Where law ends and resistance begins

Just how susceptible are societies to top-down change, with government using the force of law to impose the preferences of one faction on the unwilling members of another faction? In 2002, an intriguing and underappreciated book was published by Oxford University Press that addressed just that question. Can Gun Control Work?, by James B. Jacobs, Warren E. Burger Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University, purports to address only the practicality of restricting firearms ownership in the United States, but it really applies to all circumstances in which governments try to impose policies disliked by significant percentages of their subject populations.

Jacobs himself sees the wider application of his book's findings. In the introduction, he writes:

Interestingly, many gun control believers are atheists when it comes to government regulation of mood- and mind-altering drugs. They insist that drugs cannot be kept out of the hands of those who want to use them. They point out that after an investment of many billions of dollars, and the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of individuals, our three-decade-long drug war has achieved few, if any, positive results. Does the drug war not cast doubt on schemes for gun prohibition or stringent regulation?

Indeed, it does. Advocates of gun control would do well to recognize that the failure of drug prohibition is virtually guaranteed to be replicated in the implementation of firearms regulations. Likewise, supporters of gun rights should realize that their zeal for the right to bear arms is paralleled among devotees of the autonomy of the human body and the right to self-medicate.

But the failure of drug laws is already well-documented -- indeed, it's a main feature in news stories that follow the latest drug busts and the ingenuity of drug smugglers, manufacturers and dealers. Have gun laws experienced similar failures that support Jacobs's point?

You bet.

In recent years, several states and municipalities passed laws mandating the registration of assault rifles. These laws were overwhelmingly ignored. In Boston and Cleveland, the rate of compliance with bans on assault rifles is estimated at 1%. Out of the 100,000 to 300,000 assault rifles estimated to be in private hands in New Jersey, 947 were registered, an additional 888 rendered inoperable, and 4 turned over to the authorities. In California, nearly 90% of the approximately 300,000 assault weapons owners did not register their weapons.

After summarizing the history of restrictions and the inherent weakness of the various proposals for registering firearms, restricting sales, banning some types of weapons and otherwise attempting to choke off private ownership of guns, Jacobs concludes:

If black market activity in connection with the drug laws is any indication, a decades-long "war on handguns" might resemble a low-grade civil war more than a law-enforcement initiative.

Well, that's a pretty definitive prognosis on gun control. And, based as it is on the failure of drug prohibition (and alcohol prohibition before that), it would seem to apply to any similar effort to restrict popular practices, substances and possessions. In fact, it's a lesson that anybody with a passing interest in history could learn fairly easily. At least since the Ottoman Empire's doomed efforts to prohibit the use of tobacco, laws that have suffered any real degree of unpopularity among the people subject to them have sputtered and died -- though often leaving strife, expense and ruined lives in their wake.

People, it seems, are remarkably unresponsive to legislation they dislike, even when the penalties for defiance are draconian (the Ottoman sultan, like the Russian czar, actually imposed the death penalty for smokers).

In a few cases, that may not be terribly important to the authorities. Politicians probably don't care that they get nothing approaching full compliance with taxes so long as they squeeze enough money from their subjects to pay for their pet projects and fill their personal accounts. But most laws are rendered ineffective by widespread defiance; worse, from a government perspective, scofflawry demonstrates the impotence of the state.

That should be enough reason to avoid grandiose legislative gestures. Why reveal the ruling regime as relatively feeble and disdained by much of the populace by passing laws that can't be enforced?

But there seems to be a popular delusion that transforming society is simply a matter of wanting hard enough and cleverly crafting legislation that everybody must follow as if it were a law of nature. As Jacobs puts it in the gun control context, "To a large extent, gun control is something that people believe in. It is embraced in principle without attention to practicalities, implementation and enforcement problems, and cost." Inevitably, the gun controllers, like all totalitarian "reformers," are disappointed when their neighbors prove resistant to social engineering.

I'm not troubled that a series of failed prohibitions and restrictions erodes the legitimacy of the state -- that's a beneficial outcome in my view. But the attempt to enforce those laws inevitably results in people fined, imprisoned and killed before the ultimate ineffectiveness of the policy in question becomes obvious to even the densest lawmakers.

For the sake of our liberty, it's a good thing that people are not anywhere near as malleable as politicians and frenzied advocates of schemes for "improving" society would like. It's just unfortunate that the lesson has to be relearned each generation.

Second Amendment decision could have perverse results

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard the arguments (PDF) in the case of D.C. v. Heller, it looks like a majority of the justices are leaning towards an individual-rights interpretation of the constitutional provision that would put the court in accord with most modern legal scholars, and everybody is awaiting the final decision.

But just what result are they hoping for?

The answer appears obvious: Advocates of the right to self-defense want the Second Amendment read as protecting an individual right, while opponents of civilian ownership of firearms want the amendment read as securing the states' right to organize militias, with no provision for individual gun ownership. Right?

Well, maybe. Perhaps the right question is what result should people be hoping for?

Gun-rights supporters certainly should be hoping for an explicit statement that the right to bear arms is protected as an individual right subject to protections equivalent to those provided for free speech. But they're not likely to get such a strong ruling. More likely, they'll get an affirmation of an individual right, but one subject to regulations of various severity supposedly linked to the government's interest in keeping the peace and enforcing laws, but really motivated by a desire to avoid too terribly offending the political powers-that-be.

This result, the likely one, is what gun control advocates should be hoping for -- not an absolute rejection of an individual right to bear arms.

Why?

Because if the Supreme Court rules that the Second Amendment is essentially a nullity from an individual rights perspective, the decision is likely to turn out to be the most effective marketing boost firearms manufacturers and gun rights organizations have ever seen. Panicked by the ruling, millions of Americans -- current gun owners as well as those who have put off firearms purchases -- will very likely flock to buy guns, ammunition and reloading supplies to make more ammunition in the future, just as they did in the wake of the Brady Bill and the now-expired "assault weapons" ban. In 1994, during the days leading up to President Clinton's signing the controversial bill restricting many popular rifles, the New York Times reported:

Although current sales have not approached the buying booms set off by passage of the Brady law on handguns last year or the House's first vote to ban assault weapons in May, handguns and assault-type weapons are selling briskly, gun dealers around the country said.

"Every time they mention the crime bill on the news, people come in," said Cesare Venegoni, assistant manager at Jim's Military Collectibles in Plano, Tex. "A lot of people are afraid they might not be able to have a gun. That fear has prompted them to buy one."

