Supreme Court Strikes down DC handgun ban..
 

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont....3eef7ac3.html

I think this is absolutely awesome, and I'm glad that the Supreme Court finally ruled on such a contentious issue. I think there will be predictably a liberal outrage at the "Supreme Court writing the laws", but it's only fair in that the conservatives were outraged in the same way by the Supreme Court's ruling about habeas corpus for Gitmo detainees.

I wonder if LA, etc, will have to follow suit. I also wonder if there is any liability lawsuits in the works for all of the people who had their weapons seized, paid fines, and even spent time in jail for their "illegal" possession of a firearm.

I imagine the state has some sort of immunity, but frankly I think they should (at the very least) return the fees accessed and pay people who spent in time on weapons possession charges alone an "apology" sum for time spent.

Also, you can read the Justice's opinion here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

The gun ban probably was unconstitutional, but I'd like everyone to take special note of what Scalia wrote: "Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."

That doesn't matter as much as you may think. The ruling reinforces the Second Amendment as an individual right, not a silly state-militia-right as every gun control nut on this board argues. :thumbsup:

I'm pretty much the only one that argues that, actually. But regardless, the statement Scalia (who tends to rule conservatively for whatever reason) made is quite clear and flies in the face of what most gun proponents claim.

That's pretty clear.

As for "flying in the face of what most gun proponents claim" you're also irrevocably wrong. No reasonable gun owner believes that it is "a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."

I don't think that recently convicted felons should own firearms. I don't think that mentally ill individuals should own firearms. I don't think that firearms should be allowed in federal buildings. I don't think that fully automatic weapons should be available to anyone but an active-duty military personnel.

Any reasonable gun owner knows that it should be subject to some regulation.

It's a very strange decision on a very strange issue, and no amount of puffery by either side is going to convince me that they're correct about the 2nd Amendment. It's a miserable mess of grammar with an anachronistic purpose. The DC gun ban by any standard of judicial review was unconstitutional simply because it wasn't rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Given the latent ambiguity and anachronism inherent in the amendment itself, I think the justices should have dealt with the issue less directly, striking down the ban as unreasonable and unjustifiable but not within the framework of making it a clearly individual right.

So it goes.

Then you're calling the most vocal gun proponent on TFP an unreasonable gun owner?

But it IS a clearly individual right. It's about time they made it clear. I think they would've done a tremendous disservice by failing to identify this, once again.

it's interesting that people characterize Scalia as conservative on bill of rights issues. He actually is pretty damn absolutist on the scope of most of the rights in the first ten amendments, including some rights that a lot of people don't consider sexy, like sixth amendment confrontation rights, right to trial by jury, and things like that. He said people are allowed to burn a flag under the first amendment and there's not a damn thing the govt can do about it.

Yet another reason why conventional political bean counting as applied to the Supreme Court makes very little sense.

I assume you're talking about dk. I don't believe even he thinks it should be subject to no regulation, just less than you I.

I really don't see this as a win for the 2nd amendment. There were basically 3 outcomes possible, it's an absolute invidivual right, it's an individual right that can be restriced, or it's not an individual right.

Basically what this outcome says is that the current trend of tax and license and regulate guns to non existence will continue. Rarely are there laws or changes in legislation that protect gun owners, usually it's the other way around. This decision allows that trend to continue.

I wasn't trying to open that can of worms again. I was simply expecting a slightly different response from him. I'm happy with what he said, as I see it as responsible.

actually, Samcol, they left open whether licensing is constitutional. Didn't decide it.

YOU think it is a clearly individual right. I read the amendment and see something that made sense in 1776 and makes no sense anymore. It's like reading a regulation on horse drawn carriages or gas lamps.

Although this decision confirms an individual right, the USSC got so many things wrong with this opinion.

1) the fundamental balance of power is now firmly weighted towards the government. The 'people' being the soveriegn power of the USA rests on the ballot box only and if the govt believes its in its best interest to override the will of the people, so be it. The people are no longer soveriegn. I'm sure the pro-gov political body appreciates that.

2) no basis of scrutiny was decided upon, therefore each and every new case will have to work it's way through the court system. public policy by judicial fiat.

3) Because the phrase 'in common use' has been used, all it would take is for congress to limit the types of weapons available to 'the people' to eliminate it from common use, and viola, instant ban. constitutional.

4) This decision very subtly reverses Murdock v. Commonwealth of PA. By specifically stating that this decision does not rule out licensing, any body of government can now require a license, fee, or tax (subject to judicial approval to make sure it's not 'destructive') to exercise a right protected by the US constitution.

hooray for the people that demanded rights be regulated, that no right is absolute.

See, Jinn? As soon as I read this, I knew DK wouldn't be happy with it because it is a compromise from his perspective.

I've said it once, but I'll say it again: I love you. :hearts:

A justice is only as "liberal" or "conservative" as his last decision.

Yeah, it definitely seems like a major oversight to not slot gun regulations into some form of cognizable judicial review, or, if not to make it part of one of the existing categories, to at least make it its own category like abortion. Given how hot the issue is, if they were going to address it in a 140 page opinion, they should have at least taken a paragraph to decide how we should deal with regulations going forward.

