Study Finds Shall Issue States have 9% increase in homicides

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  • teratos

    My hair is amazing
    MDS Supporter
    Patriot Picket
    Jan 22, 2009
    59,775
    Bel Air
    Unless the study identifies how many of those homicides were committed by those exercising their shall issue freedom the data is NOT relevant

    This. All day long.
     

    jcutonilli

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 28, 2013
    2,474
    I would hesitate to say the study was biased and may simply be how the number calculated out.

    Our country is not uniform and there can be orders of magnitude differences between the states. While 1991 was around the peak homicide year for many of the high homicide states, it was not a peak year for many of the low homicide states. Many of the high homicide states have seen significant reductions in the homicide rate since 1991, while the low homicide states may have seen small increases in the homicide rates. The low homicide states tend to be some of the least populated so small changes in homicides changes the rate more than the more populated states.

    NY and CA have some of the largest drops in homicide rate and are some of the most restrictive states so the restrictions appear to have the biggest benefits. The low homicide states also tend to favor the least amount of restrictions and allow CCW, yet have seen small increases in the homicide rates. This is likely why they found increases in homicide rates in CCW states. It should be noted that the vast majority of low homicide states are still below average and most of the high homicide states are still above average.
     

    ComeGet

    Ultimate Member
    Sep 1, 2015
    5,911
    Two comments -

    1. Boston University.

    2. I would love to see John Lott's response to this study.
     

    Biggfoot44

    Ultimate Member
    Aug 2, 2009
    32,877
    Most of the "conclusion" are showing that gun control measures are useless .

    The problematic one runs into issues with using Homicides as a raw number with no further differentiation . When 98% of the public discusses " Homicides " , they are really thinking of Murder and Non- Neglect Manslaughter ( UCR language ) .

    Justified or Excusable Homicide is people being shot , who needed shooting . Not what the public is thinking of , and is actually a positive thing, and not part of the problem .

    Breaking down by the actual doer . Just because a state is shall issue , doesn't mean that the people doing murders are permit holders . If the doers are themselves Prohibited from owning or carrying , or the killings weren't in public , then those are statistically irrelevant to the policy question .

    Dig further into those states purported to show increases . Dig deep into the unabridged UCR . Eliminate from both sides of the question Justifiable Homicides , homicides by those with criminal records ( ie Prohibited ) , and those occuring in the homes of the killers . You will get substantially different percentages and trends .
     

    jcutonilli

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 28, 2013
    2,474
    Most of the "conclusion" are showing that gun control measures are useless .

    The problematic one runs into issues with using Homicides as a raw number with no further differentiation . When 98% of the public discusses " Homicides " , they are really thinking of Murder and Non- Neglect Manslaughter ( UCR language ) .

    Justified or Excusable Homicide is people being shot , who needed shooting . Not what the public is thinking of , and is actually a positive thing, and not part of the problem .

    Breaking down by the actual doer . Just because a state is shall issue , doesn't mean that the people doing murders are permit holders . If the doers are themselves Prohibited from owning or carrying , or the killings weren't in public , then those are statistically irrelevant to the policy question .

    Dig further into those states purported to show increases . Dig deep into the unabridged UCR . Eliminate from both sides of the question Justifiable Homicides , homicides by those with criminal records ( ie Prohibited ) , and those occuring in the homes of the killers . You will get substantially different percentages and trends .

    To be fair they did exclude justifiable homicides and others.
    We excluded homicides due to legal intervention (1% of firearm deaths), unintentional firearm fatalities (2.5% of firearm deaths), and fatalities of undetermined intent (1% of firearm deaths) from our analysis.

    They did not use the UCR data however.
    We obtained homicide and suicide mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS), which are derived from the vital statistics death registry of the National Center for Health Statistics.

    However, the CDC does not report death rates when the absolute number of deaths in a state during a given year is less than 10. For this reason, we did not have a complete panel of homicide data for three states: North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.
    It should be noted that these are three of the four least populated states:
     

    K-Romulus

    Suburban Commando
    Mar 15, 2007
    2,427
    NE MoCO
    Two observations:

    1) they say the used a “difference in differences” approach to the data analysis. It’s perhaps intentionally vague what they mean (unlike an earlier study by different authors that used a comparison in crime drops between states to “prove” that shall issue caused a crime “increase” because crime didn’t reportedly drop as fast in shall issue states compared to anti-carry states). Can anyone say if that is what these guys did here? Since Hemenway is involved I am taking it with a grain of salt.

