The View from Right Field

Solving Gun Violence – Without a Time Machine

I totally understand the calls for new gun control legislation.  What is happening is horrific.  The problem is that most of the proposals involve a time machine.  Let me explain.  Too many of the calls for gun control assume we can go back in time and get rid of the Second Amendment (which would involve going back to the early 1790s).  Or that we can, at least, go back to before the Heller decision in 2008, and get the Supreme Court to issue a different decision in that case (which might require going back before 2008 and getting at least a couple different justices on the Supreme Court). 

Many of them also assume we can go back to a time when we did not have upwards of 400 million guns in the United States. 

Do Kirkland & Ellis and the Biden Administration Have the Solution to Crime?

With Roe v. Wade getting overturned today, this post is probably a day late and a dollar short.  But here it is anyway:

Paul Clement and Erin Murphy, who won the case in the Supreme Court against New York state’s relatively strict handgun law,  New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, have announced that they are leaving the law firm they were at, Kirkland & Ellis.  According to them, Kirkland & Ellis told them that the firm would no longer take firearms cases and that they needed to stop representing clients such as the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association or leave the firm.  Not surprisingly, Clement and Murphy are leaving K&E.¹  In any case, the lesson is clear: K&E doesn’t want to provide legal representation to unpopular clients – or at least certain unpopular clients.

“Root Causes” Are Easy. Solutions for Today Are Hard,

When Vice President Kamala Harris went to El Paso last week, she talked a lot about the need to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration

“My trip to Guatemala and Mexico was about addressing the root causes.  The stories that I heard and the interactions that we had today reinforce the nature of those root causes: a lack of economic opportunity; very often violence, corruption, and food insecurity; and basic needs not being met, including a fear of cartels and gang violence.”

Which sounds a lot like how Democrats talk about the increase in crime: We have to deal with the “root causes” of the problem.  And it may be that dealing with these root causes, whether of illegal immigration or crime, will address the problem – ten years from now.  But talking about root causes doesn’t tell you what we need to do to address the problem now.  

After We Pass New Gun Control Laws, We Still Need to Deal With the Problem

The call is on for new gun control legislation.  Which is fine.  But my question is simple: After we add the new controls, what do we do about all the guns that are already out there?  Because our problem is not just new guns and legal sales of guns.  It’s guns that we already have and guns that are sold illegally.  Limiting new guns and putting more limits on the legal sales of guns might help.  But really dealing with the problem requires figuring out what to do with all the guns that are already out there.  And I haven’t seen anybody really seriously address that.
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Note: I have said this before (see, for example, here and here), but I wanted to say it again – because new gun controls are only a small part of a solution.

If Government Wants Our Trust, It Needs to Follow Proper Process

Illinois recently adopted a law ending cash bail.  I’m not going to discuss the merits of the new law; that’s not the purpose of this post.  I want to talk about how the bill was passed because that says something important about Illinois and the way we are governed.

A law abolishing cash bail is a big deal.  You would think that there would be a lot of discussion about it.  And that those passing it would want the process to be proper and to be seen to be proper.

Defund the Police – Or Neighborhood People and Neighborhood Police Talking to Each Other?

Because of the pandemic, we were in River Forest last month for the Fourth of July.  We haven’t been here for the Fourth all that often, and what I noticed this year was the amount of fireworks.  By 9:00 pm on the Fourth, there was a steady drone of fireworks, like a low bass humming.  You heard lots of individual fireworks, but even when there weren’t fireworks going off nearby, there was a constant drone that went on all night and into the early morning. 

There may have been more of it this year because of the shelter-at-home and social distancing orders that were just ending.  Still, it got me to thinking.  If all the fireworks and the constant noise bothered me in River Forest, where there really weren’t that many fireworks (most of what I was hearing was coming from neighboring towns), what must it be like in parts of Chicago where it’s not just fireworks and it’s not just one or two nights a year.

Feeling Sorry for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn – Or Not

You have to feel a little sorry for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn – or maybe not.  Lt. Gen. Flynn was Donald Trump’s first National Security Adviser.  In 2017, he was charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with lying to the FBI, and he pled guilty.  Some say he pled guilty so the government would not go after his son in a matter involving the consulting firm Lt. Gen. Flynn owned. 

A couple of weeks ago, documents came out that made it look, to some people, like the FBI was trying to set Lt. Gen. Flynn up for a perjury charge.   As those documents were coming out, Donald Trump tweeted about it, of course.  Once President Trump spoke, i.e., tweeted, the story became all about him, which is what happens any time President Trump gets involved in anything.  Which meant the story was no longer about whether Lt. Gen. Flynn was ill-treated or set-up by the FBI, but about President Trump.  If you like President Trump, you were on Lt. Gen. Flynn’s side.  If you don’t, then you thought Lt. Gen. Flynn was guilty.  Regardless of the actual facts of the story, in either case.

Mass Shootings: After We “Do Something,” Let’s Try to Do Something That Actually Works

With two more mass shootings, in El Paso and Dayton, we are told we must “do something.”  Generally, that means gun control, though it now also seems to include “red flag” laws, as well as more spending for mental health and doing something about violent video games. Okay, let’s do it, subject of course to the Constitution.  Not only the Second Amendment, but also the other ones: the First, Fourth, Fifth, etc.

But after we “do something,” let’s also try to do something that works.  Megan McArdle, at The Washington Post, has a couple of ideas on this subject (here and here).  Aggressive stop-and-frisk policing has seemed to reduce murder rates in places like New York City, but many people don’t like what they see as police harassment of minorities.  Also, given the distrust of the police by many people in places like Chicago, you wonder how it would work there.  Plus, these kinds of tactics wouldn’t stop mass shootings, though reducing day-to-day murders might save more lives than reducing mass shootings over a whole year.

Banning Semi-Automatic Weapons Doesn’t Solve the Problem (Even If It’s a Good Idea)

After the murder of 50 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white nationalist will not be named in this blog, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately called for a new strict gun law, which will be passed next month because all of the major parties in New Zealand support it.  Also, by issuing a new interpretation of what kind of a license is required to possess a semi-automatic weapon, the New Zealand government effectively banned the possession of semi-automatic weapons right away.

Gun-control fans praised Prime Minister Ardern and asked why we can’t do that here.  I already talked about that a little bit back in July of 2014, after another summer weekend of violence in Chicago.¹

But the most important response to people who want to “solve” the problem of gun violence in the United States by outlawing semi-automatic weapons or instituting some other kind of strict gun control is: Okay, fine.  But what we do with all the semi-automatic weapons, and other guns, already out there once we outlaw semi-automatic weapons (or institute some other kind of strict gun control)?

Guns, Laws, and Aurora, Illinois

I have written before about guns and gun control (see here, here, and here).  I don’t need to repeat what I said in those posts.  I just wanted to comment on Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s vow, after the shootings in Aurora, Illinois, to tighten Illinois’s gun laws.  The only problem with the Governor’s promise is that Illinois’s laws already prohibited the alleged shooter from buying or owning a gun.  The problem in the Aurora shootings wasn’t that we didn’t have the right laws; it was that we weren’t enforcing the laws we had.

In my post on Friday about Governor Pritzker’s proposed budget, I said that it’s not how much government spends, it’s how much government accomplishes.  In this case, it’s much the same.  It’s not what laws government passes that counts.  It’s how many laws of those laws government actually enforces.