There is no gun debate. There is only demagoguery masquerading as debate. It is boring, not in the slow-boring way, but boring because it is all a rehash with no real path to resolution.
Prosecutorial discretion, though, is a real issue with concrete examples that permeate multiple policy issues. Our lazy acceptance of prosecutorial discretion is driven by a good faith understanding that we have more laws than resources to enforce them, so some picking-and-choosing is to be expected. That has historically been true for prosecutorial discretion in most cases, but this has changed a lot over the past 15 years in ways that are really bad for our system of government.
When used as a way to advance policy, as is happening in D.C., prosecutorial discretion is a perversion of justice and undermines democracy. If representatives cannot pass a law and expect it to be "faithfully executed", then we cease to be a nation of laws at all. If the executive branch chooses to ignore some laws because they, and not the legislature, think the law is wrong then that is dangerously close to authoritarianism, with the application of the law being subject to the whims of one person alone.
To paraphrase the headline of today's essay: "The policy-driven prosecutorial discretion is the problem"
“When used as a way to advance policy … prosecutorial discretion is a perversion of justice and undermines democracy.”
Every prosecutor’s office exercises a substantial amount of discretion, and does so to advance policy goals. This is the way the system is designed - the legislative function is separated from the executive function. Each makes choices, each faces the voters.
Don’t believe me? What is the speed limit in the highway nearest your home? How many people drive under that limit? Ten percent? Nobody drives the speed limit most places because they know police don’t enforce small violations. Every now and then a speed camera goes up and there the law is enforced. This is a trivial example but it’s familiar enough that people recognize it. You could repeat it law by law by law.
Stop and frisk was a *policy* innovation. Not all cities adopted it. Where to put police, which charges to emphasize, which to prosecute: these are everyday policy choices.
It’s perfectly coherent to say you don’t agree with these prosecutors’ choices or argue they’re wrong and dangerous. But what they’re doing is an expected outcome of the system.
What you are describing is the good faith argument in favor of discretion which I referenced in my original comment. But I submit there is a difference in kind, not just in degree, between choosing not to ticket for someone driving 66 mph in a 65 mph zone and choosing not to prosecute entire sections of the law, as in illegal gun possession.
Prioritizing certain sections of the law is just setting enforcement priorities, something all prosecutors do. Calling it "progressive prosecution" is just a campaign rhetoric gimmick.
The only situation where the executive should refuse to enforce a law is if they believe it to be unconstitutional, in which case there should be a mechanism to bring that to a court to resolve the issue.
The situation that Matt describes in D.C. is the Federal prosecutor decided not to enforce certain laws. It has nothing to do with budgetary constraints.
It literally says in the linked article that it does have to do with budgetary constraints:
Because the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences lost its accreditation in 2021, prosecutors have to pay to have evidence for DNA, firearm and fingerprint analysis sent to outside laboratories, Graves said. Prosecutors, he said, prioritize doing so for violent offenses.
“We are now entering year three of DFS being shut down without any clear plan of coming back online,” Graves said. “We have to prioritize violent felonies and make sure we are doing the forensic testing for those cases. Our office is often bearing the cost for this analysis.”
Well good thing there were so many other points that Matt brought up and I wasn't addressing that one. (addendum: for example the red county sheriffs who don't enforce their blue state gun laws)
Eventually you're going to find this nitpicky Mr Gotcha willful misinterpretation strategy of discourse isn't going to advance a conversation, even if it provides you the feeling that you're most right, by being technically most correct about something in a different context.
He also did this with the act that declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. That one also went all the way up to SCOTUS and was eventually won by the executive branch (which by them was deep into the Obama administration).
At least Clinton didn't actually sign the original bill as an act of protest against Congress. He should have at least vetoed it and made Congress override him, but in this case some protest is better than full capitulation like Bush. I know this seems petty, but when Bush signed BCRA into law he knowingly, willingly, and publicly violated his oath of office, and that is a more impeachable offense than other bad things he did.
How is that a violation of the oath of office? Presidents don’t decide what’s constitutional. Bush was just doing his version of standing on both sides of the fence, as politicians are wont to do.
Presidents aren't the final arbiter of constitutionality. But they can still have stances about it. Congress used to hold votes on the constitutionality of bills. Every president says in their oath "...will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Bush publicly said he wasn't doing this.
Legislatures pass laws expecting that there will be prosecutorial and policing deaccession. Sometimes this is reasonable and sometimes not. And legislatures make available resources for police and prosecutors to influence the extent wo which they can "faithfully execute" the laws that are passed.
Every legal gun owner in the United States knows this. This is literally the conversation whenever gun owners talk about gun control.
It’s the most obvious, yet under discussed issue whenever gun control is discussed. And one of the main reasons gun owners say things like... 1st enforce the laws you already have before making new ones.
Of course, it will never happen.
Disclaimer: I own several guns. All locked away in a safe. I don’t shoot nearly as much as I would like, but it is fun.
Side note: nothing compares to Alaska for open or concealed carry or firearms. Though the little town in Eastern Oregon that my cabin is in comes close.
I hear this a lot, but this is often a bait-and-switch intransigence argument, because very few people say how they want the current laws to be better enforced, but it's always compelling because everyone can imagine the enforcement to be someone else's problem.
If the current laws were enforced to a higher level, people would be complaining about how much the police are enforcing the law, like with the stop-and-frisk style policing that effects some people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like we all know drunk driving is bad, but we can't have breathalyzer checkpoints every 5 miles. Should we really not propose any other laws or policies that minimize alcohol related deaths until we achieve perfect implementation of the drunk driving ban?
Or if illegal firearms are bad, would we really want cops searching a car every time they see a Browning deer decal, or if they ran the driver's info to see if they ever had a background check at a gun shop, or previous charge? That'd all be a next reasonable step to better enforcement of the current laws.
There should be a name for the type of categorical fallacy that posits something is a good, because I imagine it's externalities likely won't effect me. Like the type of think the Rawlsian Theory of Justice seeks to undo.
I don't think your comparison to drunk driving works.
The fact is that drunk driving laws are, for the most part, enforced in this country. If you get caught drunk driving, the police generally aren't going to let you off, and the courts are generally always going to give you some kind of penalty. That certain and consistent enforcement has helped to reduce the problem of drunk driving. Unlike illegal gun possession.
Consider if we treated drunk driving like illegal gun possession in progressive jurisdictions. People would potentially get arrested or a ticket for it, but the system wouldn't impose any penalties. Cops would realize that stopping people for drunk driving is largely a waste of their time except in more extreme cases. The only people prosecuted would be those who drove drunk and killed or injured someone.
The incentives of that would tell people that drunk driving is not risky as long as you don't get in an accident. We'd have a lot more people drinking and driving.
Now, one might propose other measures - checkpoints every 5 miles - as an additional step. But that additional step doesn't really work or do anything if the system refuses to punish drunk drivers in the first place. In the same way, passing additional gun laws that the legal system won't or can't enforce is not going to produce much in terms of actual effects.
You'd be surprised how many people go into court for their DUI and instead get a slap on the wrist with a "wet and reckless" and then given a nominal fine and a quota of AA meetings to attend, rather than any charges that goes on a record.
In fact, you're largely describing the enforcement of drunk driving as it is in many places.
In either case, the issue still remains, if gun-owners want us to better enforce the laws on the books, rather than put better laws on the books, how do they want us to enforce them?
They never really say, because it's rhetoric designed to get broad, ambiguous appeal and stall out the discussion.
Which jurisdictions are these? And getting a fine, required AA meetings and - presumably - skyrocketing insurance costs is still a lot more than what is happening with illegal gun possession where charges are just dropped.
"In either case, the issue still remains, if gun-owners want us to better enforce the laws on the books, rather than put better laws on the books, how do they want us to enforce them?"
