First let me say you make seriously good arguments. Logical, sensible, and I had to chew on them for a while. Very well done sir.
DavidTC:
Cities, counties, boroughs, whatever, have no legal rights beyond what the state grants them. ...
Agreed.
DavidTC: Put differently, the militia was the people.
They were in the militia because the government had drafted them in. That line is literally *the draft*, not some sort of philosophical statement of what militias are. If the government later says they are not in the militia, they are *not*. There is no right, whatsoever, to be in a militia. There is no right to start one, there is no right to join one.
Also true... but that needs expanding.
Culturally I think people then could NOT have related to the concept of not needing a militia, nor would they have been able to relate to the militia not needing every warm body. The state government was that weak, and the federal gov even weaker. Having said that, I think legally this is fine.
But I don't think it takes us where you want. Even if you don't have the Constitutional right to create or join a militia, even if militias don't currently exist, what we're talking about is whether or not you have the Constitutional right to have militia-worthy weapons, and this is expressly called out in the 2nd AM in the affirmative.
A big part of the militia, and thus the 2nd AM, was preventing/dealing with a tyrannical government. Obviously, misuse of those sorts of weapons also leads to these mass killings. On a side note, all the (non-drug, non-family) mass killings we've had in the last century don't add up to one bad year with a tyrannical government.
You're very welcome, and I don't think I've read Mark Kleiman, certainly not his books. And agreed we outsource the worst effects of this mess, drug gangs can rival governments for their resources and power in parts of the world, especially at a city level.
RE: Pre-Prohibition gangs.
I'm not sure what undid the Bowery_Boys and their rivals the "Dead Rabbits". Making the Irish white? The Car? Publically funded and control fire departments?
My bet is effective rule of law and the creation of a functional legal system. Given this is roughly 1800 to 1850, we're also talking about a time before the political/legal system got it's act together. If the political system doesn't offer protection, you'll make one that does even if it's "illegal".
Not exactly hyperbole. West Side Story (WSS) is the world of 1957, and the gangs had no way to earn money. They owned a few street blocks but there was no way to monetize that. Fights were for "honor", but losing a street corner didn't cost the gang hundreds of thousands of dollars of income per year. Win or lose the fight, in a few years they're going to age out of the gang.
The War on Drugs changed all that (and I'm fine with it starting in 1971). Being the top gang member means you're probably the richest person in the neighborhood. The way to get rich was to own territory, of course fist fights turn into gun fights (and everyone has the money for guns).
scott the mediocre:
There is quite a history of rather nasty street gangs at various times pre-1971, though I can’t think of any post-1933, which is apparently about when history began (that’s not a gripe at you,
I agree, we saw this before with Prohibition.
scott the mediocre:
O most honored embodiment of 27% of the mass-energy of the observable universe
Yep, that's me. :)
scott the mediocre:
...isolated subpopulations plus certain urban conditions alone seem to be close to a sufficient cause for street gangs (e.g. MS-13 started out as a more or less defensive gang for the Salvadorans in Pico Union against other pre-existing gangs).But illegal drugs certainly provide superb fuel for street gang growth and metastasis.
If Prohibition is our model, and it should be, after making drugs legal the violent, illegal players will try to stay around. They'll do protection, etc and we'll be 50+ years getting rid of them.
However "staying around" doesn't change that they'll have to take a massive pay cut, and the level of violence will go way, way down because every street corner won't be worth killing over. The drug dealer vs. drug dealer wars will stop (and when you have millions or billions of dollars fueling it, "war" is probably the right word).
Further these are all trends which feed on themselves. Dealers in other countries (or ours) will have far less money to corrupt the legal/political system, so dealing with them will be easier, the richest guy (role model) in the neighborhood won't be a criminal, etc.
DavidTC:
A militia is a *government operated* entity that is distinguished from a military by the fact that everyone is part time, instead of a professional soldier. The National Guard calls them ‘citizen soldiers’. (Which is a weird term vaguely implying that professional soldiers aren’t usually citizens.)
My impression from history is a militia could be organized at *any* level, including towns (which today would be villages). Looking for a more structured definition I've found...
