The Audacity of Gun Control?
Nick Gillespie | February 4, 2008, 7:33am
Gun historian Clayton Cramer, whose work helped to unmask Michael Bellesiles as a massive fraud, minces no words regarding Barack Obama's position toward gun rights:
He was here in Boise over the weekend for a rally, and emphasized that he is not trying to take anyone's guns. He's a liar. It isn't just that he supports bans on semiautomatics, and more possession and purchase restrictions. He claims that he wants more laws to keep guns out of the inner cities. Why? Does he think black people lack the sense that white people have?
He was a member of the board of the Joyce Foundation, the primary funder of extreme gun control measures in the United States. And he claims that he isn't trying to disarm Americans?
He's a liar, through and through.
More here.
This seems a bit arch to me, and I'm curious as to how Obama's positions match up with those of Clinton, McCain, and Romney. How much of a role will gun rights play in the election?
Untermensch | February 4, 2008, 9:51am | #
Fluffy, I'm going to guess that you leave most arguments thinking you've won while you're opponents just leave scratching their heads and wondering why the hell they bothered talking to you...
The fact that blacks bear the brunt of them is, for most proponents in the population, epiphenomenal.You know what? This is BS.
So the only reason why they fear guns is because they are racist? Somehow I just don't buy it... I don't deny there is a racial component at all, but the soccer mom would want to have guns out of the hands of skinhead gangs or white thugs just as much as blacks. If most of the "criminals" she sees are black (for whatever reason), then the association
is epiphenomenal. She doesn't fear guns in the hands of blacks
because they are black. She fears guns in the hands of
criminals, most of whom (rightly or wrongly) she sees as minorities. That doesn't mean that she wants to control guns to control minorities at all, even if the effect is disproportionately on them.
The symbolism of the criminal with an "illegal" gun is incredibly racially charged.
Did I say it wasn't? But the racial charge may not be the only, or even primary, motivator, but rather an effect of the experience people have.
your average soccer mom who supports gun control does so out of fear of crime. The association of crime with blacks and hispanics in her mind isn't the root cause for the fear of crime though.
That's absolutely not true.
How do you know that this is "absolutely not true"? I fear being murdered (as an abstract, not because of any real threats to my life), but that fear has nothing to do with who might do it. The root cause is that I don't want to be murdered. You're going to have an uphill battle arguing that people fear crime because it is associate with minorities rather than because it's damned unpleasant.
Every politician who talks about gun control is running a rhetorical Willie Horton ad. It's just OK to do that if you're a Democrat. If the parties switched gun control positions, you can be absolutely sure that the Republican position would be portrayed in the progressive blogosphere as being fundamentally Atwateresque.
Actually, I see plenty of politicians who don't mention a racial angle and just say thing about wanting to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. I disagree with their policies, and I agree that there is a racial component, but not everyone out there who wants to ban guns or keep them away from "criminals" is doing it because they are racists. Some of them are looking at the very real effects of crime in their communities and coming to the wrong solution about how to prevent it. But that doesn't ipso facto make them racists.
I hate to say it fluffy, but your arguments show that sometimes your friend is your worst enemy. If you got to debate a gun control proponent in a public arena and spouted off about the gun control buy being a racist and everyone who supports gun control being a racist, you would do more harm to your cause than good. I'm sorry to say it, because I agree with your goals, but that's the way I see it.
LarryA | February 4, 2008, 10:02am | #
Virtually all "gun control" measures in the USA are racist or culturalist at their roots (anti black, or anti irish).
joe may have bit his upper lip off, but I still don't see it. Explain it, for people like me who are dense.
For an example, look at the New York City licensing scheme. “Anyone” can get a license to own a firearm or to carry one (or to carry pepper spray, it’s the same process) provided the authorities in NYC think they “need” to have the license.
It turns out that only wealthy people who are politically connected, almost all white, and almost all male “need” a license. I.e. publishers of anti-gun newspapers “need” licenses to carry, Nigerian cab drivers do not.
