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January 31, 2013

Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair, Some Say

By ERICA GOODE and JACK HEALY

In their fervor to take action against gun violence after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., a growing number of state and national politicians are promoting a focus on mental illness as a way to help prevent further killings.Legislation to revise existing mental health laws is under consideration in at least a half-dozen states, including Colorado, Oregon and Ohio. A New York bill requiring mental health practitioners to warn the authorities about potentially dangerous patients was signed into law on Jan. 15. In Washington, President Obama has ordered “a national dialogue” on mental health, and a variety of bills addressing mental health issues are percolating on Capitol Hill.But critics say that this focus unfairly singles out people with serious mental illness, who studies indicate are involved in only about 4 percent of violent crimes and are 11 or more times as likely than the general population to be the victims of violent crime.And many proposals — they include strengthening mental health services, lowering the threshold for involuntary commitment and increasing requirements for reporting worrisome patients to the authorities — are rushed in execution and unlikely to repair a broken mental health system, some experts say.“Good intentions without thought make for bad laws, and I think we have a risk of that,” said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied rampage killers.Moreover, the push for additional mental health laws is often driven by political expediency, some critics say. Mental health proposals draw support from both Democrats and Republicans, in part because, unlike bans on semiautomatic weapons or high-capacity magazines — like the one proposed in the Senate last week — they do not involve confrontation with gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.“The N.R.A. is far more formidable as a political foe than the advocacy groups for the mentally ill,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.Indeed, the N.R.A. itself, in response to the massacre in Newtown, argued that mental illness, and not the guns themselves, was at the root of recent shooting sprees. The group called for a national registry of people with mental illness — an alternative that legal experts agree would raise at least as many constitutional alarms as the banning of gun ownership.For mental health groups, the proposals under consideration are tantalizing: By increasing services for those with mental illness, they raise the possibility of restoring some of the billions of dollars cut from mental health programs in recent years as budgets tightened in the financial downturn. The measures also hold out hope for improvement of a mental health system that many experts say is fragmented and drastically inadequate. And some proposals — those to revise commitment laws, for example — have the support of some mental health organizations.But some mental health and legal experts say that politicians’ efforts might be better spent making the process of involuntary psychiatric commitment — and the criteria for restricting firearms access once someone has been forcibly committed — consistent from state to state. And some proposals have caused concern, raising questions about doctor-patient confidentiality, the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities and the integrity of clinical judgment.Especially troublesome to some mental health advocates are provisions like New York’s, which expand the duty of practitioners to report worrisome patients — a model likely to be emulated by other states. New York’s law, part of a comprehensive package to address gun violence, requires reporting to the local authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.” Law enforcement officials would then be authorized to confiscate any firearm owned by such a patient.John Monahan, a psychologist and professor of law at the University of Virginia, said that such laws are often superfluous.Although many mental health practitioners mistakenly believe that federal laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act forbid them to disclose information about patients, such statutes already include exceptions that permit clinicians to give information to the authorities when a patient presents a threat to others, Dr. Monahan said.Most states also have laws requiring mental health professionals to notify the authorities and any intended victim when a patient makes a direct threat.New York’s provision, Dr. Monahan said, differs from virtually every other state’s laws in allowing guns to be taken not only from those committed against their will but also from patients who enter treatment voluntarily.“The devil is in the details,” he said of New York’s new law. “The two fears are that people will be deterred from seeking treatment that they need or that, once they are in treatment, they will clam up and not talk about violence.”Most mental health experts agree that the link between mental illness and violence is not imaginary. Studies suggest that people with an untreated severe mental illness are more likely to be violent, especially when drug or alcohol abuse is involved. And many rampage killers have some type of serious mental disorder: James E. Holmes, accused of opening fire in a movie theater in Colorado in July, was seeing a psychiatrist who became alarmed about his behavior; Jared L. Loughner, who killed 6 people and injured 13 others in Arizona, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was severely mentally ill.But such killings account for only a tiny fraction of gun homicides in the United States, mental health experts point out. Besides the research indicating that little violent crime can be linked to perpetrators who are mentally ill, studies show that those crimes are far more likely to involve battery — punching another person, for example — than weapons, which account for only 2 percent of violent crimes committed by the mentally ill.Because of this, some criminal justice experts say it makes more sense to pass laws addressing behavior, rather than a diagnosis of mental illness. In Indiana, for example, firearms can be confiscated from people deemed a potential threat, whether or not they have a mental illness.Proposals in a number of states seek to redefine the threshold for involuntary commitment to psychiatric treatment. But in doing so, they have reignited a longstanding debate about the role of forced treatment.In Ohio, lawmakers are expected to consider a proposal to increase access to outpatient commitment instead of hospitalization, while also doing away with language requiring people with mental illness to show a “grave and imminent risk to substantial rights” of themselves or others before they can be committed.In Colorado, where legislators are undertaking a broad overhaul of the state’s mental health system proposed by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, the proposal also includes changing the criteria for involuntary commitment.Under the state’s current laws, caregivers can place patients on 72-hour mental health holds only if they are believed to pose an “imminent danger” to themselves or others. The governor’s plan would allow caregivers to commit people if they believe there is a “substantial probability” of harm. Virginia and some other states already have standards based on “substantial probability.”But some mental health advocates are wary about lowering the threshold. “The evidence that we have tells us that that’s not an appropriate solution, it’s not an effective solution to this problem,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for people with psychiatric disabilities.But Cheryl Miller — whose 21-year-old son, Kyle, was shot by the police last June after he pointed a toy gun at them — believes that a revised law might have saved her child.Two weeks before Kyle was killed she took him to an emergency mental health clinic to get him hospitalized. But the staff refused to commit him.“I said, ‘I don’t want to take him home; he needs to go to the hospital,’ ” Ms. Miller said. “They didn’t think so. It goes back to, was he an imminent danger to himself? And it was ‘No.’ ”