That will probably happen even in the absence of federal legislation to tighten restrictions on firearms ownership, and despite explicit state-level protections for the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Far from surrendering to a ruling stripping them of protection for their right to own the means of self-defense, Americans who prize that most politically charged of rights will dig in their heels and do their best to make the draconian laws they fear unenforceable. They'll become more adversarial toward gun control advocates and the government, and increasingly defiant toward any move they consider a step in the direction of disarmament.

The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimates (PDF) that American civilians currently own 270 million firearms. That's already a number far beyond the ability of any government to curtail in a significant way. Any further surge in firearms purchases will just make a mockery of whatever legislation gun-controllers might favor, while undermining support for the government by many Americans.

If, on the other hand, the Supreme Court takes the middle road by recognizing protections for an individual right, but allowing for substantial exceptions and conditions for that right, gun control advocates will get the largest measure possible of what they want. Confiscation will be off the table, most outright bans will become impossible, so gun owners will be less fearful of efforts to impose strictures on firearms use and ownership that just nibble around the edges. Gun controllers will probably still have the option of pushing for registration, permits and restrictions on concealed carry -- and they'll have a greater chance of success since the opposition will be less unified and resistant.

What? That's not enough?

Well, if you're a gun control advocate, that's the best you can hope for. Even in the current climate of a presumed individual right, California's 1989 law requiring registration of many rifles resulted in about 7,000 affected weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state being reported to authorities. It's hard to believe that compliance could be lower, but it will be if the Supreme Court strips away protections for the right to bear arms, making advocates of civilian armament feel besieged.

Like it or not, significant changes in the way Americans own and use guns are simply out of the question. The question now is whether we get strong protections for an individual right, weak protections, or an attack on the concept of an individual right that perversely leaves Americans better armed and more divided than ever.

Gun control inevitable? Not likely

An interesting article in the Virginian-Pilot discusses the tendency of many Virginians to respond to incidents like the Virginia Tech shooting by pushing for looser firearms laws and public carry of weapons rather than (as many newspaper editors would prefer) stricter controls or outright confiscation. Jarringly, though, the article includes this peek into the editors' heart of hearts:

Others who have studied the issue think urbanization will eventually swing the pendulum toward more gun control. Out in the country, firearms represent a way of life; in the city, they represent crime. As rural interests lose political power, the strongest gun supporters won't have as much say...

Ah yes, demographic inevitability, the last refuge of political losers.

But that odd little statement is more than an ideological wish-upon-a-star; it's a window into an odd sort of political theology, and a massive misunderstanding of how the world works.

First of all, there's the strange idea that urbanization necessarily dictates a change in attitudes toward guns. Often, that's so, but it's not inevitable. In my experience, the cities of Arizona are as well and happily armed as the rest of the state, and that's true throughout much of the West.

Then there's the peculiar delusion that, even if urbanization does shift attitudes, 50 percent plus one is a form of political alchemy that anoints with righteousness (and effectiveness) any dominant faction's efforts to dictate terms to the minority. Philosophically, the whole idea is suspect; are 49 people really bound to bow down to 51, just because? And practically, history has shown raw majoritarianism to be a non-starter. Minorities that don't want to give up a valued practice, lifestyle or possession simply don't submit to the law. Majorities have, time and again, been thwarted on efforts to raise taxes, ban alcohol, outlaw drugs, criminalize sodomy or otherwise alter the behavior of any significant portion of the population unwilling to be so altered.

But we're talking about guns, so let's look at the success -- or lack thereof -- of gun laws around the world.

In Gun Control and the Reduction in the Number of Arms (PDF), Dr. Franz Csaszar, professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, wrote in 2000:

Non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a common event. In Australia it is estimated that only about 20% of all banned self-loading rifles have been given up to the authorities. ...

Following the restriction in 1983 of certain "military-style" rifles in Canada, the compliance rate was estimated as between 3 and 20% for different models. ...

In Austria in 1995 pump-action shotguns were prohibited. While new acquisition is next to impossible since then, already legally held guns could only be kept on a special permit. Out of an original stock estimated at 60 000 guns, only 10 557 have been either surrendered or registered. As the estimate on imports covers only the last ten years, total legal imports must certainly have been even higher.

Actually, I think Dr. Csaszar is being unduly generous to the Australian government over the success of the 1996 ban. Three years after Australians surrendered 643,000 semiautomatic rifles and pump-action shotguns, Inspector John McCoomb, head of the Queensland Weapons Licensing Branch, publicly admitted defeat.

"About 800,000 (semi-automatic and automatic) SKK and SKS weapons came in from China back in the 1980s as part of a trade deal between the Australian and Chinese governments," Insp McCoomb said. "And it was estimated that there were 1.2 million semi-automatic Ruger 10/22s in the country. "That's about 2 million firearms of just two types in the country."

I very much doubt that compliance surpassed ten percent.

Dr. Csaszar emphasizes, "the effects of changes in legislation which is to reduce the number of already legally owned guns depends on whether the existing stock has been already registered." So, is registration an effective way to go? Can you sidle into tougher laws by first getting an accurate tally of who has what?

Dr. Csaszar again:

In Germany the general registration of long guns was enforced in 1972. The existing stock was estimated at between 17 and 20 millions, while only 3,2 million guns have been registered within the legally set period. In England out of an estimated stock of 300 000 legally acquired semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, it would appear that fewer than 100 000 have been registered. In Austria the registration of "C" category rifles of EC nomenclature (any type except semi-automatic) was enacted in 1996. It is estimated that between 500 000 and 1 million rifles have been registered, while the existing stock has been estimated at about 2 to 3 millions.

For a more U.S.-specific example, there's a New York Times report on the success of California's 1989 law requiring registration of many rifles.

Nine days before the deadline, thousands of Californians are defying a ground-breaking state requirement that they register their military-style semiautomatic guns. ...

As a one-year registration period draws toward an end on Dec. 31, only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered. This non-compliance has virtually nullified the first step of a March 1989 law that set the pattern for similar attempts to limit ownership of assault rifles in other states and in Washington.

OK. But most gun control advocates don't favor total confiscation, and they're willing to slowly work their way toward tighter rules. How about ... just making the process of obtaining permits and licensing weapons so annoying that people give up?

Says Dr. Csaszar:

[I]n Austria the costs involved in obtaining a license for "B"-category guns (mostly handguns), including psychological screening and a basic firearms instruction, are already higher than the price of a quite serviceable handgun on the black market. This is a strong incentive for illegal acquisition even without criminal intent. Although no one would doubt the benefits of checking the personal character and the technical knowledge of a prospective gun owner, one invariably has to accept that there are also disadvantages.

