Gun Crimes Committed with Unregistered Guns In Canada

Most murder guns in Canada are never registered with the Canadian Firearms Centre, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

The new Juristat study - a version of which reported over the summer that Canada's murder rate jumped 12% in 2004 after a three-decade slide - says that registration information on murder guns was "unknown" to police in more than half of homicides reported between 1997 and 2004 where the gun was recovered.

Gun registry opponents say that proves the registry - two years and more than a billion tax dollars later - is a failure.

"First, 65% of firearms homicides involve handguns. We've had a handgun registry for decades, so obviously it didn't work either," said Dennis Young, a researcher in the office of Conservative MP and registry critic Garry Breitkreuz.

"But look at who's actually committing murders. Two-thirds of murderers - and half of their adult victims - already had criminal histories. The federal government decided with the registry to go after law-abiding gun owners, when the people doing the killing are overwhelmingly criminals who'd never think to register their guns. What a waste." . . .

Brady Campaign tries to scare tourists in Florida

The leaflets begin with the words "An Important Notice to Florida Visitors" in bold red type by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"Do not argue unnecessarily with local people," it says. "If someone appears to be angry with you, maintain to the best of your ability a positive attitude, and do not shout or make threatening gestures."

Florida's "stand your ground" law, which took effect Saturday, means that people no longer must attempt to retreat or defuse a threatening situation before using violence in order to later claim they were acting in self-defence. People already had that right in their homes, but the law now allows them to meet "force with force" in any place they have a legal right to be. . . .

Governor Jeb Bush has repeatedly pointed to a 34-year low in state crime statistics to demonstrate that Florida is not a haven for violence.

"It's pure, unadulterated politics," Mr. Bush said last week of the Brady Campaign's tactics. "Shame on them."

The Florida tourism industry, however, is taking the campaign seriously, with Visit Florida — the state's official tourism-marketing arm — issuing a statement calling Florida "a very safe and secure destination that excels in caring for its visitors."

Talk tomorrow at the University of Tennessee

I will be talking at the University of Tennessee Law School in Knoxville at noon. The talk will be on the judicial confirmation process.

The talk today at Vanderbilt was a lot of fun. About 80 people showed up and there was a nice discussion after the talk.

"The good guy finally wins for a change" 82-year-old protects himself with gun

L.G. Von Zehner, 82, was washing his Cadillac late Monday night in a commercial corridor when an armed thug interrupted the task and demanded money.

The encounter between the would-be robber and retired businessman was brief. It ended with the gunman dead in the back seat of Zehner's car and Zehner himself -- bloodied and wounded from a shootout -- walking into the roadway and desperately waving a gun in the hopes that a sympathetic motorist would stop to help. . . .

Some people working near where the incident occurred were impressed with the way Von Zehner handled himself in a life-and-death situation.

"The old man killed 'em," Stephenson said, as if surprised by Von Zehner's response under pressure.

"The good guy finally wins for a change," said Shanna, a colleague of Stephenson's at the 7-Eleven store who didn't want to give her last name.

Thanks very much to L.J. O'Neale for sending this to me.

The Perfect Storm for Judicial Confirmations

Ralph Neas, the president of People for the American Way, a liberal lobby, said that staunch conservatives on the Judiciary Committee might decide that, like Democrats, they need to know more about Miers' legal thinking before they can support her. That could lead them to forge an odd alliance with Democrats to demand answers about her judicial philosophy and to seek documents from the White House about her legal work for the president. . . .

George WIll on Miers

While driving from Memphis to Nashville yesterday, I had a chance to listen to talk radio and it confirmed for me how upset conservatives were with the Miers pick. George Will's column makes a similar point to what Ann Coulter was making on Sean Hannity's show yesterday.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's ``argument'' for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

     Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists. . . .

Supreme Court Refuses To Block Lawsuit Against Gun Manufacturers

Another reason for congress to pass the limits on suits against gun makers.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a lawsuit against gun manufacturers accused of negligence for firearms violence in the nation's capital.

An appeals court had said that the District of Columbia government and individual gun victims, including a man who was left a quadriplegic after being shot in 1997, could sue under a D.C. law that says gun manufacturers can be held accountable for violence from assault weapons.

The high court had been asked over the summer to use the case to strike down the statute, which gun makers said interfered with their right to sell lawful products. . . .

Why does FEMA have against armed police officers?

I agree with the Phoenix mayor. Opposition to armed police officers seems incomprehensible. One can easily conceive that this policy will result in deaths in the future.

The Phoenix Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue team has been suspended by a federal agency because it brought armed police officers for protection on hurricane relief missions.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's conduct code prohibits urban search-and-rescue teams from having guns.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called the reaction from FEMA "stunning, unbelievable, bewildering and outrageous." . . .

Talk at noon tomorrow at Vanderbilt

I will be giving a talk on the judicial confirmation process at noon on Wednesday at the Vanderbilt University Law School.

Talk at noon today

I will be giving a talk on gun control from noon to 1:15 today at the University of Memphis Law School.

Have Steroids Changed Baseball?