The "they" here is a pretty diverse, but the obvious thing to start with is to consistently prosecute those who break the law with a gun, to include illegal gun possession. The first step is to not just throw the cases out. Even if you don't send them to jail, there needs to be some kind of real consequence if you actually want to change behavior.
A wet reckless driving is still a criminal charge on someone’s record. And in many cases the reason for a reduction is because there’s some ambiguity as to someone’s level of impairment (particularly in cases where the driver does not give a breath, urine, or blood sample).
I mean, you tell me. Go to traffic court for a day, and see if you don't see anyone come in who blew a certified .10 BAC, and then have the judge offer them a wet-n-reckless.
It shows up on a record of fines, but it's not a criminal charge and it's not a misdemeanor.
>because very few people say how they want the current laws to be better enforced<
Well, and a great many people would oppose stronger enforcement of gun regulation—let's be blunt. There are complaints on this very thread about prosecuting people for "paperwork crimes." And can you imagine the howl that would greet actual requests for, you know, more law enforcement resources to enforce existing gun laws? I'm sure Tom Tommy Tuberville and Marsha Blackburn would totally be on board for a big increase in the ATF budget.
The fact is the gun rights movement in the United States has become well and truly radicalized. Can you imagine Everett Dirksen or Barry Goldwater mugging for the camera with their families, all holding military rifles, and then making the resulting snapshots into Christmas cards?
More enforcement doesn't have to be a huge public policy fight, though. Part of the point of using "existing laws" is that you can do it with dry memorandums distributed through emails to city police departments about policy changes and priorities, or with different decisions by prosecutor offices. Increasing budgets are things done in boring city council meetings no one attends.
This is one of those issues Yglesias points to as liberals shouldn't talk about it, they should just do it quietly and without a lot of argument where they have the legal authority to do so. It's just that first they need to get their internal policy house in order and agree it is in fact what they want to do.
You can be unhappy about these issues, as I am and still accept the fundamental soundness of Rory’s argument. In Chicago, we are so awash in guns that even the galaxy brained plan of a national ban would take decades to achieve improvement.
Meanwhile our states attorney, the county president and many soft brained activists describe illegal gun possession as a ‘non-violent’ crime.
This is the order of operations we must pursue to convince gun holders for the steps you and I want.
>In Chicago, we are so awash in guns that even the galaxy brained plan of a national ban would take decades to achieve improvement.<
I think the evidence strongly suggests some improvement would be seen almost immediately from the imposition of effective (and given the lack of internal borders in the US, that means "national") gun regulations. And very substantial improvement within few years. Certainly not "decades."
"The fact is the gun rights movement in the United States has become well and truly radicalized. Can you imagine Everett Dirksen or Barry Goldwater mugging for the camera with their families, all holding military rifles, and then making the resulting snapshots into Christmas cards?"
That is evidence that the gun rights movement has been normalized (which it has, and which I support), which is the opposite of radicalized. I know that it sounds better to call your political opponents radicals to force them into an outgroup, but a large plurality, if not majority, of Americans support gun rights, and pretending that they're all crazy is.... not convincing to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
I don’t think the “implementation can’t be perfect” argument applies when a wing of the Democratic Party is advocating to not prosecute people found with illegal gums (and in some places succeeding).
There are some people who are reflexively opposed to new gun laws, but there are many people who might be open to it, but would want to hear a proposal that will actually impact gun crime without denying them the ability to own a gun. And that's just really hard to do. We have a pretty good number of laws on the books around gun ownership - most of the proposals made now (assault weapon ban) would have very limited impact on gun homicides while banning something that a large number of people own and do so safely!
Yes, veterans are special: They are a cohort of Americans who have, 1) demonstrated a high-level of responsible behavior, and, 2) received at least a fairly rigorous firearms training that includes marksmanship and safe handling.
The only problem is most of the folks who "who want to hear a proposal that will actually impact gun crime" will keep moving the goalposts and don't want to admit there are, and will always be, trade-offs. We have speed limits to save lives, even though it restricts safe drivers from getting to work faster. I personally can't think of a single pro-responsible-gun-owner piece of legislature in circulation put forward by responsible gun owners that posits "we will do this, and it will marginally reduce this type of crime, but in a way that doesn't bother gun owners."
Yea but that ruse is to a significant degree the natural political counter force to the other ruse, that being the assertion that the ultimate goal of the other side is something other than de facto prohibition on private ownership of firearms.
There's been no headline talk of restricting private security businesses from owning firearms, and most "progressives" would prefer the state owned far fewer firearms, with a less militarized police force.
If the State, and the rich (those who can afford the services of private security) want to give theirs up first, it would go a long way to convincing gun owners that there is any good faith in the effort to disarm them.
> because very few people say how they want the current laws to be better enforced
You're posting this comment under a lengthy article that tries to answer exactly this question. Matt outlined it pretty clearly: start by prosecuting people when they are caught in possession of a gun illegally. It's pretty simple. This will make a difference, even without doing any extra policing - cops in American cities come across plenty of illegal guns just going about their day, without having to adopt overly zealous "stop and frisk" tactics.
> Or if illegal firearms are bad, would we really want cops searching a car every time they see a Browning deer decal
Indeed, this wouldn't fly. And Matt was not arguing for this. This would basically just be "stop and frisk" except on conservatives instead of urban black men - so I would file this under Matt's argument that "stop and frisk" is a bad idea. He does cite Thomas Abt's work for what an alternative policing to reduce gun violence might look like.
But what exactly are responsible gun owners advocating as a better mode of enforcement?
The thing is, they don't advocate for anything workable, and it's left intentionally vague. They just want to shoot down (harhar) any legislation they perceive targets (harhar) them as some oppressed class. Even when the "enforce the current laws" protocol they're suggesting would make them more primed (harhar) for policing, by all reasonable strategies.
That was the crux of my responce, not specifically what Matt's talking about.
Responsible gun owners promote teaching people how to treat firearms with respect, and encourage having a stable society where violence is less common.
The parallels with the War on Drugs are striking.
It's very likely that we cannot enforce our way out of our violence problem.
Having a culture that respects human life and the rule of law is very hard to legislate, and besides economic reform that decreases the need to commit crime to survive, a better more stable culture is what will drive down murder.
They don't support having the state do it, no. Licensure already exists in many ways (background checks are essentially a license) and doesn't affect criminals for one thing, obviously. And there are plenty of open spots for firearm training going unfilled already, anyone who wants to can obtain good safety and use training right now. If you want to offer rebates for training, that's cool! I would love to get my money back for courses. I don't know what kind of civil service you mean so I can't address that.
Gun enthusiasts don't actually want enforcement - as they believe many of the laws that would actually be enforced are illegitimate and unconstitutional. Most are just bringing it up to point out liberal hypocrisy on the issue.
Gun enthusiasts want basically unrestricted firearms ownership and they refuse to see the connection between more guns and more deaths. They can't really be reasoned with on this issue. The aim of prosecuting gun possession (in cities with the political capital to do so) isn't trying to "come up with something workable" gun enthusiasts approve of, it's to a) Improve public safety and b) take away their strongest argument against the gun control movement.
Two issues with this take. One, gun owners see a connection, but reason that there is both a disconnect between the 'culture of gun owners', and 'criminals who use guns for murder'. A fantastically small percentage of guns and shooters are the problem, not the vast majority. So blanket gun control and abridgment of rights to curtail the actions of a very small group of people seems like a questionable deal.
Second, there is famously a tradeoff between Liberty and Security, and it seems that the various sides of the gun control/violence debate simply have different values on the scale.
Wow, strange, conservatives don't actually want to drive to a conclusion, they just want bad faith politics to gum up the operations of the state. Never heard of that before.