The overall effects of such defiance can be impressive. In 2005, the Greek government estimated that the country's 11 million people own 1.5 million illegal guns. Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service estimates that the country's 60 million people own as many as four million illegal guns. The German police union and the Forum Waffenrecht, a gun rights group, both peg the number of illegal firearms owned by Germany's 82 million people at 20 million.

So we're not just talking about some small criminal fringe defying the law. If Germans hold enough illegal guns to arm every fourth person, it's a sizable chunk of the population that's flouting the law by keeping millions of guns in circulation.

But maybe that's sufficient. After all, some guns are taken out of circulation, some guns are registered, and, we've "sent a message." Is that enough to declare victory?

Well ... enough for what?

Do you just want to reduce the number of firearms in civilian hands? The latest estimate by the Small Arms Survey is that American civilians own some 270 million firearms (PDF). Even assuming that gun control advocates actually do want full-on confiscation (a position I believe to be held only by the hardest of the hard core), the 20 percent compliance rate estimated for the Australian gun confiscation of 1996 by Dr. Csaszar would bring stockpiles down to 216 million guns -- all illegally held by tens of millions of deliberately defiant owners. Is that what's going to make you sleep better at night?

Well ... maybe you want to reduce crime. Will even partial compliance have that effect? Don't count on it. Australia's Courier Mail reported in 2006:

And while legal gun ownership is on the rise, illegal use of firearms is not decreasing, despite an initial decline following the introduction of restrictive laws in 1996.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of robberies involving weapons across the nation is the same as it was five years ago.

The number of abductions involving weapons is higher, and while there has been a fall in firearm murders, more than a quarter of attempted murders involved guns.

Bond University criminologist Paul Wilson said: "There are indications guns are being used illegally more than a few years ago, and a stark look needs to be taken into whether firearm laws are losing their effectiveness."

Britain's The Independent had similar news in 2005:

UK gun crime might not rival that of the US, but the problem is frightening and growing. There were more than 10,000 offences in England and Wales involving the use of firearms in 2003-04. Weapons such as Brococks were used in 2,150 offences, an increase of 18 per cent on the previous year.

Also on the rise is the number of victims shot: 440 people were seriously wounded by firearm in 2003-04, up five per cent on the previous year.

Even when handguns were banned, only around 3,000 of the 100,000 believed to have been in private hands before May 2004 have been handed in for destruction. The other 97,000 have disappeared.

That's no shocker. As Dr. Csaszar points out:

[A]fter the reduction in the number of legally held guns it would appear that there is not a comparable decrease in armed crime. This is to be expected, as the guns turned in are usually not the ones involved in crime, and the people who turn in weapons are generally the least likely to commit a crime.

Laws do have effects, but they're not always those intended by their authors. Targeting any group has the effect of putting that group into an adversarial relationship with the government and with law enforcement. Australia's Inspector McCoomb made the point in 1999 that resistance had now hardened among gun owners, saying, "The perception in the shooting community is that 'if you know all about my guns, you'll soon take them all off me'."

And those guns don't remain frozen in place. They're traded and supplemented by smuggled and illegally manufactured weapons. A black market is created or expands, controlled (by definition) by criminals.

A personal note here: Until 1999, when I moved to the very different legal climate of Arizona, I represented the third generation of firearms scofflaws in my family. For over half a century, Tuccilles cheerfully disregarded New York's draconian gun permit and registration laws. My family's outlaw status may have gone back further in time, since I simply don't know whether or not my great-grandfather was armed. The situation reached a pinnacle of absurdity in the mid 1990s when I applied for a New York City pistol permit so I could legally shoot at a range. My background was checked, my fingerprints taken, my wallet lightened -- all while I had an illegal "assault weapon" purchased on the sly stashed in my East Village apartment.

I could only smile one day at police headquarters when, after an extended session of sullen, systematic abuse intended to dissuade all us permit applicants, one man stood up, loudly vowed to purchase a gun illegally, and stalked out of the room.

Amen, brother.

So, will urbanization bring about a shift in public attitudes easing the way for tighter gun control laws?

Maybe.

Will the passage of new and tighter laws be effective?

Only if you want to alienate millions of Americans from the government, increase contempt for the law, breed black markets and, potentially, increase the crime rate.

If I haven't made it clear yet, I don't think that firearms are a special case in this regard. By and large, societies are not the malleable molding clay to be shaped by legislation that "reformers" would have us believe. Societies are more like balloons; squeeze in one spot, and they bulge elsewhere. Whatever your particular cause, reshaping the world you live in solely by the force of law is a thankless, and probably impossible, task.

Even if that spells doom for your particular concern, you might take heart in that lesson. Who wouldn't rather live in a world of stubborn people who insist on making their own decisions, rather than one populated by drones who simply do what t hey're told?

That may mean you don't get to remake the world to do your bidding. But it also means that people who want to remake you won't get their way either.

'Capital murder' for Ryan Frederick

Ryan Frederick, who shot and killed a police officer during a confused, unannounced middle-of-the-night raid on his home that turned up a personal-use amount of marijuana, may be charged with "capital murder" says the prosecutor in the case. That's because Detective Jarrod Shivers was ... umm ... standing in the yard, not breaking through the door at all, contrary to earlier reports. Apparently, that's why Frederick was denied bond.

Radley Balko, who has been following the case, has the lowdown on the authorities' changing story. Read it and catch up before the prosecutor tries to tell us that Frederick actually hunted down Detective Shivers and shot him in the bath.

Lessons for the law-abiding from Greece

Lest night's episode of the excellent Travel Channel show, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, brought the boozing, snarky celebrity chef to Greece for overindulgence in local cuisine, booze, music, dance and firearms. Firearms? Yes, not only did Bourdain hunt quail with a shotgun, but an outdoor raki-fueled picnic on Crete featured one of the participants firing his pistol in the air as part of the raucous festivities.

But Greece is supposed to have strict gun-control laws. In fact, Greece does have strict gun-control laws. Shotguns are relatively easy to come by for hunting, but handguns and even rifles are tightly restricted. According to an online posting by a Greek gun owner:

There are generally two ways that one can legally get a gun in Greece.

One is, if your life is in danger, due to your job, social status or functionality, or if you have some good friends in the right places. In that case, you can easily obtain, what is known as a Concealed Self-Protection Carrying Permit (let's call it CSCP, for short). This permit allows you to have only one gun and a very limited amount of cartridges (30 or usually less). Now, if you are allowed to have 30 rounds, you can only fire, let's say half of them for practice. How can a person be trusted to protect his own life with so little practice is of course beyond my comprehension.

