Better gun policy

Very nice Q&A with a gun policy expert in TNR:  Hits some key points and completely undermines the NRA’s counter-arguments:

Why should we believe guns per se are the problem?  Isn’t it true that guns don’t kill people—people kill people?

Guns are not the sole reason why the U.S. has such unusually high homicide rates, but our lax gun laws may be the most important determinant. Rates of non-lethal violent crime, adolescent fighting, and mental illness in the U.S. are average compared with other high-income countries.  [emphasis mine]

A major, major feature that gun supporters ignore is that most all these illegal guns began is legal guns.  That’s what we need to crackdown on:

OK, so we’ve never really tried to make background checks truly universal. Why should we believe that will work?

When criminals get guns, they get them from friends, family, or from an underground market source. Without universal background check requirements, there is little deterrent to selling guns to criminals or gun traffickers. State laws mandating universal background checks deter the diversion of guns to criminals. The most comprehensive screening and background check processes, where potential gun purchasers apply in person for permits to purchase handguns, are associated with lower homicide and suicide rates.

But won’t there still be a whole bunch of guns out there, being sold illegally and falling into the hands of criminals? 

Yes, some criminals will be able to steal or purchase guns already in circulation. But many of the estimated 300 million guns in civilian hands can’t be easily acquired by criminals. Lots of gun owners lock their guns in safes or have other ways to secure their firearms, practices that can be increased by laws and educational campaigns. And it’s not as easy or risk free for criminals to buy guns in the underground market as is commonly believed. Duke economist Philip Cook has studied Chicago’s underground gun market and said, “there may be a lot of guns, but there is a shortage of trusted sellers.” With greater accountability measures and choking the supply of new guns into the underground market, street prices will rise and fewer dangerous people will have guns.

And, of course, contrary to what the NRA says, this does not really hurt legitimate gun owners:

I’ve heard the NRA say that gun control takes guns away from law-abiding citizens, not criminals. Isn’t that true? Aren’t we better off allowing people to defend themselves with a firearm? 

This is a bogus argument that has worked extremely well for the gun lobby’s fundraising and been instrumental in its success in fending off common-sense gun laws. Requiring a background check of prospective purchasers does not take away guns from law abiding people, nor does close regulation and oversight of gun dealers.

The gun lobby says that background checks will lead to registries of gun ownership—and, eventually, the confiscation of weapons.  But federal law forbids anything resembling a federal gun registry, we’ve had background check requirements for sales by license dealers since 1994 without registries or gun confiscation, and states that do have their own gun registries have never used them to remove guns from law abiding citizens.

Sorry, this is not just some agree to disagree kind of issue.  There’s smart policy on one side versus NRA/gun-nut hysteria on the other.

Map of the day

Smoking by state via Amazing Maps

The United States of Cruelty

This from Charles Pierce is brilliant.  Was about to put it into quick hits, but didn’t want to bog those down with a quote this long:

We cheer for cruelty and say that we are asking for personal responsibility among those people who are not us, because the people who are not us do not deserve the same benefits of the political commonwealth that we have. In our politics, we have become masters of camouflage. We practice fiscal cruelty and call it an economy. We practice legal cruelty and call it justice. We practice environmental cruelty and call it opportunity. We practice vicarious cruelty and call it entertainment. We practice rhetorical cruelty and call it debate. We set the best instincts of ourselves in conflict with each other until they tear each other to ribbons, and until they are no longer our best instincts but something dark and bitter and corroborate with itself. And then it fights all the institutions that our best instincts once supported, all the elements of the political commonwealth that we once thought permanent, all the arguments that we once thought settled — until there is a terrible kind of moral self-destruction that touches those institutions and leaves them soft and fragile and, eventually, evanescent. We do all these things, cruelty running through them like hot blood, and we call it our politics.