I'm reading quickly through Scalia's opinion now, and am pleased to see that he raises the post-Civil War disarmament of blacks in the South as one of the first major infringements of the newly freed former slaves' rights. History would have been quite different in the Jim Crow South if the blacks had been able to shoot back, don't you think?

I actually don't see this as a compromise. This was more like a bone thrown to the public that told us 'you can have handguns, hunting rifles, and shotguns', but the real reason behind the 2nd Amendment is null and void. We (the gov) will not allow you to be as equally armed as our military/law enforcement no matter what the framers/founders desired.'

So yes, you see it as a compromise, albeit one where your side gave more. You must admit, though, that there will now be guns in the hands of civilians in DC. Can't you see that is something you wanted? Yes, yes, the rest of it pisses you off to no end, but isn't that fact alone at least a small victory for what I see as your side?

If we allowed the general public to arm themselves equivalently to the military, average citizens could own RPGs, anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, tactical nukes and 1000 lb JDAMs. Is this really reasonable?

No will, it is NOT a compromise. we got one step forward, they took us 3 back. I dont' see how gaining a ruling on a right we already had to begin with, but losing the spirit and intent of the 2nd is a compromise.

Jinn, the opinion deals with that. Basically, the right protects keeping and bearing the category of weapons that individuals kept in 1790: personal firearms. That's an oversimplification but a useful one.

is it reasonable to think that the gov would use nukes, RPG's, and tanks against citizens on their own soil? This effectively shuts down any future machine gun ownership because they are not 'in common use' by the people anymore. Military weaponry of all sorts is effectively prohibited and that wasn't the intent of the founders.

They could have ruled to maintain the ban, dk. That was your victory. Try to enjoy it.

DK, your reasoning is circular. Like all rights in the bill of rights, the Second Amendment doesn't create or confer a right but rathern assumes the right is already in existence and prohibits the govt from infringing it. That tells you precisely zero about what the scope of the right is, only that you have it. The scope of the right - what its outer boundaries are - gets defined through custom, practice, legislation and case law. You are assuming as a premise that the scope of the right is what you think it is - that's why you think this is a bad decision. But you can't assume the conclusion, DK.

FWIW, I never have even tried to own a gun. I have gotten some training and been at shooting ranges but never sought to have one. To some extent it's because I live in NYC and the gun laws are very very strict - basically you need a good reason to be permitted to own a gun - and I never wanted it enough to be willing to go through what you need to go through to get a gun. However, it pissed me off that even though I'm about as plain vanilla a citizen as they come - pays his taxes, not deep in debt, not addicted to any substance, no criminal record, owns his home (well, the bank does, but you get the idea) - I still couldn't get a gun without having to show some good reason and get some bureaucrat's approval. It wasn't that I needed one or (most times) wanted one, but it annoyed me that if I did I still couldn't get one. But then, I generally bristle at infringements on my liberties...........

i haven't read the full opinion, but one other unresolved issue is this decision's appears to be its exact effect on states and municipalities. the district of columbia is unique in that it's administered (primarily) according to federal law. there is the issue of "incorporation" of a right... whether the rights guaranteed by the federal constitution apply as barriers to federal or federal AND state infringement.

so, under this opinion, the states may still be able to enact laws just as draconian as DC's struck policy.

this poses an interesting question for conservatives. do we continue to favor states rights, decentralized power, and local autonomy? or, should we argue for extending the federal gov's mandate over state sovereignty?

irateplatypus, I don't see any way this right doesn't get incorporated in the fourteenth amendment and then applied against the states. What would the logic be to justify treating this amendment different from the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth? Yes, the 7th isn't incorporated, but that's an anomaly. And the third isn't incorporated because it just never came up - soldiers haven't been quartered in homes since the founding, I think.

I wonder what the consequences of this law will be in 10 years? I am just as torn on this issue as the court is, but I'm still for pre-banning certain people from owning guns. True, they may be able to get a gun from the black market, but the less likely criminals, psychopaths and drugged-addicted people will have guns, the better.

I would like to see what the DC metro police does to protest. If I were running the police, I would have all officers wear riot gear and carry the large guns tomorrow.

So, who knows if this ban had any effect on crime? Or did it have any effect on non-drug related crime I should say.



And there is no way a group of people would ever be able to fight against the US military, FBI, local/state police, and intelligence agencies with the guns you can buy legally and illegally. Just look at Iraq. They had plenty of weapons, but nothing is working.

I doubt the police will protest. A lot of them believe, like many gun proponents, that the gun ban added to crime.

maybe, Will. Or not: remember, if possessing a gun is a crime (as it is in NY), then by definition a gun ban increases crime so long as people keep guns. The gun ban also gave cops a basis for raising their productivity statistics by hauling in citizens who the found keeping guns in their homes. The more laws there are, the more power cops have.

Warning, speculation:
Yeah, but if, like I say, many DC cops believe that the high crime rate is somehow caused by the gun ban, then in their minds they're in less danger now. While I'm sure many of them enjoyed the power, they'll enjoy the idea of it being more likely they'll be coming home to their families safe and sound. All my cop friends are pretty clear that's the most important thing to them.