Not at all like when it comes to taxes or how to reduce the deficit.
I'm a gun owner who thinks all of the gun laws, including the paperwork laws, should be enforced. A felon who tries to buy a gun and fails the NCIS background check shouldn't just be refused, they should be arrested and prosecuted. Someone who can't legally possess or carry a gun who is found in possession or carrying a gun should be prosecuted.
There are some paperwork-related regulations that I think are bad, but I think those should be aggressively enforced, too, because that will motivate their repeal.
I don't think people would object to officers doing drunk-driving checks whenever they pull a car over for driving recklessly (e.g. inability to keep a lane, swerving/weaving etc.). The problem with your scenario is that the hypothetical DUI checkpoints are an imposition on everyone, whether or not they're engaging in bad behavior.
Similarly, I don't think people would overly object to officers doing weapons checks on individuals who are otherwise seen to be engaging in behavior warranting an officer's intervention. Patting down someone who the officer's just pulled out of an altercation at a bar or club is a good idea. Stopping random people just going about their ordinary day is not.
But many cities still regularly utilize breathalyzer checkpoints, even when they are an imposition on everyone!
Your "patdown" is another person's "stopping random people."
In either case, what do these gun owners who "merely want better enforcement of the current rules" actually want? Because most of them don't even think getting kicked out of food service establishment warrants an additional patdown.
No, "patting down someone who just got pulled out of an altercation" is not "stopping random people." You didn't read (or ignored) the "just got pulled out of an altercation" bit.
And yes, sometimes indiscriminate checkpoints can be justified, e.g. on holidays where a significantly-larger-than-normal number of people are drinking, like New Year's, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Independence Day, etc. That doesn't mean they're always a good idea.
You seemed to ignore the "getting kicked out of a food service establishment" bit that I recognized and conceded. My point is that your "probable cause" might be someone else's "random" search.
I mean, really, who's more likely to be carrying an illegal firearm, the town drunk, or someone with gang or militia insignia on their jacket or car?
There's even gender profiling implications to this.
We will really never know what's the best policy.
But what policy exactly are the responsible gun-owners proposing instead?
I am also a gun owner and in full agreement with Matt's post. I can't help but note that as much as "enforce the laws we have!" Is popular, so is the growing trend of saying that the ATF should not exist (or in the meme form, that killing ATF agents is funny). I don't think people saying "just enforce the laws we have" are being totally fair about what that entails
I sort of agree with this, but l think you can't overlook the fact that "enforce the laws" is something that requires resources and has multiple meanings, at least in my personal experience.
Gun advocates have been consistently uninterested in, for example, providing the resources for a truly rapid, responsive background check system. People complain about the kinks in the system, but the fact that it often results in checks not getting done and purchases getting waved through is, for a lot of folks, a feature, not a bug. And when I talk multiple meanings in enforcement, I'm speaking from experience: growing up as a white kid with guns in a rural part of Texas, I got caught breaking various kinds of possession or usage laws several times (for example, shooting practice off a pier), and police just didn't care, because "people like me" weren't "the problem" (and, to be honest, they were right, and the guns in question were always hunting weapons, but rules are rules).
I was very plugged into Republican politics as a younger person (my greatest moment: meeting Dan Quayle at a GOP fundraising dinner--lol), and I always understood back then that "enforce the laws" was a kind of thing people like me said secure in the knowledge that it was a reasonable thing we believed that also wouldn't actually change the status quo in any meaningful way (for us) and usefully blocked Dem demands that WOULD change the status quo.
Maybe all that has changed; I'm not at all plugged into GOP politics any more, so maybe these days everyone is operating in total good faith with an expectation that enforcing the laws would change the status quo. But it's why, whenever I hear the "enforce the laws" language, I kind of roll my eyes. I don't think gun enthusiasts would actually like it if we REALLY enforced the laws (which, recall, include pretty invasive stuff like storage laws, but also stuff like Jersey's controversy around biometric trigger controls), which is why gun owners sue when jurisdictions try to actually enforce laws that impose real restrictions on gun possession or usage.
It feels like not exactly a bad faith claim but also not exactly a genuine good-faith belief, if that makes sense.
> I don't think gun enthusiasts would actually like it if we REALLY enforced the laws
They wouldn't like it, indeed. They're very up front that what they really want is the laws repealed. But I don't really think this contradicts most conservatives pointing out lack of enforcement.
From their perspective, liberals' unwillingness to enforce these laws on the books exposes them as bad faith actors when it comes to guns. It seems to expose the anti-gun movement is more of a culture war against Bubba with his AR-15, while the actual hotspots of gun violence in America go ignored.
If you listen to gun owners, their nightmare scenario is one where law abiding people can't own guns - but gun violence is still rampant due to non law abiding people owning guns. Personally I always get frustrated with gun enthusiasts' refusal to see the very clear connection between the number of guns and the number of deaths - but I have to sympathize with them on this point. If we have tighter gun control, but the current enforcement regime continues - we really could be in for their imagined hellscape where society gets all the costs of gun control (can't use for self defense) and none of the benefits (reduction in gun violence).
Of course, where I disagree with gun enthusiasts is that I believe with proper enforcement, the benefits of gun control will outweigh the costs.
I think I disagree. A minority (vocal) might want less laws, but most gun owners are agnostic about laws that don’t affect them… with a few exceptions in a few locations.
Maybe I'm melding "gun owners and "gun enthusiasts" too much. But I think it varies depending on the law. Most law abiding gun owners approve of the background check system, and are fine with laws against straw buying, for instance - they don't see those laws as impeding their ability to be a lawful gun owner.
Laws such as assault weapons bans, making concealed carry permits really hard to get, etc. are another story. A lot of gun enthusiasts I've talked to, for instance, are very mad about laws in liberal jurisdictions that don't effect them, and would love to see SCOTUS to strike them down.
I get the argument for assault, weapons, ban, even though I don’t agree with it. My compromise would be to make all semi automatics illegal to owned by anyone under the age of 25, but that’s neither here nor there.
My question is on the concealed carry permit resistance. I can’t remember a single incident. A new story where a concealed carrier has murdered someone. It’s just not an issue. So why would people be resistant to them. It’s one of those issues that is clearly a cultural fuck you then a evidence-based intervention.
I oppose the straw purchase prohibition on the grounds that it's not actually a law, and not even a regulation enacted pursuant to a law, but a whole-cloth invention of the ATF. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other about whether we should pass a law banning straw purchases (though if we did I'd argue that it should focus on purchases on behalf of criminals, not of just anyone), but a ban that is an artifact of the wording chosen on federal forms is bad.
There is of course a faction that wants minimal regulation as a goal in and of itself. In my experience I think what the median gun owner is concerned about and really animated against are (i) bans, either de jure or de facto via onerous regulation passed the point of diminishing returns and (ii) incoherence in what the law does and doesn't allow.
The notion that we could ever prevent “law abiding people” from owning guns is just plain nuts. Sure there may be progressives who fantasize about that, like they fantasize about “smashing capitalism,” but realistically nothing like that is possible in the US. It would be nice if we could just go back to how things used to be, when most people didn’t have guns unless they were into hunting or actually worked in law enforcement (or were violent criminals). Now we’re at a point where there is a case heading to the Supreme Court that argues it should be unconstitutional to prevent a violent domestic abuser from owning a gun because he’s not a threat to the public at large, only to his girlfriend.
Just want to add--when I said it was mostly just hunters that had guns, lots and lots of people were into hunting in the old days, either for sport or to feed their families or both.
