Guns and Today's Supreme Court Decision on 2nd Amendment

Today the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution does not permit an absolute prohibition on the private ownership of firearms. The Court’s ruling implied that some restrictions on firearm ownership will be allowed, and no doubt this issue will keep the courts occupied for many years to come.

Left unsaid in the ruling is whether our nation will be safer or less safe if, as expected, at least some of the gun control laws and regulations now in place weaken or are abolished altogether, as will certainly happen in Washington, DC, the immediate focus of the Court’s ruling. The evidence on whether firearm ownership makes us safer or less safe is very complex, and experts on both sides of the issue are very persuasive. The findings from much research on this important topic are too complicated and detailed to discuss here completely, but a few observations are in order.

First, defensive gun use (DGU) does exist and should not be overlooked by gun control proponents. Law-abiding owners of guns have used them, and continue to use them, in self-defense.

Second, estimates of DGU incidents range widely from 65,000 incidents annually to as many as 2.5 million. The lower-range estimates seem more accurate and amount to only a very low percentage of all violent crime. Thus, to the extent DGU exists, it helps prevent only a very low amount of violent crime, meaning that firearm ownership is not very helpful in this respect. Moreover, while DGU by an intended victim may prevent a crime from occurring, it may also make it more likely that the intended victim is seriously injured or killed. And some evidence indicates that DGU helps some segments of the population (i.e. men but not women) more than others. Taking everything into account, firearm ownership seems to offer only small protection against criminal victimization.

Third, much evidence, some of it gathered by public health researchers, indicates that firearm ownership actually contributes to a greater rate of homicides and other gun crimes. Households with guns suffer higher murder rates than households (matched on various characteristics such as drug and alcohol use and a history of domestic violence) without guns. States with higher rates of firearm ownership have higher rates of homicides committed with guns but not higher rates of non-gun homicides. These patterns do not “prove” that gun ownership makes us less safe, but they are suggestive.

To me, some of the most persuasive evidence of the lethal effects of gun ownership comes from international research. Compared to other western nations, the U.S. has an average rate of aggravated assault—we are higher than some nations but lower than others. The major difference between an aggravated assault and a homicide is whether a victim dies. Thus, it is notable that even though the U.S. has an average rate of aggravated assault, it has by far the highest rate of homicide. The presence of guns in America makes it much more likely that an assault ends in death.

Taking all the evidence into account, on balance firearm ownership in the United States increases the number of crimes in which guns play a key role: homicide and robbery. DGU does exist, but any protective effects of firearm ownership are outweighed by its lethal effects. If this is true, the Supreme Court’s weakening of firearm control may ironically have set the stage for an increase in homicides in the years ahead.

Supreme Court decision on death penalty for child rape

Hello, this is a new blog devoted primarily to crime and criminal justice issues. I am a professor of sociology at the University of Maine and the author of several books and other publications on crime, justice, and related issues. My latest book, Myths and Realities of Crime and Justice: What Every American Should Know, was co-authored with George Bryjak and just published earlier this week by Jones and Bartlett. As the book's title implies, we discuss realities and misconceptions of crime and criminal justice in the United States. This short and affordable book discusses the causes of crime and how the criminal justice system really works, as opposed to how it is supposed to work (with chapters on crime, victims, courts and trials, and prisons), and it discusses many myths about crime and justice that the media promote and the public holds. It should be interesting and informative reading for anyone concerned about crime and justice in the United States.

Back to the title of this posting, today's Supreme Court decision that by a 5-4 vote outlawed the death penalty for child rape. As a strong opponent of the death penalty, I applaud this decision. Perhaps the reasons for my opposition to capital punishment will be the subject of a later posting, but, briefly, the death penalty doesn't deter crime, it is more expensive than life imprisonment, it is arbitrary and racially discriminatory, and it leaves open the possibility that innocent people may be executed. Because the U.S. is the only western nation that has the death penalty, capital punishment should also be judged as beyond what democracies should be doing in the contemporary world.

For all these reasons, child rape does not deserve the death penalty, no matter how heinous child rape is, and it is certainly about the most horrible crime one can imagine. For these same reasons, I am disappointed with Barack Obama's pronouncement later today that he disagreed with the Supreme Court's ruling in that he thinks child rape is so heinous that it does deserve the death penalty. I am a strong Obama supporter, and I recognize that politicians feel the need to look tough on crime (perhaps also the subject of a later posting). Having said that, Obama should know better than to support the death penalty, and he should have supported the Court's decision while making quite clear his disgust over child rape.