, and the VP, written by Stephen Halbrook, the Freedmen's Act and the history of the 14th amendment is listed prominently.
If you actually read the DC Opinion, Silberman even cites Dred Scott, where Taney refers to the individual right to arms and how if Scott was a citizen then the BOR would apply and he'd have a right to arms in the territory.
So, the issue of the 14th amendment is well known and is prominent in the briefs.
In Heller it isn't as crucial because the 14th amendment doesn't apply in the case and because in an oral argument you only get 30 minutes and can't focus on everything.
I suspect that if a case arises that challenges a state regulation, say Chicago's ban on guns, you will see the 14th amendment featured much more prominently than it has been in the Heller case.
If the second amendment's right to bear arms has nothing to do with a well-regulated militia, why is the militia clause there at all?
A well-educated electorate being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.
1. Number of family members shot to death by angry, drunken, frustrated family men: hundreds.
2. Number of hunters shot to death in drunken hunting accidents: dozens.
3. Number of cops shot to death by armed householders during no-knock drug raid at wrong address: 1.
4. Number of robbers shot by armed householders defending the ol' manse: 0.
Since reputable statistics show your proportions are backwards, this anecdote merely serves as (further) anectdotal evidence of media bias. Good show old chap!
Remember that conservatives don't object to incorporation. We object to selective incorporation (which has no originalist basis at all). We object to incorporation that projects modern sensibilities and beliefs onto 1868. No one in 1868 thought that "equal protection" protected the right to have homosexual sex; it isn't even clear that it would have been understood to protect a right to have sex outside of marriage, since most states (perhaps all states?) had laws such as current Idaho Code 18-6603, which prohibits sex outside of marriage, and to my knowledge, every state had a law similar to Idaho Code 18-6605, which bans the "crime against nature."
Not every law that is constitutional makes sense. If I were a member of the state legislature (and there is a chance that this may be the case if I win the state senate primary in May), and I had a chance to vote for repeal of 18-6605, I would certainly do so. But the U.S. Constitution does not mandate that stupid laws are necessarily unconstitutional.
That's as it should be.
Successful crime requires that the criminal DOMINATE the victim long enough to get the murder/rape/robbery/assault accomplished. Thus death or injury often results when the victim resists (or not).
A successful DGU (defensive gun use) occurs when the criminal runs away. In fact, that's the most desirable result (and the most frequent). The assailant's running away leaves no one dead or injured. There is no body to provide a statistic.
This is true because almost all successful DGU's are not reported to the police. The victim justifiably believes that the police will just "f**k with them" for endangering the criminal. The victim knows that the police will neither prevent the crime, stop the crime once started, nor catch the assailant (unless the victim can provide the criminal's name, address, and phone number). If you don't need an official report for your insurance company and aren't hurt, there is nothing to gain by calling 911 except possible hassle. So victims don't.
Subpatre's notion that somehow newspapermen overlooked hundreds of corpses of dead home invaders just shows how airy this whole debate is.
The slaughtered families were real enough.
"4. Number of robbers shot by armed householders defending the ol' manse: 0."
Go to this website and lookup the state(s) you live(d) in.
http://www.nraila.org/ArmedCitizen/
Furthermore, this sort of thinking leads to such comparisons as "maybe bathtubs should be banned, since, according to the CDC, the number of children accidentally drowned in them every year exceeds that of the number of children fatally shot. Perhaps we should require demonstrated proficiency in the safe and effective use of bathtubs by citizens before they are allowed to possess and use same."
My point being that we do not (should not?) determine the constitutionality of any particular object, right or action based on whether it is a net positive for society. That criterion can and maybe should be used when crafting a constitution or amending it, but not in interpreting it.
Thank you!
Mark
Statistics show that media coverage of mass shootings like Columbine leads to copycat killings so surely you must support limits on the press and the freedom of speech to limit them, right?
Something tells me that you don't care to have the Federal Camel's nose under your tent...
-Gene
Since the firearms suicide rate in the usa has consistently been 1.5 times the firearms homicide rate for many years now (see WISQARS Fatal Injuries: Mortality Reports), I personally would like to know why the proponents of self-defenselessness aren't doing more about outreach towards the suicidal.