The reserve militia or unorganized militia, also created by the Militia Act of 1903 which presently consist of every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age who are not members of the National Guard or Naval Militia. http://definitions.uslegal.com/m/militia/
A. The Colonial Militias
...Yet owing to the small British military presence of the time, the colonists soon found the need to establish a military force... The resulting colonial militia laws required every able-bodied male citizen to participate and to provide his own arms. Militia control was very localized, often with individual towns having autonomous command systems.
https://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/Bioterrorism/8Military/milita01.htm
Put differently, the militia was the people. We're talking about a time period where the state was exceptionally weak (and the federal state even more so) and it was reasonable to think you'd need to depend on your neighbors for "military" support to deal with Indian invasions, slave rebellions, or even hostile government.
DavidTC:
I’ve never seen any gun control law prohibit people from doing *anything* in a militia.
I think there's an argument that all federal gun control laws which attempt to prevent private citizens from owning guns are going to seriously impact Militias.
I think at best your line of reasoning results in gun control being a state level thing... but if militias really are by definition "all able bodied men" the issue we instantly run into is whether it's constitutional for a state to outlaw militias other than it's own.
DavidTC:
It is a somewhat interesting legal question if US *states* have any drafting power.
Sounds like militias were often exactly that. Granted, 4 days of training a year isn't "full time".
DavidTC:
A lot of carbines, often being designed as military weapons, work that way. That is a specific ‘niche’ that guns are designed to occupy. Small calibre, high velocity, lots of bullets. It is great for war. It is also great for mowing down civilians at a movie theater. It is stupid for home defense, or self defense, and not great for hunting.
And thus I feel there is not actually any constitutional protection for such weapons. There is always a better choice for the *constitutionally protected* reasons to own a gun.
I am not a lawyer, but the purpose of joining a militia (or even having one) is to prepare for war. It seems odd to claim that hunting and home defense are constitutionally protected activities but getting guns which would help your militia prep for war (as opposed to hunting) would not be.
LeeEsq: Many people off the Internet still want the War on Drugs to continue though. The more aggressive police tactics have a lot of political support even though you wouldn’t know this if you spend a lot of time on certain blogs or reading certain authors. The War on Drugs might be winding down but it is going to be a very slow one.
Sure, but imho it's more realistic to think ending the war on drugs would work than it is to expect drug dealers to submit to background checks.
Discussions about gun control SHOULD be discussions about the war on drugs because that's the biggest number we can actually do anything about. Yes, the issue is politics, and that normally gets blamed for most lack-of-gun-control, but most gun-control attempts aren't workable on the face of it (which is a real part of why the NRA is so successful at stopping them).
Orlando, combined with Sandyhook, showcase pretty well the lack of use of background checks and/or sanity checks. One passed everything, the other would have failed so killing someone and taking her guns was part of the plan.
Saul Degraw: The big issue is that I do think the NRA has a very Cavalier attitude towards mass shootings and sees them as acceptable collateral damage for unlimited gun rights.
I don't own a gun myself so I mostly don't view myself as having a dog in this race, but after every mass shooting we see a bunch of policy "solutions" that wouldn't have prevented the shooting and are pretty openly one step further towards disarming everyone. Admittedly that's not the plan for this year but it does seem to be the world view fueling it.
Saul Degraw:
@Dark Matter
“2) Thug on thug crime.
Solutions: End the war on drugs. Maybe ‘stop and frisk’ in some areas.”
I think this will help but won’t solve the problem completely. A lot of fights can be territorial and over other issues. There is also the matter of collateral damage. Just because someone is in a poor and crime-ridden neighborhood does not mean that they are collateral damage.
Without the war on drugs, street gangs become the gangs of "West Side Story" again, where the gang leader wants to drop and get a real job so he can have a girl.
Saul Degraw:
@Dark Matter
“3) Mass murder by nuts.
I think this one depends on perceptions and how we define gun massacres.
According to the article, there have been 1002 mass shootings since Sandy Hook as of June 14, 2016. That seems like an epidemic to me. The article hedges though and states:
You're mixing your numbers. Your first quote, Vox's article claims 1002 mass shootings (300 a year or so), but that includes domestic incidents, drug crimes, and even injuries. But the Harvard School of Public Health's definition results in basically 2 a year. IMHO the moment we mix our various problems we end up with distorted views of what's going on and why because the drug war's numbers are so great. I'm good with talking about Orlando and how to reduce it, but Orlando was stunningly rare.
