From: watt-alan@net.yale.edu (Alan Watt)
Subject: Re: A Brady Bill Debate
Originator: swatt@mickey.CS.Yale.Edu
Organization: Yale University, Computing & Information Systems
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 19:25:19 GMT


Here we go....

Let us be (extremely) charitable and assume that if all violent crime
involving firearms were to disappear tomorrow, all of the pro-control
forces would stop agitating for more measures (and Sarah Brady would
appear as poster-woman in ads for Machine Gun News).  The remainder
of this posting follows the spirit of this assumption.

Now the traditional "liberal" position on crime is it's all the fault
of bad environment, societal neglect, or (the current fad) child
sexual abuse.  In this view, we need more social programs, more funding
for the ones we already have, and guaranteed everything.  Plus we have
to stamp out all "isms" (sex-, race-, age-, species-, ...).  Once
this is done, crime will go away.

The traditional "conservative" position on crime is we have to "get tough":
longer sentances, more prisons, expanded death penalty, "zero tolerance",
etc., etc.  And of course, we have to "win the war on drugs".  Once we
stick enough criminals in prison for long enough sentences, crime will
diminish (conservatives don't believe it will go away).

To simplfy, the traditional liberal view promotes the carrot to the
exclusion of the stick, and the traditional conservative view does
the opposite.  My belief is (1) you have to have the stick to deal
with the real scumbags, and (2) you have to have the carrot to keep
the basically decent people decent.

The problem with the traditional conservative view is the actual law
enforcement system simply doesn't work either as an effective deterrent,
or as an effective correction to crime.

The deterrent effect is too small because all down the line, the real
probability of arrest, conviction, imprisonment is too small and too
delayed to realistically deter anyone.  If you look at the "clearance
rate" (percentage of reported crimes which result in an arrest), the
U.S. criminal has 2 to 6 times *less* chance at even getting arrested
than his european counterpart.  You get a similar dismal comparison
in conviction rates and sentencing.

Even though they are called "correctional institutions", I don't think
anyone in the U.S. really believes criminals are "corrected" or "reformed"
there.  What most people do believe is the prisons act as VO-TECH
schools for carreer criminals.

Both sides tend to focus on passing new laws as the "fix" and tend
to ignore looking at how the current laws are actually working.
One example is there is currently a 5-year "sentance surcharge" for
crimes committed with a firearm.  At various times in various versions
of "the crime bill", it was to be amended to 10 years extra sentance
for crimes committed with an "assault weapon".  At no time did anyone
ever ask the question: "how often is the current provision applied?".
You would think it would be invoked on almost all violent crime to which
it applied, wouldn't you?  You would be wrong.  Somehow, the BATF (Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobbaco, and Firearms, a.k.a. "Waffen Staats Polizei") has
enforcement authority over this, and they are too busy trying to entrap
FFL holders into paperwork violations to make it happen.

Now I don't know whether changing the 5-year additional penalty to 10
years would have a significant effect, but I'm absolutely positive that
having the law on the books but not applying it voids any possible
deterrent value.

I don't claim expertise on criminal justice systems, but I do know that
in this country, ours simply doesn't function properly, even given the
current laws.  Before we go passing new laws, it would be worth trying
to find out why this is so.

Finally, the "war on drugs" is the stupidest national policty we've
embarked on since Prohibition.  Stupidier actually, since we've kept
at it longer.  The drug laws function as a "price support" system
for illicit drugs.  By artificially raising the cost of doing business,
it justifies an exponentially higher price.  The rate of return for
successful operators is therefore enormous.  Net effect: suppliers
flock to the business.  Perhaps with a more efficient criminal justice
system this effect would be damped, but it would still be there.  If
you rounded up every drug dealer in D.C. today and shot them at sundown,
a new flock would be in business by dawn.  The profits are just too attractive
and criminals, like everyone else, over-estimate the chances of success
and under-estimate the risks of failure (as Adam Smith noted).

The NRA constantly compares gun control with prohibition, but they never
seem to make the connection with the drug war.  The operating principles
are all the same, but they just can't acknowledge it.  Probably because
they identify so strongly with law enforcement and military.

If you want to make a serious impact on crime, you need to do three things:

  1)	de-criminalize drugs.  If you must, put a reasonable tax
	on legitimate trade to fund research and treatment.  While
	you're at it, do the same for the other "vices": gambling
	and prostitution.

  2)	Assuming you still have some percentage of the population
	that refuses to live by the rules and acknowledge the rights
	of others, improve the arrest->trial->conviction->prison
	rates, and improve the effectiveness of prisons themselves.
	If necessary, build more prisons.

  3)	Vigorously uphold the principle that the rights of the innocent
	outrank the rights of the guilty.  When innocent persons
	defend themselves from criminal predations, it should be
	a cause for celebration, not bleating about "vigilantism".
	If the officially sanctioned guardians of public order are
	present and able to do their duty, that is fine.  If for
	any reason they are not, the rights of the innocent are
	not in any way diminished or waived thereby.  The notion
	that innocent persons should submit to criminal predation
	rather than resist is in effect a surrender.

	People who do resist crime, violently if necessary, are not
	"taking the law into their own hands"; they are acting
	to uphold the law.  The important thing is that the innocent
	prevail and the guilty not.  Whether the agent of the
	principle wears a blue uniform is a relatively minor point.


We need to go back to basics:

  1)	A "crime" requires a victim -- someone
	whose person or property suffers due to the negligence or malice
	of others.  Behavior not classified as criminal under this definition
	should be dealt with by mechanisms outside the criminal justice system,
	such as moral suasion, peer pressure, tax incentives, etc., or simply
	ignored. 

  2)	In any reasonably cohesive community, the people will know what
	is going on.  If they agree with the laws, they will report crimes
	to the police.  For example, if I believed my neighbor had murdered
	his wife, I would report him; if I believed he used cocaine, I
	would not.

  3)	Even given the enormous incentives of the drug trade, the criminal
	population is so small relative to the basically decent folks that
	instead of asking "how can we win?" we really need to ask "how could
	we possibly lose?".  When you have laws people don't really believe
	in (just take the "would I turn my neighbor in" test), and an
	atmosphere where people are afraid to even try to protect themselves,
	the obvious response is to do nothing and hope it doesn't hit you.

	When a community gets itself organized and decides it won't tolerate
	crime, crime stops.  Like looting in Homestead, FL.  The same thing
	could be accomplished with burglary, car theft, rape, and any other
	real crime almost anywhere in this country.

	But instead of people organizing themselves and making it their
	job to stop crime, they swallow the notion that the police can do
	it for them.  And as the police get increasingly bogged down trying
	to enforce laws more and more distant from real crimes, the people
	are less and less inclined to feed them the information they need.
	So, they get a federal grant to set up a "gang intelligence unit",
	or hook into some national crime database.

	The fact that we are as worried about crime as we are does not
	indicate we need to "do more".  The problem is we are doing
	*too much* of the wrong thing.


Gun control, by any definition, has a relatively minor effect.  Taking
guns away from a peaceful community will not necessarily make it more
violent; neither will adding guns necessarily make a community more
violent.  But once you compromise on upholding first and foremost the
rights of the innocent, you have surrendered.  Whether they prey on
you with guns or knives is then their choice, not yours.
-- 
  Alan S. Watt
  Yale University			Computing and Information Systems
  Box 2112 Yale Station			(203) 432-6602
  New Haven, CT  06520-2112		Watt-Alan@Yale.Edu
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns