Tag: debate

KevinLeave a comment

Screw It, Redux.

I’ve had enough for awhile. I’m busy as hell, depressed as hell, and starting the process of doing some major remodeling on my home. (Eminent domain be damned.)

Alex has been unable or unwilling to carry on the gun control debate, so (hope you’re reading this, Alex), I’m going to drop his permission to post here for the time being.

To put it plainly, I’m burned out on writing for the moment. I’m going to paint, do a little carpentry, and shell out a bunch of money to vendors and tradesmen for a few weeks. I’m going to load some ammo and take some trips to the range.

You might check in from time to time. Something might inspire piss me off enough to post, but I won’t be posting on a daily basis, that’s for certain.

Email still works. Drop me a line if you have something interesting to say. Right now, I’m going to go read a book.

KevinLeave a comment

Let’s Try This, (Part II of the Great Gunrights Debate).

I emailed Alex after his opening post:

Alex:

Not a bad opening salvo. I stuck a title on the post and edited it just a little bit for layout consistency with my other posts. I fixed a typo [“9” instead of a “(“] too.

The only problem is that, for someone just walking into the discussion, they’d be a little lost if they haven’t read our exchange at No Banannas.

May I suggest we reset everything back to zero and start afresh? Pick a particular topic near and dear to your heart, perhaps, and let’s flog that until we’re done, then move on to the next. Otherwise we’re going to be zinging all over the place and it will be difficult to follow.

Kevin

Alex agreed:

Sounds good.

Obviously you’ve got me out manned on BF, so I’d concede that point (for now)

I am always one for the “there are sensible compromises out there” vs. “no touchin my 2nd amendment” debate.

I am also looking more at the gun industry and what it does to influence the debate.

Of course there are the basics: the meaning of the 2nd gun control vs. gun confiscation (slippery slope stuff) Statistics, lies and damned lies

Or if you have a “just once I’d like to see one of those weak kneed liberals try and defend THAT point” topics, I’d love to take a crack at it.

I used to be a (fairly) middle-of-the-road gunrights advocate, until I started digging into the debate deeper. The more I dug, the worse it looked until I finally decided that “this far, no further” was the only position I could personally take.

There’s a lot more to it than just the right to arms for me, but the right to arms is the keystone from my perspective. The fact is that the Constitution is and has been under concerted attack for a wide variety of reasons and rationales almost since its ratification. My current stance (which is not absolutist from the perspective of many) is based on my understanding of the meaning and intent of the Constitution, and the meaning and intent of the Second Amendment and all of the other amendments.

So let’s start there. What do those twenty-seven words mean, and is the Constitution a “living document”? That was the point of Ian Hamet’s post at Banana Oil! that originated this discussion. Because from my perspective the meaning and intent of the 2nd Amendment is clear, and the Constitution is not and cannot be a “living document,” and I can explain why. Everything I support and espouse is based on this bedrock. These are the questions we must address first before we can argue “sensible compromises” and the like.

Let the Discussion Begin!

KevinLeave a comment

Opening Salvo by Guest poster Alex:

Kevin- instead of taking the “Jane you ignorant slut” approach to a response, I will go point by point and refute your arguments. In many cases I think the logic just doesn’t hold, and in others it may just be a difference of opinion.
That being said, let the games begin.
You say:

“I suggest you read, very carefully, the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. It was written by Thomas Jefferson and signed by quite a number of intelligent, well-educated, propertied men who decided to stand up against tyranny and break the law in so doing. They pledged their (yes, I know it’s a cliché) “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” in that decision. And most of them lost their lives and fortunes, and several their families. But they kept their honor. Is your argument that there is never a time to rise up against tyranny? Or is it that our government can never become tyrannical?”

Ok, aside from the implication that I haven’t read the Declaration (which is wrong), you completely muddle up what I originally said, and even what I think you are trying to say. But if we look at the first paragraphs of the Declaration we can clear up both points. I never made an argument “that there is never a time to rise up against tyranny” or “that our government can never become tyrannical”. My point was actually simple. That vigilantes- however well intentioned are not revolutionaries, and that when you start talking about throwing off the oppression of the government, it needs to be against actual tyranny- not just something you don’t happen to like.

The opening paragraphs of the Declaration are clear on this point. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”. Pretty clear. It then goes on to list specific and demonstrative overreaches of the King which necessitate the formation of a new government. No representation (this is fundamental to all forms of tyranny). King’s control of the judiciary. The king’s ability to ignore passed laws. Placing the military superior to the civilian. These are major transgressions. And they are designed to keep people from ever having the power to peacefully change their own government through democracy. When, and only when, that right is taken away should the “take up arms for the struggle” idea be flouted.
However none of your previous examples were examples of anything but self defense or vigilantes. And when you support vigilantes you are, in fact supporting tyranny (via mob rule). Long way to go to make my point, but you gun guys like to wrap yourselves up in the flag and say you are preserving democracy and “keeping the government in check”. That is a total crock (my opinion) and belittles the true strength of our democracy- to change without guns through the system in place.
You say:

“All too many of the other great tragedies of history – Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few – were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.”

Ah yes- the tired line of “if only everyone had guns, there would have been no [fill in the atrocity]”. A classic, and wholly flawed argument. It assumes that there is no final solution but armed confrontation, and that any despot attempting tyranny would be thwarted at the first armed resistance. History dictates that armed conflicts can escalate into protracted civil wars, which can be far more devastating to a society than an occupation (and eventual overthrow) of a regime. Take the civil rights struggle in this country. There is no denying how brutal, oppressive and despotic the efforts made to deny a population of their civil rights were from the 40’s to the 70’s in the south. (Yes I know the rights movement began before that, but the really dangerous times- ones in which the demand for equality was met with swift retribution began in earnest in this time) So just arm them, right, and no problems?

What you would have created there is a second civil war. An armed insurgency within our own borders, and, as is the inevitable conclusion of all civil wars, mass casualties and utter destruction. Take the number of blacks tortured, maimed and killed during this period (and it is not a insignificant number, I know) and compare that to a full fledged armed conflict between blacks and whites in the south. Yes, it is comparing a known figure with an unknown, but that is exactly the part the gun guys gloss over. Do you think the whites would have just given up? “Whoa, they are armed, this changes everything… better pack it all in and just leave them alone!” or do you think they would have hunkered down, and gone all out to wipe them out completely. And, in the end, the side with the most resources is more likely to win any conflict, so the blacks still would (probably) have lost the struggle, but at a far greater toll. The civil right struggle would have ben set back decades, and all the rights they eventually gained would still have to be earned- through non-violent means- meaning they got decimated just to do the same thing they had to do anyway. Before you say “an armed populace is a free populace” study the nature of civil wars, because that is the logical conclusion of “everybody has guns”.
You say:

“You ask, “Who(se) definition of society do we have to abide by”? Good question, and one we’re constantly answering. My personal opinion: the one defined by the Constitution. No wonder forces on both the Left and the Right are trying to “reinterpret” it to mean whatever they want it to mean. This is the crux of the entire discussion. I want to keep the power to say NO!! and make it hurt in the hands of individuals, and the Statists – both Left and Right – want to ensure that the use of violence remains strictly in the hands of Government. My way, a lot of day-to-day mayhem takes place. The other way has, historically, can lead to what Professor Rudolph J. Rummel terms “Democide”. There’s that mistake you only get to make once.”

Here we are again at the “my gun is preserving your democracy” argument. This is based on an outdated, romantic delusion of being the struggling freedom fighter single-handedly battling back the “jack booted thugs” trying to take away out liberty. At some point in history, that may have held water, but it doesn’t today. You want to know what will actually take away our freedom? It’s people (on the right and left) who tell us what we can and cannot say, or even think. Being “politically correct” on the left, or “supportive of our troops” on the right has led people to suggest some pretty large steps to tyranny. They brand anyone that doesn’t think exactly the way they do as a threat to “our way of life”, and seek to squash this minority. No debate, just my way or the highway.