The second reason that entitles you to own a firearm, is to be an athlete in a shooting sport. This permit allows you to have more than one guns (usually a 0.22 LR, a 0.32 or 0.38 or 9mm, etc) in order to be able to participate in the corresponding shooting matches. In order to get such a permit, you must be a member of an athletic shooting club for several months, and to have participated in several matches (using either your friend's guns or your clubs guns, if they have any). The club is responsible for supplying you with cartridges you need for your practice sessions and your participation in shooting matches. Of course, this permit does not allow you to carry your gun(s) on yourself. You are only allowed to transport you guns in bags or suitcases to and from the shooting range. For those interested to know I have this kind of permit.

It's unlikely that the fellow on No Reservations was expending his limited legal allotment of ammo for the edification of Bourdain and company, so chances are that at least his ammunition was illegally owned, and it's a fair bet that the gun itself wasn't one familiar to the authorities. Nevertheless, he felt perfectly comfortable popping off rounds in front of a TV crew.

Why? Well, the answer may be found in another part of that Greek gun owner's post:

...there are some areas in Greece, like Crete and Mani, where guns are not that restricted. That does not come from these areas having different legislation that the rest of the country. It is more of a customary habit than anything else, which however is endorsed by some politicians.

OK -- so the festive-minded gunman was probably taking advantage of Crete's traditional nudge-and-wink attitude toward the country's gun laws.

In fact, as of 2005, the Greek government estimated that the country's population of 11 million harbored 1.5 million illegal firearms.

Actually, that's not all that surprising. Americans with an eye toward "reforming" the way things are done in the United States are fond of pointing toward tighter gun control laws in the UK, higher taxes in France or hate-speech laws elsewhere. But while touting the alleged virtues of the rules imposed by other governments, Americans with statute-envy miss an important point: The people of the United States are a lot more likely to actually obey the deficient laws to which they are subject than the citizens of many other countries are to even notice the oh-so enlightened legislation that they enjoy. Greece may have much tighter gun control laws than the U.S., but the descendants of Plato and Socrates clearly take those laws with a very large grain of salt -- and a case of 9mm ammunition.

In many countries, passing laws often seems to be more an exercise in letting eager young parliamentarians vent their elitist frustrations (and satisfy the letter of various international treaties) than an actual effort to change the way life is lived by the majority of people. The laws get passed and the enforcers do their best to make folks obey, but compliance ... well, compliance is another matter.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a Flemish law professor in the early 1990s that somehow drifted into a discussion of the apparent willingness of Europeans to pay much higher taxes than Americans. Was it because Europeans really wanted a higher level of services and were willing to pay accordingly?

The professor laughed and told us that he couldn't speak for all Europeans, but Belgians weren't any more eager to pay than Americans -- they just thought they were getting something for nothing. Belgians, he said, all thought they were the best tax evaders in the world. They weren't entirely right about that -- they paid more than they anticipated -- but they held back tax money at a rate undreamed of by Americans.

Taxes are a good place to start when comparing the willingness of different peoples to submit to the law, since they're the easiest laws for which to quantify compliance. Oddly enough, even though compliance should be relatively easy to calculate, official figures are hard to com by. But according to the latest figures, Americans have a roughly 84% rate of compliance with the federal income tax. By contrast, orderly, reputedly law-abiding Switzerland had an estimated tax-compliance rate of about 78% as of 1995 (figures here in PDF format). That's Switzerland, which could be expected to be a model of compliance among Western European countries. (As for that professor's beloved Belgium ... Time says "tax evasion is a national sport" in the country.)

America's myth of rugged individualism runs up against its surprisingly law-abiding nature as compared to the countries from which its citizens originally came.

Of course, America's law-abiding nature evolved in a climate of relatively light-handed governance and stable institutions. While Europeans groaned under authoritarian monarchs, totalitarian regimes and unrestrained majorities, the United States enjoyed a comparatively hands-off approach. Since most laws made sense or, at least, weren't terribly objectionable, it was easy to obey them and assume that the neighbors should do the same.

Not that Americans have been sheep. When something particularly nasty, like Prohibition, came around, non-compliance became, pace Belgium, a national sport.

But American government is no longer so light-handed. Rules proliferate like weeds -- smoking bans, light-bulb prohibitions ... and, of course, gun laws and higher taxes. Laws no longer seem so easily tolerated as they once were. When laws become too numerous, intrusive and overall objectionable, it's unlikely that they'll long command the respect and obedience of the people subject to them.

I'll lay odds that, before too long, the United States will soon be a place where breaking the law in front of a TV camera seems as reasonable to the average person as it was to Anthony Bourdain's Greek host.

Too honest

This is why acting like a boy scout with the powers-that-be is not a good idea.

Technology and the abortion debate

Abortion isn't about to go away as a contentious issue any time soon, but the the controversial procedure is losing much of its vulnerability to public protests and political intervention because of long-anticipated changes in technology. Says the Washington Post:

The French abortion pill RU-486, on the market since 2000, has become an increasingly common alternative, making abortion less clinical and more private. At a time when the overall number of abortions has been steadily declining, RU-486-induced abortions have been rising by 22 percent a year and now account for 14 percent of the total -- and more than one in five early abortions performed by the ninth week of pregnancy.

Where once abortion meant identifiable providers and centralized clinics that could be targeted for protests and public shaming -- or more-violent reactions -- now the procedure increasingly involves discreetly obtaining a drug from a wider pool of physicians who don't need to acquire the specialized training and equipment required for performing a surgical procedure. As one patient quoted in the article reveals:

"It was something I could do at home and be with my husband," Gilbert said of taking the pill. "It was a decision we made together alone, and we were able to take care of it this way alone. It was just a much more private affair."

She added: "I wouldn't say it was easy -- it's never easy to terminate a pregnancy. But in the grand scheme of things, it was much more pleasant than a surgical procedure."

The shift in the way abortions are performed may just be starting, since, in some European countries, "more than 60 percent of abortions are performed with the drug."

None of this is likely to change the moral and political debate over abortion, of course, but it is an illustration of how advances in technology can help to make even the most controversial practices more accessible and less susceptible to public scorn and political shifts. Indeed, the easier abortions are to obtain without walking a gauntlet of protesters or traveling far distances, the more widespread they're likely to become.

Whatever your opinion on abortion itself, there's a lesson here on how to entrench any controversial practice or product by improving the ease with which it can be obtained and by dispersing the practice or product to a multitude of relatively unidentifiable sources.

