The Historic Context of Gun Ownership

 Justice Thomas had a recent decision on the 2nd Amendment, focusing on the need to have a documented historical basis for any regulations of gun ownership.  This seems to be the latest version of "originalism" as a tool to interpret the Constitution.

I can understnad the perceived need for a standard of interpretation that seems to be objective, in the sense that it exists outside of the preferences of the justices. But as a failed historian I've reservations.  My perception of American society in the late 1700's is it was still structured with family, religion, and hierarchy, not individuals pursuing their own destinies.

I'm reminded of my grandfather's memoir of his father, a Presbyterian minister in Illinois durin the 1840's-70's. One thing he did was visit each family associated with his church and examine the children to be sure they were being properly brought up, knew their bible, and were on the way to being good citizens of the US. I'm also reminded of another grandfather, a great great one, who was part of the founding of a Presbyterian church in upstate New York, outside Geneva at the beginning of the 19th century. He was the recording clerk for the session.  The church was for many years the body which enforced the community's mores.

So I tend to believe that community norms and community pressure would have applied to gun ownership; those were impaired with mental problems, those who were irresponsible, those who weren't trusted with lethal weapons would have faced community sanctions.

Police Killed in Line of Duty

 Turns out there's a wikipedia page for US police killed in line of duty. Quite a contrast with a page for UK police killed.

For anyone too lazy to click, US killings of police run about 50 or above, the UK runs about 1 a year.

The context is the culture: US view police as maintaining order against crime in the midst of an armed populace, meaning a focus on conflict and violence, while the UK has a different history. In short, there's not an arms race in the UK, there is in US.

Assault Weapon Ban?

 Statistia has an article on an assault weapon ban, including links to studies, like this Stanford one on the effect of the Clinton 1994 ban, which expired after 10 years. 

The sunset provision was likely a compromise to get it passed.  I wonder if it would have worked to include a criteria in such legislation--i.e., specifying that if after 10 years there was a decline in fatalities the law would continue, if not, it would end?

Biden is speaking tonight, presumably to urge passage of something which will disappoint gun safety advocates and irk those in gun advocacy organizations. 

An interesting advance in 3-D printing described in the paper today--using a person's own cells to print an ear, inserted beneath the skin (person's one ear was small and misformed).  In terms of guns, it shows how 3-D printing is advancing, reminding me of the "ghost guns".  Technology may have already outstripped any law which can be passed, at least in my lifetime.

Gun Safes and Safety

 On a beautiful Sunday afternoon some speculation.  Read an article about "smart guns"--the idea being that the gun and the owner would be tied together by some means--biometric perhaps, i.e., fingerprint.  People are working on it, but it's difficult to make it relatively foolproof, particularly when the concept faces hurdles gaining acceptance in the market.

There are also some laws/proposals for requiring gun safes. It seems as if the people who would follow such a law are among the people least likely to need it, though keeping guns away from youngsters tempted to play with them while the parents are away is worthwhile.  Reduce gun deaths by preventing accidents, if not homicides.

How about using bluetooth and the internet?  Sell guns with an associated gun safe which can sense the presence or absence of the gun.  That should be easy enough. Then have the gun safe wifi-enabled with an app on the smartphone.  So one or more people could be sent alerts when the gun is removed from the safe. Such a notice would help in cases where a child/teen/burglar removes the gun.  

The idea wouldn't prevent many cases, but some.  Not sure if 2nd Amendment types would go along, but some might.

Fallows on Guns

This Fallows post expresses my thoughts on Buffalo and Uvalde. 

Guns--May 25

 Reading "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight" which is good, better for anyone who didn't live through the Johnson administration and read her memoir.

Just reached June 4, 1968, when RFK was assassinated, following the killing of MLK in Memphis. The author quotes an excerpt from a speech by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the next day (who had campaigned for RFK) in which he said: "America is a land of violent people, with a violent history..."  Seems to fit today. 

I tweeted this today: "Is it strange that the NRA's good man with a gun guarding a school or church never requires an AR-15, but John Doe defending his home has an absolute right to an AR-15?"

Not sure that expresses my intent--in other words: shouldn't the good guys have weapons at least as good as possible assailants?  It's obvious to me that an AR-15 or similar weapon is not for self-defense. 

George Washington and Bearing Arms

I ran across this quotation from George Washington's first (state of the union) address to Congress. Apparently sometimes Second Amendment advocates have modified it to make it clearly support an individual right to bear arms.

"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies."