Similar results obtain nationwide if you look at other “discretionary” gun licensing schemes.
If
any other government process produced the obviously discriminatory results of discretionary gun licensing the ACLU, NAACP, LULAC, AARP, NOW, and every other rights group would bury it in lawsuits. But apparently it’s okay to discriminate in the service of gun control.
As for soccer moms, I’m seeing more and more of them in my concealed handgun licensing classes.
How much of a role with gun rights play in the election?
Same as always: zero. And rightfully so, IMHO. The economy plays a bigger role in crime.
Gun control plays a major role in crime. Given a choice between another gun control law and doing something effective politicians will choose gun control.
Still, gun issues will play a minimal role in the election because the Democrats and the national media are pro-control and they know it’s a loser issue. Republicans won’t press the issue because the leading candidates aren’t that pro-gun either.
In related news: The Brady Center just published this year’s issue of their gun control scorecard.
Once again the states with their “A” gun control ratings have more crime than their “D” and “F” states.
Other Matt | February 4, 2008, 10:11am | #
No, he is on the record wanting to make semi-automatic RIFLES illegal.
"Principles that Obama supports on gun issues:
Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons."
Weapons=rifles?
Silly, stupid, vapid, transparent race card.
Ok, I was wrong, you are pretty much a presumptive fuckwit.
Because I've seen you write on a number of threads about a number of issues, many of which actually do have something to do with racism, and you don't ever have anything to say about actual racism or its effects.
So, lack of comment means whatever you want to infer? For the record, I abhor racism and it's continuing effects. I abhor people who propegate racist beliefs, and I don't give a shit what color they are. I confront it actively wherever I find it. I don't believe "affirmative action" as it's currently being implemented, at least in regards to set aside contracts, education, etc, work as intended. I think people vote for this crap because they haven't seen it in action, which I have.
The racism which is inherent within the "white" community is one of acceptance, meaning, we can pretend that the "inner city" is the place where things need to be "controlled", and delude ourselves into thinking that it's not racist to think so. That's bullshit. The racism which is inherent within the "black" community is one where there's some greater sense of victim entitlement based on history. History has not been kind in a lot of ways, but continuing victimhood does nobody any good, where we convince ourselves that because we're black, we need the government to handle things for us. I believe people show themselves to be honorable, or not. People are worthy of respect, and respect others, or not. I don't give a rats ass what color they are, it's how they carry themselves and treat others which is important.
That good enough for you joe?
What a presumptive prick you are. I thought you were someone who held some different beliefs but were willing to discuss. I guess I was wrong.
I live in Chicago, which has one of the country's highest homicide rates (and incidentally some of its strictest gun laws.)
Hey, amazing how that seems to hold true, isn't it?
Other Matt | February 4, 2008, 10:40am | #
And then Joe can make insightful comments like "Zzzzzzz," because apparently politicians are supposed to be judged by their stated intentions, not their real-world results.
Or, perhaps, joe (you capped the J, he's little insignificant "joe" dontcha know) just doesn't have enough brainpower to come up with comment of substance, or has no foundation, so he basically resorts to third grade level taunts.
Gun control isn't the Ultimate Solution, but it seems foolish to deny the fact that the people who have to worry about getting shot are mostly urban blacks and the people most likely to rant and rave against ANY local gun control measures are, well, not urban blacks.
MP-I would disagree with some of this. I agree that people who have to worry are typically urban blacks, with the caveat that a fair number of women are in that group also due to domestic violence. I disagree about the gun control comments. What you see are the Brady crowd, and the "leaders" of the black community who are staking out a feel good anti violence stand.
The problem is that it doesn't work, and that it affects everyone instead of the intended target.
I would point to the previous comment about Chicago's gun control laws, or DC's. They simply don't work. Of course, when they don't, the gun control people always have a reason, and can't seem to understand it's not about the tool (a firearm), it's about a culture which believes that violence is a solution.