Since they claim to be motivated by public safety and the prevention of tragedies, then simply by the raw data alone they should be investing 3/5ths of their resources in that area.
And when one includes the possible decrease in firearm homicides of others by suicidal aggressors, the case for prioritizing suicide outreach over anti-gun legislation becomes even more compelling.
So why is outreach towards the suicidal apparently not being at all addressed and funded by the firearm criminalizers?
I also find myself wondering why Harry Eagar did not include this, the MOST prevalent kind of firearms death tragedies, in his list.
I mean, it's not as though it hasn't previously been pointed out to him.
Go here and scroll down to the section "Latest Armed Self-defense News Stories." There you will see about 100 stories from the latest 10 days involving armed householders defending their homes.
Here it is.
https://www.keepandbeararms.com/default.asp
Of course banning firearms is what's desired by the gun-grabbers, not reducing suicide or crime. They want a government monopoly on arms. Other Americans recognize that this is a bad idea, and was purposely denied the government in our founding documents. I found the following recently, and think that even in the 1700s Andrew Fletcher had the right of it...
"And not only that government is tyrannical, which is tyrannically exercised; but all governments are tyrannical, which have not in their constitution a sufficient security against the arbitrary power of the prince.
GH, my stock letter, sent to many publications but never published, for some reason:
;^)
How about a "one gun story per month" law? After all, nobody needs to report on dozens of shootings at one time. It's a time/place/manner restriction....right?
rubbish,.
i was with you until there.
ime, the exact opposite is true.
most cops are more than happy when homeowners blow away a burglar or otherwise lawfully use a firearm in defense of home.
not supported by my experience at all
http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html
Here's one for you:
Elderly Tucker man kills intruder
Mr. Eagar, perhaps you were only looking for what you wanted to see. I suspect that this is common in your industry.
And note that this incident of defensive gun use is unusual in that the perp ended up dead. Many or most DGUs don't end with gunfire - the brandishing of the gun is sufficient to persuaded the perp to seek easier victims elsewhere.
Well, maybe we should accept this is the first time in 43 years? Are newspaper people really that ignorant of events?
You guys are comparing national totals with local totals.
Pick any county you like and run my 4 examples.
You're not going to find more robber deaths than child deaths in any one of them. Ever.
You're cherrypicking.
As for the outraged armed citizenry using their firearms to defend democracy, since the Revolution there's been exactly one example: the Battle of Athens, 1946. It had its opera bouffe aspects, but it was real. However, it was dynamite, not guns, that prevailed in that one.
I'd feel more comfortable moving among armed men if I didn't think most of them were juvenile fantasists. And drunks.
I gave up hunting when I was 17 when it suddenly dawned on me that all the people I hunted with were always drinking. Seemed like a bad idea, since confirmed by my newspaper experience.
The preferred term-of-art is "assault press."
Did you give up driving when you realized those drunks drove too? Cars kill an order of magnitude more people in your reporting area than guns.
-Gene
Therefore, the sensible criminals who are out to make a profit will hit a place when no one is there. The idiots and addicts may not show this kind of restraint, but I'm not sure you can deter them in any case.
I gave up believing reporters for the same reason.
Nonetheless: for 1979-1998, there were 6,258 legal intervention firearms deaths in the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Compressed Mortality File 1979-1998. CDC WONDER On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File CMF 1968-1988, Series 20, No. 2A, 2000 and CMF 1989-1998, Series 20, No. 2E, 2003. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd9.html on Mar 24, 2008 3:36:48 PM
A lot of those are police officers, without question. But it isn't clear to me that it is a majority of those being cops. At Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog, we link to dozens of items a month--and these are just the ones that get media attention.
By comparison, for ages 0-14 (the next age group is 15-19, so includes legal adults) over the same period, there were 4,755 firearms accidental deaths.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Compressed Mortality File 1979-1998. CDC WONDER On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File CMF 1968-1988, Series 20, No. 2A, 2000 and CMF 1989-1998, Series 20, No. 2E, 2003. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd9.html on Mar 24, 2008 3:38:11 PM
Sounds to me like you have allowed your bad choices of friends to prejudice you pretty severely--to the point where you have fantasies about gun accidents killing children being vastly more common than justifiable homicides.