>Gun advocates have been consistently uninterested in, for example, providing the resources for a truly rapid, responsive background check system
What specifically are you looking for? As I'm sure you know, when you buy a gun from an FFL they search the entire federal database for whether or not you're a prohibited person, like a felon or involuntarily hospitalized. And the vast majority of gun purchases are done via an FFL, not at 'gun shows' or whatever AOC believes. It's an incredibly difficult task to search every federal DB- the US has like 18 separate federal law enforcement agencies- but somehow it took the system less than 15 minutes the last time I purchased a gun.
It's pretty incredible that it works as well as it does, and there's obviously no way to force private sellers to use an FFL. The system seems fine as it is.....?
The problem with background checks aren't the checks themselves but the original data reporting. The checks thoroughly search the available data, but if data isn't originally reported the check isn't going to catch something.
I mean sure its great that it overcomes many limitations but it’s not very forward thinking to say it’s fine. Too many loopholes. But agreed that the priority should be enforcement of existing laws.
It’s crazy to me that the progressives out there and here do not seem to realize that gun rights activists are using virtually the same arguments (sloppy enforcement, inequitable blah blah) to just write those laws out of existence. Nullifying the laws is the first step to repeal.
I've been enjoying this thread, and in the interest of alternate history, instead of fighting the Civil War, we should have said 'so long fuckers'. Would have solved 90% of today's gun problem. I've lived btw 40 years in Brooklyn and never seen a gun or a gun shop. Not sure what the problem is, but it does make for entertaining reading.
I grew up in a rural state where guns were a common feature of life, though not a universal or frequent one. Gun stores were plentiful - hell, Kmart sold guns - but crimes were exceedingly rare. I went to school in PA, in a somewhat less rural though still rural area where you’d see guns off campus from time to time. I served in the Army, in the infantry, where during training and deployments firearms were a constant presence - they never left your side. I later lived in NYC, and then NJ, where, as you know, there is quite a different attitude. Now I live in Miami, which has Florida Man and his crazy antics in the news all the time, but gun violence, as it is in NYC, is confined to fairly small and well-known areas or to other circumstances everyone knows how to avoid. (I bet you don’t go walking the streets of Brooklyn at 2AM, do you?)
As far as “what the problem is,” I think Matt did a decent job of laying that out in his essay. Go after the criminals with guns - they’re the problem.
I'm 70 years old so don't walk the streets at 2AM, but I'm also an insomniac and often step outside for a cigarette then. Never been hassled or mugged. At 4AM the bars and clubs close and the streets are full of walkers. At 5AM I have the street all to myself.
"I got caught breaking various kinds of possession or usage laws several times (for example, shooting practice off a pier), and police just didn't care, because "people like me" weren't "the problem" (and, to be honest, they were right, and the guns in question were always hunting weapons, but rules are rules)."
This is to me an incredibly revealing comment. Not in a bad way. I thought your post in general was quite thoughtful.
For a variety of reasons, Matt has ended up in a place where he's spends a lot of time scolding left wing overreach, including this post. The result of which is I sort of end up (semi) defending the more extremely lefty side of the Democratic party as a sort of counterbalance to the comments and Matt's writing even when in cases where I have a lot of agreement with him. Which is what's going to happen here.
The basic thrust of Matt's piece to me is correct. There is a real tension between gun control and not prosecuting gun possession crimes. And it seems like right now, it would probably be a good decision to a) enforce gun possession crimes and b) for prosecutors to treat gun possession crimes more seriously.
Having said that you're anecdote is where I think someone more on the Progressive side of things could rightly push back. You say in the incident in question "people like me weren't the problem". And reality, I'm perfectly willing to believe in practice that while you were technically breaking crimes, you were using you gun in a way that was not particularly dangerous or worthy of arrest and being charged. But, are we really sure that in all incidents where "people like you" are contravening various gun laws, "people like you" aren't actually a problem? The police reaction to basically say don't worry "it's one of our people, not those people" is where I think Progessives can rightly say this is a problem. Selective enforcement of the law based on whether the person committing the crime is right type of person is a depressingly imbedded part of our country's history. Matt makes reference to the problems of "Stop and Frisk". But while there is excessive focus on police shootings (similar to Matt's point about shootings involving assault rifles), police pulling over black drivers at an excessive rate is a very real phenomenon. https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/05/05/veil-darkness-reas-traffic-stops/
My point is, while on a cost-benefit analysis, enforcing gun possession laws (both arrests and prosecution) is probably worth it, worrying who this going to effect the most and who is may be unfairly targeted is a real concern.
By the way, this whole issue does tie together to DJT being indicted. I'm aware that most Republicans who are complaining about this indictment are not doing so out of some deep seated analysis of prosecutorial overreach or study of the law, but rather pure partisanship (guessing if exact facts were the same but DJT was a Democrat there would quite a few left leaning voters making similar arguments as right leaning voters. Though given the very particular political climate we're in, I suspect way more Democrats would be willing to support the indictment. But I digress). But there are also a number of "sober" voices who are saying that Trump shouldn't be indicted no matter what (again we don't know what's indictment yet) and I don't think people realize how much that undermines general arguments about enforcing the law or just "tough on crime". I'm going to hazard a guess that the majority of people decrying the indictment are likely to agree with Matt's post. Putting arguments out there that laws need to be enforced to the full extent of the law against "regular" people but if you're powerful enough, maybe not so much is a sure fire way to undermine support for enforcing stuff like gun possession (at least sure fire way to push me in a more lefty direction).
This may be the conversation you and your friends have but this is decidedly NOT what happens in real life.
Did you read the part Matt wrote about Missouri? They didn’t pass a resolution to enforce existing gun laws. They loosened them further. With the (apparent) result of increasing homicides.
In fact this seems to happen in red leaning legislatures across the country after school shootings. Is to loosen gun laws?
I’m gonna be harsh here. Did you even read the piece here? Can you please point me to a state where the GOP trifecta and show me where their reaction to a school shooting is to pass laws that allow police to arrest more people for illegal gun possession? What you are saying is literally the opposite of what happens politically.
You seem angry. And honestly I’m not sure of your point.
I never said don’t do anything else.
And enforcing gun laws is pretty easy. If you arrest someone in possession of an illegal gun out in public, send them to jail for a couple years no questions asked.
There is no gun debate. There is only demagoguery masquerading as debate. It is boring, not in the slow-boring way, but boring because it is all a rehash with no real path to resolution.
Prosecutorial discretion, though, is a real issue with concrete examples that permeate multiple policy issues. Our lazy acceptance of prosecutorial discretion is driven by a good faith understanding that we have more laws than resources to enforce them, so some picking-and-choosing is to be expected. That has historically been true for prosecutorial discretion in most cases, but this has changed a lot over the past 15 years in ways that are really bad for our system of government.
When used as a way to advance policy, as is happening in D.C., prosecutorial discretion is a perversion of justice and undermines democracy. If representatives cannot pass a law and expect it to be "faithfully executed", then we cease to be a nation of laws at all. If the executive branch chooses to ignore some laws because they, and not the legislature, think the law is wrong then that is dangerously close to authoritarianism, with the application of the law being subject to the whims of one person alone.
To paraphrase the headline of today's essay: "The policy-driven prosecutorial discretion is the problem"
“When used as a way to advance policy … prosecutorial discretion is a perversion of justice and undermines democracy.”
Every prosecutor’s office exercises a substantial amount of discretion, and does so to advance policy goals. This is the way the system is designed - the legislative function is separated from the executive function. Each makes choices, each faces the voters.
Don’t believe me? What is the speed limit in the highway nearest your home? How many people drive under that limit? Ten percent? Nobody drives the speed limit most places because they know police don’t enforce small violations. Every now and then a speed camera goes up and there the law is enforced. This is a trivial example but it’s familiar enough that people recognize it. You could repeat it law by law by law.
Stop and frisk was a *policy* innovation. Not all cities adopted it. Where to put police, which charges to emphasize, which to prosecute: these are everyday policy choices.