The ability to consolidate media in the hands of a few (and to prevent the media from serving as the nation’s watchdog, as it should and must), the ability to allow money to influence our legislature to the degree it does, the attacking of an independent judiciary which is they very backbone of any democracy, and the attempt by those in power to change the rules and checks and balances within the system to stay in power- THESE are the actual threats to a modern democracy. And all your guns won’t do a damn thing to stop them.
You keep waiting for the army to come kicking down your door and “take away the guns”, while the hyper-real threat just unfolds before your eyes and you do nothing. Talk about taking your eyes off the ball. If the groups that spend all the resources crying about how the big bad guvment wants to take away their God-given right to own a bazooka spent half their time actually doing something about the real threats to democracy, we’d all be better off. But I guess putting your money where your mouth is seems like to much to ask. Better to just keep deluding yourself as the nation’s last line of defense, instead of actually realizing that a bunch of nitwits in cammo armed to the teeth are doing zero to protect us from the real threats. But, hey, as long as they support the 2nd amendment we’ll all be OK, right?
You say:
A bunch of arguments about ballistic fingerprinting, gun control efforts in other countries and ineffective tracking measures. (There was a lot of arguments entangled here, and I am not dismissing them by not breaking them out individually, you had very good points -it just seemed like a long recap, so I skipped reprinting them).
You made some decent points here, and I definitely need to educate myself more about the current technologies available before I can refute your considerable evidence. It will take me a while to do that, so all I can do for now is attack a simple premise.
Even if I concede that the technology currently used in attempts at “ballistic fingerprinting” (BF) today does not work effectively (which I am not ready to concede until I get a full assessment, not just the “gun guys spin”), nothing you have shown that it could not be made to work should the technology improve. (i.e. there is no fundamental hurdle that seems impossible to overcome). Star Wars (the military technology- not the once great movie series bastardized into mindless pap), as an example, contains a fatal technology flaw. EMP (the force generated during a nuclear blast) wipes out mechanical and electronic components within a very large radius. So, even if you build a prefect missile hunting satellite (which is still a ways off), the entire network can easily be wiped out by a few detonations in space. This is a fundamental technological flaw- something that no scientist has even hinted at having an idea how to overcome. BF, even in its currently flawed state, does not seem to have these “there is no way imaginable to make this work”. It just needs to improve the technology in place.
Plus, this technology has had zero assistance from the gun manufacturing industry (in fact there has been outright hostility to this approach). So it is natural to assume (at least until proven otherwise) that should the engineers that design guns and ammunition, actually become engaged in producing traceable evidence, the technology would be significantly advanced. Put simply, if the gun industry actually separated the efforts to track criminals from the efforts to control all guns, we’d get somewhere. But they don’t. They look at any sensible reform efforts as the tip of an iceberg that will annihilate the second amendment. Now if there is a reason to oppose the concept of BF, I’d like to hear it. It only affects criminals and aids in their capture (again, the concept- not necessarily the current science). If you want to argue on the practicality of the current state of technology, that’s fine. But if you want to attack the entire idea of BF, that seems wholly indefensible. Sorry I cannot be more specific in this argument about the specifics on the current state, but you presented enough compelling evidence to convince me that it is far more complicated than I originally thought, although I don’t think it is as dire as you portray it (however I can’t back that up… yet)
To recap this diatribe:
1) Yes, you can rise up against a despotic regime imposing tyranny. However, taking the law into your own hands just because you don’t like something the government is doing is being a vigilante. And the examples you gave were of just that. Bullets are not needed as long as ballots are used.
2) It’s easy to say “this would never have happened if they were armed”. Yet it ignores the effect of a protracted armed conflict, which often times would be far worse than the oppression in the first place. At a minimum it is lazy thinking that presumes that guns will stop people from committing terrible acts.
3) You gun does not prevent tyranny. Tyranny today disguises itself in the “need to protect our values” and the Orwellian doublespeak that passes as governance today. It doesn’t come in through a kicked down door by the government, it comes in through defining certain speech as acceptable, and the people who don’t speak like that as “threats”. It lures the unsuspecting in with catch phrases and litmus test that weed out the “troubling elements” and says “we want what you want so lets punish the other guys”. Until you become an “other guy”. And all the guns in the world wont stop it.
4) There are certainly valid concerns about the existing BF technology. But using that to throw out the entire concept is crazy. The question should be, “could we make traceable guns and ammunition that resist tampering?” But the gun industry won’t have it. Better to just look at the first attempt and say “see, it doesn’t work. Better can the whole thing.” All science evolves, and if there isn’t a fundamental scientific reason BF can’t work in concept, then we just have to try harder.
Despite this long winded response, I still don’t think this argument gets at the real core of someone who is in favor of some sensible controls, and a typical “from my cold dead hands” fanatic.
I’d like to challenge you to a larger debate (I don’t think these issues get at the heart of our differences). One that looks at the gun industry as a whole, where reform makes sense, typical straw men used in gun rights arguments, and a comparison of international efforts for gun control. I think only in this type of debate could we really expose some sloppy thinking (on both sides) and dispel of the classic sound bites that do nothing to advance either side’s argument.

(Edited just a little bit by siteowner for readability, and to give it a title.)

KevinLeave a comment

I Think He Slipped the Hook, Dammit.

Remember last month’s Banana Oil! post A Challenge? (Ian’s bandwidth has been slammed by Google image searchers, so his site is not available right now.) I thought I’d hooked a self-defined gun-control “moderate” into a discussion on the right to arms. That was May 24, two full weeks ago. As of yet, he hasn’t responded to the invitation to join TSM for our debate, and I’m losing hope that he’s going to.

Damn. I was so looking forward to it.

UPDATE: Alex assures me he will post, and has a four-page opener just needing some editing before doing so. Please stand by.

KevinLeave a comment

Just an Update.

Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve been busy, and just not all that inspired to write at the moment.

I am, however, waiting for Alex to join TSM and begin our debate. I emailed him the day before yesterday and received an affirmative reply:

I am trying to get one more project out the door.

I will post something as soon as I can.

So expect to see something on that subject soon.

I’m planning on writing a couple more pieces on LTC Dave Grossman’s book, On Killing, as well; one on that 2% of the population that can apparently kill without much in the way of remorse, and another on whether or not we’ve been inadvertently conditioning our kids to be killers. Neither of those pieces has jelled, yet, and I don’t want to force them.

I’ve also been spending my online time reading a lot of the milblogs. If you haven’t, I recommend it. You’re not going to hear about any of what these guys have to say in the regular media.

Anyway, I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth, and thank you to all the regular readers who check in each day and keep my hit counter rolling over.

And remember, I also do requests, though it might take me some time.

Keep checking in.

Presser v. Cockrum

KevinLeave a comment

Reader Robert Lewis, commenting on I Imagine This Post Might Be an Unpopular One, below, takes exception to my citation of the 1886 Supreme Court Presser v. Illinois decision:

“Under Presser, the right to keep and bear arms is not a limitation on the power of States.”

Hah …the supreme court of Texas claims otherwise …

“The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the ‘High Powers’ delegated directly to the citizen by the United States Constitution, Amendment II, and “is excepted out of the general powers of government”. A law cannot be passed to infringe upon it or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power.”
-Supreme Court of Texas, Cockrum v. State of Texas (1859).