From the conclusion of Art DeVany's new research on Steroids and Home Run Hitting:

"There is a lot of speculation about steroid use in MLB, but the evidence is mostly anecdotal, misleading and incomplete. It is surely not a basis for public policy. Unless more substantial evidence is produced, Congress should just move on to some other 'burning' issue. My opinion is that there will be no evidence linking steroids and home runs; we have seen the evidence already and it does not support the proposition that home run hitting has fundamentally changed. . . ."

Art DeVany's paper is well worth downloading.

Survey on guns in the workplace

If you are interested, you can take the survey here.

David Frum on Harriet Miers

I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated ... I could pile on the praise all morning. But nobody would describe her as one of the outstanding lawyers in the United States. And there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or - and more importantly - that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left.

I am not saying that she is not a legal conservative. I am not saying that she is not steely. I am saying only that there is no good reason to believe either of these things. Not even her closest associates on the job have no good reason to believe either of these things. In other words, we are being asked by this president to take this appointment purely on trust, without any independent reason to support it. And that is not a request conservatives can safely grant. . . .

But here is what we do know: the pressures on a Supreme Court justice to shift leftward are intense. There is the negative pressure of the vicious, hostile press that legal conservatives must endure. And there are the sweet little inducements - the flattery, the invitations to conferences in Austria and Italy, the lectureships at Yale and Harvard - that come to judges who soften and crumble. Harriet Miers is a taut, nervous, anxious personality. It is impossible to me to imagine that she can endure the anger and abuse - or resist the blandishments - that transformed, say, Anthony Kennedy into the judge he is today. . . .

What is a low poll rating for a politician?

Generally accepted political polling began in the mid-1900s. Truman set the Gallup low for presidents, dropping to 23 percent in 1951 and early 1952. Carter slumped to 28 percent in 1978, and Nixon was at 24 percent when he quit in 1974. . . . .

A database maintained by the University of Rochester, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and George Washington University lists 3,261 gubernatorial polls since 1958. Only three governors had an approval rating below 15 percent - none in the past 15 years. . . .

Rob Texans at your own risk

Corpus Christi, Texas

Stabbed by a burglar in his own garage, a Texas homeowner fought back, shooting the suspect three times. . . .

Thanks very much to Gus Cotey for sending this to me.

Brady Campaign Attacking Florida over new gun law

. . . The Brady Campaign brochure notes that lethal force could well be used in "a dispute over belongings in a public place such as a beach."

Just imagine the body count at the Florida-Florida State game.

Our last foray into the ethos of the Wild West was in 1987, when we made concealed weapons available to the masses. But a funny thing happened.

Doomsday predictions about gun violence never materialized. . . .

See a copy of the new Brady Campaign ad here. My question is: when is the Brady Campaign going to start running ads against other states that already have the so-called Castle Law? For example, why not go after the state of Washington?

Three academic papers have just come out during the last half of the year

I hope people find these papers interesting, though, as usual for most of my research, none are on the issue of guns.

The Judicial Confirmation Process: The Difficulty with being Smart, published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, November 2005

The impact of early media election calls on Republican voting
rates in Florida’s western Panhandle counties in 2000, Public Choice, June 2005

The Reputational Penalties for Environmental Violations: Empirical Evidence, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, November 2005

What was Tom Delay's Crime?

Other than conspiracy, the indictment against Representative Tom Delay does not specify the exact crime that he committed. David Frum's excellent column yesterday discusses a very fundamental objection to the case raised by E. J. Dionne.

[E.J.] Dionne this morning puts his finger on the central and hopeless flaw in the case against DeLay: "The corporations that forked over the cash to DeLay's PAC did so not because their hearts were filled with affection for those particular Texas legislative candidates but because they recognized DeLay's power over federal legislation." (Italics addes.)

Texas law forbids corporations to give money to state candidates. The case against DeLay charges that he conspired with corporations to help them circumvent this law by routing the money through political action committees he controlled. But as Dionne acknowledges, the corporations in question did not care about Texas politics. They wanted to give to DeLay's political action committees, which was perfectly legal. It was DeLay who wanted to support the Texas candidates - which was also perfectly legal. The only way you can link these two legal transactions into one illegal transaction is by claiming that the corporations wanted to break the law. Dionne - his reporter's instincts trumping his partisan zeal - admits that of course the corporations had no such desire, and so there was no crime.

To put this into simpler terms. Suppose a corporation hired Dionne to give a speech at their next annual meeting. Dionne then turns around and gives his fee to Democratic candidates for the Texas legislature. Has any law been broken? Obviously not. The corporation does not intend to help Texas candidates: It does so only inadvertently and indirectly, as a consequence of Dionne's decisions.. . . .

A copy of the indictment against Tom Delay can be found her

A copy of the indictment against Tom Delay can be found here. There are problems with Delay (for example, his claim that there is no fat in the federal budget) as well as other Republican leaders, but after reading this indictment, I don't think that most people will think that there is much of substance here. I am not sure that Delay is any better or worse than most other Republican leaders, but that aside, this looks like a very weak case.