There is a good book called "On Killing", which is a rather large read but very good. It speaks to desensitizing people to violence as happens through a number of mechanisms. The problem in Baltimore, for example, is this "stop snitching" culture, which has grown from people within the gangs to an overall anti police attitude. Part of this culture is to use violence to solve your own problems. While I agree that the police have had a lot to do with it by their SWAT team approach to the world, the real issue is how we eradicate this violence prone culture.
The problem is people have been sold a bill of goods that "guns" are the symbol of this, and need to be banned. Therefore, people like Jennifer, who is physically much smaller and much less trained in the ways of violent confrontation than I am, loses a major equilizer. It's like Stockholm syndrome, where inner city african american leaders have abandoned self emppowerment and espoused the views of their oppressors. It's really astounding if you look at it, they're advocating disarming their own populace, which are most likely to be harmed. However, unlike past movements, there is no corresponding embracing of nonviolent alternatives, there is just disarming the victims.
It really is amazing when you think of it. Counter to this, look on Wikipedia under Malcom X, a man who was photographed ready to protect himself and his family with a firearm simply to make a statement that he was not going to be disempowered.
Then we have fuckwit idiots like joe whose reaction is that pointing this out is somehow "silly" with all the young men and women getting killed. It's sad how far we've come.
Well, no, obviously not. I don't dispute your right to defend yourself; I just wonder how often man-jumps-out-of-an-alley rapes occur in the neighborhoods where you live and work. Most rapists are actually someone the victim knows slightly.
True, they are known, and there is at least a "Creepy" feeling prior, typically something more.
This is a good exampe of the equalizer effect of a firearm in such a situation, you can listen to the call or read the story, either one.
Neu Mejican | February 4, 2008, 11:50am | #
I have been impressed recently with the rational calm discussions of abortion on Hit&Run.
Funny how the same tone never appears in gun control threads.
So, let me state first that I don't support gun control.
Now: Those who feel gun control laws are, at their root, racist, have a very, very, very, very, very, weak argument. So much projection goes into statements about the state of mind of "the average soccer mom" and her fear of "minority, inner city criminals."
If that is
your main fear say it. Say it proud. Tell people "I am afraid of non-white people with guns." Don't put your fear into the heads of the average soccer mom.
If you see race as the primary organizing principle of our society, then the "code for black" statements make sense. But for most people they are just so much gibberish (here I project my view as the average, see how that works).
LarryA,
Once again the states with their “A” gun control ratings have more crime than their “D” and “F” states.
I know you are smart enough to recognize that there is no way to figure out the direction of the causal arrow from the apparent correlation (see rimfax above). . . however, it is much more likely to go:
High crime leads to more gun control
than
gun control leads to more crime.
And...the impact of those gun control laws will be minimal.
Jennifer,
No gun control law I know would keep you from owning a gun to protect yourself. As long as you don't have a criminal record, you should be able to purchase your gun. Your hyperbole about "unintended consequences" is a rather thin argument for that reason.
Rex Rhino | February 4, 2008, 12:54pm | #
people most likely to rant and rave against ANY local gun control measures are, well, not urban blacks.
Urban blacks overwelmingly oppose gun-control.
Urban blacks, however, don't have much choice in political candidates because big city politics is controlled by the Democratic political machines. When given the choice to vote on the issue directly on the ballot, as opposed to having elected officials vote for them, they overwelmingly oppose gun control.
There's really nothing, other than a warm glow of self-satisfation, to be gained by declaring that the people you disagree with about gun laws are racist in the their black little hearts.
People who support gun control are afraid of certain demographics of people having guns. Guns are inanimate objects, and can't shoot anyone by themselves, and no-one supports gun-control for cops & military, so the fear is certain people having the guns, not the guns themselves.
The group of people in question isn't always a race. It could be poor people. It could be "red necks". It could be blacks. It could be civilians (and an inherent trust that the police and military are better than the common people).