It’s perfectly coherent to say you don’t agree with these prosecutors’ choices or argue they’re wrong and dangerous. But what they’re doing is an expected outcome of the system.
What you are describing is the good faith argument in favor of discretion which I referenced in my original comment. But I submit there is a difference in kind, not just in degree, between choosing not to ticket for someone driving 66 mph in a 65 mph zone and choosing not to prosecute entire sections of the law, as in illegal gun possession.
Prioritizing certain sections of the law is just setting enforcement priorities, something all prosecutors do. Calling it "progressive prosecution" is just a campaign rhetoric gimmick.
Hence why I never used the phrase "progressive prosecution".
wouldn’t they prosecute if, say, the gun were used in a murder. i can only imagine they add firearms charges to most indictments for shooting people
The only situation where the executive should refuse to enforce a law is if they believe it to be unconstitutional, in which case there should be a mechanism to bring that to a court to resolve the issue.
You'd be surprised how far gutting a budget goes to not not enforcing a law.
The situation that Matt describes in D.C. is the Federal prosecutor decided not to enforce certain laws. It has nothing to do with budgetary constraints.
Because some people think enforcing the law, like paying transit fares, is racist.
It literally says in the linked article that it does have to do with budgetary constraints:
Because the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences lost its accreditation in 2021, prosecutors have to pay to have evidence for DNA, firearm and fingerprint analysis sent to outside laboratories, Graves said. Prosecutors, he said, prioritize doing so for violent offenses.
“We are now entering year three of DFS being shut down without any clear plan of coming back online,” Graves said. “We have to prioritize violent felonies and make sure we are doing the forensic testing for those cases. Our office is often bearing the cost for this analysis.”
Well good thing there were so many other points that Matt brought up and I wasn't addressing that one. (addendum: for example the red county sheriffs who don't enforce their blue state gun laws)
Eventually you're going to find this nitpicky Mr Gotcha willful misinterpretation strategy of discourse isn't going to advance a conversation, even if it provides you the feeling that you're most right, by being technically most correct about something in a different context.
Shorter: "I was wrong, but it doesn't matter"
Even shorter: I wasn't talking about that.
Which is why I am still astounded that George Bush publicly said the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is unconstitutional and signed it anyway.
He also did this with the act that declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. That one also went all the way up to SCOTUS and was eventually won by the executive branch (which by them was deep into the Obama administration).
At least Clinton didn't actually sign the original bill as an act of protest against Congress. He should have at least vetoed it and made Congress override him, but in this case some protest is better than full capitulation like Bush. I know this seems petty, but when Bush signed BCRA into law he knowingly, willingly, and publicly violated his oath of office, and that is a more impeachable offense than other bad things he did.
How is that a violation of the oath of office? Presidents don’t decide what’s constitutional. Bush was just doing his version of standing on both sides of the fence, as politicians are wont to do.
Presidents aren't the final arbiter of constitutionality. But they can still have stances about it. Congress used to hold votes on the constitutionality of bills. Every president says in their oath "...will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Bush publicly said he wasn't doing this.
Yes, but ...
Legislatures pass laws expecting that there will be prosecutorial and policing deaccession. Sometimes this is reasonable and sometimes not. And legislatures make available resources for police and prosecutors to influence the extent wo which they can "faithfully execute" the laws that are passed.
What about the debate over open carry legislation in FL? That seems pretty important with real stakes.
Every legal gun owner in the United States knows this. This is literally the conversation whenever gun owners talk about gun control.
It’s the most obvious, yet under discussed issue whenever gun control is discussed. And one of the main reasons gun owners say things like... 1st enforce the laws you already have before making new ones.
Of course, it will never happen.
Disclaimer: I own several guns. All locked away in a safe. I don’t shoot nearly as much as I would like, but it is fun.
Side note: nothing compares to Alaska for open or concealed carry or firearms. Though the little town in Eastern Oregon that my cabin is in comes close.
I hear this a lot, but this is often a bait-and-switch intransigence argument, because very few people say how they want the current laws to be better enforced, but it's always compelling because everyone can imagine the enforcement to be someone else's problem.
If the current laws were enforced to a higher level, people would be complaining about how much the police are enforcing the law, like with the stop-and-frisk style policing that effects some people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like we all know drunk driving is bad, but we can't have breathalyzer checkpoints every 5 miles. Should we really not propose any other laws or policies that minimize alcohol related deaths until we achieve perfect implementation of the drunk driving ban?
Or if illegal firearms are bad, would we really want cops searching a car every time they see a Browning deer decal, or if they ran the driver's info to see if they ever had a background check at a gun shop, or previous charge? That'd all be a next reasonable step to better enforcement of the current laws.
There should be a name for the type of categorical fallacy that posits something is a good, because I imagine it's externalities likely won't effect me. Like the type of think the Rawlsian Theory of Justice seeks to undo.
I don't think your comparison to drunk driving works.
The fact is that drunk driving laws are, for the most part, enforced in this country. If you get caught drunk driving, the police generally aren't going to let you off, and the courts are generally always going to give you some kind of penalty. That certain and consistent enforcement has helped to reduce the problem of drunk driving. Unlike illegal gun possession.
Consider if we treated drunk driving like illegal gun possession in progressive jurisdictions. People would potentially get arrested or a ticket for it, but the system wouldn't impose any penalties. Cops would realize that stopping people for drunk driving is largely a waste of their time except in more extreme cases. The only people prosecuted would be those who drove drunk and killed or injured someone.
The incentives of that would tell people that drunk driving is not risky as long as you don't get in an accident. We'd have a lot more people drinking and driving.
Now, one might propose other measures - checkpoints every 5 miles - as an additional step. But that additional step doesn't really work or do anything if the system refuses to punish drunk drivers in the first place. In the same way, passing additional gun laws that the legal system won't or can't enforce is not going to produce much in terms of actual effects.
I love the alcohol question.
According to https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ alcohol related deaths were 95k a 2022. 10k were driving,
According to https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html there were 45k in 2020.
So why are we not bringing back prohibition? If less people dying is the goal, beer and wine and liquor need to go before guns!
You'd be surprised how many people go into court for their DUI and instead get a slap on the wrist with a "wet and reckless" and then given a nominal fine and a quota of AA meetings to attend, rather than any charges that goes on a record.
In fact, you're largely describing the enforcement of drunk driving as it is in many places.
In either case, the issue still remains, if gun-owners want us to better enforce the laws on the books, rather than put better laws on the books, how do they want us to enforce them?
They never really say, because it's rhetoric designed to get broad, ambiguous appeal and stall out the discussion.
Which jurisdictions are these? And getting a fine, required AA meetings and - presumably - skyrocketing insurance costs is still a lot more than what is happening with illegal gun possession where charges are just dropped.
"In either case, the issue still remains, if gun-owners want us to better enforce the laws on the books, rather than put better laws on the books, how do they want us to enforce them?"
The "they" here is a pretty diverse, but the obvious thing to start with is to consistently prosecute those who break the law with a gun, to include illegal gun possession. The first step is to not just throw the cases out. Even if you don't send them to jail, there needs to be some kind of real consequence if you actually want to change behavior.
"You'd be surprised how many people" is code for "I think this is true and that's good enough"
You'd be surprised how I actually mean what I say, and I'm not speaking in code.
But try it, go to traffic court for a day, and listen to how many charges get reduced for first time infractions. I've done it. I was surprised.
A wet reckless driving is still a criminal charge on someone’s record. And in many cases the reason for a reduction is because there’s some ambiguity as to someone’s level of impairment (particularly in cases where the driver does not give a breath, urine, or blood sample).
I mean, you tell me. Go to traffic court for a day, and see if you don't see anyone come in who blew a certified .10 BAC, and then have the judge offer them a wet-n-reckless.