Imagine, for example, what reducing the production of firearms to an easy and practically automated home workshop activity can/will do to the debate over gun control. To a certain extent, that has already happened, but advancing technology promises to put production in the hands of even the least skilled tinkerers.

Technology can't settle debates over right and wrong, but it can make those debates somewhat pointless.

Gun rights by the bay

San Francisco, where freedom is OK as long as it involves marijuana, but not firearms, lost its bid to ban handguns and ammunition.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal upheld a district court decision, which found that the ordinance was pre-empted by several state laws, one of which prohibits cities from restricting handgun possession in an individual's home, business, or private property.

"These laws of statewide application reflect the legislature's balancing of interests -- on the one side the interest of the general public to be protected from the criminal misuse of firearms, on the other, the interests of law-abiding citizens to be able to purchase and use firearms," the panel wrote in its unanimous decision.

"When it comes to regulating firearms, local governments are well advised to tread lightly."

City officials may appeal -- which would be a commendable sentiment if they were trying to expand liberty instead of restrict it.

Good neighbor policy

Now that cloning of humans is becoming an increasingly likely prospect, I have an important question: Can I get a copy of Joe Horn to move in as my next-door neighbor?

Horn is the Pasadena, Texas, resident who called 911 when he saw two burglars breaking into his neighbors' home. While he stayed on the phone with a 911 operator, the burglars ransacked the house. After long, painful minutes of waiting, with no sign of the police, it looked as if the burglars were going to make good their escape. Horn told the operator that he was going out to confront the burglars with a shotgun. That's exactly what he did. The burglars ended up dead.

A few of the usual ninnies are whining about how terrible it is that Horn shot criminals over "mere" home invasion and property. Asks one letter-writer in the pages of the Houston Chronicle, "Does not human life trump some cash, or an iPod, in Texas?."

Well, no -- at least, it shouldn't. When we're talking about thieves caught in the act, we're talking about people whose lives are worth less than lint. I certainly wouldn't execute them once they've surrendered and been taken into custody, but when they attempt to escape, as these two did when confronted by Horn, shooting them is perfectly justified -- and a step toward neighborhood beautification.

Yep, when the science is perfected I'll be first in line for a Joe Horn clone to install next door.

Digging for the roots of the Second Amendment

Just a few words, but they cause so much debate:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seems clear enough to the casual reader--the amendment means what it says, and protects the right of Americans to own and carry weapons. But, for decades, most politicians and legal scholars either ignored those few words, or claimed that, somehow, they only referred to the power of states to maintain National Guard units. To most folks, that seems an odd reading, but it was the prevailing point of view of the people in power through both Democratic and Republican administrations during much of the 20th Century.

Now the tide seems to have turned once again in the debate over the meaning of the allegedly confusing Second Amendment. In two separate cases: first, United States v. Emerson, and later (and more importantly) in Parker v. District of Columbia, two federal appeals courts have held that the Second Amendment does, in fact, protect the rights of individuals; the decision in Parker actually found Washington, D.C.'s gun ban unconstitutional under that apparently commonsense reading of the amendment's language.

So, what has happened to change the legal landscape so thoroughly? Scholarship! Lots and lots of legal and historical scholarship have tremendously strengthened the argument that the Second Amendment is important to individual rights after all. In Search of the Second Amendment, an important documentary by lawyer and best-selling author David T. Hardy, details the recent findings of a generation of legal scholars and historians--and some of the important uses to which Second Amendment rights have been put to defend other important rights, such as life, liberty and property.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of bumps in the road that might prevent
In Search of the Second Amendment from reaching as wide an audience as it should. Most importantly, Hardy should either have hired a professional sound engineer or else fired the one he did hire and brought in new talent. The audio varies in quality from interview to interview and is so garbled as to be nearly unintelligible in one segment in which Hardy himself appears. The sound problems distract the viewer from the meat of the documentary.

The other problem is that the film wanders a bit during a panel discussion sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. Hardy probably included the material to further cement the case for the Second Amendment as a protector of individual rights through the testimony of some truly heavyweight legal scholars, but he risks losing his viewers. My wife, who is perfectly capable of chewing her way through medical journals, complained that this material was unfocused and dry.

But that may be the risk you take when you set out to counteract decades of bad assumptions with good scholarship. Watching an intellectual case being built may not woo a mass audience away from its affection for American Idol, but it's edifying viewing if you have any interest in history--especially if you are interested in the cultural and political factors that played such a large part in the evolution of the legal structure with which we live today.

Hardy takes the viewer from the original Englishman's duty to be armed through its transformation by intellectual ferment and political tumult into a right to be armed and that right's transplantation to the fertile soil of the American frontier. From there he describes colonial-era treatment of the right to bear arms, British challenges to that right in the days leading up to the Revolution, and, of course, the painstaking crafting of the Second Amendment during the heated debate over the adoption of the new federal Constitution.

From there, the documentary traces the odd sources of the once-prevalent belief that the Second Amendment had nothing to do with individual rights. Basically, the claim seems to have been invoked from thin air by a few politicians and jurists who (apparently deliberately) misstated holdings by earlier judges and authorities and then cited each other's opinions as proof of their position. The Kansas Supreme Court played an especially contemptible role here--before later carefully brushing the offending opinion under a figurative rug and returning to the individual rights position.

The Fourteenth Amendment comes in for extensive treatment by Hardy because of the explicit intent of its authors to extend the protections of the federal First and Second Amendments to black Americans victimized by racist state officials in the wake of the Civil War. Unfortunately, as the documentary describes, the Fourteenth Amendment has largely been gutted by subsequent court decisions.

The most effective part of the documentary may be the segment describing the use of firearms by blacks and white civil rights activists to defend themselves during the dangerous days of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s. The accounts add an emotional impact to the otherwise scholarly film.

Through it all, Hardy relies on a convincing mix of original documents and interviews with scholars, including law professors, historians, criminologists and activists. Step by step they build an unimpeachable case for taking the Second Amendment every bit as seriously as the First or the Fourth.

Overall, In Search of the Second Amendment is an excellent and important piece of journalism that summarizes scholarship done largely out of the public view in a way that's interesting and accessible. At $24.95 plus shipping and handling, it's an affordable and worthwhile addition to the home library, to be pulled out whenever Uncle Ed starts spouting off about collective rights of the National Guard.

Maybe David Hardy can improve the audio quality of the documentary to match its intellectual impact when he updates the material to reflect the very recent Parker decision.

The documentary's official Website, where the DVD can be purchased, is here.

Drop that sketch!

