Mother Jones Continues to Make the Case...That Guns Save Lives?

(UPDATE BELOW)

Josh Harkinson at MoJo has a series of charts debunking the "gun lobby" claim that "millions of people" stop crime with their guns. Honestly, that number is probably quite exaggerated and is worthy of debunking. However, what he does after establishing this is conflate a whole bunch of numbers for comparisons that obscure a very simple truth: guns save lives. A lot of them.

For example, his first chart [click through] compares gun related homicides to justifiable homicides in 2010. That number is 8,275 to 230. Granted, that's a huge disparity--but to those 230 people were deemed justly killed by someone with a firearm. That's a lot of potential lives saved from imminent danger. By comparison, the MoJo staff compiled a pictorial list of mass murder victims from 2012--all 151 of them. Clearly, those deaths are tragic, awful, and they each have a story worth telling. I don't blame them one bit for that story.

But what about the people who defended themselves against the 230 would-be assailants? Are their lives not valuable either?

And guns, of course, are also quite useful in dissuading attacks at all without pulling the trigger. Again, ahem, thanks to MoJo's fine research into federal crime data, we know that 338,700 people used guns for self-defense from 2007-2011, averaging out to 67,740 per year over that time.* That's a whole lot of self-defense. I can't say they were all at mortal risk, but it's foolish to think none of them were.

So yes, Mr. Harkinson, 12.5 million self-defense uses is probably too high. (I'm not sure where exactly that number came from, but my point holds even if I grant it.) But your own research shows thousands of cases of defensive gun use and at least 230 justifiable homicides in one year alone. I don't understand how that proves that "guns stop crimes" is a myth. Indeed, I think you proved exactly the opposite.

UPDATE 2:35PM: I was in a rush when I wrote this post, but having revisited the original article, I figured out where Harkinson seems to have come up with his 12.5 million self defense uses claimed by "the gun lobby." There is an oft-cited statistic that between 100,000 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses occur each year. It's hard to say what that number actually is, as someone who may have brandished a weapon to stop a crime from occurring may not report it. But if you multiply the high end of that estimate by 5, you end up with 12.5 million. I think there is a reasonable argument that an estimate in which the high end is 25 times the low end is inappropriate, but that's not the argument Harkinson is making.

If you take the low number of that estimate, cited in Mother Jones' own point #5 here, the accuracy of the claim leaps from .54% to 2/3 (67%). Even if the high end estimate is preposterous, and even if the low end is a bit of an exaggeration, that over 67,000 Americans use guns in self defense per year is noteworthy when discussing the number of occurrences of defensive gun use. Emphasizing comparisons of non-like statistics--as most crime victims are not themselves armed, or that gun-theft outpaces defensive gun use in unconnected instances--is irresponsible and to think such a framing was unintentional strains credulity. -JPB

 bellum medicamenti delenda est

*Their subsequent chart has the five year average at 67,600, but dividing 338,700 by 5 gets you the number I used. It's not terribly important to me. I mean, what's 140 self-defense uses among friends?

Good for Bob Costas

I don't usually like it when Bob Costas gets on his preening high horse, even when I'm sympathetic to his point of view. His Sunday Night Football traditionalist Get Off My Lawn segment is my weekly cue to go to the bathroom and pick up a beer before the start of the second half. But calling in to the Dan Patrick Show today, a venue much more appropriate for opining, Costas let CBS have it for its annual Tradition Like No Other coverage of the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National (via Deadspin):

What no CBS commentator has ever alluded to, even in passing, even during a rain delay, even when there was time to do so, is Augusta's history of racism and sexism. Even when people were protesting just outside the grounds—forget about taking a side—never acknowledging it. So not only will I never work the Masters because I'm not at CBS, but I'd have to say something and then I would be ejected.

 ...

I think someone shoulda had the guts to do it along the way. Broadcaster, executive, somebody should have said to someone at Augusta, 'Look this is an issue. And this is not Nightline or Meet The Press, we understand that. But this is an issue. And it's an elephant in the room. And we're going to address it as concisely as we can but we're going to address it so our heads are not in the collective sand trap.'

