Snowflakes in Hell

… despite the fact that I’ve said I can live with some gun control, I still think it’s pretty much useless. While I think we will have to live with background checks, if you look at the statistics, the number of criminals who obtained firearms through straw purchase increased by just about the same number as the decrease in criminals who got their firearms through licensed dealers before the Brady Act went into effect.

Now the gun control folks think they need to shut down straw purchasing, but of course ignore the fact that it will just probably increase theft and gun smuggling.

But the technology exists to screen at point of sale without affecting my ability to go into a gun shop, pay money, and walk out with my purchase. Shutting down other avenues would mean some serious infringements, and shutting down straw purchases is probably not even possible. Even if you could do it however, the demand would be satisfied through other channels. Trying to keep guns out of the hands of criminals who demand them is a losing battle. The public demands we make a token effort, and I doubt the courts would invalidate and instant background check as an unconstitutional infringement. But I think it’s important to point out that the token effort is still mostly useless. Where there’s demand for a product, someone will step up to supply that demand. Even if banned civilian sales entirely, there’s always smuggling. It’s not hard to make guns, or smuggle them. We certainly see it done regularly with illegal drugs. Guns aren’t materially different.

Carolyn McCarthy, who doesn’t even know what a barrel shroud is, has proposed new limits to be placed on magazine capacity.   Gun Laws News has the details on H.R. 1859.   Did anyone check to see if she knows what a magazine is?

Can someone tell me how having 10 rounds in a magazine makes a firearm any less lethal?  It takes a few seconds to change a magazine.  The Virginia Tech killer would have had to carry three magazines instead of two?  Pardon me if this sounds rather useless.

The good news is, the bill has no cosponsors, and it’s been two days.  Typically legislation that has legs will have a lot of cosponsors right out of the gate.  We’ll see if she can manage to guilt some of her colleagues onto the bill, but it looks to me like it doesn’t have legs.   Still worth a letter to your Congress Critter though.

Still some commenting going on over at Dr. Helen’s.  I thought I’d replicate some of it here for the gun blogosphere, because I think it’s good stuff.   Helen comments:

[...] Notice the politics of how hard or easy it is for certain people to get guns– if there is threat etc. of domestic violence against a woman, a man loses his right to purchase a gun–even if he is accused unfairly. However, if someone stalks women, scares the crap out of university classes and is said to be an imminent danger to himself or others, then neither the courts nor the hospitals have a duty to report this because they might stigmitize the mentally ill. If a man is stigmitized as a domestic abuser, well surely he is guilty without much investigtion! It is one extreme to the other. We must look at the facts logically and think about what should legitimately constitute a reason to deny a person access to a weapon. Surely, we can do that without mass hysteria against the innocent. Or maybe I am being naive.

I think this is a really good point, but I’m a pessimist about resolving it.  I replied:

I think, unfortunately, in this issue, it’s very difficult to have a reasonable discussion. Not among individuals, but in the political space, as far as what would be appropriate public policy on the matter.

We have plenty of people on the pro-gun side who believe “shall not be infringed” means that no federal or state controls on possession of firearms are constitutional. I disagree with this notion, but the issue is full of absolutists.

On the anti-gun side, it’s been pretty clear all along that their goal is to ban most firearms, particularly ones that are useful for self-defense. I have no doubt that many want to see all firearms banned. This precludes any reasonable debate on the issue, because the anti-gun side is always seeing every measure as a baby step towards the eventual goal of prohibition.

There are gun control laws that I am willing to accept and don’t think are that infringing, but I generally won’t say that in the political space because it emboldens the other side. I think there’s quite a lot of us who would be more open to a reasonable discussion if the other side weren’t pushing prohibition.

Of course, they claim to not be pushing it, but the fact is they have never met a gun control law, including the DC ban, that they didn’t like. I don’t think there’s really much reasonable discussion to be had as long as that’s the case.