It shows up on a record of fines, but it's not a criminal charge and it's not a misdemeanor.
I’m a criminal defense attorney. So yes I have seen DUIs play out in court.
A Judge can’t offer someone a reduction. That’s a power for the prosecutor.
>because very few people say how they want the current laws to be better enforced<
Well, and a great many people would oppose stronger enforcement of gun regulation—let's be blunt. There are complaints on this very thread about prosecuting people for "paperwork crimes." And can you imagine the howl that would greet actual requests for, you know, more law enforcement resources to enforce existing gun laws? I'm sure Tom Tommy Tuberville and Marsha Blackburn would totally be on board for a big increase in the ATF budget.
The fact is the gun rights movement in the United States has become well and truly radicalized. Can you imagine Everett Dirksen or Barry Goldwater mugging for the camera with their families, all holding military rifles, and then making the resulting snapshots into Christmas cards?
More enforcement doesn't have to be a huge public policy fight, though. Part of the point of using "existing laws" is that you can do it with dry memorandums distributed through emails to city police departments about policy changes and priorities, or with different decisions by prosecutor offices. Increasing budgets are things done in boring city council meetings no one attends.
This is one of those issues Yglesias points to as liberals shouldn't talk about it, they should just do it quietly and without a lot of argument where they have the legal authority to do so. It's just that first they need to get their internal policy house in order and agree it is in fact what they want to do.
You can be unhappy about these issues, as I am and still accept the fundamental soundness of Rory’s argument. In Chicago, we are so awash in guns that even the galaxy brained plan of a national ban would take decades to achieve improvement.
Meanwhile our states attorney, the county president and many soft brained activists describe illegal gun possession as a ‘non-violent’ crime.
This is the order of operations we must pursue to convince gun holders for the steps you and I want.
>In Chicago, we are so awash in guns that even the galaxy brained plan of a national ban would take decades to achieve improvement.<
I think the evidence strongly suggests some improvement would be seen almost immediately from the imposition of effective (and given the lack of internal borders in the US, that means "national") gun regulations. And very substantial improvement within few years. Certainly not "decades."
"The fact is the gun rights movement in the United States has become well and truly radicalized. Can you imagine Everett Dirksen or Barry Goldwater mugging for the camera with their families, all holding military rifles, and then making the resulting snapshots into Christmas cards?"
That is evidence that the gun rights movement has been normalized (which it has, and which I support), which is the opposite of radicalized. I know that it sounds better to call your political opponents radicals to force them into an outgroup, but a large plurality, if not majority, of Americans support gun rights, and pretending that they're all crazy is.... not convincing to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
I don’t think the “implementation can’t be perfect” argument applies when a wing of the Democratic Party is advocating to not prosecute people found with illegal gums (and in some places succeeding).
" wing of the Democratic Party is advocating to not prosecute people found with illegal gums"
Damn straight. I don't want us to become Singapore. :-)
It also doesn't apply that what's going on with a specific geographically limited wing of a party applies to the whole policy-proposing opposition.
Ok, but that’s the scope of the article. Not enforcing illegal gun crimes and advocating against it is inconsistent with wanting fewer guns.
I think you'll find those things don't logically follow or what's actually going on.
People could individually always just buy less guns and/or commit less gun crime.
I mean, yes, they could. But they haven’t. And prosecuting gun crimes is one way to ensure that they would.
There are some people who are reflexively opposed to new gun laws, but there are many people who might be open to it, but would want to hear a proposal that will actually impact gun crime without denying them the ability to own a gun. And that's just really hard to do. We have a pretty good number of laws on the books around gun ownership - most of the proposals made now (assault weapon ban) would have very limited impact on gun homicides while banning something that a large number of people own and do so safely!
My proposal is to make it 25 year age limit to own a semi-automatic pistol or rifle.
With exceptions for veterans?
I’m agnostic. It’s not a hill I would die on. If it made it easier to pass, sure. If there were no exceptions, I’m not bothered.
Us veterans aren’t special.
Yes, veterans are special: They are a cohort of Americans who have, 1) demonstrated a high-level of responsible behavior, and, 2) received at least a fairly rigorous firearms training that includes marksmanship and safe handling.
The only problem is most of the folks who "who want to hear a proposal that will actually impact gun crime" will keep moving the goalposts and don't want to admit there are, and will always be, trade-offs. We have speed limits to save lives, even though it restricts safe drivers from getting to work faster. I personally can't think of a single pro-responsible-gun-owner piece of legislature in circulation put forward by responsible gun owners that posits "we will do this, and it will marginally reduce this type of crime, but in a way that doesn't bother gun owners."
It's a ruse.
Yea but that ruse is to a significant degree the natural political counter force to the other ruse, that being the assertion that the ultimate goal of the other side is something other than de facto prohibition on private ownership of firearms.
That's a ludicrous mischaracterization.
There's been no headline talk of restricting private security businesses from owning firearms, and most "progressives" would prefer the state owned far fewer firearms, with a less militarized police force.
If you wanna talk about ruses, there's your ruse.
If the State, and the rich (those who can afford the services of private security) want to give theirs up first, it would go a long way to convincing gun owners that there is any good faith in the effort to disarm them.
> because very few people say how they want the current laws to be better enforced
You're posting this comment under a lengthy article that tries to answer exactly this question. Matt outlined it pretty clearly: start by prosecuting people when they are caught in possession of a gun illegally. It's pretty simple. This will make a difference, even without doing any extra policing - cops in American cities come across plenty of illegal guns just going about their day, without having to adopt overly zealous "stop and frisk" tactics.
> Or if illegal firearms are bad, would we really want cops searching a car every time they see a Browning deer decal
Indeed, this wouldn't fly. And Matt was not arguing for this. This would basically just be "stop and frisk" except on conservatives instead of urban black men - so I would file this under Matt's argument that "stop and frisk" is a bad idea. He does cite Thomas Abt's work for what an alternative policing to reduce gun violence might look like.
But what exactly are responsible gun owners advocating as a better mode of enforcement?
The thing is, they don't advocate for anything workable, and it's left intentionally vague. They just want to shoot down (harhar) any legislation they perceive targets (harhar) them as some oppressed class. Even when the "enforce the current laws" protocol they're suggesting would make them more primed (harhar) for policing, by all reasonable strategies.
That was the crux of my responce, not specifically what Matt's talking about.
Responsible gun owners promote teaching people how to treat firearms with respect, and encourage having a stable society where violence is less common.
The parallels with the War on Drugs are striking.
It's very likely that we cannot enforce our way out of our violence problem.
That's strange, because very few gun owners promote state subsidized firearm training, gun licensure, or even possibly a civil service.
It's certainly not the NRA's party line.
And differs incredibly from the progressive polices proposed to decriminalize drugs, while reducing the harms.
"supporting something" is not the same thing as "wanting the state to control it."
Having a culture that respects human life and the rule of law is very hard to legislate, and besides economic reform that decreases the need to commit crime to survive, a better more stable culture is what will drive down murder.
They don't support having the state do it, no. Licensure already exists in many ways (background checks are essentially a license) and doesn't affect criminals for one thing, obviously. And there are plenty of open spots for firearm training going unfilled already, anyone who wants to can obtain good safety and use training right now. If you want to offer rebates for training, that's cool! I would love to get my money back for courses. I don't know what kind of civil service you mean so I can't address that.
Gun enthusiasts don't actually want enforcement - as they believe many of the laws that would actually be enforced are illegitimate and unconstitutional. Most are just bringing it up to point out liberal hypocrisy on the issue.
Gun enthusiasts want basically unrestricted firearms ownership and they refuse to see the connection between more guns and more deaths. They can't really be reasoned with on this issue. The aim of prosecuting gun possession (in cities with the political capital to do so) isn't trying to "come up with something workable" gun enthusiasts approve of, it's to a) Improve public safety and b) take away their strongest argument against the gun control movement.