When I was a kid, I whiled away many painful hours in boring classes by drawing in my notebooks. Since I was a fairly typical boy, these sketches largely consisted of bloody depictions of combat, with every variety of weapon and atrocity penned with painstaking detail in the margins alongside my social studies notes.

If I were a student today--especially if I attended Payne Junior High in Chandler, Arizona--I'd be screwed.

Two students were suspended by school officials at that school over a sketch of a gun. That's right--a drawing. No threats were involved; there apparently wasn't even any of the imaginary gore with which I littered my school papers. It was just an artistic depiction (rendered with an unknown degree of talent) of a weapon.

But, oh yes, it violated the school's infantile zero-tolerance policy, which states that "possession or threatening use of any weapon, real or simulated, is strictly prohibited."

I guess that a sketch of a gun could be interpreted as possession of a "simulated" weapon--by a rules-bound idiot. I guess it's a good thing neither of those suspended kids had the nerve to tote a pocket knife--like my friends and I did through much of our school career.

Call the Chandler Unified School District to tell the folks there that you can hear the wind whistling through their empty heads.

Main number: (480) 812-7000
Community relations: (480) 812-7650
Community relations email: locke.terry@chandler.k12.az.us

Turning garbage into guns

Have you ever fantasized about taking advantage of one of those "gun buybacks" that trade cash or credit for old scrap guns and using the proceeds to buy yourself a shiny new boomstick? Well, somebody did--in spades.

Read the full story. It's a hoot.

Anti-gun shenanigans

I'll agree with Rep. Ron Paul on this--the gun control bill making its way through Congress is, in fact, "a flagrantly unconstitutional expansion of restriction on the exercise of the right to bear arms."

By itself, the bill is no great shakes. It tightens existing restrictions by firming up reporting requirements to make it easier for government folk to know who is legally disqualified from purchasing firearms.

The legislation approved Wednesday would require states to automate and share disqualifying records with the FBI's NICS database. The bill also provides $250 million a year over the next three years to help states meet those goals and imposes penalties, including cuts in federal grants under an anti-crime law, to those states that fail to meet benchmarks for automating their systems and supplying information to the NICS.

The bill, then, builds on the contemptible Gun Control Act of 1968, which put into place many of the modern violations of the individual right to own, buy, sell and carry weapons. The new measure would just tighten the shackles by a few turns.

That the National Rifle Association supports the current bill is just further evidence that the NRA, far from being a pro-liberty organization, is really just one of the more moderate members of the gun-control lobby.

The best response to intrusive regulation is a healthy underground market. Transactions conducted outside the law have a much better chance of preserving and extending freedom than those conducted under the watchful eyes of our would-be masters. Stay armed, folks, and keep your guns unregistered.

Armed America

Some years ago, when I ran the civil liberties site for About.com, I had the peculiar pleasure of reviewing a book about the history of firearms in America. The book was written by a historian named Michael Bellesiles and ... well, that's probably all you needed to know. The fate of Arming America and its author made headline news. Repudiated by its publisher, condemned by scholars as a work of fraud, and stripped of its awards, the book now ranks alongside Clifford Irving's "authorized autobiography" of Howard Hughes as embarrassing hoaxes that briefly fooled the publishing industry and some credulous reviewers. Bellesiles himself was forced to resign from his professorship at Emory University.

I'm happy to say that I wasn't one of the reviewers who was taken in. I had early doubts about the book, though I didn't have the scholarly background to say outright that Bellesiles was wrong in his claims. I just thought the book was excessively ideological and belabored minor issues to make anti-gun-rights political points that didn't seem appropriate for a work of history. To do a decent review of the book, I contacted somebody who knew a lot more about the subject than I did: a fellow named Clayton Cramer.

As it turned out, Cramer had been digging into Bellesiles's research for several years. He cited me chapter and verse about problems with Arming America--problems that started coming out in scholarly papers and newspaper articles with much wider circulation than I had with my Website. I'm proud, though, that I was a small part of the wave of criticism that eventually sank Bellesiles's fraud.

Anyway, all of this is a long-winded and roundabout way for me to say that Clayton Cramer now has his own book out about the history of firearms in America: Armed America. The book covers much of the same ground as Bellesiles's work, although it comes to very different conclusions--finding that firearms were actually very common in early America.

I've only just started Cramer's book, but I find it interesting and certainly free of the red flags I saw in the other work. I look forward to finishing Armed America and posting a complete review.

Creeping control

I see the busybodies at the Bureau of Land Management have their skirts in a bunch over recreational shooting on government land. Specifically, they want to ban recreational shooting at the Ironwood Forest National Monument in southern Arizona. The proposal to ban target shooting appears in two out of four strategies that fall under the monument's proposed resource management plan--including the BLM's preferred Alternative C.

In the plan, the BLM justifies the proposed ban by claiming, vaguely, that target shooting poses a risk to people engaged in dispersed recreation on the monument's 129,000 acres. In an interview with The Arizona Republic, monument manager Patrick Madigan insists that the real problem is shooters who plink at saguaros or who are little more than well-armed litterbugs. "People are bringing their trash out and shooting their trash, or they shoot someone else's trash," said Madigan.

Now, anybody who shoots knows that there are, in fact, meatheads who see every tree and rabbit as a potential bullseye, and who seem to own an endless supply of old TV sets to shoot and abandon in the forest or the desert. These people make up a small, but disproportionately visible minority of shooters, most of whom pride themselves on leaving their shooting range looking much as they found it. Unfortunately people who pick up after themselves are simply not as noticeable as folks who leave a mess.

But other recreational activities are equally plagued by subsets of jackasses. Most backpackers are responsible types who police their campsites and douse their fires; A few leave trash scattered behind them on the trail and a very few can't light a match without torching old-growth forest. Most mountain bikers are solid citizens who stick to established trails; a few carve endless pathways across fragile environments and spook hikers and horseback riders.

If you're going to base policy on the conduct of the minority of jerks, you're going to end up banning public access to the outdoors--or trying to anyway.

But BLM officials aren't talking about cracking down on all recreational activities; they've rested their crosshairs on target shooters alone. They've even exempted hunters from the proposed ban, with no evidence that hunters are immune from the meathead element that plagues other outdoor uses.

That's why I suspect that the ban is a test balloon for a more comprehensive ban on shooting on public land well beyond the boundaries of the Ironwood Forest National Monument. Government officials have never been terribly comfortable with armed civilians, so picking on litterbugs who happen to shoot at this one national monument could well be a test run of a strategy for squeezing responsible shooters off of federal land everywhere. Hunters are left out of the ban to divide the opposition--an old tactic that works often enough to keep it alive and well. I would guess that, if the ban passes with a minimum of opposition, hunters would be added at a later date.