Cardinal Mahony Stripped of Public Church Duties

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Cardinal Mahony Stripped of Public Church DutiesLos Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez  on Thursday announceddramatic actions in response to the priest abuse scandal, saying that CardinalRoger Mahony would be stripped of public duties in the church and that SantaBarbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry has stepped down.Gomez said in a statement that Mahony — who led the L.A.archdiocese from 1985 to 2011 — “will no longer have any administrative orpublic duties.”Gomez also announced the church has released a trove ofconfidential church files detailing how the Los Angeles archdiocese dealt withpriests accused of molestation.Gomez wrote in a letter to parishioners that the files would bedisturbing to read.“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviordescribed in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, noexplaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had theduty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed,” he wrote. “We need toacknowledge that terrible failure today.”Gomez’s statement came a week after the release of internalCatholic church records. The records showed 15 years before the clergy sexabuse scandal came to light, Mahony and Curry discussed ways to conceal themolestation of children from law enforcement. Those records represent just afraction of the files the church released Thursday. The Times is now reviewingthose files.The records released last week offer the strongest evidence yet ofa concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese toshield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocesefought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desireto keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.The records contain memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony andCurry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases. In theconfidential letters, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police frominvestigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they hadabused young boys.Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the priests fromseeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priestsout-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators. Mahony, who retiredin 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations.Gomez’s letter detailed changes in the status of Curry and Mahonyin the church.“Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that hewill no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary BishopThomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving asVicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of hisresponsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara,” Gomez wrote in aletter.The records were released hours after a judge signed an orderrequiring the church to do so.In a written order, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge EmilieH. Elias gave the church a Feb. 22 deadline to turn over about 30,000 pages ofinternal memos, psychiatric reports, Vatican correspondence and otherdocuments.“Let’s just get it done,” Elias said in court Thursday.Her order brought to a close five and a half years of legalwrangling and delays and set the stage for a raft of new and almost certainlyembarrassing revelations about the church’s handling of pedophile priests.The files Elias ordered released are the final piece of a landmark2007 settlement between the archdiocese and about 500 people who said clergyabused them. As part of that $660-million settlement, the archdiocese agreed tohand over the personnel files of accused abusers. Victims said the files wouldprovide accountability for church leaders who let pedophiles remain in theministry; law enforcement officials said the records would be importantinvestigative tools.But the release was delayed for years by appeals and thepainstaking process of reading and redacting 89 files, some hundreds of pageslong. A private mediator in 2011 ordered the church to black out the names ofvictims and archdiocese employees not accused of abuse, saying he wanted toavoid “guilt by association.”Earlier this month, at the urging of the Los Angeles Times and theAssociated Press, Elias ordered the names restored, saying the public had aright to know what Mahony and others in charge did about abuse. The churchcomplained about the cost of restoring the redactions and suggested to thejudge earlier this week that generic cover sheets for the files listing topofficials and their dates of service should suffice.After criticism from attorneys for the victims and the media, thechurch abandoned that plan and its lawyers said in court Thursday “anybody in asupervisory role” would be named in the documents. Elias’ order specified thatthe names of the archbishop, the vicar who handled clergy abuse, bishops andthe heads of Catholic treatment centers for pedophiles be included.Here is Gomez’s full letter:My brothers and sisters in Christ,This week we are releasing the files of priests who sexuallyabused children while they were serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But thatdoes not make them less serious.I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviordescribed in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, noexplaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had theduty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today. We need topray for everyone who has ever been hurt by members of the Church. And we needto continue to support the long and painful process of healing their wounds andrestoring the trust that was broken.I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in thesepages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused, has beenthe saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed hissorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care.Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longerhave any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry hasalso publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. Ihave accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the RegionalBishop of Santa Barbara.To every victim of child sexual abuse by a member of our Church: Iwant to help you in your healing. I am profoundly sorry for these sins againstyou.To every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I want you toknow: We will continue, as we have for many years now, to immediately reportevery credible allegation of abuse to law enforcement authorities and to removethose credibly accused from ministry. We will continue to work, every day, tomake sure that our children are safe and loved and cared for in our parishes,schools and in every ministry in the Archdiocese.In the weeks ahead, I will address all of these matters in greaterdetail. Today is a time for prayer and reflection and deep compassion for thevictims of child sexual abuse.I entrust all of us and our children and families to the tendercare and protection of our Blessed Mother Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe and OurLady of the Angels.Sincerely yours in Christ,–  Harriet Ryan, Hector Becerra, Ashley Powers and VictoriaKim