Delving into my library, I pulled my copy of Clayton Cramer‘s For Defense of Themselves and the State: The Origins and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Here’s what Clayton has to say about it over pages 90-92:

Article 610 of the penal code specified that manslaughter committed with a Bowie knife or dagger would be considered to be murder, and punishable accordingly. The defendant, John Cockrum, was indicted in 1857 for murdering William N. Self, of Freestone County. In 1858, Cockrum was convicted of murder, apparently based on article 610, and sentenced to life in prison in solitary confinement.

Cockrum appealed. The relevant part of his argument, as presented by his lawyer:

It is contended, that Article 610 of the Penal Code, is in violation of both of the State and Federal Constitution, which contain substantially the same provision, securing the citizen from any infringement on the right to keep and bear arms. 1st. it is asserted, that any law prohibiting a citizen from keeping or bearing any knife, which is intended to be worn upon the person, which is capable of inflicting death, and not commonly known as a pocket-knife, would be unconstitutional. To prohibit absolutely the keeping and having of an ordinary weapon, is certainly to infringe on the right of keeping and bearing arms. A bowie-knife, or dagger, as defined in the Code, is an ordinary weapon, one of the cheapest character, accessible even to the poorest citizen. A common butcher-knife, which costs not more than half a dollar, comes within the description given of a bowie-knife or dagger, being very frequently worn on the person. To prohibit such a weapon, is substantially to take away the right of bearing arms, from him who has not money enough to buy a gun or pistol.

Here Cockrum’s attorney, Robert S. Gould, crisply articulated the position that would be taken a century later, in opposition to laws banning so-called “Saturday Night Specials” – that such laws work principally to disarm the poor.

And I cannot help but point out the extreme divergence between this argument and the argument being put forth today in England seeking justification to ban all long, sharp kitchen knives.

Clayton continues:

But what is the relevance of a law enhancing the penalty for manslaughter, to the right to carry a “bowie-knife or dagger”?

Gould pointed to the court decisions on the right to keep and bear arms, in particular. Nunn v. State (1846), since it had overturned a law banning small pistols. He then argued that if it was unconstitutional to ban the carrying of an arm for a lawful purpose, such as self-defense; and discriminating against a particular arm by enhancing the penalty for criminal use would be an attempt to discourage law-abiding people from carrying such arms, for fear that a manslaughter might thus be punished as severely as murder.

From what I’ve seen, England has been treating arms violations more severely than some murders. Anyway, continuing:

Most of the Texas Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Roberts, addressed the issues of how the varying punishments available for a murder conviction could be determined by the jury, and are of no relevance to our interests. Of relevance to the Second Amendment and Texas’ similar constitutional provision, especially in light of the post-war decisions by the Texas Court: “it is contended, that this article of the Code, is in violation of the Constitution of the United States, and of this State.” After citing the Second Amendment and the 13th section of the Texas Bill of Rights: “Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms, in the lawful defense of himself or the State,” the Court explicated the purposes of the state and Federal Constitutional protections, with no apparent disagreement that both applied to a state law:

The object of the first clause cited, has reference to the perpetuation of free government, and is based on the idea, that the people cannot be effectually oppressed and enslaved, who are not first disarmed. The clause cited in our Bill of Rights, has the same broad objec in relation to the government, and in addition thereto, secures a personal right to the citizen. The right of a citizen to bear arms, in the lawful defence of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government, but directly from the soveriegn convention of the people that framed the State government. it is one of hte “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and “is excepted out of the general powers of government.” A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impact it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power.

The Court then held that discrimination in sentencing based on the probable lethality of a weapon was legally justified, but:

The right to carry a bowie-knife for lawful defence is secured, and must be admitted. It is an exceedingly destructive weapon. It is difficult to defend against it, by any degree of bravery, or any amount of skill. The gun or pistol may miss its aim, and when discharged, its dangerous character is lost, or diminished at least. The sword may be parried. With these weapons men fight for the sake of the combat, to satisfy the laws of honor, not necessarily with the intention to kill, or with a certainty of killing, when the intention exists. The bowie-knife differs from these in its device and design; it is the instrument of almost certain death. He who carries such a weapon, for lawful defence, as he may, makes himself more dangerous to the rights of others, considering the frailties of human nature, than if he carried a less dangerous weapon.

Today’s controversy over semiautomatic military style rifles (so-called “assault weapons”) has strong parallels to the concern expressed here about the Bowie. In both cases, the weapon was perceived as an “instrument of almost certain death,” and a a weapon against which there was no defense. Also like today’s controversy, the distinction between a Bowie knife and a butcher knife is partly in the perception of the purposes of the weapon, not their actual capabilities.

Interesting parallels to today, aren’t they? The more things change….

The critical thing about this, though is that the Cockrum decision came in 1859. The U.S. v. Cruikshank decision came in 1875, followed by Presser v. Illinois in 1886. Cockrum should still be precedent for Texas STATE law, given the wording of 13th Section of the Texas Bill of Rights, but it does not apply to the FEDERAL government, because inferior courts cannot tell the Federal Supreme Court that it’s out to lunch, even when it is. And laws have been passed to infringe on or impair the right to keep and bear arms, but not too damned many in Texas.

You’ll notice that the Texas legislature didn’t stand up to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban as being violative of the right to keep and bear arms, nor did it protest the 1934 National Firearms Act, nor any part of the 1968 GCA.

Nice try, Robert, but no kewpie doll for you! 😉

It’s a Cheap Shot, I Know…

KevinLeave a comment

…but I have to comment on this. I realize that it could happen anywhere, not just in England. Washington D.C., suburban Houston, wherever, but this is the kind of thing that just pisses me off when arguing with people who want to make victim disarmament mandatory rather than voluntary. When I read this story the thing that immediately popped into my mind was the quote by Tim Lambert of Deltoid where he defended gun control laws by saying:

If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.

Which commenter Sarah of Carnaby Fudge rephrased:

If the law disarms citizens, then it can make self defence impossible where it would have been possible if the citizen was armed.

In this case, that couldn’t be more true.

‘He held a knife to Joseph’s throat and then stabbed me’

By Simon Freeman, Times Online
Young paralysed mother gives her account, by blinking and mouthing words to police, of a vicious stab attack in Surrey

The man who attacked Abigail Witchalls chased the young mother along a leafy Surrey lane, held a knife to her toddler son’s throat and then stabbed her in the neck, according to a harrowing account she has given to detectives.

The attacker, a man in his 20s or early 30s, then rolled her son’s buggy over her body before fleeing from the quiet lane in the wealthy village of Little Bookham.

Mrs Witchalls’s harrowing story was painstakingly recorded over six hours last night by two female officers using a silent vocabulary of blinks and mouthed words from her bed at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, South London.

Detectives today praised the courage and determination of Mrs Witchalls, who is paralysed and was preganant at the time of the attack. They said that they had been amazed by the detail she has so far been able to give. It is not know(sic) whether her unborn child has survived.

At a press conference at Surrey Police headquarters in Guildford today, Detective Superintendent Adrian Harper said: “She is an incredibly brave and determined young woman.”

Detective Superintendent Adrian Harper, leading the investigation, said Mrs Witchalls, 26, was determined to help catch her attacker.

He described how she had been walking along the lane with her son at 3.45pm on Wednesday when she was passed by a blue, four-door estate car. A man in the driving seat made eye contact with her and, he said, she began to fear for her safety.

“She first saw the man at about 3.45pm on the public footpath along Water Lane in Little Bookham. The man was in an old-style blue estate car.

“It drove towards her on the path and passed her and they looked at each other. At that, Abigail started to feel uneasy and put Joseph in his buggy and began to walk home along the path with a sense of purpose.

“When she was three-quarters of the way along the track she turned and saw the car had pulled up. The man had got out and was coming toward her. She heard him say ‘You’ve dropped your purse’.