Harry, thanks for being civil and fairly evenhanded, even if your personal experiences have led you to vastly different conclusions than mine.
(And even if I am a juvenile fantasist, that alone doesn't make me reckless, irresponsible, violent or even unsafe. ;-) )
Hardly an epidemic.
And, Professor Cramer, I never said anything at all about gun accidents killing children. Go back and check. I only mentioned distraught fathers slaughtering their families. When I think of firearms in the home, that's the first image that comes to mind, not burglars.
The citation of suicides is problematic, too, since most people who work with suicide intervention (that I know) seem to think that guns lead to a lot more successful suicides than most any other method.
And the Battle of Athens is the most problematic of all for the argument that a nation armed to the teeth is, for that reason alone, better than one not so armed.
The good citizens of McMinn County were not better armed in 1946 than they had been in 1938. Something had intervened during the interim. They had become more politically conscious.
None of my opinions and experiences about firearms has any relevance to the constitutional problem, but here is my final thought: I don't know that the constitutional background of the 1780s has any real relevance now to what society ought to do in the 2000s.
Think about "West Side Story," written 50 years ago. The gangs were armed with zip guns, chains and knives. No self-respecting hoodlum would arm himself with a zip gun today, and maybe most of them never even heard of one.
Cars, airplanes and firearms are a lot cheaper and more reliable than they ever have been before. The United States Marines can no longer count on "civilizing them with a Krag" in backward ports as they could before the advent of the universal AK47.
When I was a young reporter, there were a lot of stories about people who came alive out of firearms affrays because of misfires. Now there's a story you seldom see any more.
Times change. Firearms change.
And, percheron, you're right, except I worry a little about fantasists creating in their minds situations that require/justify resort to shooting.
How often does that happen? Domestic violence (men killing their wives, and somewhat less often, women killing their husbands) does happen, but "slaughtering their families" (implying they killed their children as well)? That's pretty unusual. I read stories about it, but this is hardly a daily occurrence--and maybe not even a monthly occurrence in a country of 300 million people.
They may think this, but they are incorrect. Kleck's Point Blank, table 6.2 shows the percentage of "successful" suicides by method: guns are close to 90%, but hanging is 80%, car exhaust is about 75%, drowning just a little less than car exhaust.
Drugs and cutting tend to be very low success rates--but there is also reason to think that many of these are cries for help, rather than serious attempts at suicide.
Popular perception is that guns are 100% successful--when they aren't. Even shots to the head are surprisingly ineffective (except at leaving someone a permanently disfigured mess).
In any case, the DC experience demonstrates the ineffectiveness of gun control for dealing with suicide. Processing Loftin's NEJM data with correction for population decline shows an impressive 11.6% decline in suicide rates after the 1976 gun control law--but a 4.5% increase in non-gun suicides. The net change was a statistically insignificant 1.5% decline in total suicides. In short, people intent on killing themselves seem to find methods of killing themselves.
I would prefer that people intent on suicide take a long, long deep breath, make some calls--and put down the gun, razor, car keys, or rope. Unless they are one of a very small number of people who are facing a life sentence for child molestation, or an agonizing terminal illness, suicide doesn't make sense.
Back in 1989, Time magazine did a propaganda piece called "Death by Gun" in which they tried to find pictures and details of every gun death in the U.S. for one week in April. While many of the suicides were pointless tragedies, I was surprised at how many of them, in a sad way, made sense. I almost made a category for "psychologists and psychiatrists who committed suicide rather than face child molestation charges" because it was so common. And there were a number of old people, dying of very painful cancers, who decided it was better to get it over with all at once. Tragedies, but somewhat understandable.
All children 0-14 intentionally murdered with firearms 1979-1998 (which includes not just "fathers slaughtering their families" but some gang members killed by other gang members) for the whole U.S. comes to 6,818.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Compressed Mortality File 1979-1998. CDC WONDER On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File CMF 1968-1988, Series 20, No. 2A, 2000 and CMF 1989-1998, Series 20, No. 2E, 2003. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd9.html on Mar 24, 2008 10:38:48 PM
This is just a bit higher than the legal intervention killings with firearms. Tragedies? Sure. But the idea that defensive killings are tiny compared to these domestic violence tragedies is simply false.