Sand trap pun notwithstanding, he's absolutely right. In 2012, Augusta National admitted its first female members--Condi Rice and Darla Moore--and didn't admit its first black man until 1990.

I'll leave it to Deadspin and others to speculate whether its a shot at Jim Nance, I don't really care. But Patrick admits that it would be difficult to broach the subject, as the Masters has traditionally been harsh in its treatment of any criticism whatsoever. I think this typifies my longstanding beef with Southern romanticism: they market their "tradition" as the reason they're special, but god forbid anyone actually talks about that tradition with any amount of candor. With that gentility, honor, and that historic Southern charm came economic degradation, societal marginalization, and domestic terrorism. But the past is the past, right?

It would simply be impolite to discuss the state of things as far back as...last year's Masters when Augusta National still had no female members. But as Costas and Patrick both recognize, doing so without Augusta's explicit permission would very likely cost someone his or her job. That would be perfectly acceptable, depriving someone of their livelihood for recognizing the bloody obvious, but we must not defile the Tradition with pesky facts like year after year of prideful, defiant bigotry. No sir, we just can't have that.

You can catch the entire video at Deadspin here.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

The Truth About Good Guys with Guns

NB: I'm writing strictly in my personal capacity, despite linking to my employer's website. Their endorsement should not be inferred. Thx, mgmt.

I'm beginning to believe Mark Follman was put on this Earth just to vex me. His latest at MoJo almost immediately gave me a migraine for its selectivity and implicit privilege in its data.

Moreover, our investigation made clear that so-called "good guys with guns" do not stop public shooting rampages. Likewise, Blair's data couldn't be any clearer when it comes to the National Rifle Association's favorite myth: He found just 3 cases out of 84 in which an armed individual who had been on the scene used a firearm to stop the shooter. And none of the three were ordinary citizens. According to Blair, in two instances those who intervened were off-duty police officers: one in a case in upstate New York in 2010, and another in a case in Philadelphia in 2005. The third case took place in Winnemucca, Nevada, in 2008; the man there who intervened and shot the rampaging gunman, as I've reported previously, was a US Marine.

Granted, the NRA and other pro-gun folks have been giving Follman & company a litany of straw men to take down. (There's an argument that Follman overestimates the utility of training police get with the use of firearms which he believes makes them something other than ordinary citizens, and any number of instances of police overreacting and endangering the public with reckless shootings supports this, but it's beside the point here.) I don't think every citizen should be armed at all times, but I think every law-abiding citizen should be able to protect himself if he feels threatened. And while only a few mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens, which I've already pointed out are themselves extraordinarily rare by any metric, the same is less true for more common crimes.

There are hundreds of documented cases of armed civilians stopping crime against themselves or others, and who knows how many robberies, rapes, and assaults are stopped by a citizen brandishing a weapon are never reported. The more zealous anti-gun folks support Vice President Biden's "if it saves one life" mantra for more gun control, but such simplistic sloganeering ignores the indisputable fact that, at least sometimes, guns save lives.

And in those instances, like this one in my old neighborhood, often don't find their way to national headlines because dozens of disrupted liquor store robberies in marginalized neighborhoods don't garner the same emotional effect as horrific scenes at middle class schoolhouses. And that makes complete sense when you're talking about what makes headlines, but national policy should be aimed at the broader problems: those issues which affect more people and have more common underlying factors like poverty, educational outcomes, high crime neighborhoods, drug abuse, and the like. But Follman exploits a freak and random tragedy in order to push new gun laws--none of which up for vote would have have affected Newtown one bit--without considering what impact they may have on places like the south side of Fort Wayne and any number of other cities where people have reason to defend themselves.

