Non (Anti?) Sequitur of the Day

He’s not really stupid, some b**** just set him up.

In a place where most people want guns to be illegal I can’t imagine that allowing firearms would do anything to deter violence. Non-criminal people in DC by a wide margin do not want guns around. Do you suppose that they will change their minds and purchase guns for self defense if they are made legal? Or maybe not allowing/making it more difficult to arrest people for having a firearm will mean that more dangerous people with hand guns are on the streets. I know gun ban means that only criminals will have guns but in a place where that is pretty much going to be true no matter what I think fewer criminals having fewer guns is a better equilibrium. If a community wants guns I have no interest in taking them away, but a community that doesn’t want as many guns around should be able to decide that without people who don’t have to worry about their safety trying to prove some dubious and ideologically driven point.

Student,

Legal drunken driving would not protect you from illegal drunken drivers in the same way that legally arming yourself could possibly protect you from those who do so illegally, or rather those who do so for illegal means. I’m not sure if your comparison works.

Alex T, Google lists 11 examples of “anti-sequitur” – maybe a few more if you don’t omit duplicate results. It’s as good as meaningless. Having your defense of your initial post depend on it is pretty odd.

The sentence you quoted is not a non-sequitur. I think we’ve made our point very clearly.

anon, you’ve changed the quoted sentence from:

“The ban on handguns is a matter of life and death because 80% of the murders in DC are caused by handguns.”

to:

“80% of the murders in DC are caused by handguns because the handgun ban is working.”

I think you’re right that the second sentence contains a non-sequitur.

Robert: You define non-sequitur as “Conclusion does not follow from premises and assumptions.”

This is incorrect. It is defined as “”Conclusion does not follow from premises”. The “assumptions” bits is not true.

Also, you slip a necessity criterion into your definition at the end when you write:

“It does not follow that an increase in [legal] handguns will necessarily result in increased murders or that the ban is even effective in its intended goal.”

So you start with a too-strong definition and then slip in a criterion of necessity. This kind of sinks your argument.

For the record, if the necessity criterion were true, then anything that is not a strict law (that is to say, a law of physics – although some doubt there are any truly strict laws whatsoever) would be a non-sequitur.

“If there wasn’t a serious problem there would be no need of a ban”

It seems like a lot of peoples’ argument stems from the assumption that the the proposed solution (in this case, a ban) is the only logical or effective response to the problem. In this case, it may be the logical answer (I’m no expert). However, even if it where true, that would not change the fact that the statement is a non-sequitur. For example: “Auggie is a mammal, therefore he is a human,” Is a non-sequitur. It may be true that he is, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that he is indeed human just because he is a mammal. It seems to me that those who argue that the statement fails to meet the criteria of a non-sequitur fail to recognize the fact that there is no single conclusion to be drawn from the first observation.

Just as Auggie could be any one of 5,400 species based on the mere fact he is a mammal, the fact that gun violence accounts for 80% of murders in Washington could lend itself to a myriad of possible responses. If he went on to describe how the A = B, that’d be more fair, I suppose.

“If there wasn’t a serious problem there would be no need of a ban”

It seems like a lot of peoples’ argument stems from the assumption that the the proposed solution (in this case, a ban) is the only logical or effective response to the problem. In this case, it may be the logical answer (I’m no expert). Just to be clear I am not saying that a ban is the best or only solution. From “If there wasn’t a serious problem there would be no need of a ban” it does not follow that “if there is a serious problem there is a need of a ban” and I am saying the first thing but not the second thing.

@all

We could argue non-sequitur all day long.

But the bigger point is whether the current ban is valid? Does it help? Or does it just prevent law abiding citizens who want guns from obtaining them?

Personally, I feel this issue is very much like prohibition. Not only does it NOT achieve its intended goal, but it actually makes things worse by forcing people to seek out unregistered guns.

I would much rather add transparency to the process and hand gun safety classes, than have people illegally purchasing handguns with no registration or training.

Lastly, I would even go so far as to grant amnesty to those who purchased handguns illegally while this ban was in place — granted that they come forward and register the handgun that they currently have.

If we’ve learned anything from economics, it’s that price controls, quotas, and other non-sense rarely work as intended and usually end up causing more problems then they are worth….

Cheers!

Caped Crusader:

The actual quote that Alex modified, we have ascertained, is:

“Assistant police chief Alfred Durham says 80 percent homicides in the district this year have been committed with firearms. He says the way the Supreme Court rules in this case is literally a matter of life and death.”

So you’re provably entirely wrong.

What if Durham’s unstated assumption is that 80% of murders are caused by handguns because 80% of murderers prefer handguns over other options? In that case, his statement follows quite logically.

