Gun Sales to Blacks and Minorities Quadruple After Trump Win

[cstone]

So McDonald v Chicago was an intellectual exercise?

Like Heller, the McDonald decision restricted government from infringing on the right of law abiding citizens.Many citizens in both Chicago and DC were disobeying the law prior to those decisions. Some of those citizens were gainfully employed in non-criminal enterprises while others were involved in criminal enterprises...the rest were government employees. The primary purpose for those decisions was to block government from criminalizing non-criminal behavior and confiscating guns from otherwise law abiding citizens.

There were plenty of guns in Chicago and DC before McDonald and Heller and there are plenty of guns in those cities after the court decisions. The decisions only affect the people who voluntarily obey the laws in the first place. Quadruple the number of police in both cities and you will still have crimes committed with guns by criminals and people who don't want to be victims using guns to defend themselves. Do you really believe a bunch of lawyers could change that reality by putting a few sentences together and voting on it?

[Skip]

Like Heller, the McDonald decision restricted government from infringing on the right of law abiding citizens.Many citizens in both Chicago and DC were disobeying the law prior to those decisions. Some of those citizens were gainfully employed in non-criminal enterprises while others were involved in criminal enterprises...the rest were government employees. The primary purpose for those decisions was to block government from criminalizing non-criminal behavior and confiscating guns from otherwise law abiding citizens.

There were plenty of guns in Chicago and DC before McDonald and Heller and there are plenty of guns in those cities after the court decisions. The decisions only affect the people who voluntarily obey the laws in the first place. Quadruple the number of police in both cities and you will still have crimes committed with guns by criminals and people who don't want to be victims using guns to defend themselves. Do you really believe a bunch of lawyers could change that reality by putting a few sentences together and voting on it?

I think there is strong evidence that citizens had to make a tough choice between being criminals and accepting harm (realized or not). On that we agree.

The challenge we have is a great of deal of decent people will voluntarily obey those laws thus nullifying the individual and collective benefits of gun ownership. While the non law abiding are more likely to disregard (what's a gun charge when you're committing a murder?) those laws. So gun control becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of gun violence. Aside from the political realities of that (encouraging more gun control) it gets people killed.

Here's how Heller changed DC...



(There are likely other factors here too)

If your point is "obeying all laws is a choice" then I get that.

I would add "all laws are enforced with violence." Which means in making that choice, a person must weigh the level of violence his government can commit against him vs the level of violence committed by criminals (in the case of gun of gun control).

[cstone]

Nice chart for DC. Obviously the murder rate was on the way down well before Heller. Pre-Heller, it was illegal for anyone in DC to have an assembled firearm or all of the parts available to assemble a firearm in their residence. It was also illegal to possess any unregistered ammunition anywhere, including in your home. MPDC was charged with registering ammunition and I know for a fact that no private citizen was ever allowed to register ammunition in DC during the 80's and 90's. Essentially no one could legally own either a firearm or ammunition and keep them in their home inside the District. Obviously, criminals owned both as the crimes committed with firearms statistics proved. What wasn't as obvious were the significant numbers of residents who owned and kept both in their homes despite the violation of DC laws. The police were not about to go house to house and search for firearms or ammunition. If for some reason the police were in a dwelling and firearms or ammunition were found, they were taken. Depending on the circumstances it could be booked as found and marked for destruction or the owner could be cited, and the firearm and ammunition booked as evidence and destroyed after disposition of the criminal charges. Either way, no one got their stuff back.

The most vulnerable people, lost their stuff and often wouldn't replace it. Criminals never cared as they could and did replace anything that was taken from them. Taking guns from people in DC was much like "body counts" in Vietnam. No matter how many you took, it seemed as if there were two or three, or four to take their place. The politicians would crow about how many guns were taken off the street and the killing continued. The politicians would blame lax gun laws in Virginia and the few guns that were traced mostly went back to home robberies throughout the mid-Atlantic states. It really felt like trying to dig a perfectly round hole in a sand pit. NOTE: post-Heller DC is not much better for firearm and ammunition ownership, but there are still plenty of guns and ammunition in lots of home, rich and poor throughout the District.

I mostly agree with the quote you used but would modify it with this, "all laws are enforced with the threat of violence." I include taxes with this phrase as I believe most people pay their taxes, not out of a sense of altruism toward their country but because of the implied consequences for not paying taxes. If anyone but the government walked up to you and said, "give me 10% of your stuff now, or I will take all of it by the end of the year," we would call it extortion. Donald Trump was wrong when he said that he was smart and that is why he doesn't pay taxes. Trump pays his taxes to CPAs and lawyers who lobbied Congress to set up a system where those same CPAs and lawyers are necessary to reduce or eliminate the amount of taxes he pays.

Beware the person who tells you that you absolutely have to have something. You can be relatively certain that whatever it is, that person is the person who has it for sale.

[Skip]

Yes, DC was a cluster. And while like I said I'm sure there were other factors, it made lots of decent people victims. What I look at with changes like this isn't a line in the sand but also how the laws create a culture all their own that changes over time.

DC's gun laws effectively said citizens had to accept harm presented to them by an intruder. This emboldened criminals by eliminating a powerful disincentive (getting shot by said citizen). You're absolutely right, having a gun in violation of the law absent a defensive gun use was pretty safe. But using that gun wasn't. And if you can't use the gun to defend yourself, what good is it? But worse... if the government uses force against you (prison) you could actually suffer more harm than the criminal (assuming he wasn't shot and killed).

Even before Heller, that idea was questioned as having created the murder capitol of the US.

The drop after Heller has DC the safest it has been since the 60s.

[snip]

I mostly agree with the quote you used but would modify it with this, "all laws are enforced with the threat of violence." I include taxes with this phrase as I believe most people pay their taxes, not out of a sense of altruism toward their country but because of the implied consequences for not paying taxes. If anyone but the government walked up to you and said, "give me 10% of your stuff now, or I will take all of it by the end of the year," we would call it extortion. Donald Trump was wrong when he said that he was smart and that is why he doesn't pay taxes. Trump pays his taxes to CPAs and lawyers who lobbied Congress to set up a system where those same CPAs and lawyers are necessary to reduce or eliminate the amount of taxes he pays.

Beware the person who tells you that you absolutely have to have something. You can be relatively certain that whatever it is, that person is the person who has it for sale.

That's a good modification. The level of violence, or application, is subject to the harm government perceives in the offense.

Violation of the tax code, probably not much harm there because they are going to get theirs anyway. Usually if you pay what they claim you avoid prison.

But with gun control the government positions itself as being harmed and creates significant consequence (violence). Possession of a firearm doesn't hurt anyone. Only it's misuse would harm a person. None the less, government claims itself a victim when people can the means to defend themselves (that should frighten everyone).

So I look at gun control laws as more than just abstractions or suggestions. It is government literally holding us down so criminals can prevail.