I live in missouri, not D.C. , but for the record, of the dozen cops I know, not a single one believes in gun bans - they are, according to them, ineffective... about half of said cops have stated at one time or another in my presence something along the lines that if a citizen wants to be safer, they should get and train with a gun... my favorite statement from a cop, (my business partner btw) is that "when seconds count, we are only minutes away" All of the security people that I work with are pro gun, and several have CC permits and carry regularly... But then this is certainly not D.C.- so I would think beliefs would be different there.....

It's great not having to worry about whether to own a gun.

The story in Toronto these days is that the mayor and others want a gun ban. I don't think it matters either way. Not in my eyes. There have only been 27 murders in the city so far, which isn't too bad considering that Toronto's record year was 2007 with 84 murders, half of which were gun-related. I don't think a gun ban would do much.

(As a reference point, Chicago, a city of similar size, had 435 homicides in 2007.)

I'm generally ambivalent on gun bans.

Toronto is about 2.5 million people. 2,500,000/84 = about 1 murder per 30,000 people. San Jose has about 1 million people. We had 32 murders last year. 1,000,000/32 = 31,000. So about the same. Toronto... the cold San Jose.

Except when it gets over 40 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) with humidex about this time of year....

I don't know much about San Jose except for a bit about hockey. I'm intrigued. I'm sure that's an interesting murder rate compared to your national average. What would be the attributing factors? You have a lot of Canadians living there or something?

Likewise.. in my CCW class one of the instructors was a city police officer, and he said the same.. with the additional mention that their average response time to a 9-11 call in the city is 14 minutes. That's enough time for someone to get in, do whatever they want, and leave.

this is kinda interesting.
scalia seems to be caught in a strange little loop: does the right to form a militia presuppose another, unspoken right to have guns around? presumably, it would, yes? but since there's nothing stated, and since we read scalia assembling a (quite curious) historical case, it would follow that what is really at issue is custom as it obtained around the 1789--and i would imagine that you'd have found exactly the same rural/urban split that you have now at the level of custom--if you are living in a city, you probably aren't doing a whole lot of hunting, so you probably dont have a gun.

what i don't really see is the inferential jump from what is not stated to some assumptions about 1789 context as if it were a single thing. i think that has more to do with stuff like one of the most irritating rhetorical quirks in american history writing, the tendency to use the phrase "americans think..." or "americans reacted to x..." as if there is this Unified Subjectivity called "americans"...which exists only in the phantasmagoria of nationalist ideology.

but it's a problem, yes, moving from a sequence of statements concerning negative rights (pre-existing rights that the state cannot infringe---upon [do you have to use "infringe upon" or can you just say "infringe"?]) to a negative negative right, which is one that is not stated at all but which you may or may not be able to infer is presupposed by what is stated.

this seems to me a problem with the notion of "original understanding"---which is also a problem for "strict construction" as an interpretive posture---when you get down to it, this is a speculative game, bounded by evidence in the way that "authentic" re-enactments of 17th century daily life are bounded by clothing.


stevens opinion seems more strict in the sense that it does not make the move scalia does in disconnecting the clauses and trying to infer some set of assumptions that inform the operative clause.

i guess what makes this interesting is its uncertainty, its ricketiness as argument, despite its status as ruling.


btw: on the issue at hand, i favor local control over guns. there is no reason why a city cannot exercise a different and far more stringent type of control than would a rural area. chicago is not a big hunting area. neither is boston or nyc. and i don't really buy the self-defense arguments in an urban context--at least not as powerful enough to justify abrogating the right of communities to determine what does and does not happen within their boundaries. and i dont see scalia's decision as saying anything that runs against that--what i see it as basically saying is that a city cannot enact a wholesale ban on all guns. but i think they can, nonetheless, make it as difficult as possible to own one. and i think it is the right of the citizenry as a whole to enact such law.

like it or not, even libertarians live in a society.

It's several things, I think. For one, our police force is well funded and pretty well respected. And it's been that way for a while. San Jose has had low crime rates for over 20 years. We also are suburbia, only kinda interesting because we're ginormous and have a lot of interesting things to do. I'm not sure how much it effects crime, but we're rated consistently as one of the healthiest cities in the world very often. Maybe we're better at chasing down criminals.

Well, Roachboy, I read through Scalia's opinion quickly but here's how I understood his analysis of the language. The bill of rights got ratified in 1791. People voting on ratification, in the aggregate, discussed the proposals. The discussions presupposed an understanding of the proposals - that understanding was the "original public meaning." That original public meaning is what got ratified, so that's what we have to uncover.

In terms of the language, he distinguished between the preamble and the operative clause. As written, the 2nd says, "because X, your right Y is protected." His view is that protection of the right doesn't change merely because the then-justification might evolve to another form. (in this respect, think of the fact that a fair amount of labor legislation was originally passed for the purpose of keeping blacks out of more lucrative labor markets. Once that purpose went away, the legislation was not thereby invalid, it merely took on a new purpose. of course, the exclusionary purpose wasn't explicit, but I think the analogy nevertheless works). It's not even clear that the militia no longer exists - it depends on how you view it (we might all still be the unorganized militia, though the thought of me with a gun is frightening) - but that's a different issue. People still shake hands to greet each other even though they're not examining each other for weapons, right?

The dissent's position is that the 2nd Amendment is the only one that grants merely a governmentally sanctioned rights (as distinct from rights that are protected against governmental infringement). That's not a "right" as anyone really understands the term, is it?

As I said above, I don't really care about guns, it's not something I get excited about. I do care about being told what to do, though.

nothing to say

Orders to that effect.

Edited to add; the Unorganized Militia would not turn on the People. The Unorganized Militia -is- the People. The Organized Militia, on the other hand...orders to that effect.

Ask the people in New Orleans who had their guns taken away and pets shot by the Los Angeles P.D., the 82nd Airborne, and those scumsucking Blackwater pukes. Ask the FLDS parents who woke up to M113's coming up the driveway. Ask Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris, ask Kenyon Ballew's wife, ask anybody who's ever had their shit kicked by a cop because they were black/white/rich/poor/smelly/female/gay/etc.

There's your answer.

Blackwater I'd be worried about. Not the Army. Not the Marines. Not the Navy.

Oh, and not the Coast Guard. Can't forget them. Semper Paratus.

but it seems that some police agencies have no problem doing it, i.e. katrina aftermath.

I know I'm not your BFF, but I refuse to think that our perceptions are so different on this. I'm 100% sure you've got military buddies. Ask them. "Would you attack American civis?"

nothing to say

I'd appreciate you showing me where, in the constitution, that any government body has the 'authority', not right, to order me off of my own property.

It's called eminent domain and it's in the 5th, albeit limited (we get "just compensation").

In contemporary terms, we call that "fair market value."

nothing to say.

loquitor: thanks. i understood the moves scalia made--and the arguments he mustered for them---and i think this notion of "original public meaning" is chimerical, a space for projection and not something that can be coherently reconstructed--and like i said, if you think about it, it actually creates trouble for his claim in a way in that, like i said, i pushes you toward some notion of reception of claims in 1791, which is linked to some sense of context--which scalia's argument presupposes was singular. all i pointed out was the obvious problem, which you can get to without having to follow scalia, but just by thinking about the idea of reception context 1791 style--there were urban and rural populations--from which follows--can you assume the same presuppositions as to right to bear arms obtained for each---which comes down to "did these populations as a matter of course carry guns"--to which the answer is yes and no, rural and urban.

the other argument--that the right to bear arms int he context of a militia presupposes a broader, unstated right to bear arms seems stronger logically, but it also strays quite far from the text---and since that interpretation is basically made coherent via the notion of reception/"public meaning"--problems with the latter creates problems for the former.

i am looking at this via my historian self, btw, and i bring alot of scepticism to the whole idea of strict construction because of the problems that attend trying to make anything like a strong claim to "public meaning" in 1791--and this is the easy one--the notion of "original intent" is ludicrous---not so much as an idea (you can string together the words, the idea exists) but as a frame that you can establish firmly enough to use as a way of interpreting law, particularly if those interpretations are to break with "activist" precedent.

but it's likely that looking at the same arguments from a lawyer's perspective would focus on different things, and i'm not sure of the extent to which problems of historical method impact upon strict construction arguments for a lawyer---i would think they would, but i'm not sure.

i should say that i found the historical development of the argument through the 19th century to be interesting and well done---so the problem is in the premise. the demonstration i liked, even. scalia has good staff people, i take it, good researchers. and it's possible to find a demonstration interesting without buying the logic that informs it too, as an aesthetic matter.

it's at THAT point, unfortunately, the property is not considered yours anymore. You know I'm referring to property that hasn't been obtained through 'eminent domain', but through the so called authorities doing it for my safety.

In theory, yes.

There are two gun stores in DC and both sell to law enforcement only. The DC police force strongly supported the gun ban. It is reasonable to believe that if either store were to begin selling handguns to civilians, it would jeopardize their dealing with the police (biggest/only customer.) DC can still regulate the opening of gun stores through licensing and zoning. Given their intent to start enforcing other gun control laws now that the handgun ban and long arm disassembly laws are gone, it is reasonable to believe that they will make it near impossible or impossible to open a new gun store in the District.

I will make a very generous estimate that it will be no less than two years before the first handgun is legally purchased in Washington DC.The Miller case ruled that NFA taxes on a sawed-off shotgun are reasonable because SBS' are not used by any organized militia. By the Miller test, any gun that is in common use by any military is theoretically open to private ownership. Combine that with Heller and a strict constructionist would have no choice but to reopen the registry to Title II select fire guns and machine guns in common military use.
In 1976, the homicide rate was 26.8 per 100,000. The gun ban was passed in early February 1977 and through 2005, the murder rate never dropped below that number, and frequently exceeded it by significant amounts. I'm not going to get into formal statistical analyses, and a single law cannot be found responsible for a widespread statistic of a scope greater that could be affected by the law, but at no point was there a reduction of the annual murder rate after the ban was passed.
People are too busy enjoying their "medical" marijuana ;) (PLEASE NOTICE THE WINKING SMILEY!)
The last time members of the military were polled, 75% said that they would not fire on American citizens on American soil as a police action and 50% said that they would refuse any order to fire on Americans on American soil for any reason. I forget how the second question was worded, exactly, but it seemed to imply that if the country had gotten to the point that violent revolution appealed to enough people that they actually did it, half of the military would side with the revolution.