“She tried to open the gate at the end of the lane but in her panic was unable to do so. She turned around and saw the man had hold of Joseph and was holding a knife to his throat. He then grabbed her and pulled her down to the ground and as he did so he stabbed her in the back of the neck with a knife.

“He then pushed the buggy with Joseph still in it on top of her and ran off.”

Mrs Witchalls described the man as being aged between 20 and 35, with short dark scruffy hair. He had a long thin face, with prominent cheekbones, and wore a silver hoop earring in each ear. He had a deep voice with a southern or Cockney accent and black bags under his eyes. He appeared to be under the influence of drink or drugs.

Mr Harper said: “Abigail has been through an even more horrendous experience than we imagined. It’s hard to imagine a more compelling picture of vulnerability and innocence. He’s clearly a very dangerous man who must be caught as soon as possible.

“We are conducting an enormous operation and have gathered a huge amount of information. We now need the help of the public. This was a crime so horrific that I would hope that helping identify the offender would come before any loyalty from friends, relatives or even criminal associates.

“This is a most unusual process with a very intelligent and strong young woman. What Abigail has told us is very significant to this inquiry. We are able to work with confirmed information which has crime directly from her.

“It has changed the focus of the inquiry and enabled us to rule out the man with the blue Peugeot we had previously arrested and bailed. We believe he was in the vicinity but that he was not involved in the attack.”

He added that the interview had been an emotional experience for Mrs Witchalls, her family and the officers involved.

He added: “Suffice to say that the entire family and my officers found the interview very challenging and emotional. Joseph wasn’t harmed. He did have a knife held to his throat. He is starting to act out some of the things that happened to him on that day.

“This description is a strong description I think there will be a few people out there who will know the individual involved.

“These lanes are remote locations. It isn’t an area that you would have come to by chance and this may well be a local person with local knowledge.”

Assistant Chief Constable Mark Riley again praised Mrs Witchalls for her bravery and reinforced the appeal for information.

He said: “Her condition does appear to be continuing to improve. She has sustained an horrific injury but she is no longer in a critical condition.

“We believed that after yesterday’s interview she would need a day’s rest. She has in fact demanded that we return to the hospital today to continue the interview process.

“She is an extremely intelligent young lady with a determination we should all be proud of. The prognosis is still unclear and the hospital is conduction further tests at this time.”

Mrs Witchalls, who was ten weeks pregnant when she was attacked, was enjoying a walk along a bridle path adjacent to £1 million homes when her assailant struck.

She has serious swelling around her spinal cord and doctors are unable to say whether she will be permanently paralysed. It is not known whether her unborn child survived the attack.

The law did not disarm Mrs. Witchalls’ attacker. I don’t know whether Mrs. Witchalls would have wanted a weapon had it been allowed, but she didn’t have a choice. I doubt whoever did this is a first-time offender. They’ve arrested a man and have already released him on bail, but the chance of him having encountered a resisting victim in the past who might have put him off of violent crime is essentially nil. The law preventing English subjects from carrying any “offensive” weapon only works on the law-abiding.

Here’s one more:

FATHER DIES OF INJURIES

A father of three has died after trying to save a schoolgirl from being attacked by a gang of teenagers, it has emerged.

Thomas Noble was allegedly struck on the head and fell to the ground during the incident, close to his home in Sunderland.

The 53-year-old taxi driver had been fighting for his life since the assault in the Roker area of the city on Friday night but died in hospital on Sunday.

He had rushed from the family home to help after hearing the girl scream as she was surrounded by a gang of youths outside an off-licence.

During the incident Mr Noble was allegedly hit from behind with a weapon, causing him to fall and smash his head on the pavement.

His ex-wife, Pat Scott, told The Journal newspaper: “We’ve been told he was trying to stop a young girl being assaulted. It was a gang of youths, and he was trying to protect a female.”

A Northumbria Police spokesman said a post-mortem examination revealed that Mr Noble had died of head injuries.

A boy of 16 has been remanded in custody by Sunderland magistrates, accused of manslaughter.

Mr. Noble had no weapon, against a gang of teenagers. So armed with nothing other than his bare hands and foul language apparently (since waving even a toy pistol will get you six months in the slammer for “possessing an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence”), he got killed for his good Samaritan effort.

Yup, “If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.”

But it doesn’t disarm attackers. It disarms the defenders.

Dr. Hemenway Responds. And So Do I.

KevinLeave a comment

On Sunday, Sept. 26, reader sent Dr. David Hemenway a link to this blog with the following comment:

The subtitle of your book is “A Dramatic New Plan for Ending America’s Epidemic of Gun Violence.”

The definition of epidemic is 1 widespread occurrence of a disease at a particular time. 2 such a disease.(The Oxford Desk Dictionary, 1997).
Why do you say “gun violence” is an epidemic when it is not? It is not a disease one can catch by being in the presence of a gun.

Have you read a critique of your book by Kevin Smith(sic) at “The Smallest Minority.” web site?

I, and a lot of people, would be very interested in your response to him.

Dr. Hemenway responded, and here it is, in its entirety, with some comments interspersed, and a longer response following:

September 27, 2004

I was asked to respond to what is claimed to be a critique of my book appearing on the website, the Smallest Minority. I have neither the time nor inclination to have a detailed response to the many assertions and arguments there, many of which are wrong or misleading.

It turns out that the Smallest Minority isn’t really discussing my book “Private Guns Public Health”, but a magazine article about it. Unfortunately it seems that the Smallest Minority may not have read my book (or the hundreds of journal articles that the book summarizes). It does seem silly for him to accuse the journalist who tried to reduce a 300+ page book and 3 hours of interviews into 3 interesting pages of text, as engaging in “bait-and-switch” tactics or not sufficiently discussing what the Smallest Minority would have liked discussed.

Just for the record, I didn’t claim that my three pieces were a critique of Dr. Hemenway’s book. I was quite explicit that I was asked to fisk a Harvard Magazine review of the book, and I did, at least the first page or so of it. It was the reader who emailed Dr. Hemenway who characterized my pieces as a critique of his book (and got my name wrong, too.)

However, my accusations of “bait and switch” are, IMHO, not “silly.” You’ll note that Dr. Hemenway didn’t rebut, but simply dismissed. For someone who doesn’t have time for a “detailed response,”a two-page reply with a chart certainly seems to be one.

I will talk about one issue, to illustrate the type of problem found in the Smallest Minority’s discussion.

A dozen case-control studies all find that, in the U.S., a gun in the home is a risk factor for “violent death” (i.e., homicide, suicide or unintentional gun death). Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include age, gender, community, living alone, education, alcohol illicit drug use, depression medication, and psychiatric diagnosis. Ecological studies also find that, across U.S. states and regions, higher levels of household gun ownership are associated with higher rates of homicide (due to higher gun homicide rates), higher rates of suicide (due to higher gun suicide rates) and more unintentional gun deaths. Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include poverty, alcohol consumption, unemployment, urbanization, divorce, education, violent crime, major depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Massachusetts, where I live, is a state with (relatively) low levels of household gun ownership, strict gun control laws, and low rates of violent death. I remarked to the journalist, who lives in Massachusetts, that I was glad I lived in Massachusetts and that “It’s nice to have raised my son in Massachusetts, where he is so much safer” than most other states. The Smallest Minority took this quote, asserted that I live in Boston, which I do not, and made comparisons to violent death in parts of Arizona, a state that has more permissive gun laws than Massachusetts.

I apologize here. I did indeed assert that Dr. Hemenway lived in Boston, and that is not the case. My most abject apologies. I made an incorrect assumption based on the belief that since he worked at Harvard University, he therefore lived in the Boston metropolitan area. My error. I do hereby withdraw that assertion.