Law-abiding citizens have a right to protect themselves and have done so on literally countless occasions. Maybe "good guys with guns" don't stop random mass murderers, but they do stop a lot of other crime and save many lives. There is more to gun violence than mass shootings, and there is more to America than Newtown. Any new regulations should recognize both of these facts, where Follman recognizes neither.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

About Rand Paul's Howard Speech

Today I watched Sen. Rand Paul give a speech before Howard students on the relationship between blacks and the GOP. Much of my twitter feed watched the speech, but if without context you'd think they were watching completely different speeches by the tone of the reactions. The libertarians were more or less enjoying the speech, the Left seemed to be yelling in unison "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?" I find myself squarely in between these camps on this issue, but am closer to the Left in the speech's efficacy.

From the outset, Paul bombed with two opening jokes about how people had warned him about going to Howard, perhaps the most storied HBCU, because of its mostly black, presumably Democratic student body. While not really offensive, the jokes were inappropriate. The audience didn't need to be reminded about the Otherness with which Republicans view blacks and Democrats generally. (Say nothing of universities.) But out-of-place reminders seemed to be the order of the day for the junior senator from Kentucky.

Paul spent much of his speech retracing Civil Rights history and the role of the Republican party in it--conveniently glossing over anything since 1964. He was seemingly unaware that a university dedicated to black uplift would be peopled with individuals whose understanding of The Struggle is not only equal to but, in many cases, surely surpasses his own. While it may come as a shock to some people, black people are well aware of what the Republican party used to be. Paul compounded this problem by saying that it was the Democrats who were the slavery party and the party of Jim Crow. Well, that's true enough, but the false equivalence of the Democratic parties of 1863, 1963, and 2013 is an insult to everyone's collective intelligence and he should be ashamed of himself for conflating them. Whether or not you buy Kevin Williamson's contrarian view of the modern Republican party, it is just wholly absurd to think the parties of Alexander Stephens and Richard Russell would ever nominate a black man as its titular leader. Think what you will of today's DNC, the word "Democrat" just doesn't mean what it used to and saying it does is contemptibly ridiculous.

 Paul's comments betrayed a low intellectual expectation and historical awareness of his audience. Given the venue, this is particularly insulting, and I would bet that cost him any credibility he may have earned by just showing up.

Unfortunately lost in all this, Paul finally began to talk about serious policy issues we face in this century toward the end of his remarks. He brought up two issues, specifically, that could begin to bridge the credibility deficit between the GOP and black voters: mandatory minimum sentences and the Drug War. On these issues, Paul is a solid senator and he's been getting better. But so much of his time and effort was dedicated to telling an audience that they've misunderstood the GOP and it hasn't changed from its Civil Rights heyday. 

It is as if the leader of the new vanguard of the GOP decided to approach black America and say: "Come back! It's you, not us! But we forgive you for the misunderstanding."

Relatedly, I was baffled when he hailed the Reagan era as a sterling example of Republican vision to that audience. Whatever his economic policies did for the country, Reagan's escalation of the War on Drugs turned America's inner cities into the killing fields of that war. The mandatory minimum sentences Paul opposes today were ramped up in the Reagan era in response to the "crack epidemic," eventually culminating in the 100:1 sentencing disparity for crack to powder cocaine, only recently lowered to 18:1. Black people disproportionately suffered from that escalation and those laws, with bi-partisan consensus, no less. This is what he should have been driving home: that government, however well-meaning, can ruin lives and devastate communities through unintended consequences. This is his view of government and, on these issues, young Democrats should work with the GOP to correct some of these horrible wrongs.

That's the history he should have begun, started, and ended with. Paul missed a great opportunity today. Let's hope the next time he tries something like this, and I sincerely hope he does, he comes with a higher estimation of the audience he's speaking to. Maybe then, if he focuses on today's issues and why his approach can benefit all people, and particularly the folks in his audience, he might leave the room with a little more respect than he came in with.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Rand Paul's Filibuster, Due Process, and Democratic Cowardice

I've never been a big Ron or Rand Paul fan. The elder's refusal to take responsibility for his racist fundraising emails in the 1980s is an inexcusable disgrace. Rand has publicly distanced himself from the "L-word," and proudly asserts his conservative bona fides. I am not anti-Pauls, but I'm not about to put a "Paul 2016" sign up in my window either.