The Ultimate Guide To The Gun Safety Debate

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TheUltimate Guide To The Gun Safety DebateBy Zack Beauchamp on Jan 31, 2013 at3:20 pmSince the shooting inNewtown, Connecticut, the debate over gun violence in the Untied States hasbegun in earnest. Some common talking points can and should be easily dismissed— the idea that regulating access to guns is always unconstitutional or makes tyrannymore likely, to take two examples. But notevery argument against expanded gun regulation is ridiculous. There are some,based on the evidence about and history of gun use in the United States, thatare worth taking more seriously. You’re likely to hear them a lot over thecourse of the coming debate. Here’s a list of some of the more commonly made,more serious arguments against gun regulation — and why they fail toeffectively make the case against new laws:“Assault weapon” is a meangingless term. || The last assault weapons ban failed. || Assault weapons don’t kill many people. || Deaths went down after the ban expired.|| How can background checks stop killings?
Are background checks unfair? || High-capacitymagazines don’t assist in mass killings.
People need high-capacity magazines to defend themselves. || The ban on high-capacity magazines failed.
More guns, less crime. || Why do gun-regulating cities have more crime?THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN1. “The law’s ban on some so-called assault weapons isnonsensical. All such weaponry terminology means is that they aresemi-automatic weapons (which most guns are) with some military-style externalfeatures.”These so-called “externalfeatures” not only themselves allow for faster rates of fire and other morelethal uses of the guns, but also serve as effective proxy definitions for thesort of weapons best suited to kill people as efficiently as possible. Thedefinition of “assault weapon” in the new federal ban proposed by SenatorDianne Feinstein (D-CA) with respect to semi-automatic rifles and pistols isfocused on two kinds of each. The rifles are civilian equivalents of “assaultrifles,” the main class of rifle used by modern militaries. “Civilian” versionsare distinguished only by their inability to fire either automatically or inbursts without a conversion kit. The pistols have features that make themliable to be converted to full automatic versions (that is, into submachineguns) or otherwise enhance their lethality (e.g., allow for faster rate offire).The Feinstein law picks outthose sorts of weapons in two ways. First, it bans specific guns (like theAR-15s used by James Holmes in Aurora and Adam Lanza in Newtown) that areparticularly deadly. Many of these guns are civilian equivalents of militaryassault rifles, because — as assault rifle expert C.J. Chivers puts it — these guns were “conjured toform solely for the task of allowing men to more efficiently kill other men”because they are “smaller, lighter in weight, more tactically versatile andrequire a lighter per-man effective ammunition load than the infantry riflesthat preceded them.” The Feinstein provisions, unlike in the 1994 federal ban,specify that “altered facsimiles with the capability of any such weaponthereof” are also banned, so taking out a single screw and callingthe weapon something different would not allow manufacturers to skirt the ban.The second provision defines generic features — like barrel shrouds that allow for faster fire or (for pistols)magazines outside the pistol grip — and bans any gun that has more than one ofthem and a detachable magazine (the old ban allowed a maximum of two features,making it easier to skirt).These aren’t merelycosmetic features: they’re the ones that mark guns optimized for effectiveperformance in combat-style situations. They also mark guns easily convertibleto full automatic fire, like the TEC-9 submachine guns once favored in gangkillings. One such kit is fully legal, despite the 1934 National Firearms Actbanning the possession of automatic weapons without a permit. The kit producedby the company Slide Fire product allows you to turn your AR or AK seriesassault rifle into a rapid-fire machine without technicallyrunning afoul of the federal definition of “machine gun.”The notion that assaultrifles are similar in caliber to hunting rifles, and hence no more dangerous,doesn’t stand up to scrutiny for similar reasons. As the California AttorneyGeneral’s office explains, “Caliber has no bearing on a weapon’sstatus as a series weapon and should be disregarded when making anidentification. For example, upper receiver conversion kits are available toconvert almost any AR series weapon into .45 ACP, .40 S&W, 7.62 X 39 mm, 9mm, 10 mm, or .223 caliber.”2. “The last assault-weapons ban didn’t work.