That does not, however, change the comparison data between Boston, Tucson, and Phoenix.

So, let’s compare Massachusetts and Arizona. Here are data from 1999-2001, the most recent time period available, easily obtained from the CDC WISQARS website.

Number of Deaths and Mortality Rate Ratio, 1999-2001
Arizona pop: 5.154 million Massachusetts pop: 6.356 million Mortality Rate Ratio, Arizona v. Massachusetts
Homicides 1,374 501 3.4
Gun 909 218 5.2
Non-gun 465 283 2.0
Suicides 2,317 1,244 2.3
Gun 1,433 330 5.4
Non-Gun 884 914 1.2
Unintentional Gun 47 6 10.0
Total Gun Deaths 2,460 565 5.4

In other words, a resident of Arizona is over 5 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, commit suicide with a gun, and be unintentionally killed with a gun than a resident of Massachusetts. Arizona may be nicer than Massachusetts in many ways (e.g. climate) but it’s difficult to understand how the Smallest Minority can suggest that Arizona is a safer state in terms of gun deaths, or violent deaths.

I didn’t. I asserted that Tucson and Phoenix were safer in terms of homicide than Boston during the time period I referenced, gun laws notwithstanding. I also noted that Arizona was a border state with a high level of drug trafficking. Apparently there’s a lot of homicide and suicide going on outside those metropolitan areas here that don’t occur in Massachussetts. Given the fact that a lot of drugs do move through this state, I’m not surprised. This does not, however, refute the data for Boston, Phoenix, and Tucson. Massachussett’s gun laws have apparently not made Boston significantly safer.

Dr. Hemeway writes that “Massachusetts, where I live, is a state with (relatively) low levels of household gun ownership, strict gun control laws, and low rates of violent death.” Yes, indeed it has. It also has a tremendously lower level of drug trafficking. According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice in Massachusetts, in 2003, the following drug seizures occurred:

Cocaine: 374.7 kgs.
Heroin: 29.7 kgs.
Methamphetamine: 1.2 kgs.
Marijuana: 177.4 kgs.
Ecstasy: 5,717
Methamphetamine Laboratories: 1

Via the same source, in Arizona in 2003 the following was seized:

Cocaine: 2,373 kgs.
Heroin: 3.2 kgs.
Methamphetamine: 538 kgs.
Marijuana: 322,374 kgs.
Ecstasy: 107 tablets
Methamphetamine Laboratories: 119
Heroin and Ecstasy seem to be more popular in Massachusetts, but nothing else. Arizona appears to be the central pipeline for Marijuana, and a major thoroughfare for cocaine – and drug trafficking is a major risk factor for violent death. Add to that the traffic in illegal aliens. The people involved in both of these are members of a culture that survives by personal violence. Guns are a byproduct of this culture, not a cause of it, and gun control laws will not disarm them.

In general, the Smallest Minority seems to believe if he can find an anomaly, then the general associations scientists find between guns and death is disproved. It is analogous to his finding that Abel smokes but Cain doesn’t, and Cain has heart disease but Abel doesn’t, and believing that this proves that smoking does not really cause heart disease. Or believing that the fact that Japanese smoke more than Americans and have less cancer shows not only that cigarettes don’t cause cancer, but may well be protective. But such anecdotal evidence shows only what everyone knows, that there are many factors affecting the likelihood of heart disease or cancer, and smoking is only one of those factors. It is not the only factor. Nor is gun availability the only factor affecting homicide or suicide—but the evidence is quite strong that it is one important factor.

I will not argue that gun availability is one important factor affecting criminal homicide, but I will argue that I believe no such causality has been proven when it comes to suicide. I will argue that guns are not the cause of homicide or suicide or even accidental death by gunshot. Culture is. This is the critical difference between my position on “gun control” and that of the gun control movement.

What makes the Smallest Minority’s arguments even more questionable is that his claimed anomalies are often specious. One can find states with more guns and a lower homicide rate than Massachusetts (HINT: look for very rural states, since virtually all crime, including homicide, is much higher in urban areas), but Arizona is not one of them. There are many other examples. The Smallest Minority also says that about half the households in Finland contain guns. While a UN report did say that, the information appears to be incorrect. Probably the best source for comparative gun ownership is the International Crime Surveys that found that in 1989 23% of Finnish households contained a gun, in 1992 it was 25%, and in 1996 it was about 26%.

I’ve used International Crime Survey data before, and been burned by it. The ICS claimed that Scotland in 2000 had a homicide rate of 13.3/100,000. Scotland’s government reports the level is 2.0. Sweden’s homicide rate was given as 10.01. Sweden reports 1.2. (Apparently sometime since I did the research for that piece, the “International Crime Statistics” pages of Interpol have been made accessible only to “authorized police users.”) Pardon me if I don’t feel the ICS data is all that reliable, and used a different, assumably accurate source. (If you can’t trust the UN, who can you trust?)

Which brings us to,

Discussions of firearms in the Smallest Minority, and many other internet sites, seem primarily to be debates, where each party tries to find evidence to support his already held point of view. These are interesting exercises, but they add little to science, and I am not very interested in them. There seems to be a surprisingly lack of curiosity as to what really is happening in the lives of 300 million American, or the 5-6 billion people on the planet. We can’t rely on news to tell us much. We should rely, not on anecdotes, but on good scientific studies, where the goal is to find the truth rather than support for what one already believes.

David Hemenway

Thank you, Dr. Hemenway, for your reply. (You could have cc’d me a copy, but the original respondent was kind enough to forward it.)

I agree with you on your characterization of my site and others on the internet. In general we are, and I unashamedly proclaim to be, advocates of our personal positions. I concur that we do not “add to science.” I concur that we “can’t rely on the news to tell us much,” and much of what they do tell us is wrong, either out of ignorance or bias. I agree that we should rely on good scientific studies, but I have seen that in much of the study of firearms that “good science” isn’t used a great deal.

You state that “A dozen case-control studies all find that, in the U.S., a gun in the home is a risk factor for “violent death” (i.e., homicide, suicide or unintentional gun death).” I have no doubt that firearms were present, but were they the risk factor, or were they merely an indicator of the real risk factor? You state, “Some of the other risk factors accounted for in one or more of these studies include age, gender, community, living alone, education, alcohol illicit drug use, depression medication, and psychiatric diagnosis.” I have to wonder why no one who does these studies considers that people who die violently overwhelmingly belong to a culture that practices personal violence, and that guns and other weapons are the accoutrements of this culture, not its cause. Millions of people own firearms who won’t die by gunshot because they are not part of that culture, yet your efforts seem aimed at treating the United States as if it were homogeneous where it comes to firearms possession.

The research that you and your colleagues do, all the data that you collect, are all directed in the belief that “the number of guns” in our society is responsible for the level of violence, and that if we could somehow get rid of them our problems would abate. I disagree. The problem is that a small minority of the country embraces an extreme culture of violence, and the people who do so will be the very last to be disarmed. I therefore believe that attempting to solve our gun-violence problem by attacking guns is a path to disaster.

You (the gun control advocates) have identified a violent crime problem. You think you’ve identified the disease vector, and that gun violence can be solved by eliminating or at least reducing that vector, but you ignore the example of England that indicates that path is a failure. Worse, you gloss over the fact that our homicide rates are horribly distorted by a small, identifiable minority that is destroying itself by violence. Instead of attempting to address that glaring and tragic problem, your colleagues would rather look away and instead attempt to attack that “iron pipeline” as though efforts to control the illegal flow of any material has ever been effective. You ignore the first rule of economics: that supply will always meet demand by dismissal.