But again, every recreational activity draws its share of idiots who can be used to smear other practitioners through guilt by association. If shooters can be pushed off of public land, so can enthusiasts of any other activity that draws the disfavor of the current crop of government bureaucrats. Dirt-bikers and ATV-riders aren't exactly loved by government land-managers; they're already under attack and would make easy targets for a future ban.

And it doesn't necessarily stop there. There really are people who want to make the wilderness off-limits to humans. Do you think the same people who can turn litterbugs into grounds for banning shooters could maybe point to firebugs as reason for booting backpackers out of the forests?

Better to head this nonsense off early than to have to fight a bigger battle later.

You can contact the BLM at: AZ_IFNM_RMP@blm.gov

Or you can write to:

Mark Lambert
Project Lead
BLM Tucson Field Office
12661 E. Broadway Blvd.
Tucson, AZ, 85748

Second Amendment surprise

Like a man slapped in the face with a trout, the New York Times has finally noticed that the Parker v. District of Columbia Second Amendment decision was based on a whole lot of constitutional scholarship. And--gasp--many of the scholars supporting the individual right to bear arms are liberals!

Good kid, bad officials

This from Rogersville, Tennessee:

A good kid made a bad decision Wednesday at Cherokee High School that will land him in alternative school for the remainder of his high school career, school officials said.

As a result of a search in the school parking lot Wednesday morning, school officials found a shotgun in the vehicle of CHS senior Justin Tyler Luster, 18, 1430 Beech Creek Road, Rogersville.

Aside from closing out his high school career in alternative school, the Hawkins County Sheriff's Office charged Luster with carrying a weapon on school grounds.

Hawkins County Director of Schools Clayton Armstrong was quick to point out Wednesday that there was no threat to students at school, the shotgun was never in the school building, and Luster had no ill intentions for the shotgun.

Apparently Luster was planning on going turkey hunting after school and had the shotgun hidden out of view in his vehicle.

So, let me get this straight. The shotgun was unloaded, locked in the kid's car, and clearly intended for an innocent use, and Luster is said to have made a "bad decision?" School officials are willing to simultaneously admit that they know that Luster had no ill intentions, and also to punish him severely?

Actually, school director Armstrong says he could have expelled Luster, so he apparently thinks he's being merciful.

This is what you get with mindless zero tolerance policies. You start with a rule that is already unnecessarily restrictive, such as a ban on possessing firearms on school grounds, even when unloaded and locked in your own vehicle. You then apply the rule robotically, even to people who very clearly intend no harm to anybody. Presto! Innocent people are subject to suspensions, expulsions and criminal prosecutions.

And when officials are faced with clearly unjust results as a consequence of their rules, they simply roll their eyes heaven-ward and plead that they have no discretion--under the rules they themselves established to escape the torment of exercising intelligent judgment.

We can only hope that Justin Luster comes through his encounter with knee-jerk officialdom relatively unscathed, and with a healthy disrespect for authority.

Do us all a favor. Call Director of Schools Clayton Armstrong at 423-272-7629 x110 and tell him he's a weasel.

When playing by the rules makes no sense

The mass-murder at Virginia Technical University makes explicitly clear something that many of us had known all along: People are at their most vulnerable in those places that pride themselves on disarming residents and visitors. I think it's time that those of us who care about our safety stop being so solicitous of rules that put us at risk.

As I write, I'm in the comfortable position of residing in a state that has a relatively liberal concealed-carry law, and that is very accepting of open carry of firearms. Where I live, it's common to walk into Wal-Mart and see people strolling around with guns strapped to their hips. Nobody bats an eyelash.

But I carry a gun much less frequently here than I did when I lived in New York City where doing so is essentially forbidden.

In New York, I felt a sense of danger that I've never encountered in Arizona. The crime rate was high, I lived in a borderline neighborhood (Avenue B in the East Village -- since gentrified) and I worked the night shift for part of my residency there. I've never believed that the government has the right to disarm me, and I adhere to the pragmatic belief that it's better to be tried by 12 than carried by six. As a result, I almost always had either a pistol or a knife (or both) in my pocket as I traveled the streets of the city.

I actually pulled the pistol once, late at night on Avenue B. Two guys on the otherwise abandoned street made straight for me, cutting across the avenue at an angle. I pulled my gun and backed up. They both raised their hands and laughed. One said, "you got us!" Then they walked off.

Make of it what you will.

All of this time, of course, I acted in complete violation of city and state law. Had I been caught, the authorities would, no doubt, have thrown the book at me--they certainly did to other people in similar circumstances. It was a balance of risks; I felt that carrying a gun was a risk worth taking.

For students at Virginia Tech, carrying a gun is a balance of risks, too. The school has a policy against carrying weapons, despite state law allowing concealed carry for people who submit to the permitting process. the school has a track record of punishing people who violate its rule. So there's a risk inherent in carrying a gun in violation of school policy.

But if somebody had flouted that policy on Monday, a lot more people might have survived the day.

That's because criminals, whether mass murderers like Cho Seung-Hui, or simple street criminals of the sort that confronted me on Avenue B, never even consider abiding by policies against weapons. Such policies disarm only potential victims, not the people who prey on them.

Many people of a libertarian bent will agree with me that government officials--including the administrators of public universities like Virginia Tech--have no legitimate authority to restrict the rights of individuals. Laws against carrying a gun might carry risks for violators, but they are morally null and void.

But what if Virginia Tech was a private school? Many liberty-minded folks tell us that private parties have a right to set the conditions for use of their facilities; you either accept the conditions or go elsewhere.

In an abstract sense, I think that argument is correct. But I think it runs up against concerns about privacy--and triviality--that rightly keep us from applying the same principle to other areas of life.

If you stop by the home of a militant anti-smoker, for instance, you're certainly not going to light up in her living room--that would be rude. But you're unlikely to empty your pockets of smoking materials and lock them in the glove box before crossing the threshold. You respect your host's right to regulate behavior in her home, but you probably don't think that you should bother to extend your consideration as far as what you have lying inert in your pockets.

Likewise, if you visit the offices of a vegetarian organization, you're probably not going to start chewing on a piece of beef jerky in the reception area. But you're unlikely to trouble yourself over your leather belt or the ham sandwich sitting uneaten in your briefcase. You're not shoving these items in your hosts' faces, so even though they may be technical violations of house policies, they're not worth fretting over.

So why the big concern over carrying a gun where they're not welcome?