    2) the analysis is only as good as the controls. If they failed to control for the right variables that supposedly drive crime differences between the states then the outcomes are suspect.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     

    tball

    Ultimate Member
    May 20, 2010
    2,135
    St. Augustine, Florida
    They have an agenda. Like Mini Mike Bloomberg's Super Bowl antigun commercial that added 18 and 19 year olds gun death figures to the children figures. They are adults not children. Doing so doubled the numbers of "children". I have had a belly full of the made up statistics coming from the loony lefties.
     

    kcbrown

    Super Genius
    Jun 16, 2012
    1,393
    I would hesitate to say the study was biased and may simply be how the number calculated out.

    Our country is not uniform and there can be orders of magnitude differences between the states. While 1991 was around the peak homicide year for many of the high homicide states, it was not a peak year for many of the low homicide states. Many of the high homicide states have seen significant reductions in the homicide rate since 1991, while the low homicide states may have seen small increases in the homicide rates. The low homicide states tend to be some of the least populated so small changes in homicides changes the rate more than the more populated states.

    NY and CA have some of the largest drops in homicide rate and are some of the most restrictive states so the restrictions appear to have the biggest benefits. The low homicide states also tend to favor the least amount of restrictions and allow CCW, yet have seen small increases in the homicide rates. This is likely why they found increases in homicide rates in CCW states. It should be noted that the vast majority of low homicide states are still below average and most of the high homicide states are still above average.

    And this is why you don't use a "public safety is the aggregate of individual safety" argument when attempting to secure a fundamental Constitutional right.

    Because studies like this one will blow your argument out of the water. The opposition will point out, rightly, that if public safety is the aggregate of individual safety, then it follows that when the public safety has been increased following the imposition of the laws under consideration, it follows that average individual safety must likewise have increased. What will your argument be then in the face of that?


    To argue the public safety angle is to tacitly acknowledge the fundamental presumption that public safety overrides the Constitution, when it is the Constitution, and not public safety, that is the supreme law of the land.
     

    traveller

    The one with two L
    Nov 26, 2010
    18,256
    variable
    True, true unrelated
    and
    Correlation does not imply causation.


    A close look at the data of the states that show an increase would probably show that homicides by 'hands&fists' and 'blunt objects' followed the same trends.
     

    jcutonilli

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 28, 2013
    2,474
    And this is why you don't use a "public safety is the aggregate of individual safety" argument when attempting to secure a fundamental Constitutional right.

    Because studies like this one will blow your argument out of the water. The opposition will point out, rightly, that if public safety is the aggregate of individual safety, then it follows that when the public safety has been increased following the imposition of the laws under consideration, it follows that average individual safety must likewise have increased. What will your argument be then in the face of that?


    To argue the public safety angle is to tacitly acknowledge the fundamental presumption that public safety overrides the Constitution, when it is the Constitution, and not public safety, that is the supreme law of the land.

    SCOTUS has said
    Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose

    Unless you think you can get them to accept that prisoners in jail should have access to arms because the right is unlimited, I don't see any problem acknowledging that there are limits to the right. Public safety happens to have some historical precedent in defining limits to the right.

    The problem with the study is that they only established a correlation. As stated prevously,
    Correlation does not imply causation.

    This is acknowledged in the study itself
    We found a relationship between the enactment of two types of state firearm laws and reductions in homicide over time. However, further research is necessary to determine whether these associations are causal ones.

    Until they can establish that there is, in fact, a substantial causal relationship, I don't see that there is a reasonable relationship between the laws and reductions in homicide.

    I am not sure why you think this study blows my argument out of the water. This study aggregates individual instances of harms to understand possible public safety implications. The other side has won most cases using this type of argument. Why shouldn't we use this same type of winning argument?
     

    kcbrown

    Super Genius
    Jun 16, 2012
    1,393
    SCOTUS has said

    Unless you think you can get them to accept that prisoners in jail should have access to arms because the right is unlimited, I don't see any problem acknowledging that there are limits to the right. Public safety happens to have some historical precedent in defining limits to the right.