In Orlando, the shooter passed various background checks, mental health checks, might have planned his crime for years (if the FBI is right about him not being gay), and basically kept reloading until someone else with a gun forced him to retreat (we don't have a total number of bullets he fired yet, but I expect it's going to be in the hundreds).
The only thing I see to work with there is getting rid of these fake "gun free" zones. This was a crowd of young men, some of them are going to be current/former military/law enforcement.
First of all, good article, you seem to be fact driven which is a good thing.
On the other side of the aisle, I don’t see a lot of good faith interest in trying to find ways to do things that the Constitution does allow to identify that .1% and keep them from murdering people. When the NRA opposes pre-purchase background checks, it’s difficult to take their claim to want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys seriously.I'm not with the NRA but it's very easy to see "pre-purchase background checks" become "no one, ever". Given how difficult some members of government want to make it to have a gun, it's difficult to believe the gov will administer this in good faith. One of the big purposes of rights is to prevent government abuse.
As I see it, we have four, mostly unrelated problems.
1) Suicide. Note it's somewhat dishonest to include suicide in with gun crime because other countries which are gun free have similar suicide rates.
Solutions: Not sure we have one.
2) Thug on thug crime.
Solutions: End the war on drugs. Maybe 'stop and frisk' in some areas.
3) Mass murder by nuts.
This is so rare it really shouldn't be driving the discussion, but somehow it is. We don't have a solution. A 'background check' wouldn't have stopped the last guy (a professional security guard who has passed mental health checks), nor anyone who is willing to plan things for months/years. IMHO it's worth pointing out that disarming the victims with these 'gun free' zones seems counter productive.
4) Government sponsored mass murder.
One government run genocide can easily be thousands of years worth of these others, hundreds of thousands if we exclude suicide and drug crimes. Our own government probably can't be trusted over that period of time, and has committed crimes probably worth the name 'genocide' within the last few centuries.
Yes, the gov has an army, yes, armed citizens can't stand up to it... but so what. If the gov needs the army to deal with every small hick town then it's lost right there.
Will H.:
Redefinition is exactly what happened in Second Amendment jurisprudence.
Prior to 1970, it was generally accepted that the right to bear arms was a right held by the states.
After about ten years of one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history by the NRA, the individual right came to be accepted.
The typical person back when the 2nd AM was passed would have been a farmer (90% rural back then), and farmers like guns. The typical person would have lived within a day or two's ride of dangerous animals, indians, etc. They'd just lived through a repressive government where the common man had picked up his guns and overthrown the government.
This is not a description of someone who would be in favor of central government control over guns, any more than it's a description of someone who would be in favor of central government control over speech or assembly.
RE: Unintended downsides
1) $10k is FAR too much. The gov has things to do other than BI, and having children shouldn't be a lifestyle. "Basic" should mean "poverty" (a min wage job easily takes you above that).
For example, median household wage is currently $52k(ish), I have 4 kids.
2) Giving out free money is popular, if we go down this road the gov will be under huge pressure to increase the BI (just like Social Security was originally intended to be a very basic low key top off, not your entire retirement).
3) The Purity of this system is great, but I'm not sure what happens after we get lots of political meddling.
I like the idea... a lot... but only if it's replacing existing systems (i.e. not a massive tax increase) and not in addition to them.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Choosing A Side”
First let me say you make seriously good arguments. Logical, sensible, and I had to chew on them for a while. Very well done sir.
Agreed.
Also true... but that needs expanding.
Culturally I think people then could NOT have related to the concept of not needing a militia, nor would they have been able to relate to the militia not needing every warm body. The state government was that weak, and the federal gov even weaker. Having said that, I think legally this is fine.
But I don't think it takes us where you want. Even if you don't have the Constitutional right to create or join a militia, even if militias don't currently exist, what we're talking about is whether or not you have the Constitutional right to have militia-worthy weapons, and this is expressly called out in the 2nd AM in the affirmative.