But what Rand Paul did yesterday was remarkable and one of the greatest political moments of my life. For thirteen hours, Rand Paul held a basic--though imperfect--civics lesson, citing simple truths and fundamental rights that the Obama administration blithely asserts they can ignore. Only one Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, had the courage to quite literally stand up for what is right.

I say "imperfect" because, not only did he get some constitutional doctrine wrong, Paul became too distracted by "drones," the weapon with which the United States carries out much of its targeted killing program. Easily lost in his many hours of talk about drones and Hellfire missiles, Paul was making an extensive and coherent defense of Due Process and the fundamental rights every American has against his government. In the criminal realm, these rights include, but are not exclusive to:

• Right to habeas corpus (the government has to present just cause for imprisoning you)
• Right to counsel
• Right to face your accuser
• Right to trial by jury
• And, in the case of an accusation of treason Article III  § 3 of the Constitution is quite specific:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Two witnesses. Overt acts.  Open court. For all the ambiguity in the Constitution, the requirements placed on the government to pursue charges of treason against a citizen are about as unambiguous as the document gets.

Yet, there isn't one of these rights and protections that isn't violated in its entirety by President Obama's "Kill list."

Since the birth of government thousands of years ago, rulers and despots have been ordering enemies killed for both just and unjust causes. It is the most brutal use of state power and it has been used and abused throughout the history of civilization.

But for almost 800 years, Western legal tradition has forbidden its use against its citizens. The rights listed above aren't some product of a bleeding heart ACLU lawyer, they have been formed by our  understanding of the rights of man since 1215. For reference, Genghis Khan was pillaging China when England decided, "Hey, maybe we should put in some safeguards to protect people from being indiscriminately killed by our leaders."

There is nothing that changed on 9/11 that should upend the wisdom learned over the greater part of a millennium.  The brilliance and beauty of our 224 year old system of government is that, at great cost and over time, it has continued to expand, not restrict, these protections that once were given only to "free men." The ancient right to Due Process was crafted over centuries, ultimately codified in our Constitution, to protect citizens from the unilateral actions of a government entity.

And yet, we have an administration that claims the power of assassination by executive decree, with no geographical boundary, and no reasonable understanding of "imminent threat"--the standard used to self-justify their secret decisionmaking.

When directly questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, whether the government had this power to order the domestic killing of an American citizen away from any cognizable battlefield, Attorney General Eric Holder essentially admitted as much, though he said it was highly unlikely they'd use it. Holder half-assed his answers, obfuscating as much as he could, in order to not say outright that the government can kill you without oversight or due process at its whim, dismissing the question because it was "hypothetical."

Yet, for another hypothetical, Holder didn't back down from specifics. This is the exchange Holder had with Sen. Grassley:

GRASSLEY: Once again, thank you for coming up here. I want to follow up on your response to Senator Cruz. And I think he talked about introducing a bill. Do you believe that Congress has a constitutional authority to pass a law prohibiting the president's ability to use drone aircrafts, to use lethal force against American citizens on U.S. soil? And if not, why not?

HOLDER: Do I think the Congress has the ability to pass such a bill?

GRASSLEY: No, whether the legislation -- well, yes, Congress has the constitutional authority to pass a law prohibiting the president's ability to use drone aircraft, to use lethal force against American citizens on U.S. soil.

HOLDER: I'm not sure that such a bill would be constitutional. I think that might run counter to the Article II powers that the president has. I'd have to look at, obviously, the legislation, but I would have that concern.

GRASSLEY: OK. But your basis is -- the why not, it'd be because of Article II?

HOLDER: I believe so, yes.

The  Attorney General of the United States's first reaction to a hypothetical bill to ban domestic drone strikes is to "have concern" that the President's power may be limited. Yet, the hypothetical nature of a question whether the government could summarily kill a citizen on American soil prevents him from unambiguously supporting 800 years of common law and the explicit text of the Bill of Rights.