    Your argument above is irrelevant to my point. I'm not arguing that the right is unlimited. I'm arguing that the Constitution, and thus any right it secures, is not subservient to public safety. Again, it is the Constitution, not public safety, that is the supreme law of the land.

    Nor am I arguing that the right to arms doesn't confer safety advantages.

    No, my point is simple: public safety is a precarious, AND WRONG, foundation upon which to secure a fundamental Constitutional right. After all, suppose the right actually does leave us with less public safety? In that case, an attempt to secure the right via a public safety argument will fail spectacularly. But a right is exactly that which we have despite the wishes of government and, yes, despite its public safety implications.


    That doesn't mean the right can't be controlled so as to improve public safety (e.g., via laws requiring training in arms for all able-bodied citizens -- such laws needn't infringe the right, and wouldn't if the penalty they impose is something other than removal of the right to arms). It does mean it can't be infringed upon for that purpose.



    The problem with the study is that they only established a correlation. As stated prevously,

    This is acknowledged in the study itself

    Until they can establish that there is, in fact, a substantial causal relationship, I don't see that there is a reasonable relationship between the laws and reductions in homicide.
    And if they do manage to establish that causal relationship? What then?

    That's my point: if they successfully show that their law improved public safety, then your public safety basis for securing the right is blown clean out of the water. And you'll have nothing left to fall back upon, because at that point you'll have already tacitly acknowledged that it is public safety, and not the Constitution, that determines whether or not the right survives.


    I am not sure why you think this study blows my argument out of the water. This study aggregates individual instances of harms to understand possible public safety implications. The other side has won most cases using this type of argument. Why shouldn't we use this same type of winning argument?
    Why shouldn't we? Because of why the other side has won using this type of argument. They win not just because of the type of argument, but because of what's behind it. The courts have accepted their public safety showings as sufficiently compelling. Why should we believe the courts would accept an opposite showing?

    But most of all, like I said, an attempt to use that argument is tacit acknowledgement that the Constitution is subservient to public safety. If you manage to get that encoded into precedent, then you'll have successfully destroyed the Constitutional basis of the entire country. For "public safety" can be successfully used to justify nearly any and all kinds of infringements upon any and all kinds of rights and, indeed, upon any other kind of Constitutional construct.




    Now, maybe you can use such a public safety argument to augment a Constitutional one, strictly for making the right more palatable to the court. But the Constitutional argument must come first, and must reign supreme. To insist otherwise is to insist that the survival of a right can turn on a public safety argument alone, which turns the "right" into something else entirely, and makes the encoded protection of the right, and thus the Constitution itself, subservient to public safety.
     

    jcutonilli

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 28, 2013
    2,474
    Your argument above is irrelevant to my point. I'm not arguing that the right is unlimited. I'm arguing that the Constitution, and thus any right it secures, is not subservient to public safety. Again, it is the Constitution, not public safety, that is the supreme law of the land.

    You are arguing that it is unlimited at least with respect to public safety. I am trying to get you to understand that SCOTUS has indicated that essentially no right protected by the Constitution is considered unlimited.

    I am also trying to get you to understand that public safety is a common reason to curtail rights. In first amendment cases, fighting words and incitement to riot are examples of public safety interests curtailing free speech rights. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions for other examples.

    And if they do manage to establish that causal relationship? What then?

    That's my point: if they successfully show that their law improved public safety, then your public safety basis for securing the right is blown clean out of the water. And you'll have nothing left to fall back upon, because at that point you'll have already tacitly acknowledged that it is public safety, and not the Constitution, that determines whether or not the right survives.
    If they do manage to establish an actual causal relationship then the right should be curtailed for that particular example.

    They are not going to establish an actual causal relationship for most things because law abiding citizens don't commit crimes. It a definition thing. Those that do are not law abiding citizens and should face the consequences.

    Why shouldn't we? Because of why the other side has won using this type of argument. They win not just because of the type of argument, but because of what's behind it. The courts have accepted their public safety showings as sufficiently compelling. Why should we believe the courts would accept an opposite showing?
    The courts have accepted their public safety showings because of quirks in the law and poor arguments on our side.

    Instead of directly confronting the public safety evidence by demonstrating why the evidence that the other side uses is faulty and the inferences draw are unreasonable, they present alternative evidence.

