Who’ll Shoot First? How Relaxed Gun Rules Fuel a ‘Small Arms Race’ (mild barf alert)

The Crime Report ^ | March 18, 2022 | Andrea Cirpiano

[DoodleBob]

A handful of high-profile cases has sparked a larger public debate about the impact of self-defense laws. The acquittal of teenager Kyle Rittenhouse of homicide charges stemming from his killing of two people who allegedly threatened him during a protest, and the conviction of three men for murdering Ahmaud Arbery because they believed he was a robber, have fueled fears that certain states’ gun-use and self-defense laws effectively invite malicious individuals — “including vigilantes and white supremacists” — to kill with impunity.

According to law professors Guha Krishnamurthi of the University of Oklahoma College of Law and Peter Salib of the University of Houston Law Center, this public concern is warranted.

Generous open-carry firearm policies, relaxed assault threat rules, and weak or nonexistent “duties to retreat” create real danger, they argue in their forthcoming paper for the University of Chicago Law Review online.

“Together, such rules generate incentives for ordinary, rational individuals to issue progressively escalating threats of deadly violence for the sake of their own protection,” the authors write.

“The result is a scaled-down version of the brinkmanship that characterized mid-century nuclear strategy: a small arms race,”

...

The law professors detail that the small arms race arises from three main “troubling” legal implications, and it’s looking at the examples of Wisconsin and Georgia’s laws that “exemplify this perilous confluence.”

“Under gun control regimes like Wisconsin’s and Georgia’s, even perfectly rational actors can easily find themselves committing deadly acts—no ill will required,” the authors begin, noting that Wisconsin residents don’t need any permits to purchase a firearm, and that their laws have a high standard for imposing liability for assaultive threats — “even a literal threat to shoot someone may not be forbidden, so long as there is not actual intent to do so.”

[DoodleBob]

In the draft of their paper, the authors state "Heller, we think, showed that, from the Founding to the present, the Second Amendment has been understood to allow well-tailored gun restrictions that produce significant net safety gains.69 Of course, the Founders understood, the state may constitutionally prohibit people from carrying guns in ways that threaten public safety. And it may do so precisely because the safety benefits to those same people outweigh the safety benefits of having the gun in the first place. Whether the Court is ready to explicitly acknowledge this principle is beyond our ability to predict.

Our cost-benefit reading of Heller may sound too pragmatic for certain originalist- leaning scholars. But let us reemphasize here that we understand our reading to be consistent with originalism. It is precisely history, as interpreted in Heller’s avowedly- originalist majority opinion, that reveals the Second Amendment’s amenability to net- benefits analysis.

For those who are still not convinced, let us additionally highlight the historical bona fides of our proposed interventions. As noted above, both a robust duty to retreat and broad assault liability for threats with guns are ancient, traditional rules. It is indeed states that lack a duty to retreat and lack liability for gun threats that are engaging in legal experimentation. Thus, if any legal rules count as “longstanding” and therefore constitutionally-permissible regulations of gun use under Heller, our proposed interventions must be among them.

Uh huh...clipping civil rights to make society safer ALWAYS works out perfectly..

[Last Dakotan]

Han will shoot first.

[Antihero101607]

𝘏𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵.

Amen! George Lucas had it right the first time.

[OttawaFreeper]

“Uh huh...clipping civil rights to make society safer ALWAYS works out perfectly..”

Agreed, we can always discount or ignore the idea that it would take criminals and psychos many hundreds of centuries to equal the number of disarmed citizens murdered by governments under Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot in just one.

[G Larry]

If there were any data to support this imagined fear the Left would have presented it via their accomplices in media.

The date DO show that "gun free zones" result in more crime.

[CodeToad]

“According to law professors”

I stop reading when I see a law professor, a liberals arts teacher, is involved in the story. No offense to you for posting it, it’s just that law professors are usually wrong about anything in this world, from rights and law to science of any kind. Law professors are usually the dumbest people right next to journalist degree holders and education degree holders.

[frog in a pot]

My money is on the one who is the most easily offended or most excitable, and we can read the newspapers for daily results.

[Last Dakotan]

The authors create a scenario of two men, Lee and Jesse, both of whom are sporting firearms on hip holsters. As one man approaches the other late at night, they both grow nervous. Although each man has benign intentions, they perceive one another as a threat.

