Resolved: In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned
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- Plan causes big black market.
- Prohibiting imports causes smuggling.
- Just banning sales manufacturing makes no sense. Gotta ban possession also.
- Massive non-compliance-empirically confirmed.
- Court clog-ppl sue the gov’t.
- Plan has to be federal//who can even do the aff
- Passive enforcement.
- Prosecutors/jurors will nullify.
- Could just be a misdemeanor.
Jacobs 04If the aff defends shutting down manufacturing, they must spec the following:Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Prohibition proposals come in different styles and sizes. Prohibiting manufacture of handguns would be the easiest form of prohibition to implement and enforce. The Census of Manufacturers for 1997 shows that there were one hundred and ninety-one small arms manufacturing companies with combined sales of $1.2 billion. The locations of these manufacturers are known. The federal government could order them shut down, subject them to prohibitive taxation (“tax them to death”), or expose them to ruinous tort liability. Their decommission would be easy to monitor. Of course, the government would need to permit at least one private company to continue producing enough handguns for the police and whatever other groups would still be lawfully armed. Alternatively, the government could set up its own handgun manufacturing plant to supply the legitimate market* Plan causes big black market.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Closing down legitimate manufacturers would be a boon to black market (p.161) producers. Clandestine handgun manufacturers would spring up, just as thousands of illegal stills operated during alcohol prohibition, and hundreds or thousands of clandestine labs now produce unlawful mood and mind-altering drugs like amphetamine and ecstasy. Even today, “zip guns” are produced or assembled in small workshops within the United States.* These black market manufacturers, already illegal, operate outside any regulatory scheme for recordkeeping, serial numbers, safety locks, or taxation. Prohibiting imports causes smuggling.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Implementing a prohibition on importation of handguns would be even more difficult. Without (or with sharply diminished) domestic U.S. sources for new handguns, there would be a greater economic incentive for smugglers to bring in handguns from abroad. Is there any reason to believe that customs officials and other law enforcement personnel would be more successful in preventing handgun smuggling than in preventing drug smuggling? I think not. Contraband handguns, like illicit drugs, would enter the country illegally in seaborne containers, trucks, cars, planes, and by mail. (Currently, there are firearms black markets in Western Europe, where handguns smuggled from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are easily obtainable in Amsterdam, Brussels, and other cities.)16 Just banning sales & manufacturing makes no sense. Gotta ban possession also.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Prohibiting the Sale of Handguns All handgun prohibition proposals discussed in this chapter include a ban on the sale of handguns. A sales prohibition would necessarily have to prohibit every type of commercial transfer, lest the ban be circumvented by leasing and renting. But even that expanded proscription would be incomplete. Banning just commercial transfers would not prevent handguns from being transferred by nondealers to new owners as gifts or barter. Therefore, an effective “sales” prohibition should encompass a ban on gifts and lending as well. No doubt once a sales prohibition seemed like a realistic possibility, (p.162) some people (including profiteers and ideological opponents of the prohibition) would purchase large quantities of handguns in order to supply the post-sales prohibition demand. Prohibiting Possession of Handguns Proponents of handgun prohibition ought to see little point in banning the manufacture and sale of handguns without also banning possession. Failure to ban possession would leave the existing private sector stock of handguns intact. Moreover, if handgun possession was undisturbed, following the model of National Alcohol Prohibition, there would be a tremendous opportunity for blackmarketeers to meet the demand for handguns with weapons imported from abroad or produced in clandestine workshops. The new handguns and handgun possessors would blend in with the existing handguns and their possessors. The moral coherence of this form of prohibition would be weak; tens of millions of owners would be allowed lawfully to possess guns, while younger people would be treated as criminals for doing the same thing. Criminalizing the possession of handguns, along with the manufacture and sale, would conform the gun prohibition paradigm to the regime that currently covers illicit mind- and mood-altering drugs. Prohibition that includes a ban on possession would commit the country to disarming the citizenry. The Dellums and Bingham bills say that 180 days after the law becomes effective, it would be a crime to possess a handgun. In one fell swoop, tens of millions of Americans would be prosecutable, unless they surrendered or destroyed their arms. Massive non-compliance-empirically confirmed.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW We can get a sense of the magnitude of the compliance problem by looking at the success of our current prohibition on possession that applies to persons with a felony record. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of ex-felons currently possess handguns illegally, despite the federal felonin- possession law's threat of a 10-year maximum federal prison sentence. We can also obtain a perspective on compliance by looking at what happened when, in 1995, several states required registration of assault rifles. In California, only 10% of about 300,000 assault weapons owners registered their weapons.17 Cleveland and Boston achieved an estimated 1% compliance rate. Denver authorities registered 1% of 10,000 assault rifles.18 The estimated 100,000 to 300,000 New Jersey assault rifle owners registered 947 assault rifles, rendered 888 inoperable, and turned over 4 to law enforcement personnel. It should be emphasized that these assault rifle laws were implemented in states that had produced legislative majorities for such gun controls. A federal registration requirement would (p.163) have to be enforced in states where handgun prohibition could not command a legislative majority. In those states, noncompliance would be an even greater problem, and police and prosecutors, charged with enforcing the prohibition, would have to confront jurors’ hostility.* Court clog-ppl sue the gov’t.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Prohibition would face constitutional litigation all over the country. Most gun owners (rightly or wrongly) believe that they are exercising a constitutional right.19 Even a Supreme Court decision, rejecting the contention that the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding individuals the right to keep and bear arms, would not shake millions of citizens’ belief that gun ownership is a right of American citizenship. Plan has to be federal//who can even do the aff?Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW After the Supreme Court's decision in Printz, rejecting federal authority to order state and local officials to conduct background checks, National Handgun Prohibition might have to be a completely federal program.22 What kind of a federal enforcement agency would be needed to investigate and deter unlawful handgun possession? Currently, most illegal handguns are seized as a consequence of street or car stops made by local law enforcement agents; a frisk reveals the gun.23 Routine car and street stops are (p.164) not the province of federal agents, who lack general street-level policing authority and experience. Perhaps BATF could be expanded into a super nationwide street-level police agency with tens of thousands of new agents? Such a move would have to overcome the opposition of the NRA, gun owners, some members of Congress, and others who excoriate BATF agents as “jack-booted minions.”* It would also have to overcome those who oppose expanding federal power and expending a great deal of federal funds. Undoubtedly, there would be opposition and resistance from fringe elements, who for years have warned of a colossal and despotic federal government. The number of militia groups would probably grow, with the potential for Waco-type standoffs and shootouts.24 Passive enforcement.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW These potential problems suggest that passive enforcement might be a better alternative. BATF agents might make no special effort to identify and arrest handgun possessors. They could simply make arrests when handguns come to light in the course of investigations of other crimes. Of course, that is not much different than the way federal and state felon-inpossession laws are currently enforced. Prosecutors/jurors will nullify.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Some prosecutors, for political or practical reasons, would hesitate to prosecute unlawful possession cases, just as prosecutors today do not prosecute every drug possession case. They would face serious difficulties convicting defendants with no criminal record who claim to possess a gun for self-defense or sport. Currently, federal prosecutors decline to prosecute a high percentage of charges even against persons with felony records when, though possessing firearms illegally, the arrested person has committed no other crime.25 It would be much more difficult to convince federal or state prosecutors to bring charges against otherwise lawabiding persons for merely violating National Handgun Prohibition. Even if prosecutors brought charges, it would be difficult to get unanimous guilty verdicts from jurors who, in many states, would be inclined to nullify the unpopular law. Could just be a misdemeanor.Jacobs 04 James (Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts Director, Center for Research in Crime and Justice New York University School of Law) Can Gun Control Work? “Prohibition and Disarmament” 2004 Oxford Scholarship Online JW Perhaps enforcing unpopular, or at least controversial, handgun disarmament could be made easier by setting the punishment low. If illegal possession of a handgun were treated as a misdemeanor or administrative violation, punishable by a small fine, say $250 or $500, jury trials could be avoided altogether. However, under that scheme, people who were (p.165) committed to keeping their handguns would be no more deterred from violating the gun law than from violating the speed limit. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.99 Mb. Share with your friends:
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