    This dueling evidence makes its evaluation appear political to judges, which then defer to the legislature over political issues.

    If you do not believe the courts will be fair then there is no point in using the courts to resolve the issue.
     

    kcbrown

    Super Genius
    Jun 16, 2012
    1,393
    You are arguing that it is unlimited at least with respect to public safety.

    No, I'm not. There might indeed be limits inherent within the right that are of a public safety nature.

    No, what I'm arguing is that absent language in the Constitution that allows it, public safety cannot legitimately override a direct Constitutional command. That means that public safety cannot legitimately be the basis for infringement of the right to keep and bear arms. Nothing can. The right shall not be infringed. The only thing that can legitimately override that is a later Constitutional Amendment. Why? Because the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land.

    Put another way, I'm not arguing that the right is unlimited, I'm arguing that the protection of the right, whatever it encompasses, is. Why? Precisely because the Constitution commands that the right shall not be infringed, and places no restrictions or qualifications upon that protection whatsoever.

    Either the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and thus what it says goes, or it isn't. Which is it? And no, the power to decide cases and controversies, and to interpret law, does not empower the judiciary to ignore the Constitution and its commands. That power exists under the Constitution, not separately from it. And since the Bill of Rights is composed of amendments to the Constitution, they override anything implicit in the judicial power granted by the Constitution. Such is the nature of amendments: they override anything that came before that might conflict with them. The judicial power cannot legitimately bootstrap itself into the power to override the meaning of the Constitution, and most especially the amendments to it.


    I am trying to get you to understand that SCOTUS has indicated that essentially no right protected by the Constitution is considered unlimited.
    And to insist that I'm arguing that the right to arms is "unlimited" is a strawman. I'm arguing no such thing.


    I am also trying to get you to understand that public safety is a common reason to curtail rights.
    No, public safety is a common reason that rights have inherent limits, and more specifically were understood by the founding generation to have inherent limits. That is not the same as arguing for their infringement on the basis of public safety.


    In first amendment cases, fighting words and incitement to riot are examples of public safety interests curtailing free speech rights. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions for other examples.
    No, those are cases where the right itself was already understood, by the founding generation, to not encompass those things. That is a very different thing.

    It's a very different argument to say that the right does not encompass something, than it is to say that it is permissible to infringe on a right that is understood to encompass something on the basis that "public safety" overrides the right.

    You are arguing the latter. I am arguing the former.


    If they do manage to establish an actual causal relationship then the right should be curtailed for that particular example.
    Really? And if "curtailing" the right means evisceration of it? Then what? Does "public safety" override the Constitution or not? And if it does, or even can, what is the Constitutional foundation for that assertion? What is the Constitutional foundation for even the conditional override of the Constitution by public safety?


    They are not going to establish an actual causal relationship for most things because law abiding citizens don't commit crimes. It a definition thing. Those that do are not law abiding citizens and should face the consequences.
    The opposition will argue that criminals were law abiding citizens until they suddenly weren't, and thus law abiding citizens cannot be exempt.


    The courts have accepted their public safety showings because of quirks in the law and poor arguments on our side.
    Maybe. But my point is that there's absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that our public safety showing is going to be more compelling than the opposition. Your argument is that the protection of the right itself hinges upon that outcome, and my point here is that your argument presumes that the outcome is permissible whether or not it overrides a direct Constitutional command.

    My argument, on the other hand, is that it cannot legitimately override a direct Constitutional command, and that it is an error for the court, even the Supreme Court, to insist that anything other than a Constitutional Amendment can override the Constitution.

    And even the Supreme Court recognizes that "public safety" is not sufficient to override the Constitutional protection of rights:

    McDonald v. City of Chicago said:
    The right to keep and bear arms, however, is not the only constitutional right that has controversial public safety implications. All of the constitutional provisions that impose restrictions on law enforcement and on the prosecution of crimes fall into the same category. See, e.g., Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006) ("The exclusionary rule generates `substantial social costs,' United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 907, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), which sometimes include setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large"); Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 522, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972) (reflecting on the serious consequences of dismissal for a speedy trial violation, which means "a defendant who may be guilty of a serious crime will go free"); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 517, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) (Harlan, J., dissenting); id., at 542, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (White, J., dissenting) (objecting that the Court's rule "n some unknown number of cases ... will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets ... to repeat his crime"); Mapp, 367 U.S., at 659, 81 S.Ct. 1684.