A big part of the militia, and thus the 2nd AM, was preventing/dealing with a tyrannical government. Obviously, misuse of those sorts of weapons also leads to these mass killings. On a side note, all the (non-drug, non-family) mass killings we've had in the last century don't add up to one bad year with a tyrannical government.
"
You're very welcome, and I don't think I've read Mark Kleiman, certainly not his books. And agreed we outsource the worst effects of this mess, drug gangs can rival governments for their resources and power in parts of the world, especially at a city level.
RE: Pre-Prohibition gangs.
I'm not sure what undid the Bowery_Boys and their rivals the "Dead Rabbits". Making the Irish white? The Car? Publically funded and control fire departments?
My bet is effective rule of law and the creation of a functional legal system. Given this is roughly 1800 to 1850, we're also talking about a time before the political/legal system got it's act together. If the political system doesn't offer protection, you'll make one that does even if it's "illegal".
"
Not exactly hyperbole. West Side Story (WSS) is the world of 1957, and the gangs had no way to earn money. They owned a few street blocks but there was no way to monetize that. Fights were for "honor", but losing a street corner didn't cost the gang hundreds of thousands of dollars of income per year. Win or lose the fight, in a few years they're going to age out of the gang.
The War on Drugs changed all that (and I'm fine with it starting in 1971). Being the top gang member means you're probably the richest person in the neighborhood. The way to get rich was to own territory, of course fist fights turn into gun fights (and everyone has the money for guns).
I agree, we saw this before with Prohibition.
Yep, that's me. :)
If Prohibition is our model, and it should be, after making drugs legal the violent, illegal players will try to stay around. They'll do protection, etc and we'll be 50+ years getting rid of them.
However "staying around" doesn't change that they'll have to take a massive pay cut, and the level of violence will go way, way down because every street corner won't be worth killing over. The drug dealer vs. drug dealer wars will stop (and when you have millions or billions of dollars fueling it, "war" is probably the right word).
Further these are all trends which feed on themselves. Dealers in other countries (or ours) will have far less money to corrupt the legal/political system, so dealing with them will be easier, the richest guy (role model) in the neighborhood won't be a criminal, etc.
"
My impression from history is a militia could be organized at *any* level, including towns (which today would be villages). Looking for a more structured definition I've found...
The reserve militia or unorganized militia, also created by the Militia Act of 1903 which presently consist of every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age who are not members of the National Guard or Naval Militia. http://definitions.uslegal.com/m/militia/
A. The Colonial Militias
...Yet owing to the small British military presence of the time, the colonists soon found the need to establish a military force... The resulting colonial militia laws required every able-bodied male citizen to participate and to provide his own arms. Militia control was very localized, often with individual towns having autonomous command systems.
https://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/Bioterrorism/8Military/milita01.htm
Put differently, the militia was the people. We're talking about a time period where the state was exceptionally weak (and the federal state even more so) and it was reasonable to think you'd need to depend on your neighbors for "military" support to deal with Indian invasions, slave rebellions, or even hostile government.
I think there's an argument that all federal gun control laws which attempt to prevent private citizens from owning guns are going to seriously impact Militias.
I think at best your line of reasoning results in gun control being a state level thing... but if militias really are by definition "all able bodied men" the issue we instantly run into is whether it's constitutional for a state to outlaw militias other than it's own.
Sounds like militias were often exactly that. Granted, 4 days of training a year isn't "full time".
"
I am not a lawyer, but the purpose of joining a militia (or even having one) is to prepare for war. It seems odd to claim that hunting and home defense are constitutionally protected activities but getting guns which would help your militia prep for war (as opposed to hunting) would not be.
"
Sure, but imho it's more realistic to think ending the war on drugs would work than it is to expect drug dealers to submit to background checks.
Discussions about gun control SHOULD be discussions about the war on drugs because that's the biggest number we can actually do anything about. Yes, the issue is politics, and that normally gets blamed for most lack-of-gun-control, but most gun-control attempts aren't workable on the face of it (which is a real part of why the NRA is so successful at stopping them).
Orlando, combined with Sandyhook, showcase pretty well the lack of use of background checks and/or sanity checks. One passed everything, the other would have failed so killing someone and taking her guns was part of the plan.