Guns have been stigmatized of course. But that's a political consideration. Objectively, there's no reason to treat them differently than an errant stogie or a ham sandwich. You shouldn't target shoot with a pistol where it's unwelcome, but I see no reason why you should unholster a weapon where it's officially proscribed any more than you should empty your pockets of other personal items just to satisfy a host's intrusive fetishes.

Besides, unlike a gun, a stogie or a ham sandwich is unlikely to save your life.

In the wake of Virginia Tech, we still have to balance the risks we face when we violate oppressive rules. But we don't owe those rules any special deference.

Grim news

The news from Blacksburg, Virginia, couldn't be worse. A lone man apparently went on a rampage and killed 30 people before he either killed himself or was shot by police.

Trying to draw lessons from a savage amok attack like this is often pointless--dedicated killers will always find a way to arm themselves and attack their victims. But I can't help but contrast this situation with the 2002 shooting at the Appalachian Law School, which ended when two armed students drew their weapons and disarmed the shooter.

My understanding is that Virginia Tech University doesn't allow its students to carry weapons. I sincerely wish at least one student had defied that rule.

Webb's Second Amendment moment

I expect that Phillip Thompson, a "top aide" to Senator Jim Webb, will escape the mini-scandal surrounding him with little more than a warning. His "crime" -- carrying a pistol without a license and possession of an unregistered firearm and ammunition in gun-phobic Washington, D.C. -- seems to have been inadvertent. More importantly, he has Senator Webb -- the apparent owner of the gun and ammunition -- in his corner, making sure that the legal difficulties that befall little people don't ensnare a trusted political operative.

But while he's getting his aide off the hook, Webb might want to consider that a potential political plum has fallen into his lap. First of all, the incident demonstrates that Webb is not
as hostile to firearms as some of his Democratic colleagues. At the very least, he thinks that he should be able to own them. Now he needs to demonstrate that he extends that same consideration to the rest of us.

He's off to a good start. In a profile shortly after the election, Bloomberg columnist Andrew Ferguson described Webb as "an absolutist on Second Amendment rights -- the right to keep and bear arms." In an interview last year for the Daily Kos blog, Webb said:

I support the Second Amendment, for many of the same reasons that I am more "liberal" on social issues. I believe the power of the government should stop at my front door, and that I should have the ability to protect myself and my family.

Now he's a senator and it's time for Jim Webb to show he means what he says. He could publicly regret his aide's violation of D.C.'s gun laws, but then (after Thompson is off the hook) point out that the problem is with the law -- not with an individual transporting a firearm. He should make it clear that nobody -- not just politically connected apparatchiks -- should run afoul of the law for owning the means of self defense.

Webb could endorse the decision in Parker v. District of Columbia, and call on the Supreme Court to affirm the reasoning adopted by the court of appeals.

Basically, Webb could use this incident to put himself on the side of individual liberty -- at least so far as the right to bear arms is concerned.

Of course, doing so may cause some friction with his Democratic colleagues. The question is whether he's really the man of principle he claims to be, or whether he's just another ambitious politician.

More on Parker v. District of Columbia

After rereading what I wrote, I think my original take on the Parker v. District of Columbia appeals decision (full PDF file available here), which overturned some of the capital city's more-severe gun restrictions on Second Amendment grounds, underplays the importance of the decision. After all, this was the first federal court decision to overturn limits on the right to bear arms because such limits are unconstitutional. That's a big deal.

I continue to believe that the decision was a moderate one. While recognizing that the Second Amendment protects individual rights, the court left the door open for fairly intrusive regulation of those rights, including such controversial and potentially dangerous requirements as gun registration, which many liberty-minded people would never obey. That's a far cry from wiping away the nation's gun control laws, since few jurisdictions impose restrictions as draconian as those enforced in the District of Columbia, which amount to outright abrogations of individual rights.

But while the court's decision was moderate, it stands in stark contrast to a history of immoderate positions taken by government officials, including judges. After decades of bogus claims that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to organize militias, and that it is nothing more than an archaic artifact, since the National Guard replaced those militias, it's nothing short of revolutionary to see a federal appeals court rule that the Second Amendment means what it says.

The decision is likely to have an effect only in those few places -- D.C., New York City, Chicago, etc. -- that go beyond regulating the right to bear arms to explicitly preventing its exercise. And it will only have an effect in most of those places if its reasoning is adopted by other courts of appeal, or if the Supreme Court endorses the D.C. court's position. In most of the country, laws are less restrictive than the court would allow, and an individual right to bear arms is implicitly assumed by local lawmakers.

In fact, the D.C. decision may strengthen the hand of gun-controllers in an odd way. By taking absolute bans off of the table, the decision may alleviate the concerns of millions of gun owners who have, so far, seen every restriction as a step toward ultimate confiscation. Restrictions are more palatable to many people when they know those restrictions can only go so far and no farther.

It's enlightening, therefore, to see the howls of outrage coming from fans of gun restrictions. For example, a Brady Campaign press release complained: "By disregarding nearly seventy years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent, two Federal judges have negated the democratically-expressed will of the people of the District of Columbia and deprived this community of a gun law it enacted thirty years ago and still strongly supports."

But the only laws taken off the table by the appeals court are explicit bans on firearms. That makes it wonderfully clear that the Brady Campaign isn't about restricting guns so much as it's about completely disarming people -- the law-abiding ones, that is.

If nothing else, the appeals court decision really put everybody's cards on the table.

D.C. just got a little more livable

The folks who would disarm us all and leave us at the mercy of criminals -- and at the mercy of the authorities who are not always much better than the criminals they supposedly oppose -- took a shot to their figurative groins on Friday, March 9. That's the day the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that D.C.'s severe restrictions on keeping firearms for self-defense violate the U.S. Constitution, and in the process further reinforced the already strong foundations of the school of thought that holds the Second Amendment to be a guarantee of the individual right to bear arms.

The case of Parker v. District of Columbia (full PDF file available here) was brought by a half-dozen residents of the nation's capital in protest of the city's all-but-explicit ban on owning handguns and its tight controls on long guns that effectively preclude their use for protecting life and property. As the court summarized their argument:

Essentially, the appellants claim a right to possess what they describe as "functional firearms," by which they mean ones that could be "readily accessible to be used effectively when necessary" for self-defense in the home. They are not asserting a right to carry such weapons outside their homes. Nor are they challenging the District's authority per se to require the registration of firearms.

The plaintiffs lost their case at the district level, but won a rousing victory on their appeal in a decision that reads like an in-depth summary of modern Second Amendment scholarship. The majority on the appeals court effectively dismantled arguments that the Bill of Rights's most controversial provision protects some sort o