A Thousand Cuts

A Heller of a notion.

I’ve read speculation in more than a few places around the blogosphere that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller, which struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, should lead to lower murder rates in the nation’s capital (and elsewhere, assuming similar bans can be successfully challenged).

Allow me to toss a glass of cold water on these hopeful musings.

It’s true that D. C.’s gun ban did nothing to reduce its murder rate.  Chicago, which banned handguns in 1982, continued to see its murder rate rise, reaching a peak of 33.9 per 100,000 in 1992 before dropping (and it has dropped dramatically, to as low as 15.6 per 100,000 in 2004).  But it’s still nearly three times the national average.  And the large drop in the murder rate has been attributed more to intensive policing tactics in high-crime areas than to the gun ban.

Conversely, it’s inconclusive that lifting restrictions on guns acts as a deterrent to violent crime, at least in urban areas.  Texas has perhaps the most relaxed gun laws in the nation, but its largest city, Houston, saw a dramatic spike in its murder rate following an influx of refugees from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (but it has started to decline this year).  Michigan liberalized its permit requirements in 2002, but Detroit ranks first in the country in homicides, at more than 47 per 100,000.  Whether in the hands of law-abiding citizens or criminals, it isn’t the presence of guns that drive violent crime.  It just happens to be the tool of choice for those who perpetrate crimes, and where legal, those who wish to defend themselves.

Dreaming about a substantial drop in D. C.’s murder rate as a result of Heller, then, ignores all the other factors that can contribute to crime: high population densities, low incomes, crumbling public infrastructure, poor educational systems, family deterioration, drug addiction, etc.  Solving these problems requires a far more nuanced policy approach than simply banning guns or allowing them anywhere.  And the statistics do make clear that of all the tools state and local governments have to fight crime, restrictive gun laws are among the least effective.

Other approaches, such as the “broken windows” tactics used by police in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver, have had a lowering effect on those cities’ violent crime rate, though not always on murder itself.  But that, too, comes at a cost of civil rights violations and even more disturbing, the rapid militarization of local police departments.  Former NYC mayor and Presidential also-ran Rudy Giuliani often touts his “get tough” attitude on crime, ignoring the fact that arrests for petty drug offenses skyrocketed during his tenure, and disproportionately targeted minorities, among other abuses perpetrated by city police.

What, then, can we really expect as the fallout from Heller?  Probably not a magical drop in crime in the country’s inner cities, and certainly not over the short term.  There are still many policy issues regarding gun regulation to sort out, and it will probably take many more years of litigation to resolve them.  None of the solutions to fighting violent crime will come easily.  But the simplest policy, the one that politicians grasp for when they need a populist feather for their cap—abrogating an individual’s right to self-defense which has existed long before the Second Amendment was enshrined in the Constitution—is the worst solution of all.