So why shouldn't cities/counties/states be allowed to resrtict the weapons you own? I live in SoFL. Unless you live in the far west, why do you need more than a hand gun? Even living far west, why would you need more than a shotgun? Against a gator? They are not that fast. Step it up - Black Panther. If you are that slow a shooter, you should not be there.

William, there's not an actual reason, more like a "right". I've asked many times why one would need more than one or two guns for defense, and all I've ever really gotten was either a vague threat from the government or that it's "a right". The only reasonable reason I've been given is "I like shooting", which I suppose isn't a bad reason so long as one's responsible. Many people on TFP use guns as a recreational pursuit.

Why do you need more than 1 car?

It's about choice and different abilities.

I would imagine there are two reasons for one person having more than one car: fun or necessity. Fun would be a track car, off roader, etc., necessity would be a van for a big family, truck for work, electric car for driving to work.

Apply the same to guns: fun or necessity. Fun would be going out to the range and showing a target the true meaning of pain with as many different guns as you can afford, necessity would be either something like hunting or personal/home defense. I'm pretty sure I covered both of those, along with the "it's my right" non-answer. Still, that doesn't explain directly why someone would need more than one or two guns.

roachboy, your skepticism is part of the larger debate about judicial review of a written constitution, which in turn raises the issue of why write things down at all. And that brings us back to Marbury v Madison. But that's a broader dispute and one for another day.

It's been pointed out that both of the sides in this case used some form of originalist reasoning, precisely because there is so little case law and other development of the Second Amendment that trying to figure out what the words meant to the framers is almost literally the only thing we have to go on.

Until recently, the 2nd Ammendment called for a "well regulated militia". Our Supreme Court could not (or would not) define that - so they dropped it and said that you have a right to defend yourself w/a gun.
I have no problem w/that. My problem is this - why is it the 2nd Ammendment must include the "right" to own any weapon of your choice, with no regulation?
No disrespect to the ruling, but just because I've never fallen under one of the categories listed not to have a weapon, does that automatactily give me the right to stockpile AK-47s? RPGs?

Fun or necessity? That's an absurd descriptor.

There are some cars you can tow with because the engine provides enough torque. You can't haul a ski boat with a small SUV like a RAV4 just because it has a towball in the back. Just because you have a large SUV doesn't mean you can comfortably seat 7 people. It's about application.

A slingshot, bow and arrow, crossbow, all pistol and rifle variants of .22, .357, .45, shotgun all have different abilities and used for different applications.

Use too high of a caliber when you are hunting small animals and you won't have anything left to eat. Use too small a caliber hunting large game and you may find yourself hurt by a charging large animal like a bear, lion, elephant.

Use a .22 to defend your home you man not stop a person on PCP because a .22 doesn't have enough velocity to put a person down on his ass like a .45 will.

I'd also state that when I was an avid practicing gun enthusiast. I liked to target practice with a .22 because the rounds were cheaper. I still got in .45 rounds, but not as many. I can't load cheaper rounds to practice in a higher caliber pistol.

loquitor--i would think the problem runs in the opposite direction--the requirement to write things down knowing that writing does not really stabilize meanings. which is neither good nor bad, a problem or its opposite.

william--that is the logic of scalia's argument--that there is such a right presupposed--but the distinction between the ability to in principle organize a militia and the other right is seemingly that of what type of gun it is ok to possess--so it seems to follow that a handgun or hunting rifle would fall under it, where an ak would not.
though i suspect that were the argument a strict construction of strict construction, it's have to result in one or another version of the claim that either the constitution cannot be interpreted as commenting in any way on ak-47s because they weren't part of the public meaning of the amendment in 1791 OR that in the platonic aether of forms, under the classification GUNS there has always been the form "ak-47"--it was only discovered and condensed into the shape of a metal object 40 years ago, but was always extant.

presumably, then, the moment of "public reception" of the amendment would also have been one of mystical insight, the Giants who were ratifying the sacrosanct Statements having access at once to this mortal coil 1791 stylee and to the aether of Forms that shaped it.

which is why we, in 2008, have to be subordinated to what the mythical Public of Giants from 1791 Understood.
because we are less, you see.

this seems to follow from strict construction logic, such as it is.

Baraka and willravel, I've assembled some data and stats here, in an attempt to encourage both of you to stop patting yourselves on the back. I've highlighted poverty rates in these four US counties/districts, and I've portrtayed will's county, Santa Clara, in the worst possible light, by displaying only the murder/crime stats for San Jose, not for the whole county. Prince George's, MD, does not contain a major city, it's count seat has a population of under 700. Dekalb County, GA, includes the a more affluent portion of the city of Atlanta....Atlanta is spread across portions of both Fulton and Dekalb counties. Washington DC is a city in a federal "district".