Because of that, the daily gunplay no longer surprises us. The rising rates of poverty no longer surprise us. The chaos of our lunatic public discourse no longer surprises us. We make war based on lies and deceit because cruelty is seen to be enough, seen to be the immutable law of the modern world. We make policy based on being as tough as we can on the weakest among us, because cruelty is seen to be enough, seen to be the fundamental morality behind what ultimately is merely the law of the jungle. We do all these things, cruelty running through them like a cold river, and we call it our politics.

It does not have to be this way.

Quick hits

1) On the fashions of World Cup soccer coaches.

2) New Republic has a new Jonathan Cohn-led policy blog.  I’m looking forward to good stuff.

3) Really wanted to give this own post since I’m always fascinated by IUD policy, but it’s just not happening.  Anyway, good Slate story about an Ohio legislator who wants to ban coverage for IUD’s (while admitting he doesn’t actually know anything about medicine).

4) So, what do those extra thousands for a premium DSLR lens really get you anyway?

5) How Americans pronounce common tech words (I had no idea some people say “wiffy.”)  And it’s .gif with a soft “g” damnit!

6) Sticking with language, love this on words that are most known to only men or only women.  Two thoughts… Paladin!!  and damn, I thought I’d know more of the “women” words.

7) I’ve only remembered to try this with a paper towel once, but it didn’t quite work.  Maybe I need to shake more.

8) Nice NPR story on trying to be a better parent.

9) It’s really kind of pathetic that it has taken this long to have the technology in place to allow planes to have consistently descending glide paths in their landings.  The good news is that it finally is and that it saves a ton of jet fuel.

10) Loved this on the under-performance of top NBA draft picks.  And 538 makes the case that teams should draft college sophomores (I just don’t think freshman year is always a good enough sample size for prediction).

11) Yes, sports heavy week.  Loved this Atlantic piece on the siblings of World Cup players, especially Clint Dempsey’s big brother.

12) The relationship between political attitudes on guns and abortion.  Richard Nixon brings it all together.

13)Science, politics, and NC beaches.  Personally, I just hope Topsail Beach lasts long enough for me to take my grandkids there.

14) Jeffrey Toobin on when the Constitution itself gets it wrong and (again) the folly of Scalia’s originalism.

A more beautiful (and fair) beautiful game

As you all know, I love soccer (football, for my international readers).  And I love the World Cup.  But watching so much always reminds me of how frustrating it is.  One horrible rule?  The penalty kick.  It was so nice to see Adam Gopnik (generally an amazing writer on criminal justice issues) make the strong case for modifying this rule:

The more serious objection concerns the ancient and much agonized over matter of the penalty. Every good game has an Achilles heel, something that is just all wrong with it, and the trouble usually comes from some unanticipated hole in the rules, or in the way they’re enforced. Baseball’s is the endless and ever-growing delays that come from ringing pitchers in and out for lefty-righty matchups; basketball’s are those twenty-minute-long final two minutes, with all the dull strategic fouling; my beloved ice hockey’s is the needless violence that, meant to keep the game honest, ends up making it merely brutal. Soccer-football’s is always the same: the tiresome, unresolvable did-he-fall-or-was-he-pushed arguments that take place when a player goes down in the penalty area. The trouble is built into the rules of the sport: if you allow players to foul in front of the goal with minimal punishment, then the optimal strategy is to foul all the time. But, if you offer what amounts to capital punishment, a near certain goal, for a foul, then playing up a mild or debatable push offers a huge advantage, and the player gets rewarded out of all proportion to the offense—which encourages the absurd playacting and diving that disgusts even hardened fans. [emphasis mine]

Watching the games, my teen-age son—who lives and dies with Chelsea and France—suggested that the resolution of this difficulty was, in truth, staggeringly simple: award a penalty only for a foul that removes an authentic chance on goal, and award a direct free kick for all other fouls in the area that don’t. In a flash, you would bring some justice to the area and distinguish between contact meant to do something dastardly and contact that, though a violation of the rules, is merely contact.