“There is evidence that the1994 federal ban saved lives despite a series of loopholes closed in theFeinstein bill and several state bans. Though there isn’t reliable data on the number ofpeople killed by assault weapons in the United States, there is strong evidence from the Mexican borderthat both California’s assault weapons ban the federal assault weapon ban lowered the homicide rate. The clearest comesin a 2012 academic paper that treated the expiration of the federal assaultweapon ban in 2004 as a natural experiment — California still had its assaultweapon ban, but Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona didn’t have equivalents. Theauthors tracked homicides and weapon seizures in the Mexican provincesbordering the states, finding disproportionately lower homicide rates inprovinces near California. This difference remained when other potential causes(like police presence) were accounted for, suggesting the federal andCalifornia bans had successful kept assault weapons out of the hands of cartelsand other criminals. The expiration of the federal law, on this paper’s model,has gotten roughly 239 people killed on the Mexican border peryear since 2004. This is consistent with another paper that found “the expiration of the AWB isresponsible for at least 16.4 percent of the increase in the homicide rate inMexico between 2004 and 2008.”The 1994 ban, according toa Department of Justice review, also appears to have caused the percentage ofcrimes involving assault weapons in some major US cities to drop from 72percent to 17 percent.While it’s true that thesame review couldn’t find support for the idea thatthe Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime in 2004, the authors concluded that theresimply hadn’t been enough time or data to come to a strongconclusion. The more recent Mexican studies may have filled thisgap.3. “So-called ‘assault weapons’ are nowhere near the root ofthe American violence problem.”The reality is that even aminor percentage decline in fatalities could means hundreds of fewer peoplekilled per year. Estimates about the percentage of crimes involving assault weaponsrange from two to eight percent. But if the Feinstein law could make a dent inthat number, that’s still a big deal. Consider one estimate, based on federal gun trace data, that the originalfederal assault weapons ban reduced the national percentage of gun crimesinvolving assault weapons from about five percent to about two percent.Assuming that, because assault weapons are rarer and deadlier and hence morelikely to be responsible for homicides, this translated to a one percentdecline in the homicide rate. That’s 110 fewer murders per year given theroughly 11,000 Americans killed by gun homicide every year. We can debatewhether would-be murderers would simply use other types of guns, and whetherthey’d be as deadly, but the point is that even a small percentage drop in gunhomicides nationwide would be a huge victory.4. “Violent crime has decreased 17 percent since the assaultweapons ban expired..”This one is just an abuseof statistics — just because violence is declining doesn’t mean it couldn’t bedeclining faster. It’s true that violent crime as a whole, including gunhomicides, has declined over the course of the past decade. This suggests thatgun laws aren’t the only factors that determine the crime rate — see KevinDrum’s fantastic series on lead and crime for aclear explanation of the other causes that might’ve mattered.Moreover, when you comparedifferent states with different gun laws at the same time, you find states withtighter gun regulations (including assault weapon bans) have significantly lower rates of firearm death.This suggests that, independent of whatever good fortune the United States hasseen the past decade, better gun laws could significantly accelerate decline inlives lost to gunfire.UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS AND DEALER INSPECTIONS
1. “How is this supposed to prevent mass murder?”First, some mass shootersdo have criminal or worrisome mental health records, like James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho. Both Holmes and Cho bought their weapons legally. Choeven passed a background check despite being ruled “an imminent danger tohimself because of mental illness” because of Virginia’s lax standards aboutwhat counts as a red flag for purposes of a background check.Second, there’s anotherkind of mass murder — the 11,000 gun homicides per year — that improving ourbackground check and inspection system could unequivocally help prevent. Onepercent of gun dealers sell half of the guns used in crimes nationally,which other evidence indicates have been deterred in the pastby stepped-up ATF enforcement. Domestic violence perpetrators, people withsubstance abuse problems, and individuals convicted of other violent crimes are all more likely to commit firearm crimes,yet they can freely purchase a weapon in a private sale at, say, a gun show, noquestions asked. In a finding that should surprise no one, 80 percent offirearms used in crimes appear to have been purchased privately. State and city-levelcomparisons indicate that “states which do notregulate private gun sales, adopt permit-to-purchase licensing systems, or havegun owner accountability measures, like mandatory reporting of gun thefts,export significantly more guns used by criminals to other states that haveconstrained the supply of guns for criminals by adopting strict gun salesregulations.”It’s hard to estimate aspecific number of lives that would be saved by requiring background checks onall sales, requiring all states and federal organizations to input criminal anddrug records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (they don’t have to, currently), and giving the ATFmore power to trace and sting “bad apple” gun dealers and traffickers, but thismountain of evidence suggests that the effect of such measures could besubstantial.2. “Although better enforcement of existing restrictions ongun ownership sounds unobjectionable, it would unjustly deny millions of peoplethe right to armed self-defense.”Background checks arehardly onerous and likely won’t “unjustly” disqualify that many people. A checkusually process very quickly at the point-of-sale and even abnormally long waittimes top out around five days. It’s hardly anexcessive burden for someone seeking a deadly weapon