Of course, one could argue that murderers without access to guns will simply turn to other types of weapons, but I think most people would agree that guns make it easier to commit murder than other readily-available options (e.g., knives/baseball bats).

Caped Crusader:

If you think that it’s reasonable for at least one person to assume that there exists a possibility that lifting the ban would result in more gun-related homicide – even if you yourself do not assume that there is such a possibility – then you can’t hold that Durham uttered a non-sequitur.

Ooops. Make that 8,000 without firearms. Too much gunfire around here for me to do simple math.

Thanks, Chris. Your comments were helpful, I think. To be clear, is it your position that a large number or percentage (‘heck of a lot’) of firearm homicides makes a compelling case for the continuation of a firearms ban?

Just to clarify, I believe that a small number or percentage (‘heck of a little’) of firearm homicides makes a compelling case for the continuation of a firearms ban. That’s all. I just don’t understand why a ‘heck of a lot’ of firearm homicides should make me think that the ban on firearms is effective in preventing firearm homicide.

For what it is worth, the ban has been in place for 30 yrs, I believe. From 1987 until 1991, homicides grew from 225 to 479. Today they stand at about 170 for the year, up about 10% from the same date last year. But these numbers don’t help me at all in understanding if the firearms ban is effective. Firearm recoveries seem to be down this year compared with last

I am a bit worried. First Alex argues against surgery by pointing out that it has a high overall risk, without considering the marginal risk increase. Now arguing in the above post, without seemingly, consider that the relevant comparison is what would DC be without the guns (since, as someone mentioned, violence/murder is a function of more than one variable).

I thought this blog would be about MARGINAL thinking, and about economics.

Yet Virginia with it’s lax gun laws as was so stated doesn’t have the huge problem with gun violence that DC, with it’s gun ban does

Because 99 out 100 criminals prefer unarmed victims. Gun bans remove handguns from the law abiding citizen who would use them to defend themselves. Criminals by nature have decided not to follow the laws. Why did you expect them to follow the gun ban?

I am a Virginia Concealed Carry Permit holder. I carry everywhere it is legal to do so. I don’t carry on the Metro, in Maryland or at the Pentagon because I am not allowed to. But everywhere else I carry either a S&W Model 60. a 9mm Makarov, a SIG P229 in .40 S&W or a Glock 30 in .45 ACP. If you live in the Northern Virginia area then you have probably walked near me or any number of other armed citizens. Criminals know this. So why not go to Maryland or DC where you have a reasonable assurance that your target is unarmed. If you break into my house I will give you my gun, bullets first. Law abiding DC residents are denied this option of self defense and are forced to rely on the known incompetance of the DC Police.

I don’t want to be a victim, but the DC ban forces me to potentially be one. If I am unarmed I have to rely on my hand to hand combat skills against a criminal with a gun. I prefer, as a combat veteran, to be armed at all times so I may fight unfairly against potential threats.

What everyone has missed on this forum is that driving is not a constitutional right. The right to keep and bear arms, The 2nd Amendment, which the DC ban violates, is a constitutional right.

That is why what the DC Assistant Chief stated is ludicrous on its face.

An armed society is a polite society.

Here’s a good summation from the Shooting Wire

Certiorari No Certainty
The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed that it is high time we have a definitive decision regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. In granting a Writ of Certiorari to the District of Columbia’s appeal of a U.S. Court of Appeals decision that found the District’s handgun laws unconstitutional, the high court set the table for what could be a watershed decision in the American legal system. It may as well have finally created an undeniable litmus test for any political candidate running for office, but that’s a fortunate by-product more than an intent.

A Supreme Court ruling upholding the Appeals Court decision has the potential to lay waste to vague interpretation of the Second Amendment that has allowed anti-firearms judges to rationalize – and push – an anti-gun agenda.

A decision the other way could hasten what many of the people I’ve spoken with today call the “inevitable disarmament” of all of us.

Ordinarily, I’d call that a bit overwrought. But with the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court has routinely changed the course of this nation. From segregation to abortion, the Supreme Court has been the single greatest deciding force either in national change.

Even the granting of the “Cert” is significant.

Approximately 2,000 requests are filed in each term (October to June); the Court normally grants an average around 80. Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to function as a trial court, but it does so in only the most major of instances. Today, the principal function of the court is to exercise appellate jurisdiction over lower court rulings on “constitutional and ordinary law” issues.

Rendering a uniform interpretation of the Second Amendment based on this particular case, is, actually custom-made for the Supreme Court.

