Kopel vs. The Economist, Round 5
In the finale of my Los Angeles Times on-line debate with Christopher Lockwood, the U.S. editor of The Economist, we each get a magic wand with which to create whatever gun laws we would like. He offers some proposals which, he frankly admits, are politically impossible. Waving my Wand of Sensible Consensus I propose:
1. Don't disarm people whom the government will not/cannot protect.
2. Good policemen don't own bad guns. So if a gun ban has a police exemption, its premises are probably flawed, as I show with some examples.
3. Obey the Constitution. If it's too hard to do that all at once, start with Article I. So "interstate commerce" is not equivalent to "everything," and so Congress stops exercising the usurped power to regulate/prohibit things like simple intrastate possesion of guns.
4. Recognize that guns can be used for good and for bad. Make sure that gun policies enhance, rather than destroy, the widespread social benefits which flow from guns in the right hands.
It was a great honor to debate Mr. Lockwood, and I hope that our exchanges can help people on all sides of the gun issue approach it with greater understanding.
In other words: don't disarm people. I agree. And the constitution agrees.
I especially liked your remark regarding "interstate commerce" not being equivalent to "everything" which it does appear to have become.
It's important to point out, though, that cops undergo a great deal of training and background checking that qualify them for things that normal civilians shouldn't do. It's similar to a class-b truck driver who can drive an 18-wheeler, while I can't.
But just as basic class-c driver's licenses are easy for people to get without undue fuss, basic 'class-c' firearms should be easy to get, as well. A 'class c' firearm would certainly include the sort of semi-automatic 15-round capacity handguns that most cops carry every day.
[DK: Good points. If the rationale for special restrictions on, for example, Mini-14s were "these guns are very difficult to handle properly, and cops have the proper, extensive training," that would be a rational argument for requiring any Mini-14 owner to get special, extra training. But as the article points, the ban rationales are "these guns are bad; they don't work, or they're only useful for crime." In touting Denver's "assault weapon" ban, City Councilwoman Cathy Reynolds complained that the guns are "easy to use."]
Can you please explain why DC has a much higher crime rate than the places that are the sources of the banned-in-DC firearms?
Er, to be honest, most police officers get less firearms training than the average hunter, nevermind the sort of gun nut that would probably care.
And Mr. Lockwood really needs to actually learn what he's talking about before spouting off about it. The AWB didn't ban most semi-automatics, and only banned the manufacture of some magazines and a very limited selection of cosmetically improper semi-automatics. Semi-automatics are not particularly lethal compared to double-action revolvers, and are probably the single most common type of firearm around. Moreover, nearly every police officer carries a semiautomatic pistol on them,
I also really don't want to know what goes on in the head of a man who thinks a single misdemeanor should result in loss of the ability to own a firearm, nevermind . I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe he's never broken the speed limit, and I find it very hard to trust the advice of a man who think he's not worthy of a constitutional right. Adding in the "determination that the person involved is a fit and proper person to have a gun" (can anyone say modern Jim Crowe law?), and it's just gone completely to idiocy.
He also really buggers with facts. He says "It is, if you like, a laboratory for what might happen if you had a federally-mandated handgun ban: many fewer deaths arising from accident, suicide, or domestic violence, but only a limited impact on the more criminal stuff," but Washington DC's overall suicide rate is, as far as my data can show, the same as Maryland and Virginia's, as are accidental deaths (which firearms never played a significant role in compared to anything as dangerous as a bucket). At least from what I can glean online, DC's domestic violence rates have either gone up significantly or remained roughly similar since the handgun ban. Does he mean merely firearms related accidental deaths, suicides, and domestic violence? Perhaps that's what we're supposed to conclude, but it really doesn't support his argument very well.
There's seldom any testing further than that, such as for maintenance or off-range safety.
But the controversial "assault weapons" (that name seems like a deceptive attempt to equate semiautomatic pistols with things like fully automatic assault rifles) bans are different.
As an aside, the idea that SWAT teams need assault rifles to somehow put themselves on even footing with gang-bangers or mass murderers is a little ridiculous. Fully automatic weapons are used in a very small number of crimes, and have little tactic benefit thanks to ammunition limitations, costs, and recoil. There's a reason the United States military recommends semiautomatic fire for most uses, with burst and automatic fire being more and more resigned to covering fire or ranged practice.
That's not to say I think they should be banned for both police and unimportant folk, just that the logic's fairly questionable.
And Mr. Lockwood, supposing that miscreants in that gun-free utopia, the District of Columbia, do get all their guns from lax-gun-law hellholes like Virginia, would you please explain why murder and other crime rates are so much lower in the hellholes than the utopia? Really, before you trotted out the "permissive Virginia gun laws cause (only) D.C. crime" idiocy, I thought you were merely misguided. Now I think you are stupid.
I don't think ease or difficulty of use is the only issue. To use the car analogy again, a ferrari is 'easy to use,' in that it only takes a twitch of the foot to rocket to 100 mph. But this 'ease of use' actually makes the vehicle more dangerous. And though I support driver's 'rights,' I don't want every sixteen year old driver to own a ferrari.
Making every man able to drive 0-60 in four seconds, or able to kill fifty people at will is a bad idea.
However, defense and strength should always remain in the hands of the people. Note that cops, the symbol of order and defense, carry guns... but not nukes. The American Way says that the people are the source of order and defense, so we should expect that people can carry guns... but not nukes.
It's pretty safe to say that the basic loadout of your average cop should be the standard for what every American can carry.
If you include what they have in the trunk, the "average" in many places might surprise you.
Note that the average in a given location can be time-dependent. I suspect that LA police up-gunned significantly during the riots and that Detroit police do the same whenever a Detroit team makes the playoffs.