    Now, in the above, the Court was raising that argument to say that public safety isn't reason to preclude the Constitutional protection of the right to arms from being applied against the states, but that reasoning applies equally well to actual application of the protection of the right against the states. After all, what's the point of allowing the application of the protection against the states despite the public safety implications of doing so if one is going to insist later that public safety can and does override the right in every situation in which the protection would be applied against a state law or action?

    Because the courts are a human construct operated by human beings, the numerous decisions made over the many years will naturally cover the entire gamut of reasoning, including the notion (if only implicit) that public safety overrides the Constitution. That the courts engage in a particular kind of reasoning doesn't make that reasoning correct.


    Instead of directly confronting the public safety evidence by demonstrating why the evidence that the other side uses is faulty and the inferences draw are unreasonable, they present alternative evidence.
    I was under the impression that our side did attempt to do exactly what you state here, and the court nevertheless didn't buy it.


    This dueling evidence makes its evaluation appear political to judges, which then defer to the legislature over political issues.
    Of course. But that's the very nature of evidence-based arguments in court. Each side picks the evidence it needs to support its position. Courts don't do science, they do law, and litigation is a confrontational mechanism, not a truth-finding one. That's an inherent problem of the courts and law in general, one I personally find distasteful, but it explains exactly why these things become political even in the arena of law.


    If you do not believe the courts will be fair then there is no point in using the courts to resolve the issue.
    That doesn't follow at all. It may be, for instance, that the courts will be unfair in your favor. Or it may be that you'll get lucky and the courts will actually be fair this time around. It depends on the people involved, something I've argued from the start. Why do you think I've argued that the outcome of these decisions will correlate strongly with the political position of those who appointed the people that made them? It's precisely because the arguments that appeal the most to the listener depend on the listener's preferences, and as regards judges, those preferences were selected for when the judges were selected and nominated. And how could you reasonably argue otherwise, when to argue otherwise is to argue that the nominating politicians were idiots who didn't have their own interests in mind when performing the nomination?

    Regardless, if your only real recourse is the courts, then you've no choice but to use them, and that's the position we've found ourselves in repeatedly.
     
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    jcutonilli

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 28, 2013
    2,474
    The problem is that the Constitution does not define the right itself. It simply indicates that the right shall not be infringed. None of the courts to date, where we have lost, found that the law infringes the right based on pubic safety. They have all found that there is no infringement and so the 2A requirement to not infringe has been met. To say public safety cannot be a factor in determining the extent of the right, because the Constitution does not explicitly state it, indicates you are misunderstanding what is said in the 2A. There is historical evidence that indicates that there are limits inherent within the right that are of a public safety nature.

    The hard part is figuring out what is part of the right and what is not. When Heller and McDonald were decided, five justices felt its limits indicated one thing, while four of the justices felt differently. Neither case really addressed the exact nature of the limits that are of a public safety nature. The lower courts have stepped in, using its scrutiny methodologies the court uses in other areas, to figure out the extents of those rights. SCOTUS has not yet corrected the lower courts on this issue.

    As part of the scrutiny analysis, the court determines the extent to which the law furthers a government interest. For 2A cases this interest is public safety. Courts are very familiar with this type of analysis and have included it as part of every case. What I am proposing is to properly evaluate how public safety is achieved. This includes every individuals contribution. Simply looking at a small portion of public safety gives a distorted view of how well the law furthers the interest. The laws in question take away the ability of the public to protect itself, yet that never gets argued because the right is seen purely as an individual one with no real societal implications. How can you properly determine if the law furthers public safety if you never fully understand what public safety is?

    Our side has tried to demonstrate that data and inferences of the other side are faulty, but they do so by using different data. They need to demonstrate that the other side's data and inferences are faulty using the other side's data. The quirk that causes us to lose is because two different data sets are used rather than arguing over the validity of just one. The legislature gets to break the tie in these instances because the issues are perceived as political.