Of course, this would make it a “judgment call,” but all such calls are already judgment calls; the new policy would just allow the referee a finer area of discriminating judgment. And, though you would not end the fakery and playacting, you would at least put a small brake on it: no one would really think he could sell a foul and win a goal unless he had had a chance at a goal seriously stolen. The point of the writhing and agonizing is to buy a goal at the price of a ridiculous performance; if you knew that the purchase price included losing a chance to score one, there might be more effort devoted purely to getting the chance to score. (A free kick, after all, is hardly an impotent penalty to offer for a lesser foul.)

The estimable Paul Doyle, of the Guardian, made exactly the same proposal three years ago: “Rather than be lambasted for tweaking the rules to better serve justice, referees should be formally given the right to use their discretion when it comes to fouls in the area, awarding either a direct free-kick or a penalty, depending on how likely it was that a goal scoring chance would have ensued (as well, perhaps, as on the degree of malice).”

Amen!  And since a British writer already made the same argument, its just not ugly Americans who don’t get soccer.  While trying to find the Gopnik piece (which I couldn’t at first remember where I read) I also came across this commentary on the matter which I quite liked:

So let me get this straight:  You play 90 minutes of soccer, average roughly 13 shots a game, accurately strike those shots less than 38% of the time, and put less than 3 of those shots in the net … both teams combined.  But if fouled somewhere in the 18 yard box despite a potentially low percentage chance of scoring, you get a free kick so close to the goal that the goalie is merely left with guessing in an attempt to stop it.

Sound about right?

We’ve all heard the adage, let the punishment fit the crime.  In the case of soccer, their penalty kick is akin to executing someone for lifting a Snickers bar from the Oyster Bay Drug and Sundry…

I understand that a player with a fantastic scoring opportunity cannot be allowed to be chopped down by a tackle, without fear of a severe consequence.  After all, I’ve established that scoring opportunities are few and far between, so everyone should be treated according to its obvious value.  But why not allow some level of subjectivity in regards to individual fouls?  Some may warrant a penalty kick, while others merely a direct kick or some more difficult version of the existing penalty kick…

The penalty kick in soccer would be the equivalent of a hit batsman in baseball being awarded a swing off a tee.  I can see it now; Mike Trout is hit by a Felix Hernandez fastball, and the Los Angeles Angels bring Albert Pujols to the plate for one cut from the tee.

Or the NFL making all pass interference calls, regardless of where they occur on the field, to be placed on the opposition’s 1-yard line.

Or the NBA rewarding a 10-point free throw for a clear path intentional foul.

Those are ludicrous, but so is the penalty kick in soccer.

Yes!!  And driving into work today, I was listening to Colin Cowherd making a point that I’ve thought myself so many times. Basically soccer just needs to clean up dirty play through better officiating– the point being to let the most skilled players actually demonstrate their skill.  That’s what we all came to see– right?  And the way to do that is simple– more than one referee.  Sure there are the assistant referees on the side, but a huge portion of their attention simply goes to the offside call.  The idea that the massive acreage of the soccer field is patrolled by a single official empowered to call most fouls is ludicrous on its face.

Of course, the traditionalists I’m sure have all sorts of complaints for this.  But neither reform would fundamentally change the essence of the game and they would, without a doubt, make the sport more fair, and a more compelling athletic contest.

Using technology for smarter punishment

I was reading and loving Dylan Matthews’ Vox post on why we should be using less prisons and more high-tech location monitoring (GPS, etc.) and thinking that this is basically just what my go-to Criminologist, Mark Kleiman, would have ordered.  Of course, at the end, Matthews’ basically says as much.  Kleiman is all about using research to use our criminal justice resources far more efficiently.  And when you consider that prison space is among our scarcest resources, our current use– in addition to being monstrously inhumane by international standards– is also monstrously inefficient.  It’s a great piece (I think just the sort of thing for which Ezra wanted to create Vox) and you should read it, but basically it comes down to the fact that we should save prison for violent offenders, repeat offenders, and those who violate their location monitoring (i.e., high-tech house arrrest).  Of course, that may not sound punitive enough to you, but as far as smart and efficient use of society’s criminal justice resources, it is surely the way to go:

While the idea of house arrest has been around for millennia, it has always suffered from one key defect as a crime control tool: you can escape. Sure, you could place guards on the homes where prisoners are staying, but it’s much easier to secure a prison with a large guard staff than it is a thousand different houses with a guard or two apiece.