See if you can spot what is different about Santa Clara and Canada, compared to the other three, US areas? The crime rates defy easy explanation, since only Washington has a poverty problem, and Prince George's does not contain an urban center.

Since you guys have been taking the bows, related to how "violence free" your home areas happen to be.... what do you think is going on in the other areas....to explain the dramatic differences in gun related violence?

The data above for one extremely low crime county, and three areas with very high. violent crime rates, indicate that the problem is not so simple that it can be said with any certainty that gun control had no effect on the problem of gun violence in Washington, DC, over the past 30 years. Handguns are easy to obtain in Dekalb Cty, GA, and much easier to obtain in San Jose, CA, and Prince Georges, MD, than in Washington DC, yet the murder rates are very high in two of three of those other places.....

You should summarize and further interpret the data, host. I'm not sure what you point is exactly. I don't think we were patting ourselves on the back, and not especially when it comes to gun control. I'll wait for you to come back and present your case a bit further. For now, all I see is population density, poverty rates, and crime. Can you present the essential data and give me a more through interpretation that speaks directly to it?

Oh, and about the 10.8% "poverty rate" in Canada. You forgot this CIA note for others to see:

note - this figure is the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO), a calculation that results in higher figures than found in many comparable economies; Canada does not have an official poverty line (2005)

LICO is scaled by family size and community. You'd have to apply that to the American areas to have a direct comparison. Otherwise, 10.8% would seem higher in contrast. Statistics Canada uses this scale method as a more accurate representation of poverty. Not everyone does this, unfortunately.

EDIT: I should be more fair and give you more feedback. I do think there are several indicators that would help determine the level of crime and violence in a community. They include: average income levels, employment rate, health, education, access to community services. There are a few more, but I can't think of them from the top of my head. Should we factor all of these in?

!!
 

The data and stats from Dekalb, GA and Prince George's MD, contradict all of that ! My point, notwithstanding how negatively it might be received, is that the commonality between Dekalb, Prince George's, and Washington DC, is in the category of racial majority, as it is in Santa Clara and Canada. '

Dekalb (#2) and Prince George's (#1) boast the highest household average income of all counties with African American majority populations in the US, and Santa Clara enjoys one of, it not the highest average household income, and that is where the similarity ends.....



Charles City County has a population too tiny to be noteworthy.....

That's average income; what about income distribution by race?

I don't understand your question....I've shown you the best...as far as household income and low poverty rates, vs. the worst, in three counties/districts where black Americans are the majority population.

Maybe the info at thes two links will verify the extent that the wealth is not held by a Caucasian minority, in the wealthiest county, and the high crime impacts in a way that probably feeds on itself:


http://books.google.com/books?id=Su4...um=2&ct=result

http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=1&gl=us

I've driven through DC neighborhoods where the poverty is so obvious from the look of the blighted residential and commercial buildings....those not boarded up or burnt out, that it broke my heart to think it could occur, on such a scale, just blocks from the Capitol and the White House. I've also driven through neihgborhoods in Dekalb and North Fulton, GA, where every home was upscale and featured late model luxury cars in the driveways...and each was owned and occupied by African American families. The areas are so upscale that it was possible, when encountering a police patrol car, to wonder if the officer is regarding you as suspicious looking simply by your presence...."wrong race", driving a vehicle not of a quality befitting the area....

It is an experience the opposite of segregation due to poverty. These segregated neighborhoods are still racially driven, but because of wealth, not poverty.

Maybe, in the US, a tendency towards commission of violent acts is a cultural trait....for lack of a better rhyme or reason:
Challenge in Prince George's to find customer service oriented employees:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062301267.html

host, would you mind restating a) what it is you're trying to get us to discuss, and b) what is has to do with the recent Supreme Court ruling? I think many of us aren't quite following your logic.

in post #63, I responded to this:
My posts after that, were resplies to Baraka's questions, points, challenges...the main point is that gun control, if the examples of the disparity in violent crime stats is an indication, should be up to local officials. Gun control appears to be needed much less in San Jose/Santa Clara, than it does in DC, Prince George's, and in Dekalb.... We have the added burden in our society that it is politically incorrect to examine or discuss whether violent crime is a cultural or an ethnic trait.

It does not seem to be rooted in conditions of poverty, but high incidence of violent crime is most prevalent in highly African American populated areas in the US, irregardless of average income and education levels.

This is curious, since a dramatically large percentage of black males of an age group most prone to criminal activity, is already incarcerated.

I think the Supreme Court majority ignored the demographic realities of 2008, and focused on now irrelevant 18th century conditions and opinions. Maybe if guns were as strictly controlled in all of the US as they are in the UK, there would not be the "leakage" of guns from permissive sales in Georgia, to Washington DC. Santa Clara, where willravel lives, does not have the violent crime problem that DC has, so a different local and regional approach can be practised there, then in DC, with it's high gun crime and it's close proximity to guns coming out of Georgia.....

The first point could follow from the second two, but I suppose one would have to have a pragmatic approach to gun control rather than the stand of principles we resort to.