    There certainly are judges that have a political ideology, but they don't always follow the nominating politician. Justice Souter is a good example. I think one of the characteristics of a good lawyer is the ability to frame the issues in a way that will appeal to opposite leaning judges.
     

    kcbrown

    Super Genius
    Jun 16, 2012
    1,393
    The problem is that the Constitution does not define the right itself. It simply indicates that the right shall not be infringed.

    Right, it doesn't. That's where historical analysis, text, history, and tradition come into play.

    The Supreme Court was explicit:

    District of Columbia v. Heller said:
    Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.

    Because of that, in order to determine the scope of the right, one must determine what the founding generation understood the contours of the right to be. Nothing else matters.


    None of the courts to date, where we have lost, found that the law infringes the right based on pubic safety. They have all found that there is no infringement and so the 2A requirement to not infringe has been met.

    No, they found that the law infringes on the right and then proceeded to decide that said infringement was Constitutional. How do we know this? Simple: because they used "scrutiny", and the courts decide upon scrutiny only after answering whether or not the law in question imposes upon the right at all. Only if the law imposes upon the right in the first place does the court proceed to scrutiny tests. Why? Because if the law in question doesn't impose upon the right in the first place, then there is no need to proceed any further. See, e.g., Peruta v. County of San Diego, 742 F. 3d 1144:

    Peruta v. County of San Diego said:
    Our first task, therefore, is to assess the nature of the infringement that the San Diego County policy purportedly effects on the right to bear arms—namely, does it burden the right or, like in Heller, does it destroy the right altogether?

    or Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F. 3d 81:

    Kachalsky v. County of Westchester said:
    We have held that "heightened scrutiny is triggered only by those restrictions that (like the complete prohibition on handguns struck down in Heller) operate as a substantial burden on the ability of law-abiding citizens to possess and use a firearm for self-defense (or for other lawful purposes)."

    I could go on and on, but you should get the point by now: the courts determine infringement first, and then decide after-the-fact whether or not the infringement is "Constitutional".


    To say public safety cannot be a factor in determining the extent of the right, because the Constitution does not explicitly state it, indicates you are misunderstanding what is said in the 2A. There is historical evidence that indicates that there are limits inherent within the right that are of a public safety nature.

    Didn't I already say that? "There might indeed be limits inherent within the right that are of a public safety nature."

    But that's not the issue here. The issue here is that the means the courts have used to determine whether or not the law is allowed to stand do not depend upon the scope of the right -- that scope has already been determined to be infringed upon -- but rather whether or not the law furthers public safety enough to justify the infringement.

    But the Constitutional command is clear and unequivocal: the right shall not be infringed. There are no exceptions, and no conditions, upon that command. It is absolute. That leaves only the scope of the right itself as the sole variable left in the equation, and that, as the Supreme Court explicitly said, is that which the founding generation understood the scope to be.

    And no, you can't use the claim that the term "infringed" is ambiguous. We have dictionaries from the period that define the term clearly, as well as ample historical documents in which the term was used. None of the cases we've been speaking of, at least that I'm aware of, raised the question of what the meaning of "infringed" is in the 2nd Amendment, much less pursued that meaning through historical sources. And yet, that's exactly what must happen for the rules of statutory construction to be satisfied.


    The hard part is figuring out what is part of the right and what is not. When Heller and McDonald were decided, five justices felt its limits indicated one thing, while four of the justices felt differently. Neither case really addressed the exact nature of the limits that are of a public safety nature. The lower courts have stepped in, using its scrutiny methodologies the court uses in other areas, to figure out the extents of those rights. SCOTUS has not yet corrected the lower courts on this issue.

    That's correct in terms of what the courts have done. My point is that the courts are fundamentally incorrect in what they have done. The Supreme Court was explicit about the scope of the right. At best, scrutiny cannot inform us of the scope of the right because it does not ask whether the founding generation understood the right to include the scope in question. Scrutiny is completely independent of that, and how can it not be, when, firstly, no test it performs includes anything about the founding generation's understanding of the right and, secondly, it is invoked when an infringement has already been determined to exist in the first place? If anything, invocation of scrutiny by the court is proof that the scope of the right includes that which the law imposes upon, i.e. is proof of infringement.

    As such, to argue public safety as you would is to acknowledge that the infringement is permissible if your public safety argument fails, since there’s no point in making the public safety argument if your challenge would succeed even if your public safety argument failed. But that means that the government is empowered to violate the explicit command of the Constitution in the event the public safety argument doesn't go your way, something which directly contradicts the supremacy clause of the Constitution.