Two issues with this take. One, gun owners see a connection, but reason that there is both a disconnect between the 'culture of gun owners', and 'criminals who use guns for murder'. A fantastically small percentage of guns and shooters are the problem, not the vast majority. So blanket gun control and abridgment of rights to curtail the actions of a very small group of people seems like a questionable deal.
Second, there is famously a tradeoff between Liberty and Security, and it seems that the various sides of the gun control/violence debate simply have different values on the scale.
Wow, strange, conservatives don't actually want to drive to a conclusion, they just want bad faith politics to gum up the operations of the state. Never heard of that before.
Not at all like when it comes to taxes or how to reduce the deficit.
I'm a gun owner who thinks all of the gun laws, including the paperwork laws, should be enforced. A felon who tries to buy a gun and fails the NCIS background check shouldn't just be refused, they should be arrested and prosecuted. Someone who can't legally possess or carry a gun who is found in possession or carrying a gun should be prosecuted.
There are some paperwork-related regulations that I think are bad, but I think those should be aggressively enforced, too, because that will motivate their repeal.
I don't think people would object to officers doing drunk-driving checks whenever they pull a car over for driving recklessly (e.g. inability to keep a lane, swerving/weaving etc.). The problem with your scenario is that the hypothetical DUI checkpoints are an imposition on everyone, whether or not they're engaging in bad behavior.
Similarly, I don't think people would overly object to officers doing weapons checks on individuals who are otherwise seen to be engaging in behavior warranting an officer's intervention. Patting down someone who the officer's just pulled out of an altercation at a bar or club is a good idea. Stopping random people just going about their ordinary day is not.
But many cities still regularly utilize breathalyzer checkpoints, even when they are an imposition on everyone!
Your "patdown" is another person's "stopping random people."
In either case, what do these gun owners who "merely want better enforcement of the current rules" actually want? Because most of them don't even think getting kicked out of food service establishment warrants an additional patdown.
No, "patting down someone who just got pulled out of an altercation" is not "stopping random people." You didn't read (or ignored) the "just got pulled out of an altercation" bit.
And yes, sometimes indiscriminate checkpoints can be justified, e.g. on holidays where a significantly-larger-than-normal number of people are drinking, like New Year's, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Independence Day, etc. That doesn't mean they're always a good idea.
You seemed to ignore the "getting kicked out of a food service establishment" bit that I recognized and conceded. My point is that your "probable cause" might be someone else's "random" search.
I mean, really, who's more likely to be carrying an illegal firearm, the town drunk, or someone with gang or militia insignia on their jacket or car?
There's even gender profiling implications to this.
We will really never know what's the best policy.
But what policy exactly are the responsible gun-owners proposing instead?
That's what I want to know.
I am also a gun owner and in full agreement with Matt's post. I can't help but note that as much as "enforce the laws we have!" Is popular, so is the growing trend of saying that the ATF should not exist (or in the meme form, that killing ATF agents is funny). I don't think people saying "just enforce the laws we have" are being totally fair about what that entails
Growing trend? I remember the convenience store joke going all the way back to when I was a kid.
Oh yeah I'm thinking more in online spaces where anything gun adjacent that isn't corporate has a "ATF shooting your pupper" joke at a minimum.
I sort of agree with this, but l think you can't overlook the fact that "enforce the laws" is something that requires resources and has multiple meanings, at least in my personal experience.
Gun advocates have been consistently uninterested in, for example, providing the resources for a truly rapid, responsive background check system. People complain about the kinks in the system, but the fact that it often results in checks not getting done and purchases getting waved through is, for a lot of folks, a feature, not a bug. And when I talk multiple meanings in enforcement, I'm speaking from experience: growing up as a white kid with guns in a rural part of Texas, I got caught breaking various kinds of possession or usage laws several times (for example, shooting practice off a pier), and police just didn't care, because "people like me" weren't "the problem" (and, to be honest, they were right, and the guns in question were always hunting weapons, but rules are rules).
I was very plugged into Republican politics as a younger person (my greatest moment: meeting Dan Quayle at a GOP fundraising dinner--lol), and I always understood back then that "enforce the laws" was a kind of thing people like me said secure in the knowledge that it was a reasonable thing we believed that also wouldn't actually change the status quo in any meaningful way (for us) and usefully blocked Dem demands that WOULD change the status quo.
Maybe all that has changed; I'm not at all plugged into GOP politics any more, so maybe these days everyone is operating in total good faith with an expectation that enforcing the laws would change the status quo. But it's why, whenever I hear the "enforce the laws" language, I kind of roll my eyes. I don't think gun enthusiasts would actually like it if we REALLY enforced the laws (which, recall, include pretty invasive stuff like storage laws, but also stuff like Jersey's controversy around biometric trigger controls), which is why gun owners sue when jurisdictions try to actually enforce laws that impose real restrictions on gun possession or usage.
It feels like not exactly a bad faith claim but also not exactly a genuine good-faith belief, if that makes sense.
I support universal background checks, though they will make a very very tiny dent in the overall gun violence rate.
> I don't think gun enthusiasts would actually like it if we REALLY enforced the laws
They wouldn't like it, indeed. They're very up front that what they really want is the laws repealed. But I don't really think this contradicts most conservatives pointing out lack of enforcement.
From their perspective, liberals' unwillingness to enforce these laws on the books exposes them as bad faith actors when it comes to guns. It seems to expose the anti-gun movement is more of a culture war against Bubba with his AR-15, while the actual hotspots of gun violence in America go ignored.
If you listen to gun owners, their nightmare scenario is one where law abiding people can't own guns - but gun violence is still rampant due to non law abiding people owning guns. Personally I always get frustrated with gun enthusiasts' refusal to see the very clear connection between the number of guns and the number of deaths - but I have to sympathize with them on this point. If we have tighter gun control, but the current enforcement regime continues - we really could be in for their imagined hellscape where society gets all the costs of gun control (can't use for self defense) and none of the benefits (reduction in gun violence).
Of course, where I disagree with gun enthusiasts is that I believe with proper enforcement, the benefits of gun control will outweigh the costs.
I think I disagree. A minority (vocal) might want less laws, but most gun owners are agnostic about laws that don’t affect them… with a few exceptions in a few locations.
But all in all, this is a very valid comment.
Maybe I'm melding "gun owners and "gun enthusiasts" too much. But I think it varies depending on the law. Most law abiding gun owners approve of the background check system, and are fine with laws against straw buying, for instance - they don't see those laws as impeding their ability to be a lawful gun owner.
Laws such as assault weapons bans, making concealed carry permits really hard to get, etc. are another story. A lot of gun enthusiasts I've talked to, for instance, are very mad about laws in liberal jurisdictions that don't effect them, and would love to see SCOTUS to strike them down.
I get the argument for assault, weapons, ban, even though I don’t agree with it. My compromise would be to make all semi automatics illegal to owned by anyone under the age of 25, but that’s neither here nor there.
My question is on the concealed carry permit resistance. I can’t remember a single incident. A new story where a concealed carrier has murdered someone. It’s just not an issue. So why would people be resistant to them. It’s one of those issues that is clearly a cultural fuck you then a evidence-based intervention.
I oppose the straw purchase prohibition on the grounds that it's not actually a law, and not even a regulation enacted pursuant to a law, but a whole-cloth invention of the ATF. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other about whether we should pass a law banning straw purchases (though if we did I'd argue that it should focus on purchases on behalf of criminals, not of just anyone), but a ban that is an artifact of the wording chosen on federal forms is bad.