I think I've done enough reading in the period to know what he was talking about.  When he took command of the military forces besieging the British in Boston there was a desperate shortage of gunpowder and arms.  The Continental Congress was desperately searching for supplies,  within the colonies, elsewhere in the British empire, in the Americas and in Europe.  

Throughout the Revolution Washington was forced to use colonial militia forces, called up for short periods of time, often poorly armed by the local governments and poorly trained during their periodic muster days.  He did not like the militia.

So what he's calling for in this sentence is a well-armed and organized military force, equipped with American made weapons and supplied with American made gunpowder, clothing and other gear. In other words, the full meaning of the Second Amendment.

Why Do We Need?

 

As a UK man living in a mostly gun-less society answer me this America. Why do civilians need guns like this? pic.twitter.com/O2tB65pTB3

— Paul Samuel (@PaulSteveSamuel) January 16, 2021

That tweet, and the associated thread, got me to asking this question:  Why do Americans need guns, and pickup trucks, and McMansions, and lawns, and...?

Mostly IMHO it's a matter of signaling to ourselves and to others our status and self-image.  

Crime In DC

My title is a bit misleading--this is a report on a poll  asking whether people had, or knew someone who had, been threatened with a gun. 

Notably the results are broken down by DC wards, and as usual east of the Anacostia had the highest exposure/ 

Two things strike me:

1. the difference between the best wards and the worst is not that great--46 percent versus 28 percent..  Yes, that's a big difference, but based on media reports I would have guessed maybe 85 versus 25.
2. there's no difference between west of Rock Creek Park, stereotypically white, and the Northeast wards, more stable middle class black neighbors (my image, which may be outdated).

Bottom line: a reminder that one's picture of the world is likely to be wrong.

Laws on the Books Wouldn't Have Stopped It

Kevin Drum blogs against this meme as it relates to guns.  I'd expand the point
.
By definition, anything that happens wasn't stopped by the laws on the books.  The stock market setting a new record wasn't stopped by laws.  The 16-year old in Santa Clara wasn't stopped by the laws.  Trump wasn't stopped by the laws.

Do we conclude there's problems with our laws?  No, of course not. Most things the laws aren't intended to stop.  In many cases the laws can stop 90 percent of cases but not the last 10.  Needless to say, we never notice the 90 percent.

(There are also laws poorly written so they don't stop some cases and laws poorly enforced or implemented. )

For any specific case, you need to figure out  into which category it falls.

Blast from the Past: Oswald's Rifle

I've a lot of posts which I've started but not finished.  I may lose the train of thought; more often I see something which triggers a reaction, but isn't sufficient to carry me through a discussion.

This is a  post which I abandoned for a while but which I've come back to.  I think the trigger was the discussion of the need for semi-automatic weapons, specifically against the threat of feral hogs.

To pick up the thread, back in the day there was much discussion in the Warren Report over whether Lee Harvey Oswald would have been able to get off the shots which killed Kennedy and injured Connally.  There were questions over how many shots were fired, how many struck the limousine, how many were heard. 

As I remember it, tests with a rifle like Oswald's bolt action rifle (a cheap mail-order gun) showed that a good shot could easily get off the three shots the Warren Commission determined had been shot.  IIRC the rate was 3 shots in about 5 seconds, maybe less. 

I just did a google search, on how fast you could fire a bolt-action rifle, getting conflicting results.   Obviously there are lot of variables, skill of the shooter, the weapon, scope?, distance, accuracy, etc.  Bottom line seems to be you can put out a lot of lead in a short time.

"Militias"

Which groups of armed men get to be called "militias" and which don't?  Could the Black Panthers have called themselves a "militia"? 

Fads and Social Contagion

First we have the guy in Kentucky  who shot two people, then the mad bomber of the van who sent bombs to various people on the left of Trump, and currently the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter who's more right than Trump.

I find some solace in the idea these three events are examples of social contagion, of fads.  It's similar to the spread of anti-vaccine theories, or the sudden popularity of a set of names for newborns.  Somehow we humans are monkey-see, monkey-do (with my apologies to our simian cousins) people.  I'm not sure whether we just like to follow the path beaten down by others or also we like to outdo each other. 

Where does rhetoric come into play?  I'm not sure.  Maybe it's similar to a flu or measles epidemic.  One condition, necessary but not sufficient, is the existence of an unvaccinated population, a set of people closely connected enough to support the spread of a disease.  The other condition is the introduction of a carrier of a virus/bacteria which is infectious. 

But the metaphor isn't good enough--there's just two conditions going on.  With our recent events there's more conditions: the availability of guns, the availability of bomb technology (knowledge and materials), the existence of people somewhat (or very) nutty, the knowledge that others share the feelings and conceivably can be impressed by deeds, the triggering event, etc.