There are few/no dead burglars because American burglars choose to burglarize empty homes (because they fear getting shot). See Wright &Rossi's 1986 book. Those who try it anyhow are virtually all run off by the sight of a gun in the defender's hands. Only the most persistent home invaders are shot (and most still run away to be caught at the hospital).
So, as I said earlier:
Or to justify calling the police or even to provide a newspaper story.
(The motivation, in this case, was not about firearms but about claims of a racial disparity in home invasion deaths -- either side.)
For Central Iowa, over a period of about a decade, there were four murders of householders by home invaders; no slayings of home invaders by householders.
A representative sample? I dunno. That's what happened where I was working.
And here's 382 residential burglary incidents. The distinction is that "home invasion" means that the bad guys knew someone was home, and intended to break in on people.
Harry,
Which of the below items from the 1780s now lack relevance?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The point of both of my earlier postings is that "body count" is not relevant to the incidence of successful DGU's. Having a gun makes it LESS likely that you'll be injured, LESS likely that an assailant will be injured, and LESS likely that the encounter will generate any newspaper report or statistics.
Many incidents will be deterred and a great many (I'd estimate close to 99%) that occur will end with the assailant fleeing the scene before completing his crime. There will be no reports to alert even a watchful reporter like yourself.
No newspaper reports is not the same as no successful DGU's.
true also note several countries where guns are nearly completely unavailable (japan, etc.) have higher suicide rates than we do. guns DO make suicides easier.
but the reality is that people who REALLY want to go through with it are usually successful.
"Drugs and cutting tend to be very low success rates--but there is also reason to think that many of these are cries for help, rather than serious attempts at suicide. "
women, fwiw, depending on you define "attempt" attempt suicide FAR more often than men, but men commit it far more than women
if you include even the lamest examples like the obligatory bottle of tylenol and such women attempt close to 10X as often
but these aren't REAL suicide attempts. they need to GET real.
if you really want to do it, there are many near foolproof ways, gun or not.
for example - go the corner drug store buy a 3cc syringe and some insulin (both over the counter here) and have at it.
nearly 100% success rate unless somebody finds ya quick
no gun needed.
these teenage girls who cut their wrists with butter knives cause little johnny told them he doesn't love her any more are not bona fide attempts, and even where guns are available these parasuicidal people won't use them
'How often does that happen? Domestic violence (men killing their wives, and somewhat less often, women killing their husbands) does happen, but "slaughtering their families" (implying they killed their children as well)? That's pretty unusual. I read stories about it, but this is hardly a daily occurrence--and maybe not even a monthly occurrence in a country of 300 million people.'
The Maui News on March 23:
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) --Police in western Georgia have determined that a father whose body was found in a wooded field next to those of his three children shot them then himself.
The Maui News on March 25:
IOWA CITY (AP) — A woman and her four children were found dead in their home Monday morning, and police later found a sixth body in a burning, wrecked van owned by her husband — a former bank executive who had been charged with embezzlement. . . .
Initial alerts said there had been a shooting at the home, but Kelsay said further investigation shows the deaths could have been the result of some other trauma. . . .
‘‘I’m not certain that a firearm was ever involved. Nobody reported hearing any shots fired,’’ Kelsay said.
+++++
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that maybe a firearm was involved in Iowa.
The family slaughter story used to be one of the South's many peculiar institutions. These stories were much more common 50 years ago.
I cannot demonstrate it but suspect one reason they have declined is that the economic desperation and isolation of the rural southern father has declined since then. Certainly his access to firearms hasn't changed much.
Elliott, I dunno. Because it almost never happens? Anyhow, never happened within the catchment area where I was reporting and editing. Not even once.
It recently and notoriously happened twice to the same householder in Dallas, but I'm not working in Dallas.