There is of course a faction that wants minimal regulation as a goal in and of itself. In my experience I think what the median gun owner is concerned about and really animated against are (i) bans, either de jure or de facto via onerous regulation passed the point of diminishing returns and (ii) incoherence in what the law does and doesn't allow.
“…gun enthusiasts' refusal to see the very clear connection between the number of guns and the number of deaths…”
Maybe because they understand it’s not the number of guns, it’s whose hands the guns are in.
It's just not possible in a free society to prevent the guns getting into the wrong hands.
It is possible to reduce the number in wrong hands with the laws we currently have. What’s needed to is to take it seriously.
The notion that we could ever prevent “law abiding people” from owning guns is just plain nuts. Sure there may be progressives who fantasize about that, like they fantasize about “smashing capitalism,” but realistically nothing like that is possible in the US. It would be nice if we could just go back to how things used to be, when most people didn’t have guns unless they were into hunting or actually worked in law enforcement (or were violent criminals). Now we’re at a point where there is a case heading to the Supreme Court that argues it should be unconstitutional to prevent a violent domestic abuser from owning a gun because he’s not a threat to the public at large, only to his girlfriend.
Just want to add--when I said it was mostly just hunters that had guns, lots and lots of people were into hunting in the old days, either for sport or to feed their families or both.
>Gun advocates have been consistently uninterested in, for example, providing the resources for a truly rapid, responsive background check system
What specifically are you looking for? As I'm sure you know, when you buy a gun from an FFL they search the entire federal database for whether or not you're a prohibited person, like a felon or involuntarily hospitalized. And the vast majority of gun purchases are done via an FFL, not at 'gun shows' or whatever AOC believes. It's an incredibly difficult task to search every federal DB- the US has like 18 separate federal law enforcement agencies- but somehow it took the system less than 15 minutes the last time I purchased a gun.
It's pretty incredible that it works as well as it does, and there's obviously no way to force private sellers to use an FFL. The system seems fine as it is.....?
The problem with background checks aren't the checks themselves but the original data reporting. The checks thoroughly search the available data, but if data isn't originally reported the check isn't going to catch something.
I mean sure its great that it overcomes many limitations but it’s not very forward thinking to say it’s fine. Too many loopholes. But agreed that the priority should be enforcement of existing laws.
It’s crazy to me that the progressives out there and here do not seem to realize that gun rights activists are using virtually the same arguments (sloppy enforcement, inequitable blah blah) to just write those laws out of existence. Nullifying the laws is the first step to repeal.
“…it often results in checks not getting done and purchases getting waved through is, for a lot of folks, a feature, not a bug”
I have never heard anyone put forth this opinion. Rather, everyone wishes the federal government would close up these holes in the system.
I've been enjoying this thread, and in the interest of alternate history, instead of fighting the Civil War, we should have said 'so long fuckers'. Would have solved 90% of today's gun problem. I've lived btw 40 years in Brooklyn and never seen a gun or a gun shop. Not sure what the problem is, but it does make for entertaining reading.
I grew up in a rural state where guns were a common feature of life, though not a universal or frequent one. Gun stores were plentiful - hell, Kmart sold guns - but crimes were exceedingly rare. I went to school in PA, in a somewhat less rural though still rural area where you’d see guns off campus from time to time. I served in the Army, in the infantry, where during training and deployments firearms were a constant presence - they never left your side. I later lived in NYC, and then NJ, where, as you know, there is quite a different attitude. Now I live in Miami, which has Florida Man and his crazy antics in the news all the time, but gun violence, as it is in NYC, is confined to fairly small and well-known areas or to other circumstances everyone knows how to avoid. (I bet you don’t go walking the streets of Brooklyn at 2AM, do you?)
As far as “what the problem is,” I think Matt did a decent job of laying that out in his essay. Go after the criminals with guns - they’re the problem.
I'm 70 years old so don't walk the streets at 2AM, but I'm also an insomniac and often step outside for a cigarette then. Never been hassled or mugged. At 4AM the bars and clubs close and the streets are full of walkers. At 5AM I have the street all to myself.
"I got caught breaking various kinds of possession or usage laws several times (for example, shooting practice off a pier), and police just didn't care, because "people like me" weren't "the problem" (and, to be honest, they were right, and the guns in question were always hunting weapons, but rules are rules)."
This is to me an incredibly revealing comment. Not in a bad way. I thought your post in general was quite thoughtful.
For a variety of reasons, Matt has ended up in a place where he's spends a lot of time scolding left wing overreach, including this post. The result of which is I sort of end up (semi) defending the more extremely lefty side of the Democratic party as a sort of counterbalance to the comments and Matt's writing even when in cases where I have a lot of agreement with him. Which is what's going to happen here.
The basic thrust of Matt's piece to me is correct. There is a real tension between gun control and not prosecuting gun possession crimes. And it seems like right now, it would probably be a good decision to a) enforce gun possession crimes and b) for prosecutors to treat gun possession crimes more seriously.
Having said that you're anecdote is where I think someone more on the Progressive side of things could rightly push back. You say in the incident in question "people like me weren't the problem". And reality, I'm perfectly willing to believe in practice that while you were technically breaking crimes, you were using you gun in a way that was not particularly dangerous or worthy of arrest and being charged. But, are we really sure that in all incidents where "people like you" are contravening various gun laws, "people like you" aren't actually a problem? The police reaction to basically say don't worry "it's one of our people, not those people" is where I think Progessives can rightly say this is a problem. Selective enforcement of the law based on whether the person committing the crime is right type of person is a depressingly imbedded part of our country's history. Matt makes reference to the problems of "Stop and Frisk". But while there is excessive focus on police shootings (similar to Matt's point about shootings involving assault rifles), police pulling over black drivers at an excessive rate is a very real phenomenon. https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/05/05/veil-darkness-reas-traffic-stops/
My point is, while on a cost-benefit analysis, enforcing gun possession laws (both arrests and prosecution) is probably worth it, worrying who this going to effect the most and who is may be unfairly targeted is a real concern.
By the way, this whole issue does tie together to DJT being indicted. I'm aware that most Republicans who are complaining about this indictment are not doing so out of some deep seated analysis of prosecutorial overreach or study of the law, but rather pure partisanship (guessing if exact facts were the same but DJT was a Democrat there would quite a few left leaning voters making similar arguments as right leaning voters. Though given the very particular political climate we're in, I suspect way more Democrats would be willing to support the indictment. But I digress). But there are also a number of "sober" voices who are saying that Trump shouldn't be indicted no matter what (again we don't know what's indictment yet) and I don't think people realize how much that undermines general arguments about enforcing the law or just "tough on crime". I'm going to hazard a guess that the majority of people decrying the indictment are likely to agree with Matt's post. Putting arguments out there that laws need to be enforced to the full extent of the law against "regular" people but if you're powerful enough, maybe not so much is a sure fire way to undermine support for enforcing stuff like gun possession (at least sure fire way to push me in a more lefty direction).
Also, universal enforcement would most likely have made you, ‘not the problem child’ far less likely to be possessing the guns illegally.
This may be the conversation you and your friends have but this is decidedly NOT what happens in real life.
Did you read the part Matt wrote about Missouri? They didn’t pass a resolution to enforce existing gun laws. They loosened them further. With the (apparent) result of increasing homicides.
In fact this seems to happen in red leaning legislatures across the country after school shootings. Is to loosen gun laws?
I’m gonna be harsh here. Did you even read the piece here? Can you please point me to a state where the GOP trifecta and show me where their reaction to a school shooting is to pass laws that allow police to arrest more people for illegal gun possession? What you are saying is literally the opposite of what happens politically.
You seem angry. And honestly I’m not sure of your point.
I never said don’t do anything else.
And enforcing gun laws is pretty easy. If you arrest someone in possession of an illegal gun out in public, send them to jail for a couple years no questions asked.