It would also be the basis for ruinous lawsuits aimed at local low enforcement.

My vocation works directly with those living in poverty in the Santa Clara County, particularly San Jose. We not only provide food, shelter, and clothing, but are directly connected with city and private programs for job training and placement. Regardless of the fact that poverty in San Jose is quite relatively low, more needs to be done. Anything above maybe 1% (with a 1% margin of error) is too much.

the argument, then, is basically that easily available guns effectively militarize class conflict--which is continual, everywhere---or, another way, make its violence more explicit. so that areas in which class divisions are more severe and in which the geography of class conflict is such that the groups are closer together would expect to see a different pattern of gun-related violence than would areas which are more segregated spatially.

if you add to this the fact that income levels are not a particularly informative indicator of the nature of class conflict---poverty being in a sense worse in the states than in many other places which are poorer in terms of income across the board (amartya sen correlates income levels with morality rates to generate this argument..it's a pretty compelling one, if you see the data)---adding guns to the routinized violence of class divisions is a real problem.

the "principled"--or platonic--approach to questions of gun control make no sense. it has to be approached on a local basis.

it's not obvious that the decision of last week upsets anything about this--it seems to me that it makes absolute bans more difficult, that's all.

roachboy, I am posting data/stats that indicate gun violence is largely rooted in the opposite of what you posted....it isn't related to "class" conflict. It has become part of the culture of African Americans, if the statistics are an indicator, and it doesn't seem to be related to poverty or to below average education level, either.... By and large, they use guns to prey on and to kill each other.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/2007prelim/table4il_mo.htm
Boston 2007 Population 591,855 Violent crimes 6,838 Murder 66 Forcible Rape 263


http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/2007prelim/table4il_mo.htm

Detroit 2007 Population 860,971 Violent crimes 19,683 Murder 383 Forcible Rape 344

Detroit has 1-1/2 times the population of Boston, triple the numbers of annual violent crimes, and 383 murders, vs. just 66, in Boston. It seems that the volume of violent crime is much more related to who lives in a place, than it does to how much money and opportunities they have.

Boston actually had slightly more per capita reported forcible rapes in 2007, than Detroit had.... Is it possible that rape is just less reported in Detroit, due to fear by victims and witnesses, of being murdered if they cooperate with police and the courts?

If poverty or class friction was the problem it is assumed to be, affluent Prince George's county should have a much lower per capita murder rate than the city of Boston, and so should Dekalb County, Ga., but they don't.

The stats show outsized African American populations, regardless of household income and poverty rates, experience outsized rates of violent crime, despite heavy per capita incarceration rates of most likely repeat violent criminals.

There is an argument for strict local gun bans, and stepped up nationwide control of interstate gun traffic, even if it means restricting hand gun purchases to the extent they are restricted in NY City. Not to do so, will apparently continue the loss of economic activity and livability of areas with outsized African American populations, regardless of social spending and reforms.

host--as a general claim, that makes little sense to me.
the problems seem to me legion.
to start with, what exactly is "the culture of african americans"? is it a single entity? on what basis do you say that?

the evidence above seems strange as well--like there's information not given.
this i want to look into further--do you have more information about this story?

the inferences you make seem problematic as well, but how would follow from the above---basically, it doesn't sit right...something feels off about it.

roachboy, I was shocked that this could be published in a restaurant industry publication, when I first read about Dr. Lynn's research, in 2002:
I don't mean to trivialize violent crime by comparing it to tipping....I present it because it is a well studied and reported behavorial trait, peculiar to one group of people....not necessarily to a race, but to a subset of the American public, categorized in a way that could easily be dismissed as politically incorrect or prejudiced.... but my anecdotal experience says that it isn't.
It also seems a valid comparison, because it is about attitude and behavior that transcends income and education.

.....the "problem", is....my anecdotal experience, before reading it, completely supported it. I also have enough firsthand experience to know that there are exceptions, wonderful people who have been gracious enough to influence me not to prejudge. It isn't the numbers of these gracious individuals who cause that positive influence, in my experience they are few and far between, but they are there.

I "get" what you are asking, about "the culture of african americans". I also "got" the Wapo author's point in the opinion piece in my last post. New Hampshire has a one percent African American population, yet I read that caucasians are incarcerated at 1/9 the per capita rate (286 per 100,000, vs. 2650 ) of that state's African American population. My reaction was that it was an obvious symptom of injustice. What should my reaction be to the violent crime rates in affluent Prince George's and Dekalb?

How do we have "balance" if we don't talk about it. I can easily fall into a conversation with a waitstaff co-worker who is African American, about the problem of the African American public's attitude towards tipping for dining service. The reason is because we all live equally, with the effects of it...share the same experience, every shift.