Today, we have something better than guards: satellites. The advent of GPS location tracking means it’s now possible for authorities to be alerted the second a confinee leaves their home. That not just enables swift response in the event of escape; it deters escape by making clear to detainees that they won’t get away with it.

Researchers have tested electronic monitoring as an alternative approach to parole, probation, or other criminal punishments that fall short of imprisonment — and it’s been a huge success. An Urban Institute analysis found that electronic monitoring reduces odds of re-arrest by 23.5 percent relative to traditional probation, and a randomized study in Switzerland found major advantages to electronic monitoring compared to mandated community service…

So, if electronic monitoring can work just as well as prison — and keeps prisoners from being physically and sexually assaulted by guards and other inmates, and saves money, and perhaps even allows some inmates to earn a living while serving time — why not switch?

[rapists and murderers, basically]

But the fact of the matter is that rapists and murderers are a distinct minority of the prison population, at least in the United States. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of 2011 only 12.6 percent of state prisoners in 2011 were there for murder, 1.5 percent for negligent manslaughter, and 12.4 percent for rape or sexual assault. That’s only 26.5 percent of the overall prison population. The numbers are even starker in federal prisons: only 3.8 percent of prisoners committed any kind of violent crime.

And here’s Matthew’s brief proposed solution:

A solution

So how’s about this. The US should:

1. Move those imprisoned for offenses short of homicide or sexual assault to GPS-supervised house arrest as soon as is practicable, with a guaranteed, immediate prison stay for those who violate its terms.

2. Reserve prisons for repeat offenders and those who’ve committed truly heinous crimes.

There are obviously other details to be worked out. You wouldn’t want people convicted of domestic violence to be sentenced to home confinement with their victims, for instance; in those cases, some kind of alternate housing would have to be offered to ensure separation.

But if successful, this plan could reduce admissions by at least half, probably much more. Hopefully, this will just be a temporary measure. In principle, it could get to the point technologically where house arrest becomes as hard to escape as prison is. At that point, abolishing prison outright starts to become imaginable. UK home secretary David Blunkett spoke too soon when he referred to electronic monitoring as “prison without bars,” but that dream is attainable. As Kleiman once put it, “My view is that if you know where someone is, you don’t have to put them in the cage.”

I’m sure as hell on board.  It’s great to see that there’s more and more places experimenting with punishment through technology, and very importantly, focusing on the swiftness and certainty of the punishment– the true keys to deterrence– rather than the severity.   Technology as a savior is often oversold, but it is quite clear that it could really do wonders to continue to protect the public, punish the guilty, help rehabilitate the guilty, and do it for far less money than we currently spend.  We’ll always need prisons.  But we sure as hell don’t need them for 1 in every 108 Americans or the 1 in 3 black males who will be imprisoned over a lifetime.

Cuban PID

Lots of good stuff from Pew lately that I’ve been remiss in getting to (between World Cup and volunteering to be a group leader at Vacation Bible School it’s been hard to find time this week).  At least wanted a quick post on this Pew report about Cubans shifting towards the Democratic party.  Historically, Cuban immigrants have been very  Republican (largely because of the anti-communism/anti-Castro) thing.  But for younger Cubans– like pretty much everybody else in America who is not white– they are increasingly realizing the Republican party is not for them:

The impact of younger Cubans is reflected in those figures. Over half (56%) of Cubans ages 18 to 49 identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party compared with 39% of those 50 years and older. Conversely, older Cubans tend to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party more than younger Cubans, by 44% to 23%. Even so, the share of older Cubans who are Republican has declined over time. In 2002, among all Cubans, some 68% who were 50 and older said they identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party.

 

Is McCrory (and the NC Chamber) relevant?