they’ll then be able toown for life.But does current federallaw unfairly bar certain groups of people from acquiring guns? Currently, only one percent of sales are blocked bybackground checks, the vast majority of which because the purchaser hascommitted or been indicted for a felony, is a fugitive from justice, or is aperpetrator of domestic violence. Presumably, both the percentage and absolutenumber of people denied would go up if the background check system wereimproved, but the breakdown suggest that only a minute number of (for example)harmless, recreational drug users would have their access to guns restrictedbecause they failed a drug test.Moreover, it’s criticallyimportant that felons be restricted from accessing firearms. The NewYork Times surveyed felons and people convicted of“domestic violence misdemeanors” who (as a consequence of state-level,NRA-backed legislation loosening restoration standards) regained their gunrights. It found that 13 percent went on to commit crimes, half of which werefelonies. As the Times notes, there’s also evidence that denying handguns to peoplearrested for or convicted of felonies reduces their likelihood to commit futurecrimes by 20 to 30 percent.It is almost certainly truethat universal background checks and a more complete database of disqualifiedpersons will lead to less people being able to buy guns legally. Some fractionof them likely wouldn’t commit crimes — your average pot smoker isn’t theviolent type. But the misguided excesses of the war on drugs shouldn’t obscurethe fact that, right now, domestic abusers, violent felons, gang members, anddrug addicts can buy guns with impunity. The evidence is very clear that members of these groupsare more likely to commit gun crimes and that improved background checks can limit their ability to do so, saving lives inthe process. A minor limitation on a tiny percentage of Americans’ ability tobuy guns seems like a trade-off that’s easily worth making in light ofAmerica’s gun homicide rate.HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINES1. “High-capacity magazines…require less frequent reloading,but are more likely to jam, and at any rate changing magazines is not difficulteven for the untrained.”There are plenty of largecapacity magazines that aren’t more likely to jam that could majorly amplifythe death toll in a mass shooting. While it’s true that 100-round magazines are more likely tojam, most high-capacity magazines aren’t nearly that large, and hence can usemechanisms that don’t appreciably increase the risk of jamming. The modern USArmy M-16, for example, has a 30-round magazine, as does a standard AK-47 (agun famous for jamming rarely). And as magazinetechnology improves, larger magazine sizes become more practicable: as JoshSugarmann, executive director and founder of the Violence Policy Center, toldThinkProgress, evidence “from gun magazines and industry publications[suggests] the trend is towards higher capacity magazines.”The Feinstein law, then,bans magazines that hold more than ten bullets for a reason.Suppose a shooter had the same assault weapon, but had four magazines or clipsthat could hold thirty rather than ten bullets. That shooter would have 80 morebullets, or three times the number, than he would have without thehigh-capacity magazine ban. Since magazine size doesn’t make much of adifference for how many magazines an individual shooter could carry on theirperson, limiting access to high-capacity magazines could result in a shootercarrying significantly fewer bullets — and hence being able to fire at significantlyfewer people.2. “Magazine size is more likely to matter for peopledefending against aggressors.”Not only is this assertiondubious on its face, but it’s bad justification for making policy given howrare defensive gun use is. Presumably someone who’s attacking a school or afamily would have more people to shoot, and hence require more bullets than thepeople trying to stop just him. But debating the nuances of this very specifichypothetical situation misses the point broader point that it doesn’t makesense to fixate on these extraordinarily uncommon cases.The often-cited number thatguns are used defensively 2.5 million times a year in the United States is mathematically impossible (more on thatlater). A survey of criminals who had been shot in a Washington, DC jailindicated that, far from being injured by their victims, they had almostall been hit by other criminals. These data suggest, when combined with other evidence,that defensive gun use is quite rare: “to believe fully the claims of millionsof self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abidingcitizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergencydepartments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminalsare afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shotwent to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.”There are at least twoother reasons to believe that defensive gun use is rare. First, people verycommonly label criminal and/or aggressive behavior as “defensive” whenasked in surveys, for somewhat obvious reasons. Second, many crimes, like most sexual assaults, simply aren’t likely tobe deterred or stopped by guns.Defending one’s family issurely a legitimate use for a gun, but the fact that a high-capacity magazine*might* be useful in some subset of these already-exceptional cases isn’t agood reason to permit their widespread ownership if keeping them legal alsocomes with real, identifiable costs in human lives.3. “In the latest incarnation of Mrs. Feinstein’s