Voodoo Social Policy

Exorcising the twin demons, guns and drugs

Jacob Sullum from the October 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Which brings us to the impact that gun control and drug control have on civil liberties. Since both policies aim to control things that individuals buy and sell voluntarily, both involve government intrusion into people's private lives. They charge the police with stopping transactions and preventing ownership, which requires surveillance and entrapment. The extent of the intrusion depends upon how extensive the legal restrictions are and how serious enforcement is.

The results are more dramatic in the area of drug control, where broad classes of substances have been banned altogether. The list of trespasses occasioned by drug prohibition is by now painfully familiar. The war on drugs has seriously eroded the Bill of Rights, especially its search-and-seizure, due process, and property-rights provisions, but also the right to counsel, the right to free speech, and the right to the free exercise of religion. The drug laws give the state license to invade our homes, to search our bodies, to monitor our conversations, to take our property, freedom, and lives.

The effect of gun control on civil liberties (aside from the right to keep and bear arms) is less obvious, because the restrictions are less severe. For an idea of what life would be like in the United States if the government got really serious about gun control, take a look at Japan, where private possession of firearms is very rare. Not coincidentally, the Japanese accept a level of police surveillance and intrusiveness, including searches at will, that would be intolerable to most Americans.

Most, but not all. In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, a writer named Karen Grigsby Bates called for "unannounced sweeps of California, a coordinated effort by local police and sheriff departments and the National Guard to rid the state of guns." She conceded that such an operation would prompt complaints and lawsuits. "It would require arbitrary search and seizure and would make life miserable for all of us," she wrote. "Traffic would be snarled (because checkpoints would be established throughout cities, much like those at border crossings)." Still, Bates said, it would be worth the trouble, because the gun dragnet "would save lives and improve the quality of life." While this article appeared the week of April Fools' Day, I don't think Bates was kidding. I think she was just following the idea of gun control to its logical conclusion.

Even if no one ever takes Bates's advice, U.S. gun-control laws already raise broad civil- liberties concerns. Any jurisdiction that requires a license to own or a permit to carry guns thereby gives police authority to investigate violations, which generates searches and arrests. When categories of guns are banned--such as sawed-off shotguns, so-called assault weapons under state laws, or handguns in some cities--the police may try to disrupt trafficking in addition to arresting people who own the illegal firearms.

Such attempts to enforce gun laws can have deadly consequences. The disaster in Waco, where more than 80 people died, grew out of charges that the Branch Davidians had illegally converted semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic. The federal siege of the Weaver family in Idaho, which resulted in three deaths, started with a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms attempt to entrap Randy Weaver into selling a couple of sawed-off shotguns. (See "Ambush at Ruby Ridge," October 1993.)

In addition to undermining civil liberties, gun control and drug control undermine responsible behavior. Again, this phenomenon is more familiar in the area of drug control.

Prohibition tends to make drugs more concentrated, since traffickers try to minimize the bulk of their contraband and consumers try to get the most bang for their buck at artificially inflated prices. Although the active ingredients are the same, crack and heroin pose more potential problems than coca tea and opium, just as liquor is harder to handle than beer.

Furthermore, prohibition has a disproportionate impact on moderate, responsible users, who are more likely to be deterred by the trouble, expense, and risk of obtaining drugs in the black market. Even so, most people who consume illegal drugs do so moderately. But because they have to conceal their drug use, they can rarely serve as models for others. Instead, it is the most excessive, irresponsible users who are conspicuous and who come to represent the norm in the public mind. This situation is hardly conducive to establishing a culture of responsible use. Instead of neighborhood taverns and coffee houses, it produces shooting galleries and crack houses.

A friend of mine was raised in a household where her parents grew their own marijuana and smoked it openly. Today she uses pot occasionally, and her attitude toward the drug is much like the attitude toward alcohol of someone who grows up in a household of moderate drinkers. The main barrier to extending this sort of socialization is prohibition.

Like drug control, gun control mainly deters law-abiding people. Since the vast majority of criminals get their weapons through the gray or black markets, background checks, waiting periods, and licensing will never have a significant impact on crime. But such measures do impede people who want guns for self-protection or other legitimate reasons.

Gun control's effects on responsible behavior can be seen most clearly in the jurisdictions with the strictest laws. As David Kopel notes, a New York City merchant who keeps an illegal pistol under the counter for self-protection is not likely to take it out for practice at a target range. Even if he managed to obtain a license, he could not legally teach his son how to handle the gun properly. In cities with strict gun control, the main models of gun ownership are criminals and the police. Parents rarely have the opportunity to teach their kids about firearm safety. Recent moves to outlaw gun possession by minors make it even harder to foster a culture of responsible gun ownership.

Indeed, advocates of drug control and gun control deliberately blur the distinction between responsible and irresponsible use. Drug prohibitionists consider any use of an illegal substance to be abuse. When discussing "the drug problem," they commonly do a bait and switch. Arguing for drastic measures, they cite the horrible depredations of drug addiction, offering anecdotes of people who lost their jobs, abused their children, stole, prostituted themselves, or died in accidents or overdoses because of their drug habits. Trying to demonstrate the success of the drastic measures, they cite government statistics showing a decline in casual drug use.

In his 1989 national drug control strategy, William Bennett argued that casual drug users are worrisome and deserve punishment precisely because drugs haven't ruined their lives. By showing that illegal drug use need not lead to disaster, casual users encourage others to follow their example. To prevent such imitation, the government has to crack down on the casual users and thereby show that taking controlled substances has serious consequences. Former L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates took this argument a step further, declaring that casual users should be taken out and shot as traitors in the war on drugs.

Similarly, the rhetoric of gun-control advocates implicates all gun owners in the crimes of a tiny minority. A recent pamphlet from the ACLU of Southern California asserts that the National Rifle Association "insists on a view of the Second Amendment that defies virtually all court decisions and contradicts findings of most legal scholars. In so doing, the NRA actively perpetuates a seemingly endless cycle of gun-related fatalities." Leaving aside the ACLU's questionable constitutional scholarship, the organization is arguing that Americans who defend their right to keep and bear arms are somehow to blame for violent crime. No matter how law-abiding, responsible, and peaceful you are, if you think you have a right to own a gun, you have blood on your hands.