I can't say my opinion of Sowell is improving with that column.
Legolas Send a noteboard - 03/07/2010 12:01:28 PM
Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn't be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves.
Is it just me, or is he rather overstating the importance of this decision? To the best of my knowledge, this decision does not make much of a difference in most places in the US, only in those places like that Chicago neighbourhood where there were strict gun control laws. As for the second sentence, yawn.
When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence.
You try telling that to the majority of Americans. Well, I suppose he is telling it to Americans, but since he doesn't take it seriously anyway, it makes little difference. Mind, I would have to agree that in a society where guns are already so prevalent, trying to cut down on them is going to be difficult and might not help with the murder rate at all. After all, the gun situation, like anything else, is not in a vacuum and is not created from scratch; the matter of "allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms" or not has to be viewed in the existing context of the matter in the United States.
But if Sowell is going to make ludicrous comparisons to Russia and Brazil, one would have to conclude that this "let's look at it empirically" talk is empty rhetoric and excuses to justify the ideology.
There is no point arguing, as many people do, that it is difficult to amend the Constitution. The fact that it doesn't happen very often doesn't mean that it is difficult. The people may not want it to happen, even if the intelligentsia are itching to change it.
Fair enough point.
What all this means is that judges and the voting public have different roles. There is no reason why judges should "consider the basic values that underlie a constitutional provision and their contemporary significance," as Justice Stephen Breyer said in his dissent against the Supreme Court's gun control decision.
No, there really is. It's true that amending the Constitution is always possible even if it's not easy, but it simply would not be practical to interpret the Constitution literally and decline all re-interpretations based on changing circumstances. That would mean the Constitution would have to be amended on a regular basis to take those changing circumstances into account, with all the political costs that would entail each time.
And as I've said in the other recent thread, it seems rather hypocritical to make statements like this while insisting on a Second Amendment right to bear arms that is very different from what was originally meant.
But, as the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, his job was "to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not."
I can certainly sympathize with that quote, but then I live in a civil law country. I suppose in the United Kingdom it might be applicable as well, despite their having common law. But in the United States? There his job goes further than that. The American Supreme Court does have the power to change the rules if it so pleases, in practice at least. If it had taken a Constitutional Amendment to end segregation, it would have taken a generation or two longer before it had ended, and things might have gotten very ugly indeed.
If the public doesn't like the rules, or the consequences to which the rules lead, then the public can change the rules via the ballot box. But that is very different from judges changing the rules by verbal sleight of hand, or by talking about "weighing of the constitutional right to bear arms" against other considerations, as Justice Breyer puts it. That's not his job. Not if "we the people" are to govern ourselves, as the Constitution says.
Sowell is free to think that that shouldn't be his job, and I might actually agree. But like it or not, it has been the job of the Supreme Court for many decades now.
As for the merits or demerits of gun control laws themselves, a vast amount of evidence, both from the United States and from other countries, shows that keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens does not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It is not uncommon for a tightening of gun control laws to be followed by an increase-- not a decrease-- in gun crimes, including murder.
Conversely, there have been places and times where an increase in gun ownership has been followed by a reduction in crimes in general and murder in particular.
Unfortunately, the media intelligentsia tend to favor gun control laws, so a lot of hard facts about the futility, or the counterproductive consequences of such laws, never reach the public through the media.
If he had stopped after these three paragraphs, I might have taken his claims about favouring a decision based on empirical data seriously. Shame that he didn't.
We hear a lot about countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States that have lower murder rates. But we very seldom hear about countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States that have higher murder rates, such as Russia and Brazil.
Uh. Maybe because comparing a first world country like the US to third world countries (or, okay, second) like Russia and Brazil makes no sense and doesn't exactly have much relevance? Discussing the merits of different degrees of gun control only makes sense if you assume a comparable level of government ability to enforce such laws, or to enforce laws in general.
The media, like Justice Breyer, might do well to reflect on what is their job and what is the voting public's job. The media's job should be to give us the information to make up our own minds, not slant and filter the news to fit the media's vision.
This is also a valid point, even though I don't really see the relevance to the column. Then again, the problem with this stance - well, it's not a problem for me really, but it might be for some, I don't know about Sowell - is that such a stance effectively means the media shouldn't function in a capitalistic way. That is, it would mean the media have responsibilities above and beyond trying to sell their product any which way, beyond selling to the public what it wants to buy. And it's not easy to see how such a change in mentality in the media could be effected in a capitalistic society.
Judges, the Constitution & Gun Control Laws
- 03/07/2010 05:26:32 AM
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I can't say my opinion of Sowell is improving with that column.
- 03/07/2010 12:01:28 PM
455 Views