ban, wewould see the return of an ammunition limit that had no proven impact on crimewhile it was in effect from 1994-2004.”It very likely the banreduced the supply of high capacity magazines to criminals and a decent chanceit prevented unnecessary deaths. While it’s hard to separate the effects offederal and state high-capacity magazine bans on crime from assault weapons bans(they’re generally enacted at the same time), there is excellent evidence thatthe federal ban on high-capacity magazines ended up restricting access to them. TheWashington Post tracked police seizures of high-capacitymagazines in Virginia during and after the federal assault weapons ban was ineffect. The Post‘s reporters found a steady decline in number ofmagazines recovered from 1994-2004 (when the law was in effect), but saw thetrend halt and then reverse after the ban expired, indicating more criminalswere getting high-capacity magazines. One gun expert who was “skeptical” thatthe federal ban worked said the Post’s evidence changed his mind;its data was “about as clear an example as we could ask for of evidence thatthe ban was working.”There is also some old, very tentative evidence that “thatvictims killed with guns having large-capacity magazines tend to have morebullet wounds than victims killed with other firearms, and that mass murderswith assault weapons tend to involve more victims than those with otherfirearms.” While this evidence is, again, rudimentary, it suggests that arenewed, effective ban on high-capacity magazines might very well save morelives.THE SCIENCE ON GUNS1. “More guns, less crime.”The best evidence we havesays the opposite.The “guns reduce crime”argument gets made in two ways, often together: 1) the presence of more gunsdeters crime and 2) concealed carry laws allow citizens to stop crime wherethey encounter it. The two main sources cited for these claims are John Lott’s MoreGuns, Less Crime, and a series of papers written by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertzsuggesting that Americans used guns defensively 2.5 million times per year.The overwhelming consensusamong scholars is that Lott, Kleck, and Gertz are wrong. In a blockbusterarticle after the Newtown shooting, Salon‘s Alex Seitz-Wald reviewed this research in great detail,finding a series of glaring methodological flaws and a wealth of evidencesuggesting more guns led, in fact, to more gun death. It’s really worth reading Seitz-Wald’s piece in full, but to summarize afew salient points: Lott has been unable to produce the survey data supportinghis major claim about guns and concealed carry reducing crime, while independent reviews of the evidence havecome to opposite conclusions. Kleck and Gertz fail toaccount for the fact that people often falsely self-report as using gunsdefensively when they’re actually intimidating people ala George Zimmerman and the Kleck-Gertz numbers mathematically require assuming “burglary victims usetheir guns in self-defense more than 100 percent of the time,” among other problems.Suffice to say, more gunsare not the answer to gun violence.2. “If gun control works, Chicago ought to be safe.”This argument is mistakenas a matter of both statistics and law. While a simple glance at rough homicide rates suggests very littledifference in crime rates between cities with strict gun laws and thosewithout, the relevant research strongly suggests that ease of acquiring gunslegally increases the local gun homicide rate. A 2001 paper by Mark Duggan estimatedcounty-by-county gun ownership,finding that counties with higher rates of gun ownership had higher gunhomicide rates. A second paper, which used a different measure of gunownership, came to a similar conclusion. Both papersfound that only gun homicide rates — and a county’s other homicide or broadercrime rates — is affected by gun ownership, suggesting that easy access to gunsincreases gun homicide by getting more guns to more people.A third, more recent paper goes further, finding that gun ownershipincreased gun homicides even when you control for levels of urbanization andpoverty. That is, cities with more guns, all other things being equal, willhave more homicide deaths, as will poorer areas. This points to the basicstatistical error in the “what about Chicago?” argument — the question isn’twhether gun regulation is the only or principal determinant of gun homiciderates, it’s whether there’d be more or less gun death in Chicago if Chicago andnearby counties did a better job restricting access to guns. Given that stateswith tighter gun laws also have less guns (and less gun deaths), it seems the same would holdtrue (again, if you hold other variables like poverty and overall crime rateconstant) on the city-to-city level. Moreover, studies of cities with strongbackground check and illegal sales enforcement provisions have found clear evidence that imposingthese measures lowered the number of guns being diverted to criminals.There’s another, well-knownproblem with this conceit — lax federal and state laws make it easy to purchaseguns from nearby, underregulated counties or states and bring them into cities.In Chicago, for example, gun sellers will simply set up shop just outside the city limits and sell totraffickers who bring the weapons into the city. That’s one of the keyarguments for the sort of federal action being considered today, especiallyuniversal background checks at nearby gun shows to prevent this sort oftrafficking. A uniform federal standard would make it much harder for criminalsto take advantage of state and local variation.