Bullshit, an armed society is a polite society.

Americans are increasingly carrying firearms, not because they want to but because they have to provide for their own defense. Liberal jurisprudence has brought us here.

[17th Miss Regt]

What you have italicized there is a good example of lawyerese dressing up their preconcieved notions in a word salad to make it sound respectable. Innuendo, opinion and the like is what liberal gun grabbers do.

[throwthebumsout]

“... allegedly threatened him ...”

Allegedly? The threats were literally recorded on video. His defense was solely based on these threats and the jury agreed. How much more does it take to drop the “allegedly?”

[OttawaFreeper]

Looking at the article, there is a link to a real howler of an article from 2018 called “Ten Women Who Changed Criminal Justice in 2018” featuring, among others, Christine Blasey-Ford and Carmen Best, who was Seattle’s police chief when the BLM and other communist violence took place in that city in 2020.

https://thecrimereport.org/2018/12/20/ten-women-who-changed-criminal-justice-in-2018/

[sima_yi]

What should always be pointed out to idiots (e.g., the authors of the article) is that concealed carry permit holders comprise the most law-abiding subgroup in America.

[throwthebumsout]

How does the conviction (life sentences) of the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery encourage people “to kill with impunity.” Bad example. Poorly written article. Andrea Cipriano should be embarrassed.

[bravo whiskey]

I was in Phoenix last week. Have a CO chp. Checked the gun laws. Was going into the Music Instrument Museum. As we went to enter my frau pointed to the note on the door saying NO GUNS PERSUANT TO AZ CODE ###. I said “give me the keys” and turned around to walk back to car and lock gun in safe. My frau said the guy with the family behind us smiled and said “I’d have felt safer if he had it with him.”

[bravo whiskey]

I was in Phoenix last week. Have a CO chp. Checked the gun laws. Was going into the Music Instrument Museum. As we went to enter my frau pointed to the note on the door saying NO GUNS PERSUANT TO AZ CODE ###. I said “give me the keys” and turned around to walk back to car and lock gun in safe. My frau said the guy with the family behind us smiled and said “I’d have felt safer if he had it with him.”

[bravo whiskey]

I was in Phoenix last week. Have a CO chp. Checked the gun laws. Was going into the Music Instrument Museum. As we went to enter my frau pointed to the note on the door saying NO GUNS PERSUANT TO AZ CODE ###. I said “give me the keys” and turned around to walk back to car and lock gun in safe. My frau said the guy with the family behind us smiled and said “I’d have felt safer if he had it with him.”

[bravo whiskey]

Sorry about the triple post
Impatient and on I 40 in the middle of nowhere.

[CharlesOConnell]

I have no guns. For 40 years. The cops never come in my neighborhood by Fox 40 Sacramento. 1 street over from Fruitridge & Stockton, right by a Rite Aid, it’s a Sacramento Sheriff’s no go zone.

There was a shooter at the church behind our back fence. Criminals have no more trouble getting guns than do private security operatives; gun controllers don’t care about protecting ordinary people, they serve their billionaire masters. I told everyone else in my house to run out of the house & drive away. All I could do was lie down on the floor & hold the baby on my abdomen. A helicopter was flying overhead. The 911 Operator was having a freakout/ meldown, I think they had to have the men in white come take her away.

Mitt Romney, the Koch Bros. & Warren Buffett don’t care what happens to us, they are protected by sharpshooters as you can see in photos from Davos of masked sharpshooters on the roof. The Oligarchs want us disarmed like Australia so the police can shoot unarmed protestors.

I hate guns. I hate gun control more.

[frogjerk]

Had Ukraine had relaxed gun rules it may have prevented Russia from invading.

[marktwain]

The entire article is based on their hypothesis, without any supporting data.

Vermont has always had Constitutional (permitless) Carry. It has consistently had one of the lowest crime and homicide rates in the nation.

This single example makes their hypothesis extremely unlikely from the start.

States that have incrementally restored the right to bear arms, have not seen an increase in homicides among legal firearms carriers.

This is another nail in the coffin of their hypothesis.

It is easy to create hypotheticals for any proposition. If you are a little clever, they will sound plausible.

Testing them in the real world is the only way to see if they work or not (outside those which are ruled out by natural law, including basic economics).