I have a hypothetical for the administration:

A train is bombed by terrorists, killing over 100 people. A fingerprint pulled from the reconstructed device comes up with a match in the government's database. The fingerprint belongs to a Muslim American citizen living in Oregon. The United States has tangible evidence that he is responsible for over 100 deaths of innocents. Can the government kill him?

These facts aren't really hypothetical. In the wake of the Madrid train bombing, Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield was taken into custody and held weeks without charge for a misidentified fingerprint. He was guilty of no crime, but government agents threw him in a cell and denied him his constitutional rights for weeks. Due Process should have protected him, but because he was thought to be a Muslim terrorist, his rights were ignored. Presented with tangible evidence in the wake of a mass casualty attack, in a world in which American terror suspects are routinely targeted abroad, it doesn't take a slippery slope to reach the point where a presidential hit is put on an American citizen in the United States. It just takes one step and a call to clandestine operations.

So when a U.S. Senator took to the floor to bring this bold assertion to the forefront of the public eye, only one person from the party that prides itself on its civil rights bona fides stood up to even question the claim. One.

I do not believe for one moment that most of the Republican senators, or even all of the Republicans who raised questions last night, agrees with Paul. They used his filibuster as a political tool to attack Obama. Under a Republican administration--which not a few of them imagine themselves to be someday leading--many would have no qualms whatsoever with this power. But this was an opportunity for the Democrats to stand up for what they claim to believe in, at no conceivable political cost from their constituents, yet all but one sat on their hands. They said nothing. They'll get no such support against executive overreach from Republicans during a Republican administration, and they know it, yet they just sat idly by as one man spent 13 arduous hours explaining the fundamental importance of Due Process and how assassination by executive decree, with no oversight or recourse, is anathema to a functioning republic.

Their silence was cowardice. They should be ashamed of themselves.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

UPDATE:   Adam Serwer reports that Holder has answered Paul:

"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" Holder wrote. "The answer to that question is no."

Sigh. The drone issue continues to obscure the fact Americans have no legal recourse against a secret executive order to kill them, whether at home or abroad.

Justice Sotomayor on Racism in the Criminal Justice System

Thousands of cases are denied certiorari (hearing) in the Supreme Court every year. These denials, as well as other Court business, are released on Orders Lists on a fairly regular basis while the Supreme Court is in session. At the end of today's list, however, was a comment on a cert denial that I wanted to bring attention to.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Breyer, took time to address the repugnant behavior that prompted the case, even though they concurred that it wasn't a reversible error and denied cert petition. I've excerpted the relevant pieces below, taking out the legal reasoning for why cert was denied.

I write to dispel any doubt whether the Court’s denial of certiorari should be understood to signal our tolerance of a federal prosecutor’s racially charged remark. It should not.
... 

 The issue of [Petitioner] Calhoun’s intent came to a head when the prosecutor cross-examined him. Calhoun related that the night before the arrest, he had detached himself from the group when his friend arrived at their hotel room with a bag of money. He stated that he “didn’t know” what was happening, and that it “made me think . . . [t]hat I didn’t want to be there.” Tr. 125–126 (Mar. 8, 2011). (Calhoun had previously testified that he rejoined the group the next morning because he thought they were finally returning home. Id., at 109.) The prosecutor pressed Calhoun repeatedly to explain why he did not want to be in the hotel room. Eventually, the District Judge told the prosecutor to move on. That is when the prosecutor asked, “You’ve got African-Americans, you’ve got Hispanics, you’ve got a bag full of money. Does that tell you—a light bulb doesn’t go off in your head and say, This is a drug deal?”

...

Calhoun, who is African-American, claims that the prosecutor’s racially charged question violated his constitutional rights. Inexplicably, however, Calhoun’s counsel did not object to the question at trial.
...

Given[...]the unusual way in which this case has been, litigated, I do not disagree with the Court’s decision to deny the petition.