I’d love to have a reasonable discussion, but because the Brady Campaign, once called Handgun Control Inc., just wants to crap all over the second amendment, rather than have a reasonable discussion, and listen to our concerns, it’s not going to happen.  If the Brady’s are truly interested in keeping guns out of the hands of the criminally irresponsible and mentally incompetent, they need to accept our right to bear arms. As long as they are pushing a disguised prohibitionist agenda, there will be no reasonable discussion.

Dr. Helen brings up the topic of NICS improvements. This started out as a comment over on her blog, but it started getting big, so I figured I’d do a linky-then-comment deal here instead.

The NICS improvement bill was something that has been talked about on the gun blogosphere before. A lot of folks are against it because they are against background checks entirely, largely because they don’t believe in the concept of “prohibited person”. It’s often heard that once you serve your debt to society, you get your rights back.

I am sympathetic to the argument, because I do think the current laws catch way too many non-violent people in its net. There is no compelling reason for denying someone convicted of tax evasion their right to keep and bear arms, and yet it is done. I do oppose a large portion of the current felon in possession law. Felon in possession should only apply to people who have committed violent acts, not to non-violent felonies, which there are many.

I do support laws which prohibit criminals, who commit acts of violence, and are convicted through due process of law, from possessing weapons. It’s accepted in our legal tradition that people can be deprived of their liberties through due process; if part of the sentence can include being thrown in jail for several year, part of it can also include not possessing weapons for whatever amount of time the legislature sees fit. I also support people who are adjudicated mentally incompetent from possessing arms.

That said, I think the current practice of Congress not funding any of the programs that can restore the rights of people is wrong. There should be a path for people who have lead clean lives for years to have their right restored. I’m sympathetic to someone who as an 18 or 19 year old, might have gotten in trouble with the law, but has lead a clean life for years and is now a responsible member of the community. There should be recourse for those people.

But it doesn’t alter the fact that if we’re going to have NICS, and we are, it’s not going away, that it should function effectively. It’s already illegal for the people who have those criminal or mental health record to even touch a firearm, so it doesn’t alter the legal situation to have NICS updated with those records.

So therefore, to the disappointment of many of you, I’m sure, I support making sure NICS has the data it needs on criminal and mental health records. We should accept that, and concentrate on things like getting rid of Lautenberg, getting funding for restoring rights to people who have truly reformed themselves, and modifying felon-in-possession statutes to only cover truly violent and mentally unstable people.

I have probably mentioned before that The Belmont Club is one of my favorite blogs. Wretchard has been covering the Virginia Tech incident, which you can read here, here, here, and here. Read the comments too, because that’s often full of good material:

I know there is some debate over whether Cho’s craziness could have been fully anticipated. However, a university stands in loco parentis, in place of the parents. It is fully committed, by its own avowal, to creating a safe environment for its students.

Any parent understands that when you are hosting a group of children in your house, when you are in loco parentis one of the variables you control is the quality of the company. And when one of the kids acts in a menacing way like Cho, most parents would probably send him home. There was no need to lock Cho up, but is not reasonable to think that the University might have suspended him or expelled him for his behavior, which apparently stalking, voyeurism and setting fire to his dorm, by some accounts? After all they were willing to expel students who carried licensed guns to school, even when they could not be prosecuted; so it is established the university was perfectly willing to toss people out on their ear to create their environment of safety.

The intention may have been laudable, but they forgot one thing. The threat is the man, not the thing. The hijackers who killed 3,000 people accomplished their deed only with boxcutters. They were looking for guns, which is neither here nor there, but they were oblivious to the flaming psychopath who broadcast his existence continuously, like some dark beacon in their idyllic sea.

It may not be productive to indulge in recriminations, but surely it is reasonable to recall that in a creating any security screen, any safe environment it is the man above of all whom we must watch. Maybe they forgot that. I hope they remember it now.

Emphasis is mine. It’s still not clear yet what the impact of all this is going to be. Wretchard is a very good writer. He takes incidents and current events, and tries to put them into the broader context. You never see that in the media, and it’s great that we have bloggers who do it, and are talented at it. Read all the links. Hopefully it will keep you all busy for a while, because blogging might be a bit light today.