Most Northwestern students have never seen, much less shot, a gun. Consequently they're quite gullible – just last week a professor taught that semiautomatic rifles and pump shotguns are "purely military" weapons and not hunting tools, for example. I guess I'll have to buy some new guns before taking to the woods in November.Hopefully, this column will give a heads-up to the facts on gun rights and other issues. I plan to share a right-libertarian worldview and the evidence and logic in support of it. I tackle firearms laws first because, in Evanston and Chicago, the only people who can have handguns are police – and criminals. Just last week, a child found a revolver in an elementary school bathroom and at least two died in a nightclub shooting, according to The Daily Northwestern and the Chicago Tribune respectively.
No matter how anyone may spin the issue, the year 2005 promises to be exciting for gun advocacy. A recent study shows that gun control has little empirical support, and two new court cases are climbing the litigation stepladder.
In recent weeks the National Academies of Science, mirroring year-old results from the Centers for Disease Control, reached this conclusion: We need more studies, but so far there is no good evidence that gun control works.
To be fair, both committees also rejected the findings of John R. Lott, who in 1998
released More Guns, Less Crime. The book documented how right-to-carry laws (generally, statutes dictating that any non-felon can carry a weapon after completing a course) reduce numerous types of crime. The work was controversial politically and methodologically, but the 2002 follow-up, The Bias Against Guns, earned the back-cover endorsement of three Nobel Prize-winning economists.
Largely as a result of the study, about 35 states now have right-to-carry laws, and nearly every state allows concealed carry in certain situations; Illinois is one of the few exceptions. Every year more states at least propose the legislation, and presumably 2005 will be no exception.
One National Academies scientist, James Q. Wilson, had known anti-control beliefs going into the study, while several were known to be pro-control. Wilson wrote a dissension as an appendix to the report, saying concealed carry does indeed drive down murder rates. "Some of (Lott's) results survive virtually every reanalysis done by the committee," Wilson stated.
Given the anti-gun tilt of the committee, these findings (and Wilson's dissent) may nudge state legislators into supporting right-to-carry this year.
If the empirical and legislative areas of the issue are interesting, the litigation is potentially revolutionary. The last time the Supreme Court ruled a Second Amendment case, 1939's U.S. v Miller, it concluded the right to bear arms applies only to weapons useful for military purposes – an odd criteria, to say the least.
The U.S. v. Miller decision did not comment on the most important issue, that of whether the Second Amendment applies to "the people" or only those belonging to "a well regulated Militia." Two current Washington, D.C. cases aim to resolve the debate. Both cases are brought by groups of law-abiding citizens who want to own handguns.
In the nation's capital, as in Evanston and Chicago, such weapons are effectively banned but for police and those willing to break the law. There has been much infighting between the litigants – Parker v. District of Columbia argues using only the Second Amendment, while Seegars v. Ashcroft also invokes other Constitutional protections, and both sides want to be heard first – but both cases do push for a ruling on the Second Amendment.
Hopefully, in the near future the nation will hear a thorough Supreme Court analysis of whether the Constitution guarantees gun rights for individuals. Since appellate courts are sharply divided on the issue, it's an analysis the legal system desperately needs.
The decision holds important local ramifications: a ruling invalidating handgun bans would affect Evanston, Chicago, Wilmette, Morton Grove and Winnetka. One way or the other, lives hang in the balance.
Entertainment Editor Robert VerBruggen wants to start the year out with a bang. E-mail him at r-verbruggen@northwestern.edu.