    That said, there is one public safety argument you could make that is consistent with the Constitutional command: the argument that the founding generation understood the right to include that which the law imposes upon because of their belief that it would benefit public safety. But that's not the kind of argument you're proposing here.


    There certainly are judges that have a political ideology, but they don't always follow the nominating politician. Justice Souter is a good example. I think one of the characteristics of a good lawyer is the ability to frame the issues in a way that will appeal to opposite leaning judges.

    I agree. My claim isn't that judges will always follow their political leanings, but rather that they will tend to. And the statistics at the appellate level appear to bear this out, with Democrat appointees almost to a man deciding against the right regardless of the case, while Republican appointees are much more evenly split.
     
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    W2D

    Ultimate Member
    Dec 2, 2015
    2,074
    Escaped MD for FL
    I was hoping to see some stats in the data on what happened to the murder rate in DC since they went Shall Issue. I didn’t see DC mentioned at all.






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    justiw

    Active Member
    Jan 26, 2012
    302
    I read part way through and saw that they are excluding gang violence from their analysis. Garbage. They toss out the majority of violent, unjustified homicides; the ones that our society is most focused on reducing. The remaining stats are then diluted in liberal gang infested cities, while the more sparsely populated areas with much lower crime statistics (but slightly more likely to see mass shootings) get emphasized. They are clearly slanting the data to their utmost advantage and still only seeing marginal results and weak correlations on few parameters.

    Garbage.
     

    DanGuy48

    Ultimate Member
    I haven’t read the whole thread so maybe a repeat. From the article...emphasis added.

    “Using a panel design, we analyzed the relationship between 10 state firearm laws and total, age-adjusted homicide and suicide rates from 1991 to 2016 in a difference-in-differences, fixed effects, multivariable regression model. There were 1222 observations for homicide analyses and 1300 observations for suicide analyses.”

    So, if it’s looking at just homicide, that includes justifiable homicide, in which case that increase, in my opinion, is probably a good thing...more dirt bags dying at the hands of citizens defending themselves.

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-019-04922-x

    My first question would be: Are they including justifiable homicides(self defense) in those numbers?

    From living in a state where it's very difficult to get a permit (Maryland) and one where it was very easy (Alabama) I can tell you which one has more extremely violent street crime in the major cities.

    Edit: just read this...”We excluded homicides due to legal intervention (1% of firearm deaths), unintentional firearm fatalities (2.5% of firearm deaths), and fatalities of undetermined intent (1% of firearm deaths) from our analysis.”

    Does legal intervention mean all justifiable homicide or just homicide by law enforcement?

    Edit #2. “While historically the literature on the impact of concealed carry–permitting laws has been inconsistent and several studies have found an association between “shall issue” laws and reduced murder rates,7, 22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29 the three most recent studies to examine these laws found a positive association with homicide rates.3, 30, 31”

    It would be interesting to read a review/analysis of these by Lott to see what he thinks. Their methodology is beyond me but it appears studies yield 9:4 shall issue-lower homicide:shall issue-more homicide.
     

    jcutonilli

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 28, 2013
    2,474
    No, they found that the law infringes on the right and then proceeded to decide that said infringement was Constitutional. How do we know this? Simple: because they used "scrutiny", and the courts decide upon scrutiny only after answering whether or not the law in question imposes upon the right at all. Only if the law imposes upon the right in the first place does the court proceed to scrutiny tests. Why? Because if the law in question doesn't impose upon the right in the first place, then there is no need to proceed any further. See, e.g., Peruta v. County of San Diego, 742 F. 3d 1144:

    You are completely misunderstanding what the courts are doing. The first test is a scoping test to determine if there is really a 2A issue or not. The second test determines the specific extents of the 2A for that particular issue.

    In Peruta, the court dismissed the case because concealed carry is supposedly not part of the 2A. Kolbe was dismissed because the firearms in question were supposedly not protected by the 2A.

    Most of the time the court assumes without actually deciding that it is a 2A issue and proceeds to the second test to determine if the law in question actually infringes on the right. They do not need to actually decide it is a 2A issue because most of the time the law supposedly does not infringe on the right.
     

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