"
What "improvements" do you want? Bring back stop-and-frisk? Outlaw gun-free zones? Something else?
"
I don't own a gun myself so I mostly don't view myself as having a dog in this race, but after every mass shooting we see a bunch of policy "solutions" that wouldn't have prevented the shooting and are pretty openly one step further towards disarming everyone. Admittedly that's not the plan for this year but it does seem to be the world view fueling it.
"
Thank you.
"
Without the war on drugs, street gangs become the gangs of "West Side Story" again, where the gang leader wants to drop and get a real job so he can have a girl.
You're mixing your numbers. Your first quote, Vox's article claims 1002 mass shootings (300 a year or so), but that includes domestic incidents, drug crimes, and even injuries. But the Harvard School of Public Health's definition results in basically 2 a year. IMHO the moment we mix our various problems we end up with distorted views of what's going on and why because the drug war's numbers are so great. I'm good with talking about Orlando and how to reduce it, but Orlando was stunningly rare.
In Orlando, the shooter passed various background checks, mental health checks, might have planned his crime for years (if the FBI is right about him not being gay), and basically kept reloading until someone else with a gun forced him to retreat (we don't have a total number of bullets he fired yet, but I expect it's going to be in the hundreds).
The only thing I see to work with there is getting rid of these fake "gun free" zones. This was a crowd of young men, some of them are going to be current/former military/law enforcement.
"
Sir,
First of all, good article, you seem to be fact driven which is a good thing.
On the other side of the aisle, I don’t see a lot of good faith interest in trying to find ways to do things that the Constitution does allow to identify that .1% and keep them from murdering people. When the NRA opposes pre-purchase background checks, it’s difficult to take their claim to want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys seriously.I'm not with the NRA but it's very easy to see "pre-purchase background checks" become "no one, ever". Given how difficult some members of government want to make it to have a gun, it's difficult to believe the gov will administer this in good faith. One of the big purposes of rights is to prevent government abuse.
As I see it, we have four, mostly unrelated problems.
1) Suicide. Note it's somewhat dishonest to include suicide in with gun crime because other countries which are gun free have similar suicide rates.
Solutions: Not sure we have one.
2) Thug on thug crime.
Solutions: End the war on drugs. Maybe 'stop and frisk' in some areas.
3) Mass murder by nuts.
This is so rare it really shouldn't be driving the discussion, but somehow it is. We don't have a solution. A 'background check' wouldn't have stopped the last guy (a professional security guard who has passed mental health checks), nor anyone who is willing to plan things for months/years. IMHO it's worth pointing out that disarming the victims with these 'gun free' zones seems counter productive.
4) Government sponsored mass murder.
One government run genocide can easily be thousands of years worth of these others, hundreds of thousands if we exclude suicide and drug crimes. Our own government probably can't be trusted over that period of time, and has committed crimes probably worth the name 'genocide' within the last few centuries.
Yes, the gov has an army, yes, armed citizens can't stand up to it... but so what. If the gov needs the army to deal with every small hick town then it's lost right there.
"
The typical person back when the 2nd AM was passed would have been a farmer (90% rural back then), and farmers like guns. The typical person would have lived within a day or two's ride of dangerous animals, indians, etc. They'd just lived through a repressive government where the common man had picked up his guns and overthrown the government.
This is not a description of someone who would be in favor of central government control over guns, any more than it's a description of someone who would be in favor of central government control over speech or assembly.
On “The Unconditional Basic Income and the Hayekian Price System”
Lack of vouchers is how we get parents being forced to send their kids into what they know are failure factories.
"
RE: Unintended downsides
1) $10k is FAR too much. The gov has things to do other than BI, and having children shouldn't be a lifestyle. "Basic" should mean "poverty" (a min wage job easily takes you above that).
For example, median household wage is currently $52k(ish), I have 4 kids.
2) Giving out free money is popular, if we go down this road the gov will be under huge pressure to increase the BI (just like Social Security was originally intended to be a very basic low key top off, not your entire retirement).
3) The Purity of this system is great, but I'm not sure what happens after we get lots of political meddling.
I like the idea... a lot... but only if it's replacing existing systems (i.e. not a massive tax increase) and not in addition to them.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.