Hemenway scoffs at the rote objection, “A determined criminal will always get a gun,” responding, “Yes, but a lot of people aren’t that determined. I’m sure there are some determined yacht buyers out there, but when you raise the price high enough, a lot of them stop buying yachts.”

However, there are nearly 300 million guns already inside our borders. Guns are not nearly as difficult or expensive to produce as a yacht. Sixty-five million handguns. At most two million violent felons. The current supply will easily keep the price down to a low level for any foreseeable future.

And you claim that my arguments are specious?

Gun control advocates ignore the fact that all gun control attempted so far here has been, at best, inconclusive in its effect (For those interested, read Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America for more on this). You ignore the fact that there has been over a decade of decreasing violent crime here that cannot be linked to any gun control law. You ignore the fact that during that same period between two and three million new guns have been added to the private market each year, but insist that there need to be more gun control laws passed in order to reduce gun crime.

There is no evidence that “gun control” has been beneficial, but the response to this has been, as I have repeatedly noted, that the philosophy cannot be wrong! We must do it again, only HARDER! Dr. Hemenway, the GUNS aren’t causing the problem, a culture of violence is. But it’s easier to attack a steel and lead vector than a behavior. Yet the behavior has been affected, and because of this, not gun control laws, gun violence has been reduced.

You see that the U.S. has a high level of suicide by firearm, but ignore or at least downplay the fact that our suicide rates are pretty average for the world, regardless of gun availability. You want “safer guns” so that accidental gunshot is less likely, but ignore the fact that accidental gunshot – absolute numbers, not just the rates – have been declining ever since we’ve been keeping record – and that “gun control” doesn’t affect that except where it keeps people from actually possessing guns. Gun control advocates hype the problem of accidental gunshot among children, but fail to note that such shootings are relatively rare given the huge number of firearms in private hands. You distort this by making claims that ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen children a day die by gunshot, but fail to note that the overwhelming majority of these “children” are young men between the ages of 17 and 20 who are involved in criminal activities. This leads to erroneous conclusions – never dispelled by the gun controllers – such as Jean Hanff Korelitz’s claim that “more than 4,000 children… die in gun-related accidents each year.”

Is that good science?

You suggest methods by which guns can be made “safer” to reduce the possibility of such shootings, but don’t seem to want to study how such changes will actually effect a reduction, since there are already 60-70 million handguns and possibly over 200 million long arms already in circulation that such changes cannot affect. You recommend additional gun laws, but when such laws are passed and no benefit is seen the cry is, again, that we need MORE gun control because the previous effort wasn’t implemented properly.

In short, your solution (and I’m still using the general “you” here), your path to “create a society in which it is harder to make fatal blunders” is to severely restrict public access to the means with which those “fatal blunders” can be made, and you want the U.S. to implement more and stricter gun control laws to accomplish this end.

And this is the part I object to most strongly: You have identified the problem as one of “too many guns,” yet you, the gun control advocates, generally claim to not want to confiscate anything. Change designs to make them safer, yes (while not addressing nearly 300 million guns already out there). Confiscate, no. Register, yes (though the only people who would register are the ones you don’t need to worry about) but never confiscate (though that’s the only function a registration system actually has.) License, yes (ditto.) Confiscate, never.

However, the only way to affect what you yourself have identified as the problem – the number of guns – is to take those guns, and not let the public have any more.

We’re capable of logic. We can see where “gun control” is inevitably headed.

The goal of reducing death by gunshot is noble. The path to it is wrong, and I’ll fight that path as strongly as I possibly can because it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it doesn’t address the actual underlying causes. It’s wrong because it’s been proven a failure. And most importantly, it’s wrong because it violates the fundamental law of the United States.

And I will use this and other forums to fight it just as you use your forum to advocate it. You may be a lab-coated PhD, and I may be just a pajama-clad ankle-biter, but there are a lot more people like me than people like you, and our numbers are growing. In a democratic form of government, that means something.

I Pound My Head Against the Wall Because it Feels So Good When I Stop

KevinLeave a comment

(We now return to our original programming)

Tim Lambert and I are attempting to discuss self-defense and weapon regulation. In an odd mix of blog comments and posts that is probably hard for anybody but us (and maybe even us) to follow, this is the latest entry in that exchange. It started with this post, continued in the comment section, then that spawned this later post by Tim. I could not reply in the comment section of that post, so my response is below, here. Tim’s response to that is in the comments to that prior post. Whew! And now I’m responding here.

A bit more background: The problem here, as I see it, is that Tim and I have entirely different perspectives based on entirely different philosophies. The philosophy that I believe Tim adheres to has led to the disarmament of UK citizens under the mistaken belief that it would make them safer. I believe, as I stated earlier, that Tim and other proponents of that philosophy suffer from cognitive dissonance – an inability to recognize the error of the philosophy, as most accurately described by Steven Den Beste:

When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn’t seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn’t executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as “escalation of failure”.)

Because of Tim’s cognitive dissonance he is forced to dismiss or ignore anything that doesn’t fit the philosophy. Thus, when I ask the question,

And how is a woman to exercise her presumed inherent right to lethal force against a rapist if she’s denied any means with which to do so?

three times, he finally replies with:

Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases, but they can also make it easier in others.

Isn’t that comforting?

The first question Tim asked me in his latest post was:

(Y)ou asserted that the statement “self defense in the UK is illegal” is “practically true”. If you acknowledge that you can defend yourself without a weapon, then surely you must concede that your statement is false?

Let’s see what I’ve said about that question so far, in chronological order:

The law there seems to be one based on “proportional response” – e.g., stabbing someone who isn’t armed with a weapon is “excessive force.” So is bashing them over the head with a brick. There are many of these cases, and they’ve lead us to the conclusion that private citizens in Britain had best not resist attack, or face prosecution for usurping the authority of the State in its monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
—
The appearance is that, as I said, the government guards jealously the legitimate use of force. Proles should not overstep their restrictions.
—
Do you find the law prohibiting honest citizens from carrying any weapon suitable for self-defense, while the law ostensibly allows you a right to defend yourself somewhat schizophrenic?

The jury is supposed to take your “instinctive” response to being attacked into account, but if you use a weapon in your defense you’re immediately assumed to have had it for offensive purposes. Am I misunderstanding the (il)logic here?
—
Tim, the law prevents anyone from carrying anything for self-defense. A knife, pepper spray, a club, a taser, anything.

As the law has (apparently) been interpreted (and I believe it was intended) the presumption on the part of the Government is that if you carry a weapon, any weapon, you are guilty of the intent to do criminal bodily harm. Yet the law gives lip service to the concept of the right to self-defense.
—
Is there or is there not a right to self-defense? English law says there is, yet its laws concerning weapons make self-defense, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause. The facts are that possessing, much less using anything that the State considers a weapon makes you a criminal in its eyes. It does not seem to legally recognize any legitimate use of force by any non-government actor.
—
There are no “offensive” weapons. They’re just weapons. Or tools. (A hammer makes quite an effective weapon. So, apparently, does a walking stick .) A knife can be a tool or a weapon as well. Pepper spray or mace can be used to disable a victim as well as an attacker . Same for a taser, or an axe handle. So too for firearms.

It’s not the weapon that carries the intent – it’s the user. Yet the UK government has seen fit to tell the entire population “You’re not trustworthy. You cannot be trusted with any weapon, because of the chance you might use it to inflict bodily harm upon another.”

At the same time, it tells them that they have a right to inflict bodily harm upon another in defense of themselves – all the way up to homicide in the case of rape – but that the infliction of harm must be restricted to a reasonable level.

