Year: 2009

In contrast to a conversation that goes nowhere, last week, Doug Pennington of the Brady Campaign threw down on Megan McArdle.  Obviously they took Megan’s comments seriously enough to respond to them.  But Doug, in his response, ditches much of the usual Brady nonsense and actually talks about some real issues:

Contrary to McArdle’s framework, the issue here isn’t whether firearms have a magical, mesmerizing power to make good people do bad things.  The issue is whether fallible human beings carrying the best tool for killing people to a heated protest increases the possibility of a lethally violent outcome – something of particular concern at a Presidential venue.  Other issues include whether adding guns to Presidential events – outside of trained law enforcement – makes the Secret Service’s job unnecessarily harder, and whether being confronted with a gun-carrying protester can be intimidating and stifle debate.

I’m with Megan that I’ll defer to the Secret Service on how best to protect the President, but I actually share Doug’s concern that the open display of guns could be seen by others as threatening, and may discourage people from speaking out, but I’m also concerned that people are assaulting those who disagree with them, even going so far as biting fingers off their opponents.  Yes, it is emotionally charged.  Which is why ordinary, well adjusted individuals might not be unreasonable in wanting tools to protect themselves in such situations.

I’ve always gotten the impression that Brady folks believe that violent criminals are just ordinary people who just snap.  But murders, particularly assassins, tend to be more than just your average “fallible human beings”.  Most scientific research into the minds of violent criminals shows them to be quite different from ordinary people.  But Doug continues:

The problem with McArdle’s view, and the gun libertarian position generally, is the assumption of a damaged analogy between unregulated speech and unregulated gun carrying.  The assumption is that since prior restraint against speech is bad by definition, prior restraint against unrestricted gun carrying must be equally bad, or at least deeply suspect.  Except that it’s not, because they are radically different things when put into practice in the world real human beings live in.

Whoa!  Real philosophical arguments coming out of the Brady Campaign rather than emotionally charged nonsense and drivel?   Let’s hope this isn’t a trend.  We might actually have to start making arguments back instead of just mockery.  I don’t think our argument has ever been that the right to keep and bear arms has to be absolutely identical to the right to free speech, or freedom of religion.  Whether or not prior restraint when it comes to guns should be treated the same way as for free speech is a matter of debate.  But what we do demand is that the right to keep and bear arms be taken seriously, as we do with other constitutional rights.  And that means you don’t get to pass laws and enact policy based on the justification that some behavior makes you uncomfortable.

We can also take steps to make it harder for dangerous people to get guns as a general matter – for example, criminal background checks for all gun sales (a policy McArdle agrees with), limiting bulk purchases of firearms to cut the illegal gun market; and restricting access to military-style assault weapons.

OK, now we’re back to ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers.  The Brady penitence for our wicked ways.  I’ve said before, I’m willing to sit down and talk about background checks on private transfers, but certain things have to be taken off the table first, like being forced to go through an FFL, and you have to be willing to talk about how NICS works too, and address some of our concerns with it.

At the end of the day, reducing gun violence isn’t about any one law, but is about a collection of policies that work together as a safety net to prevent as many needless gun deaths and injuries as we can in this country.  We can do these things while respecting the Second Amendment, and the First.

I don’t think anyone ever believed it was just about one law, and now that the Supreme Court has taken prohibition largely off the table, it can’t be about one law.  But what’s the Brady Campaign’s philosophy about respecting the Second Amendment?  It can’t just be anything short of prohibition is lawful.  That’s not a treating the right seriously.  A collection of laws who’s intention is to frustrate and discourage gun ownership, much like DC’s new almost prohibition, or even New Jersey’s laws, is absolutely off the table.  If that’s respecting the Second Amendment, we have nothing much to discuss.  Any law that proposes to limit gun ownership on the part of criminals by limiting gun ownership on the part of everyone is an automatic non-starter with us.  I wish there was some way to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, without interfering with ordinary people’s right to keep and bear them, but there isn’t.  At least not without bringing about this kind of world.  If the Bradys want to start having a serious philosophical discussion about the Second Amendment, I’d be game for it.  It would certainly be better than the usual BS rhetoric, but I’d suspect they’d have to admit they really don’t respect the Second Amendment, and would have to admit their goal is to limit the impact of Heller to the greatest extent possible.  Perhaps the reason there’s little or no common ground between the two sides is because we each understand the other’s true end goal.

I’ve been following MikeB’s blog now for several weeks, and one of the disappointments has been that the conversation just doesn’t seem to go in any real direction.  There will have to be a lot of agreeing to disagree when two people are coming from the opposite side of the spectrum on an issue, but usually when talking with someone who is intellectually serious about a topic, the conversation at least tends to take on some structure, as areas of agreement and disagreement tend to be worked out.   Typically in this kind of situation you’ll find serious questions, that don’t have easy answers, get asked by each side.  People tend to move past the bullshit, and the easy stuff, and get to real areas of philosophical disagreement.  So here’s a few questions for MikeB, based on some of his recent posts.

Straw purchasers arrested trafficking guns from Colorado to California:

No one denies that, but the dispute comes in when trying to accomplish it inconveniences gun owners. They immediately start talking about “infringement” and “gun bans,” when actually we’re not talking about those things at all.

So here’s your fundamental problem.  It’s legal for a citizen with a clean criminal history to purchase a gun in the United States.  To get around the problem of not having a clean criminal history, criminals put up straw men, who do have clean records, to purchase guns on their behalf.  Girlfriends of criminals are your typical straw purchaser.  How do you fix the straw man problem without banning guns?   Keep in mind it’s already a felony to buy a firearm under false and misleading pretenses.  As long as it’s lawful for a citizen with a clean record to purchase firearms, criminals are going to use straw men to get guns.  How do you fix that problem without a ban, or something that’s awfully close to a ban?

MikeB takes on the Queen of Snark over the Wintenmute gun show study:

Why do pro-gun folks resist these intelligent and highly educated men so aggressively? Why is it necessary to attack them on their expertise as well as their veracity? What’s wrong with simply discussing the issues? I’ll tell you what I think.

I think what explains the incredibly nasty attitude on the part of so many pro-gun writers is that they realize they’re wrong. They realize that anyone who refuses to join in a common effort to find a way to diminish gun violence is in the wrong. Well, why would they do it then? Out of fear. Out of fear and insecurity.

Joe Huffman, in the comments, basically cuts to the heart of the matter: “how do you determine truth from falsity.”  I don’t particularly resist intelligent, highly educated people.  In fact, I spend most of my time working with intelligent, highly educated people, and they are prone to the same kind of biases, assumptions, and have agendas just like everyone else.  I’ve seen some remarkably good science happen in my career, and some remarkably bad science.  Just having credentials doesn’t mean you’re automatically putting out quality research and quality science.  It doesn’t mean you don’t have an agenda or bias.  Joe’s question was good.  How do you sort true from false?  I can go into detail about why I think Wintenmute’s studies are relatively useless, but can MikeB tell me why they are good?  Can we have a real conversation about it?