Guns and Drones and Second Amendment

I wonder, with drones becoming more and more capable and technology advancing on other fronts, how long will it be before we run into some constitutional questions?

For example, the Second Amendment confers the "right to bear arms".  These days that means literally carrying a gun around, and pulling the trigger.  Suppose we get drones with lethal capacity.  Will the person who controls the drone be considered to be "bearing arms"? 

Contrarian Time: Trump, Russia, Guns

I'm feeling contrarian today so I'll voice two opinions which will be unpopular with my fellow liberals (most of them):

• I don't think the Russians were really motivated to elect Trump as president; I think they wanted to cause trouble and weaken Clinton.  That fits my judgment that there wasn't serious collusion/conspiracy between Trump and the Russians--Trump himself is too disorganized and his campaign so catch as catch can that conspiracy doesn't work.  Instead, I'll fall back on Murphy's law, and a corollary: different people doing different things and not knowing what they were doing.  (If an alternate history could swap the personalities of the candidates, I'd judge there was collusion between Clinton and the Russians.)
• I hope Congress doesn't act on gun control between now and November.  I well remember Clinton's crime bill in 1994, which included stuff for the right and an assault weapon ban for the left.  We lost Congress that fall.  The last thing we liberals need this year is anything which increases energy on the right.  (Yes, I may be misreading the climate of opinion; we may finally have reached that Holy Grail of a turning point on guns.  But I doubt it.)

An Originalist Second Amendment Proposal for Gun Control

A quick sketch of a contrarian position on gun control.

The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment abstracts it from the original context in which the amendment was adopted.  Returning to its history would permit us to control guns effectively.

In the 18th century America, guns were a necessity for life on the frontier, if not in the cities.  But colonial governments, and I assume state goverments,were concerned that all militia members be well armed, going so far as to buy muskets and furnish them to the militia. 

Militias were geographically based; you went to war with your friends and neighbors, with your kin and fellow church members.  You typically I believe elected your officers, the captain of your company. 

My point: militia members knew the capabilities and limitations of their fellows.  They knew who were the klutzes and who the sharpshooters, who was slightly touched in the head, who drank and who was dangerous when drunk.   

These networks provided a social control on gun possession, a social control which current jurisprudence does not provide.

My Modest Proposal:  We require all gun owners to either:

• have the signature of a person who knows them and has some status in the community. For example: an adult relative, a fellow church member, an NRA club member, a government official (Senator, congressperson, state rep).  The list can be expanded.
• maintain his or her weapons in a repository operated by a gun club, NRA club, or firing range.

Requiring a co-signature on a gun purchase application could provide a better check on gun purchases than a database check, since it makes the co-signor liable for the misdeeds of the gun owner.  By putting the NRA in the loop, there's assurance that the measure isn't aimed at confiscating weapons. 

Updating Gun Check Databases

Vox has a piece on the Air Force's failure to update the federal gun check database with the data on the domestic violence conviction of the shooter at Sutherland Springs.

Proposals to strengthen the system are welcome.  I wonder though, whether the responsibility should be on the Air Force or on ATF or FBI (whoever runs the database).  The problem with our distributed system of government is all the silos and all the interfaces we need.  My general rule is that you need to put responsibility on those motivated to do it right.  In other words, it makes no difference to some AF bureaucrat whether she gets information into a Fed database--she's not going to act on it nor will any AF person act on it.  It does make a difference to the Fed bureaucrat, so she is more motivated to get things right.

Guns and the Founders

An interesting piece on types of gun laws our early politicians would have been familiar with.

Pickup Trucks and Guns: David Brooks

Brooks has a column arguing that guns have become a symbol of adherence to an older agricultural/industrial America, as opposed to the newer service-oriented America.  Seems to make sense to me.  I wonder though whether pickup trucks haven't served the same purpose.  So I wonder whether there's a correlation between owning a gun and owning a pickup truck. 

Our Laws So Weak

Virginia has a thriving export trade, a trade in guns. The Brooklyn district attorney announced indictments of 24 people according to the Times:

 "The indictment of 627 counts charged 24 people, some of whom have violent criminal records and ties to the Bloods street gang, with conspiracy and illegal weapons sale and possession. In all, the authorities recovered 217 guns, including 41 assault weapons like AK-47s, AR-15s and a Thompson submachine gun."

Wiretaps recorded comments such as:

“There is no limits to how many guns I can go buy from the store, you know what I mean?” he said."