Who gets to decide what was reasonable? A JURY. Which means, if you use force effectively in your own defense, especially if you used any weapon in that effective defense, you stand a very good chance of being charged with excessive use of force, and placed on trial. After all, seems to go the reasoning, if you were able to effectively defend yourself, if your attacker is wounded and you are not, or if your injuries are less serious than his, you weren’t in real danger and/or you de facto used excessive force.

That high risk of prosecution effectively chills the right to self defense. Who wants to risk court? Just the costs, not to mention the possibility of conviction? The inability to have or use a weapon in your defense also chills the right. If you are overmatched, what use is resistance?
—
I’ve said that, for those so willing (a firearm is) the BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB (of self-defense). But as Mr. Lindsay demonstrates, it’s hardly the “only way.” Your conclusion that my “argument is logically flawed” is based on your fallacious understanding of my argument.

That’s seven times I’ve tried to make my position perfectly clear. Here’s what Tim has said in response:

I think your arguments would be more persuasive if you could actually come up with a case that supports the position that self defence is not allowed.
—
Kevin, you seem to be equating self defence with guns. This is doubly wrong. First, guns are far more frequently used for offensive purposes than for defensive ones. And second, guns are not the only means for self defence.
—
To explicitly answer your question: No, I do not find the law to be schizophrenic. Restrictions on offensive weapons do not make it impossible to defend yourself.
—
Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases, but they can also make it easier in others (because the attacker does not have a weapon). The net effect could be to make it easier or harder on average. It certainly isn’t to make it impossible.
—
Even if there are some rare situations where a gun is the only possible means for defence, it does not make the statement that “self defense in the UK is illegal”, since that is a general statement describing all situations. (Emphasis mine.)
—
Despite learning that Lindsay had chased the robber out of his home and stabbed him in the back four times, in the comments and on his blog Baker continued to insist that self defence was illegal in practice in the UK. His argument was that England’s “laws concerning weapons make self-defense, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause”. His argument is badly wrong for two reasons.

1. Using a weapon is not the only way to defend yourself.
2. If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.

Baker’s response on the first point is to focus on cases where a weapon might actually be the only way to defend yourself…

And finally,

(Y)ou asserted that the statement “self defense in the UK is illegal” is “practically true”. If you acknowledge that you can defend yourself without a weapon, then surely you must concede that your statement is false?

We’re using the same words, but apparently speaking different languages.

So here you go, Tim: English law says, as I quoted:

Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 provides that a person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, and the question of reasonableness is subject to the amplifications contained in such cases as R v McInnes and R v. Palmer. It has been held that “if a jury thought that in a moment of unexpected anguish a person attacked had done only what he honestly and instinctively thought was necessary, that would be most potent evidence that only reasonable defensive action had been taken.”

and

One of the most important limitations on the use of weapons is of course that they cannot be carried or used to injure other people.

so weaponless self-defense is not statutorily illegal. Self-defense involving any weapon is legally risky. In both cases excessive force is to be judged by a jury. I think I said that several times. I think I was pretty clear about it, but if not, there it is in black and white.

Tim’s second objection is:

You claimed that what I was implying was: “Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense, and the government is honestly doing everything it can to disarm everybody so that you can successfully defend yourself in your unarmed state.” I never said anything like “Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense”. Kindly refrain from stuffing words into my mouth. I do not appreciate it.

What I said, verbatim, in response to your assertion of “If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.” was:

Nice of you to admit that last point. Big “if” there at the start, though. Because what you are saying here by implication is “Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense, and the government is honestly doing everything it can to disarm everybody so that you can successfully defend yourself in your unarmed state.”

Tim, that’s how it translates to me. If that’s incorrect, please explain, in detail, exactly what you did mean.

Tim continues:

You continue to insist that “laws against weapons have essentially no effect on the access to weapons by criminals”, claiming that the English experience somehow illustrated this. You then write extensively about the violent crime rate England. But this is not even relevant to your claim, since it includes violence done without weapons.

Not relevant? Why? As I pointed out – REPEATEDLY – by disarming the law abiding it leaves them essentially defenseless against violent criminals, armed or not. All the criminal need be is physically superior to his victim, or (should he desire) the criminal can be armed, knowing almost as a certainty that his victim won’t be. If criminals need not fear effective resistance then they will be emboldened. I pointed to England’s experience with violent crime over the course of the 20th Century, noting that the real upswing in violent crime began just shortly after passage of the law that made illlegal carry of any weapon for defense on the grounds that there are no “defensive” weapons for the general public, only “offensive” weapons by definition. Yet those same weapons, when held by government officials, are considered “defensive.” I gave a hypothetical example of weaponless self-defense, and then added two conditions that made weaponless self-defense even more hazardous. Tim did not comment.

Tim continues:

In 2000, England had about 4,000 with-gun robberies while the US had 170,000 After allowing for six times as many people in the US, the rate is still seven times higher in the US. This hardly proves that the laws made the difference, but the evidence is not on your side.

To me that isn’t as important as the fact that England, according to the British crime survey, suffered 276,000 robberies in 2000, and the U.S. about 408,000. With six times England’s population, that makes the English rate four times the American rate. Tim evidently considers the higher rate of robberies involving firearms to be worse than an overall much higher rate of robberies period. I do not concur. That is apparently the disconnect between our two philosophies – as long as the perpetrator doesn’t have a gun it seems, the crime committed has less importance. I don’t want to be the victim of a robbery, period, and I think that government policies that “restrict” my chances of successfully defending myself against them are immoral.

Now, I suppose, we’ll start trading statistics again?

Tim concludes:

I also note that you did not comment on the Kleck quote I gave. Do you concede that the “overmotivated criminal” is a fallacy as Kleck argues?

The pertinent part of the Kleck quote was this:

Like noncriminals, however, criminals do many things that are casually or only weakly motivated.
—
(I)t is not all impossible for crime prevention efforts to be achieved among the more weakly or temporarily motivated criminals who make up the large part of the active offender population.

Specifically as it comes to guns, Kleck is correct, but by disarming the citizenry and by making it legally risky to use weapons in self defense, it is safer for “weakly or temporarily motivated criminals” to commit crimes against other people. They don’t need a gun to be successful. Physical superiority, a knife, a steel bar, or even a broken bottle is all that is needed.

An here’s the pernicious part, what I believe is the unintended consequence of a philosophy that considers all weapons in the hands of non-government agents to be “offensive weapons,” one that does not recognize that citizens can carry a weapon with defensive intent: Those “weakly or temporarily motivated criminals” learn that violent crime is lucrative, easy, and low-risk, and with each new success they become emboldened to do it again. This draws others to do it as well, just as the lucrative illicit drug industry constantly attracts new “talent.” Easy money. Some percentage of those “weakly or temporarily motivated criminals” become professional or at least semi-professional at it, and are willing to carry the tools of the profession.

This is a long-term trend, and I believe the history of violent crime in England illustrates this. The rising level of violent crime in England as a result of the failure of the philosophy that “all weapons are offensive” forced the government to become ever more restrictive towards the general citizenry without affecting the ever rising levels of violent crime. In combination with other failed social policies, particularly social welfare and criminal justice reform, disarming the general public has resulted in a polity with the highest level of violent crime in the developed world.

Still unwilling to admit the error of the philosophy, the government continues its congnitive dissonance and “escalates the failure” by announcing a desire to end of “double-jeopardy” protections and trial by jury for some crimes. Another incremental step toward what would be, for all intents and purposes, a police state, not a free nation.

All of this justified, apparently, by a fear of firearms.

UPDATE, 5/2:

I made an error in this post, which Tim pointed out:

Oh, and you blew the comparison of robbery rates. You have compared the survey measured robbery rate in England with the police reported robbery rate in the US. The police reported number in England is 78,000 (it’s right next to the 276,000 figure you reported) that’s roughly the same rate as you get with 408,000 robberies in the US once you adjust for population.