Nice NC Policywatch article looking at the dissension between the Republican-led NC legislature’s support for repealing Common Core and the clear opposition of the NC Business community and Governor McCrory:

Governor Pat McCrory has previously upheld North Carolina’s decision to adopt the Common Core State Standards.

Speaking to a group of business-minded folks at a state chamber of commerce meeting last summer, McCrory praised Common Core.

“It’s not the standards that are bad; it’s the execution which must be improved here in North Carolina.”

But as the legislature hovers close to joining a handful of other states that have repealed the academic standards, frequently referred to as “Common Core,” McCrory’s words, communicated through his education advisor, Eric Guckian, have gotten softer…

Now that the House language is the primary bill up for consideration in a conference committee, the [NC] Chamber doesn’t want anything to do with it all.

“In its latest version, this legislation is not only a step backward for our classrooms but it is a step backward for our manufacturing floors to the research labs and garages where the next big ideas are being born,” said a representative of the NC Chamber in a statement…

Whether or not McCrory will veto any legislation that is ultimately passed is still up in the air.

“I won’t commit [McCrory] to any decision on that,” said Guckian. “It’s not a certainty that this will be passed given that we have a short session and we are trying to work together on these issues.”

“I know the business community is watching it very closely,” added Guckian. “It’s a big issue for our state.”

Assuming the legislature sends McCrory a bill repealing Common Core, the big question is what will he do?  Either way, I think it ultimately tells us 1) a lot about McCrory; and 2) who’s really got the upper-hand in NC Republican politics.

Of course, if McCrory were a real leader, he’d already loudly be standing up to the anti-Common Core Tea party non-sense (in the way the NC Chamber has, at least rhetorically), but so far we’ve seen known of that.  Theoretically, a governor should be a leader, but to this point it very much seems that McCrory is simply the ultimate follower– stick that finger up and see which way the GOP wind is blowing.  Secondly, if this repeal is successful, it will be quite clear that it is the Tea Party totally in command of the policy agenda in this state, not the Chamber of Commerce.  Now, I’m not the biggest fan of the Chamber, but they certainly appreciate the importance of education and I’ll take them over the Tea Party any day.  We’ll see, but I suspect I’m not going to like the answers to either of these questions.

Photo of the day

Awesome Wired gallery of 360 degree time-lapse photos from a home-made setup.  Very cool images:

Sometimes he takes stills, like this shot inside the Double Arch in Utah. But he regularly winds up with at least 150 photos from each of his camera that he then stitches together and layers for a time lapse effect. VINCENT BRADY

I’m a Rand Paul Republican

Okay, not really, but when it comes to issues of criminal justice, this guy is right on and the rest of the Republican party is still in their “tough on crime” fantasyland.  I finished my Criminal Justice Policy summer class this week and was thinking about how one of my favorite students was an ardent libertarian.  When it comes to this particular class, the genuine libertarians and I are pretty much always on the same page (definitely not so most other classes I teach).  Anyway, I was thinking about this in light of Emily Bazelon’s piece yesterday about Rand Paul wanting to restore voting rights to ex-felons.  Of course, it seems entirely unjust and illogical to deny voting rights to those who have already served their punishment.  Then again, they are far more likely to be poor and non-white.  Bazelon:

When libertarian Republicans go on about the “tyranny” of the federal government, as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is prone to do, I tune out. But not today. Paul has been talking for a while about how his conception of tyranny extends to long, draconian prison sentences for mostly poor and black offenders. Now he is introducing a bill that would restore voting rights to nonviolent ex-felons in federal elections. This bill is not about to become law any time soon. But give Paul credit for standing on principle even though he and his party would hardly benefit.

I’m also reminded of a recent Vox piece on Paul and the aforementioned sentencing reform:

Over the weekend, Rand Paul spoke at the Iowa Republican convention — and harshly condemned America’s war on drugs. “It’s a problem to lock people up for 10 and 15 and 20 years for youthful mistakes,” Paul said. He went on to point out that racial minorities are particularly unfairly treated by the system:

IT’S SIGNIFICANT THAT PAUL IS SAYING THIS IN IOWA

PAUL: If you look at the war on drugs, 3 out of 4 people in prison are black or brown. White kids are doing it too, in fact, if you look at all the surveys, white kids do it just as much as black and brown kids. But the prisons are full of black and brown kids because they don’t get a good attorney, they live in poverty, it’s easier to arrest them than to go to the suburbs.