However, the fear of guns is the fear of certain classes of people having guns, that much is undeniable. It is a form of elitism, and a form of class warfare, even if you are as afraid of drunken rednecks stereotype as much as you are the urban black criminal stereotype and therefore not technically "racist". Gun control might not always be racist, but it is always elitist and undemocratic.
Also, it is undeniable is that gun control will be enforced disproportionally black people. Do you imagine, joe, that upper-middle class homes in fashionable suburbs are going to be raided by SWAT teams on a regular basis? Do you think for a second that the banker in a $2000 suit is going to be randomly searched for weapons when he is walking down the street, the same way black people are today? Do you deny, joe, that the War On Drugs is primarily targeted at minorities and the poor, not the upper-middle class white folk? Do you deny joe, that blacks are disproportionally imprisoned on drug charges compared to white people (and poor people disproportionally to rich people). Do you deny that a War On Guns will likely have just a racist as the War On Drugs.
So we established the fact that gun control is elitist and based on fears of other social classes... and we established that the effect of gun control will be racist, regardless of the intention of some of its supporters. So why is it such a stretch joe, that some reasonable people would assume that all gun-control is based on racism. It might not be 100% true in all cases, but it isn't as outlandish as you make it seem.
LarryA | February 5, 2008, 10:12am | #
it can be blamed as a cause of the continuing crime rate.
Nope. It can't be.
I think I justified my statement. If the leaders of Washington, D.C. insist that their gun control law is necessary to prevent crime, despite two decades of evidence to the contrary, and refuse to consider more effective measures, then that action is at least somewhat responsible for the crime rate remaining high. If you can’t accept that, we’ll have to disagree.
And yes, that particular law has been ruled unconstitutional by a lower court, but has not yet gone to the Supreme Court. Look for it the end of summer. But it’s taken
thirty years to get that far.
Two states, Illinois and Wisconsin, prohibit self-defense carry.
Self-defense carry? by this you mean?
There is no provision for an ordinary citizen to get a license to carry a concealed handgun (as in the thirty eight states with shall-issue laws), or to legally carry without one (as is legal in Alaska and Vermont).
Eight states restrict it to the politically connected.
Politically connected? Meaning who?
Eight states have “discretionary” license systems. No matter how qualified you are the issuing authorities can turn down your license application for any reason. The reason most often
officially cited is because you don’t need to protect yourself, since you can rely on government-supplied law enforcement. (Despite numerous court rulings that police are not responsible for protecting you as an individual.) It’s the equivalent to refusing to issue you, as a qualified driver, a license to operate a private auto because the authorities think you should rely on public transportation.
Some jurisdictions run these systems fairly, but most do not. In Los Angeles County, for instance, almost all concealed carry licenses are issued to judges or celebrities. San Francisco issues very few licenses; at one time the
only person who had one was Diane Feinstein, their anti-gun U.S. Senator. The NYC license list is a who’s who of celebrities and political cronies. And the beat goes on.
I had a couple in one of my CHL classes who had just moved to Texas from a discretionary state. They had both applied for licenses, going through the entire process, fulfilling all the requirements, submitting all the forms, and paying all the nonrefundable fees. Then they met with three county officials who would decide if they “needed” the license or not.
The county committee authorized his license, reluctantly. They denied hers. After all, he had one, so if anything went wrong he could protect her.
If that happened in
any other licensing situation NOW and the national media would have been all over it. But it’s okay to discriminate against people when it comes to gun control.
Ironically, when they took the practical shooting test she was the better shot.
Ludwig | February 6, 2008, 3:42am | #
Well, Amadeus, I hope the rest of your countrymen are not as confused, or as poor in reasoning skills, as you are. See if you can follow these points:
1. In America, There are people who support the right to defend themselves, namely with guns (especially when guns are used by the criminals or the criminals are overwhelmingly stronger than the victims).
2. If guns are outlawed, criminals are the most likely people to buy them on the black market.
3. Many of the same people who support the right to gun ownership also support freedom for the individual in general. That is mostly true of people who comment on this site. So, people on this site wouldn't make any restrictions on access to gay porn or to LSD or any other kind of drug or medication.