There is no doubt, however, that the prosecutor’s question never should have been posed. “The Constitution prohibits racially biased prosecutorial arguments.” McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U. S. 279, 309, n. 30 (1987). Such argumentation is an affront to the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. And by threatening to cultivate bias in the jury, it equally offends the defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Judge Frank put the point well: “If government counsel in a criminal suit is allowed to inflame the jurors by irrelevantly arousing their deepest prejudices, the jury may become in his hands a lethal weapon directed against defendants who may be innocent. He should not be permitted to summon that thirteenth juror, prejudice.” United States v. Antonelli Fireworks Co., 155 F. 2d 631, 659 (CA2 1946) (dissenting opinion) (footnote omitted). Thus it is a settled professional standard that a “prosecutor should not make arguments calculated to appeal to the prejudices of the jury.” ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Prosecution Function and Defense Function, Standard 3–5.8(c), p. 106 (3d ed.1993).

By suggesting that race should play a role in establishing a defendant’s criminal intent, the prosecutor here tapped a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our Nation. There was a time when appeals to race were not uncommon, when a prosecutor might direct a jury to “‘consider the fact that Mary Sue Rowe is a young white woman and that this defendant is a black man for the purpose of determining his intent at the time he entered Mrs. Rowe’s home,’” Holland v. State, 247 Ala. 53, 22 So. 2d 519, 520 (1945), or assure a jury that “‘I am well enough acquainted with this class of niggers to know that they have got it in for the [white] race in their heart,’” Taylor v. State, 50 Tex. Crim. 560, 561, 100 S. W. 393 (1907). The prosecutor’s comment here was surely less extreme. But it too was pernicious in its attempt to substitute racial stereotype for evidence, and racial prejudice for reason.

It is deeply disappointing to see a representative of the United States resort to this base tactic more than a decade into the 21st century. Such conduct diminishes the dignity of our criminal justice system and undermines respect for the rule of law. We expect the Government to seek justice, not to fan the flames of fear and prejudice. In discharging the duties of his office in this case, the Assistant United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas missed the mark.

Also troubling are the Government’s actions on appeal. Before the Fifth Circuit, the Government failed to recognize the wrongfulness of the prosecutor’s question, instead calling it only “impolitic” and arguing that “even assuming the question crossed the line,” it did not prejudice the outcome. Brief for United States in No. 11–50605, pp. 19, 20. This prompted Judge Haynes to “clear up any confusion—the question crossed the line.” 478 Fed. Appx. 193, 196 (CA5 2012) (concurring opinion). In this Court, the Solicitor General has more appropriately conceded that the “prosecutor’s racial remark was unquestionably improper.” Brief in Opposition 7–8. Yet this belated acknowledgment came only after the Solicitor General waived the Government’s response to the petition at first,leaving the Court to direct a response.

I hope never to see a case like this again. (emphases added)

I will not agree with much of Justice Sotomayor's jurisprudence, but kudos to her (and Justice Breyer) for admonishing the prosecutor and his federal apologists.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

UPDATE: Ken at Popehat brings up a good point: Why hadn't anyone called him out by name? (He is AUSA Sam L. Ponder.) I still think it's noteworthy that Sotomayor wrote what she did, but I leave to actual lawyers like Ken to complain whether or not namedropping him would be appropriate in the context of a legal opinion.

That said, Ken did what CNN, Chicago Tribune, other media (and I) failed to do: a casename search on PACER. Regardless of the reasons Justice Sotomayor didn't use Ponder's name, the media have a professional duty to find truth and should have done a simple search to find out. Thanks, Ken.

A Perspective of Time

This would probably be better if I had a Tumblr account, but I don't.

A perspective of time: 

I was 8 when I first heard racism directed at me. 

My youngest sister was born the year Malcolm was assassinated. She was about to turn three when Martin was killed. 

My father was 35 when DuBois died/during the March on Washington. 

My mother was 22 when Medgar Evers was killed. 

My paternal grandmother was 29 when Garvey's Black Star Line ceased operating. 

My paternal grandfather was 8 when Frederick Douglass died.

Tell me again about this distant past of which you speak.

bellum medicamenti delenda est