We go home after work, and we do not share the same experience. My neighbors are not shooting at me....Neither are Scalia's or Thomas's !

i am still confused about the article you posted, even more after looking into it a little...the basis for my suspicion really is the use of aggregated data to characterize what appears to be a socially diverse area. i found a crime data map here:

http://pgcrime.info/

and looked at the homicide data since january of this year (before i got distracted and went outside to look at 15 ducks wandering around and a boat that was drifting up the river) and they're concentrated in a tight ring around the edge of washington. assaults are concentrated in the same area--which makes me wonder what's up in the immediate area around washington dc.

somehow i think the article is just way to simple--milloy even blames hip hop at the end of it for all this. which is nonsense.

i'm not saying that the simple reverse of your argument is always necessarily the case--i just think this information is curious--and getting past aggregation effects is kinda tough in the internet from essex massachusetts (presumably from elsewhere as well).

on the prison population of new hampshire--cynically, because i grew up there, nothing really surprises me. but that's just cynicism. now i have another datapoint to think about.

but on the pg county thing, i just am not sure of what's actually going on. the reporter seems to do a court beat, so works outward from police information--which is always a dicey affair. he also doesn't seem to like mentioning economic class very much--i read a bunch of his articles and it just doesn't figure in his reporting. i can't say why it isn't a variable exactly. but it's curious nonetheless.
perhaps class is out of fashion amongst bourgeois journalists.

Is the question here whether arbitrary lines of social group or certain behaviors are the most powerful aggregator?

It seems like you are trying to parse whether people are a group because of some social cues or if they are a group because they shoot each other. Seems a little like missing the forest for the trees.

I know which classification would matter more to me if I was visiting.

The real weakness of host's point in my view is that the data set is small, specific to a few areas (which have more differences than crime statistics, such as enforcement practices, jobless rates, etc), and not really controlled too well.

that's not what i was thinking about, comrade--i was wondering about missing correlations. my marxist self tends to equate violence and class conflict, absent other information--from there i tend to move to either confirm or falsify that linkage. it seems a more powerful explanatory variable than hip hop does.

the point is more that this county seems like many such--and many city neighborhoods--in that aggregated information doesn't really tell you much about any particular place--obvious enough point, really--so i wanted to see what i could find out. the washington post article seems written at a demographic that sees pgc through the aggregated image, as a nice middle class area beset with violence--and i just wonder if that is true in many, but not all, parts of the county, just as similar things can be true of many, but not all, parts of a neighborhood.

behind all this was my experience in logan square, which profiles in a very similar way in the aggregate but had considerable violence---less now than 5 years ago apparently--but still--in this fairly middle-class neighborhood, i heard gunshots more nights than i didn't. it wasn't terribly hard to work out that my predispositions in terms of trying to understand this sort of thing fit pretty well with the social reality of the area---but obviously it was only a general explanation, not providing any detail about why particular act x or y or z occurred.

that's more the direction i was thinking in.

rb, when I think of Essex, I think of http://www.woodmans.com/ ...I've only been there once, but the food was memorable.

I took a look, on your map, at assaults, just from May 1, 2008 until June 15. The ring extended outward a bit, from the murder incidents area.

The "tight ring" is also adjacent, on both sides, to I-495, the beltway around DC.

I think you would also find that the county's population is concentrated where the crime is, and there is this:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Su4...um=1&ct=result

The one large new mall in the county, opened in 2001, was not built in the more centrally located Mitchelville, even though median income is $7000 higher there, but in the northeast corner of the county, in Bowie, population 65 percent caucasian, almost the opposite population average in the rest of the county.

The Prince George's areas bordering DC are probably cursed by their proximity to DC, but that is where the beltway...the major thoroughfare is located.

rb and uber, what go me started on this series of posts was willravel's mention of the very low murder rate in San Jose, and when I checked it out, I saw that San Jose had a tiny African American population. I already knew that Prince George's and Dekalb were wealthy, African American, and experienced surprisingly high murder rates.....

The stats of Houston indicate that the city is 1/4 African American, probably has a large population of undocumented Mexicans, and an outsized violent crime rate....

woodman's is across the street, down a couple doors...i can't eat their food because it's cooked in lard and seems to do bad things to me afterward--the wages of being a (semi) vegetarian.
farnhams is better, i think.
but the only way to know is more fieldwork, comrade.

the larger point relative to the thread seems to be a series of arguments for local control over questions relating to gun availability, with different attempts to demonstrate the claim.

I want to add to this that any gun with a removable magazine (basically anything but a revolver or one of those classic Mauser pistols with a fixed magazine) can, in theory, be modified to hold more than 12 rounds and is therefore defined as a "machine gun" under DC law.

Roachboy, you may want to read Randy Barnett's take on how original public meaning works, with particular reference to how it was used in Heller. He posted it over in The Volokh Conspiracy. Barnett is a well-known con law prof, now at Georgetown (I think). He is the attorney who argued in the Supreme Court that April Raich should be permitted to grow marijuana in her own home for her own personal medical use (he lost 6-3; the dissenters were Rehnquist, O'Connor and Thomas). I remember learning back in law school the distinction between interpretation and construction that he talks aobut, but he is right that in practice a lot of people conflate the two, which is not conducive to clear thinking. (He has some criticism of Scalia at the end, too. I like that Barnett is intellectually honest.)

thank you thank you.

I really appreciate that link. I never really grasped what the difference of interpretationist vs. constructionist and this spelled i out very simply for me.

loquitor--interesting text---i'm thinking about it--i'll maybe post more about this later--but thanks...