4. We don't have school shootings every other week. Maybe every other year... or less. Dramatic instances do not equate to frequency of instances.
5. Has violent crime been going up lately in your country or down? In ours, it's been going down since the 1980's.
6. The freedom to do whatever action you want as long as it does not violate the corresponding freedoms of others is a completely separate issue from the degree to what people do for others in their free time. The former is about what the law should say about individual rights. The latter suggests what role citizens should play in civil society.
Some people here probably do a lot of community service. Others not so much. But it's irrelevant. How about you? When's the last time you did something for the community that your government didn't force you to do?
Oops, maybe you're just parodying the average anti-libertarian idiot. Sorry, my mistake.
Clayton E. Cramer | February 6, 2008, 6:40pm | #
I notice a few people commenting here who think that it's somehow silly or offensive to point out that racism is a core value of gun control. I think someone else may have already posted a link to this
Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy paper by me a few years ago. If not, go read it. I'm not the only historian who has written about the racist roots of gun control.
My recent book
Armed America (Nelson Current, 2007) devotes part of a chapter to a discussion of Colonial gun control laws--which interestingly enough, generally appear the same year, or within a year or two, of these colonies taking the vote away from free blacks. (If you didn't know that free blacks could vote in Virginia, South Carolina, and Maryland in the Colonial period--well, you'll learn a bit from reading my book. A free black man was actually elected to the Maryland legislature in the 1640s.)
The racist history of gun control isn't just long, long ago, or limited to the South. The direct ancestor of California's current concealed weapon permit law was passed in 1923 as part of a package that,
as the man who persuaded the governor to sign it admitted was to disarm Chinese and Hispanics. A few years back, even a liberal member of the state legislature, Steve Peace, wrote a report California's discretionary concealed weapon permit system, and admitted that those at highest risk of criminal attack--black females--were among the least likely to get permits. My own analysis of permit issuance by county revealed a strong negative correlation between permit issuance and the black percentage of the county. As the black percentage of a county increases, the percentage of the population able to get a permit fell--quite dramatically. Yet the counties where
more than 1% of the population had a concealed carry permit had almost no crime. I won't claim that the widespread issuance of permits makes the crime rate lower--but it does show that widespread issuance of permits isn't the disaster that some people want to believe.
Here's an ugly truth: violent crime in America is disproportionately done by blacks, to blacks. It is quite common for blacks to be 45-50% of those arrested for murder--even though they are about 11% of the population. The victims are also usually black; about 9/10ths of all murders are within race.
Why? There are a lot of possible explanations. Blacks, on average, are several years younger than whites--and people that commit violent crimes tend to be young. Poor blacks have higher violent crime rates than poor whites--perhaps, as Brandon Centerwall's work suggests, because poor blacks live in very dense housing relative to poor whites. Perhaps poverty plays a part. And there is persuasive evidence that growing up urban increases rates of psychosis, which may play some part in this as well. It is devilishly difficult to unravel these complex multivariate relationships.
What I do know is that much of the fear of crime in America is based on race--and for the reasons mentioned above, this is prejudice, but it isn't
irrational prejudice. When California passed the 1989 Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act, the proximate cause was the Stockton schoolyard slaughter by Patrick Purdy, a mentally ill prostitute with a long criminal history--and a government check that helped him buy guns. (Social Security disability.) But the reason the bill was sitting in the legislature was because of Oakland and Los Angeles gang members. I think it was no coincidence that most of the guns targeted had black stocks. It was easier to focus on the guns, than for liberals to confront what they were really afraid of, or to try and solve the severe social problems that made South Central Los Angeles into a no-go zone.
Amadeus | February 7, 2008, 3:56pm | #
Hello Ludwig,
Just a quick take on things - as things progress quickly on the page I this is a bit out of date now but nevertheless an answer:
> Well, Amadeus, I hope the rest of your countrymen are not as confused, or as poor in reasoning skills, as you are. See if you can follow these points:
I'll skip personal attacks here, as I unfortunately did some myself and get back to the issues.