Paul then called for compassion for young drug offenders, and argued that voting rights should be given back to some felons who’ve served their time:

PAUL: Most of us are Christians or Jews or of the Judeo-Christian faith, and it’s like, we believe in redemption. We believe in a second chance. Should a 19-year old kid get a second chance? I think yes. Let’s be the party that has compassion, that doesn’t say the behavior is right, but says, ‘You know what? When you’re done with your time, you get the right to vote back.’ Let’s be the party that is for extending the right to vote back to people who have paid their time, who have reformed their ways.

These aren’t new positions for Paul. But the fact that he made them loud and clear to a convention of Iowa Republicans is significant, because of Iowa’s importance to the presidential nomination process.

There’s no way stands like this win Paul votes among many Republican primary voters.  Kudos to him for standing up for the right thing.  Now, if only the rest of the Republican party was willing to do so.

Are you high right now?

Probably not, I suppose, but the latest study suggests there is far more drug use going on than traditional methods of studying the issue reveal.  The breakthrough methodology?  Analyzing raw sewage for drugs:

The News: Scientists just performed a giant drug test on two American communities — although they didn’t tell anyone.

By sampling the sewage of two communities in New York state, public health officials were able to estimate how many drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine, people are using across the state.

The results: People in the Albany communities the researchers studied use at least four times as much cocaine and six times more amphetamines as previously estimated, the researchers said…

The scientists didn’t just scrub the waste for the active components of the drugs, such as cocaine, morphine (the active component of heroin) or amphetamines. They also studied the compounds they break into after our bodies process them. After collecting the samples, the researchers tested them using a technique known as electrospray mass spectrometry, a process that basically sifts and organizes the contents by their mass so scientists can identify them…

Although the studies are not large enough to extrapolate to the entire U.S., the process suggests we could soon begin to see actual numbers of drug use across the country. The science could help correct many of the assumptions that currently plague our conceptions of who uses drugs and how often.

Fascinating stuff!  Time to grab the sewage from the US Capitol before it flows out to join the rest of DC?

Mars needs women (and so does the US Congress)

Alright, maybe Mars, not so much.  One of my favorite pieces of political science research on gender is Lonna Atkeson’s piece from 11 years ago that shows having a high-profile female candidate in a state leads to greater political engagement of that state’s female citizens.  And since women, on average, lag behind men in political engagement, more female candidates is especially good not just for women in office, but for the role of women throughout our democracy.

The Monkey Cage now highlights a new article that very much builds on this line of research in showing that women voters are actually more aware of the positions of their female Senators:

If, say, you’re a woman who lives in Louisiana, you’re more likely to know that Mary Landrieu voted for it than you are that David Vitter voted against it.

That’s one insight from a new article (ungated) by political scientist Philip Edward Jones. He finds that women know more about how their female senators vote and are more likely to hold them accountable for those votes than when they’re represented by men. There’s also suggestive evidence that this might be true for male voters as well. Maybe electing women makes for better citizens…

Female voters were more likely to know the legislative records of their female senators than male senators. In 2006, for instance, Jones found that controlling for a host of other factors — partisanship, how long a senator had been in office, and so forth — women knew were able to correctly identify about 45 percent of the votes of their male senators. But when they were represented by women, they were able to say how they voted about 52 percemt of the time…

The votes of female senators were also more consequential for how their female constituents evaluated them.

To lessen the gender gap in political participation and engagement, it is more clear than ever that we need to have more women in political office– an improving trend that has very much slowed.  The problem is not voters, the problem is that we simply need more women running for office.  And that problem is that not enough women want to run for office.  That’s what we really need to change.