Alabama Does Gun Manufacturers’ Bidding By Seeking To Nullify Federal Gun Laws

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Alabama Does Gun Manufacturers’ Bidding By Seeking ToNullify Federal Gun LawsBy Annie-Rose Strasser on Feb 1, 2013 at10:01 am
The Alabama legislature isconsidering an unconstitutional bill that would make it a felony for federallaw officers to enforce any bans on semi-automatic weapons or high-capacitymagazines in the state — a measure that, its author insists, would be good forthe state’s economy, or at least its gun manufacturers.State Sen. ShadrackMcGill’s (R) legislation would specifically exempt guns that were manufactured,sold, and owned within Alabama’s borders from federal laws. It would alsoclassify anyone who did try to enforce federal laws as a Class C Felon. McGillthinks that such a law amounts to state stimulus, since creates animpetus for manufacturers to reap profit in the state:In a time of strappedbudgets, adding resource officers may be difficult for local systems. McGillsaid that’s why his colleagues have worked to improve the economy, and he addedthat there is no desire to raise taxes.[...]McGill said the gun billcould be a way to improve Alabama’s economy, as the law would only pertain toguns made and kept inside the state.“I’m chairman of the SmallBusiness Committee, and one aspect of this is any state that passes similarlegislation to this, it will be an attraction to manufacturing — good for theeconomy,” he said.The U.S. Constitutiondictates that federal law “shall be the supreme law of the land.” But theirony is apparently lost on McGill and other state legislators that in theireffort to protect their constitutional right to own a firearm, they are tryingto supersede the constitutional requirement that states follow federal laws.