He was quite correct. I was wrong. I have apologized and clarified my position in a later post.

Tim Lambert Responds!

KevinLeave a comment

Tim has a new post up, dedicated to proving me wrong after that long exchange. Too bad we seem to be arguing different topics, but… My response is (typically for me) really long, and the preview function in his comment section seems to have puked, so I’m responding here. Please go read Tim’s opening salvo first so you understand what I’m responding to.

Glad you responded, Tim. I thought for a second you’d abandoned the field!

Point 1: I stated, quite plainly:

Where have I said a gun is the ONLY way?

Please, point it out.

I’ve said that, for those so willing it’s the BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB. But as Mr. Lindsay demonstrates, it’s hardly the “only way.”

Now you’ve changed the assertion to that I state a WEAPON is the “only way” to defend yourself, even though I gave a hypothetical example of unarmed self-defense in that same thread:

Example: Someone confronts me and demands my wallet (with an implied threat of physical injury if I do not comply.) Instead of yielding up my wallet, I punch him in the mouth and knock him out. Doing so, I break my hand. I am injured, but I have not lost my wallet. I have successfully defended myself, even though I did not avoid injury. I have done something else – I have prevented a crime of violence (robbery edited from the original) through the legitimate use of force. My punching him in the mouth is not assault, it’s self-defense. If I am able to call the police and the mugger is apprehended, (hopefully before he recovers consciousness) I have aided in removing a violent criminal from the street (until they put him out on bail ten minutes after arraignment.) If I then testify against him and put him in jail, I’ve done a bit more effective job (unless he gets a sentence of probation.) Regardless, I’ve not only defended myself, I’ve defended society by resisting violent crime and attempting to remove a violent criminal from the general population.

Now, repeat the exercise above with the assailant holding an (illegal) knife, and me with only my hands and feet with which to defend myself.

Then add my wife and my two grandchildren to the equation.

I note you didn’t comment on that example.

Point 2: “If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.” Nice of you to admit that last point. Big “if” there at the start, though. Because what you are saying here by implication is “Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense, and the government is honestly doing everything it can to disarm everybody so that you can successfully defend yourself in your unarmed state.” Well! That’s comforting. Good to know the government is looking out for its citizens. But it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that the law doesn’t disarm attackers. They choose to carry a weapon or not regardless of the law.

You’re damned right I focus on cases where the only way to defend yourself is with a weapon, because the UK government has seen fit to disarm the law-abiding. As the link you provided in the original thread stated,

One of the most important limitations on the use of weapons is of course that they cannot be carried or used to injure other people. (Emphasis added)

Apparently any other people, including someone who assaults you.

I did indeed assert that the laws against weapons have essentially no effect on the access to weapons by criminals. I didn’t provide evidence because I thought anyone reading would acknowledge that the English experience pretty much illustrated that, but no, you’ve whipped out some pretty charts to ostensibly prove otherwise. Well, I’m game.

Your first chart indicating violent crime rates shows a climb from about 2.2 million incidents in 1981 to about 4.2 million in 1995, then a reduction to about 2.5 million in 2000. According to this Home Office page in 2002/03 it’s back up to not quite 2.8 million. You’re certainly right about crime going up and down, but you’re looking at the short trend, not the long one, and you neglect to note that violent crime here in the States – where we don’t “enjoy” the kind of weapon control laws the UK does, also began trending down at the same time. One problem – the rates in England & Wales now exceed ours, and have for a while. Hell, they exceed most everybody’s.

The second graphic shows armed robberies involving firearms and you use it to state “Robberies with firearms are less frequent now than they were at the start of the 90s.” They are? The way I read that chart, they climbed dramatically from 1990 to ’95, dipped pretty significantly after 1995 (prior to Dunblane) and they minimized in 1998, but they’re right back up to where they were in 1990. I thought the handgun ban was supposed to make everyone safer? This Home Office report indicates that from 1991 through 1995 violent crime committed with firearms in England and Wales stayed fairly stable at about 13,000 per year. Then there was the ’96 handgun ban and things started to fluctuate, but the trend is still UP rather than DOWN. UP, in fact to a level of over 22,000 for 2002.

Aside from that, British weapon control laws started long before 1981. They actually started about 1920 (Bolshevism and all that) with The Firearms Act, 1920 that required registration of rifles and handguns and introduced the “good reason” restriction. “Self defense” at that time was an accepted “good reason.” It really got going in the middle of the century with the Prevention of Crime Act, 1953 which made it illegal to carry an “offensive weapon” without demonstrating a “need.” “Offensive weapons” included knives, pointed objects, and tear gas along with firearms. This is, apparently, where the government decided that “the most important limitations on the the use of weapons is of course that they cannot be carried or used to injure other people.”

Here’s a challenge, Tim. You work at a university and have access to stuff that’s not on-line. Go dig up the violent crime rate statistics for England & Wales from 1900 through 2000. Long ago I found statistics that showed the rate was low and stable up until shortly after passage of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1953. In 1958 the rate was a tiny 69/100,000, but it climbed strongly and steadily from there until by 1997 it was up to 647/100,000 – a more than 900% increase. According to this report the rate for 2002/03 was 1900/100,000. Now, I’m certain that changes in the way crimes are recorded has had an effect on those numbers, and while Gary Mauser’s graph shows an apparent step-change in those rates right about 1997, they just kept going up.

Perhaps you’re right, perhaps the fact that the government implemented a philosophy of

All weapons are offensive and weapons cause violent crime, therefore we must do everything in our power to disarm our populace in order to prevent violent crime!

isn’t responsible for the increase, but I’ve not seen any other explanation for it. But you know us “gullible gunners!” So simplisme.

What I have seen is that implementation of that policy has not made England and Wales safer. That polity has moved up rapidly to achieve the rank of #1 in violent crime in the developed world. Regardless of whether the laws passed as a result of that philosophy are responsible for the increase, both have proven useless in actually reducing violent crime. The philosophy has failed, yet it has been repeatedly tried, each time with more vigor, in a textbook example of cognitive dissonance.

I’ll repeat myself, since it seems necessary: This isn’t about guns. It isn’t about weapons. It’s about a philosophy that denies the absolute right to defend yourself, your family, and your property while giving that right lip-service. If you can defend as valid a system that tells people they have a right to self-defense but denies to them the means to exercise that right then we can’t have a productive discussion. We won’t be talking to each other. But I hope sincerely that you’ll continue this exchange, because other people need to see it. They need to see how you can answer the question,

And how is a woman to exercise her presumed inherent right to lethal force against a rapist if she’s denied any means with which to do so? What weapon is she left with? Foul language? Mean thoughts? Rapier wit?”

with

Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases, but they can also make it easier in others.

Abstractions are always so much easier to deal with than hard realities.

I’ve got lots of questions to ask you Tim, and I’m really interested in your responses. Here’s an invitation: I have another blog that I started just for discussions like this, because comment sections are just too damned limited. Want to join me there? Would you rather just trade posts? Or would you rather stop now before I make your brain hurt in your defense of the indefensible? As I said, I’m game.

UPDATE, 4/5/04 10:30 AM MST: Tim has a new post up, but has yet to respond to this post in either my comments, his comments, or the body of his blog. It’s only been two days, though. I’ll give him a couple more…

UPDATE 5:00PM: You’ve GOT to read this! Aaaaaahhhggghh! And I can’t post on it yet! THAT gets archived!

UPDATE 4/6 11:00AM: Tim has responded in the comments of his post. I think he’s going to find that forum restrictive if this exchange goes on very long, but his choice. I’ll reply in a couple of days, probably after I have something to say about my question above.