> 1. In America, There are people who support the right to defend themselves, namely with guns (especially when guns are used by the criminals or the criminals are overwhelmingly stronger than the victims).
I see your point and fully support it - nobody should have to endure a crime, but guns are often bad for *both* the attacker and the victim. Problem is that when people get that flight-or-fight reaction and are excited there is little hindrance to just bending your index finger, leaving you with the haunts and responsibility of having killed someone (rightful or not) for your whole life. Failure to do so on the other hand (especially by many women) often leaves the attacker with a possibly lethal weapon - or the hard question why they didn't self-defend themselves in the first place, allowing it to happen.
I know for myself that I could kill, but I don't know if I could walk upright after the act. But self-defense is okay nevertheless. In certain parts of Berlin and Düsseldorf I have pepper spray in my pocket that knocks a guy (even with a gun) off his feet in 2 seconds. This is fully legal here in an act of self-defense and I don't have to face a life as a murderer.
> 2. If guns are outlawed, criminals are the most likely people to buy them on the black market.
If guns are *not* outlawed, how many more (would-be) criminals have access? Btw: You could exchange the word guns with drugs in that sentence and it stays true. So you say you're a libertarian (a term that I would also call myself), though many in the forum are republicans. I'm interested where you're standing on that issue and if it is okay for you that the US have by far the highest incarceration rate in the world (six times than in average Europe), more than half of the inmates being non-violent drug offenders that just took the liberty of doing stuff that's against the moral of certain people while doing no harm to anyone...
> 3. Many of the same people who support the right to gun ownership also support freedom for the individual in general. That is mostly true of people who comment on this site. So, people on this site wouldn't make any restrictions on access to gay porn or to LSD or any other kind of drug or medication.
I didn't want to offend those - sorry for using an overblown stereotype.
> 4. We don't have school shootings every other week. Maybe every other year... or less. Dramatic instances do not equate to frequency of instances.
I would agree on that. I was overstating and hope you apologize for that.
> 5. Has violent crime been going up lately in your country or down? In ours, it's been going down since the 1980's.
It's also been going down (yep, I looked it up). So let's compare some real numbers. I know it's not exactly the same, but I see a strong correlation between violent crime and murder rate and I just have access to international statistics for the latter: Six murders per 100,000 inhabitants in the US and one in Germany. By the way - what exactly did you want to prove with that point?
> 6. The freedom to do whatever action you want as long as it does not violate the corresponding freedoms of others is a completely separate issue from the degree to what people do for others in their free time. The former is about what the law should say about individual rights. The latter suggests what role citizens should play in civil society.
I agree with you on both points and also think that the government shouldn't interfere with anything you do as long as you're not harming, disrespecting or endangering anyone else (a problem that I have with most republican standpoints). My problem with firearms is that they were *designed* from the ground up to kill and harm, as that's their only purpose. So even if you don't intend this, there are many accidents and even judicially approved killings/injuries that lead to depression and suicide in victims turned attacker. Firearms are no good for no one. And even if I'm really fairly liberal, there are good reasons why parents don't give knives to 3-year-olds and the blueprints of nuclear weapons are top secret. I think Gun Control is a complicated issue, but in the end it's a better choice for everyone. But if you have better arguments, I'm totally able to change my opinion.
> Some people here probably do a lot of community service. Others not so much. But it's irrelevant. How about you? When's the last time you did something for the community that your government didn't force you to do?
I'm an active church musician and have a license for youth group leading. And you?
> Oops, maybe you're just parodying the average anti-libertarian idiot. Sorry, my mistake.
Well, I'm an anti-anti-libertarian mensan and unfortunately I was parodying 62,040,610 Americans that made George Bush's second term become possible - after seeing the consequences of the first one happen...
Yours,
Amadeus
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