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NRA's 'enemy list' includes Temptations

 Our View | Wednesday, October 22, 2003I am the world's leading expert in temptology. As such, I know just about every trivial thing there is to know about Motown's storied singing group, The Temptations.

I know they recorded once as The Pirates. I know they were the first Motown act to win a Grammy. I know bass singer Melvin Franklin's nickname was Blue.

But the one thing I didn't know was how they wound up on an enemy's list posted by the National Rifle Association.

We have Bob Herbert to thank for alerting us to said list. The New York Times columnist recently disclosed the fact that, if you dig around the NRA's Web site (www.nra.org), you'll find a compilation of "anti-gun" journalists, officials, groups and celebrities - an old-fashioned, honest-to-Nixon enemy's list.

Among the other names: Oprah Winfrey, Patrick Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Spike Lee, Paul Newman, Michael Eisner, Lakers forward Rick Fox and singer Moon Zappa. Under the apparent theory that one doesn't stop being an enemy just because one stops breathing, the list also includes Ann Landers, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and the cartoonist Herblock.

I'm sure this all raises for you the same searing question it raised for me:

Why didn't Leonard Pitts make the list!? I'm anti-gun, too! What, they hate Molly Ivins more than me?

Actually, my exclusion is probably my own fault. I don't write about guns that often. Worse, my opinion doesn't translate easily to a bumper sticker. If you've got a moment, I'll lay it out for you.

I believe the right to keep and bear arms is a fiction. Legal experts I respect - including Departments of Justice previous to the current one - have all held that the Second Amendment confers no right of individual gun ownership.

But - and here's the tricky part - I also believe the perception of such a right is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that the legal niceties are largely immaterial. As a practical matter, the right exists.

I'm reminded of the First Amendment attorney who told me that as a strictly legal issue, it can be argued that the Constitution grants you no right to read this newspaper. Yes, freedom of speech allows the newspaper to print what it wants, but where is it written that you have

a right to have access to it?

Nevertheless, the perception of such a right is so much a part of the American character that if government tried to deny it, newspaper readers would take to the streets in protest. It's the same with the gun owners except, of course, that they'd be better armed.

So I hate guns. But I also accept that they're not going anywhere.

The question is: what can we do within that reality?

Unfortunately, extremists on both sides of the issue have robbed us of the ability to do much. We are in dying need of mandatory registration and training to govern those who choose to own guns and sensible laws to prevent their use by those who have no business with them. At a minimum, we need to be able to discuss the issue rationally. But we'll never have that ability so long as gun control advocates tar responsible gun owners as "gun nuts" and cling to the fantasy that guns can be erased from these shores.

We'll also never have it so long as gun owners' interests are represented by an organization that sets new standards for crazy.

The NRA, by the way, says The Tempts earned their way onto its list by lending their name to an anti-gun newspaper ad in 1999.

Wow. The nerve.

Still, you'll forgive me if I don't run out to burn the rare, factory-sealed Temptations live album that cost me $60 bucks. And if I say that I see in this predilection for listing enemies a sweaty, shifty-eyed, hunker in the bunker mentality that recalls Nixon at his worst.

In the face of such asininity, of paranoia beyond parody, I have just one thing to say to the NRA:

There are two "ts" in Pitts.

Maryland Students Rank First In Nation On AP Exams

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WASHINGTON - Maryland public high school students had the highest success rate on Advanced Placement tests in 2012, according to figures released Wednesday by the College Board.

Virginia came in fifth, behind New York, Massachusetts and Florida. The previous year, Virginia students had the third highest success rate on the tests, which help students prepare for college and can lead to college credit.

In Maryland, 29.6 percent of public high school students received a score of 3 or higher. The figure for Virginia was 27.2 percent.
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Winning Mega Millions Ticket Claimed In Md.

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WASHINGTON - A Mt. Airy grandmother of two, who wishes to remain anonymous, has claimed the $26 million Mega Millions jackpot.

"I am still in denial," the woman says in Maryland Lottery news release. "I even drove by the store the next day to see if it was real. One look at the parking lot with all the news vans and I knew it was true."

The 48-year-old retiree says she plans to buy a beach house.

To win the jackpot, she matched all five numbers, plus the Mega Ball. She will take home $12.6 million after taxes.
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