Over the years, I've reported on quite a few firearms deaths in homes, for all kinds of crazy reasons. The very first crime story I ever reported, when I was still a teenager, involved a 14-year-old whose father was 'chasing his mother around the house.' The boy got out the family 12-gauge, hid behind a door and gave his father both barrels in the back as his parents finished another lap. I never found out whether this was an even-up event that prevented the death of the wife or an example of overreaction that led to an otherwise unnecessary death because firearms were handy.
When I asked the sheriff if he was going to charge the boy, his reply was, 'Hell, no. I'da done the same thing myself.' There wasn't even an inquest.
We don't overlook corpses, you know. If there'd been an example, we'd have reported on it.
'Remember: there are vast numbers of incidents that never get reported to the police, or where local media don't consider it worthy of reporting.'
True, if we don't hear about it, we don't report it. You are incorrect though that we wouldn't consider such a story worthy of reporting. In most cases, I think we would. If it were more solid than someone hearing a stealthy sound, pulling his trusy roscoe out of the bedside table, noisily racking in a round and then noticing that the sound didn't recur. (That last is a recapitulation of several versions of 'incidents' I have seen people relate, proudly, on Internet gun threads. Not the kind of story I'd invest any time in reporting, though. Show me at least a cut window screen.)
Some of the claims on this thread have been hilarious, such as that the reason burglars don't enter occupied homes is that they fear the householders' guns. Maybe they do. But the reason they don't enter occupied homes is that they don't want to be seen. Sheeesh.
simply not true.
compare for example, countries like switzerland (where most homeowners are armed) VERY VERY VERY low occupied burglary rate. england MUCH higher. US much lower than england. you can look at the rate of firearms ownership in a society and occupied burg's. the correlation is very close.
also, in places that have criminalized gun possession, occupied burgs have gone up.
compare state to state. as a cop in hawaii, we had WAY more occupied burgs (especially of tourists) cause nobody had guns. they'd walk RIGHT in while thye were asleep. if they woke up, oh well.
seriously. that almost NEVER happens in the seattle area.
i realize this is somewhat anecdotal, but switzerland, the UK etc. are hardly the only examples.
also NUMEROUS interviews of burglars who have stated they don't do occupied burgs PRIMARILY because they don't want to get shot.
seriously. have you ever interviewed a burglar? that's been my experience and i have read of numerous others with the same experience.
Clayton seems to have presented many cases of people shooting invading crooks, and they also appear to have been reported in various newspapers. Would you be willing to reveal what portions of the country are covered by the various circulation zones from which you draw your samples?
An area that has hundreds of people shot by angry, drunken, frustrated family men, while having nobody shot by a homeowner deserves attention. If you are correct, and if your circulation areas are larger than metropolitan Mayberry, there may be some very interesting lessons to be learned. Would you be willing to reveal the regions covered by your various circulation zones?
I really only intended to ask the question once in the above.
Much easier to steal stuff out of unoccupied cars at the beach.
Elliott, I've worked for newspapers in Raleigh, N.C., Norfolk, Va., Des Moines, Iowa, and, now, Maui, Hawaii. The Raleigh paper attempted to cover the eastern part of the state (one of my first jobs was editing the country correspondents), and the Iowa paper covered the entire state.
Yes, this is a trick question, because prisoners have been asked this question some years back. And they indicated that they were far more worried about being shot than arrested.
I am one of the +400,000 CCW permit holders here in Florida. I am the guy that is holding the door open for you at the gas station, the guy eating dinner with his wife at the table next to you in the resturaunt, the one standing behind you at the grocery store checkout line, and the guy along with his wife whom, just like a fire-escape plan for the home, have an emergency plan for a potential assailant that could potentially cause us physical harm or even death. And yes, if a potential assailant intends to harm or kill us, we will kill them back with more force than what they could ever bear.
Do we (my wife and I) live in constant paranoia? Absolutely not. Actually the opposite. Because we both carry firearms, train in the use of those firearms, and are prepared to defend our persons, property, and family... We live a much more comforatble life, something about having the knowledge and preparedness that brings a sense of calm —- difficult to describe.
What I can say for certain is that because of the many SERIOUS responsiblities that come with carrying a concealed firearm, it forces us to be better people. Better citizens. If we wish to maintain the ability to carry, we must refrain from abusing drugs and alcohol, not participate in f