But there’s still no reason to be dancing in the streets. The stage is now set, however, for high legal drama as formal hearings, oral arguments progress to that final decision.

Today, in political terms, the grassroots base – for and against guns – is “energized”.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, says the Supreme Court should “reverse a clearly erroneous decision and make it clear that the Constitution does not prevent communities from having the gun laws they believe are needed to protect public safety.” In other words, Helmke hopes for one of the “living document” interpretations of the law. That “living document” interpretation is one most commonly used by activist judges to apply a “culturally relevant” interpretation of law.

Simply stated, “living document” interpretations say the “old meaning” should give way to a more relevant interpretation adapted to current situations.

In my thinking, it’s the equivalent of ruling day to be nighttime, but it’s been used to advance any number of causes over the years.

The last “significant” ruling on the Second Amendment came in 1939 when the court ruled a sawed-off shotgun was not a weapon that would be used in the militia.

That decision, incidentally, is one reason Chief Justice John Roberts says the correct reading of the Second Amendment is “still very much an open issue.”

In 1976, one of the District of Columbia’s first actions after being given self-rule was to ban handguns.

The City council said it was a move designed to reduce violent crime in the nation’s capital because, “handguns have no legitimate use in the purely urban environment of the District of Columbia.”

Apparently, only legal handguns have no place in the District. Crime – including handgun crime – has continued to make Washington, D.C. one of the nation’s deadliest locales. Although down from all-time highs in the 1990s, 169 residents were murdered there in 2006.

Some were law-abiding citizens with no means of defending themselves.

Regardless, the District argues in favor of the restriction, claiming, among other things, the Second Amendment is applicable only to militia service. There’s also a second argument that the ban isn’t on all firearms, just handguns.

That argument ignores the fact that a “legal” firearm in the District is either kept under lock and key or disassembled, neither conducive to self-defense. No criminal I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet has ever set an appointment, or allowed me time to reassemble and arm a weapon.

Pro-gun arguments are not quite so convoluted.

In fact, they hinge on a single statement: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.

For years, a series of rulings have read the amendment to mean a “collective” rather than an “individual” right. The U.S. Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling the D.C. gun control law illegal based on individual rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment.

This case was essentially created when lawyers assembled six D.C. residents to challenge the District ban. Instead of a group of people appealing criminal convictions, the courts were faced with law-abiding citizens who wanted the weapons for self-defense.

An initial federal court ruled against them, but the Appeals Court agreed on their right to individual firearm ownership.

At that point, anti-handgun groups were torn over whether or not to appeal.

Without appeal, the decision was a setback limited to the District of Columbia. Other cases would continue to be heard individually – and in courts where the “living document” interpretations were common.

Filing a Supreme Court appeal and losing, however, could mean that all firearms bans could be called into question – and judged under a single legal interpretation.

In fact, the appeal argues the lower court ruling “drastically departs from the mainstream of American jurisprudence.”

In other words, it upsets the legal status quo.

The appeal also says the Appeals Court erred by recognizing an individual rather than a collective right; by interpreting the Second Amendment as anything other than a restriction on federal interference with state-regulated militias and state-regulated gun rights, and failing to recognize the District’s rights to protect its citizens by banning a certain type of gun.

Personally, I’d think the case could be made – and won – that the District has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the ban has done nothing to protect citizens, but plenty to protect criminals.

Yesterday, the NSSF cited leading historians, legal scholars and constitutional experts already on record as having concluded the Second Amendment provides an individual right.

“The government has powers, not rights,” says NSSF general counsel and senior vice president Lawrence G. Keane, “The contention that the Second Amendment is a collective right of the government is completely without merit.”

“The firearms industry looks forward to the Supreme Court putting to rest the specious argument that the Second Amendment is not an individual right,” says Keane. “This intellectually bankrupt and feeble argument has been used by gun control advocates to justify laws and regulations that deny Americans their civil right to own and lawfully use firearms for protection, hunting, sports shooting and other lawful purposes.

“The firearms and ammunition industry is unique in that our products are the means through which the Second Amendment right is realized,” continued Keane. “If there were no firearms and ammunition manufacturers, than the Second Amendment becomes an illusory right.”

As the legal observers prepare, politicians are squirming at the thoughts of having to answer the “gun question” should the Supreme Court uphold the Appeals Court. There will be little – if any – room for equivocation on firearms and gun owners’ rights.

Politicians prefer less absolute interpretations. After all, a privilege can be revoked, denied or modified – at the pleasure of the current political majority.

It’s a long way until November, and there’s no predicting the Supreme Court’s course of action with any confidence.

Historically, it’s been impossible to predict a decision with any certainty.

By this time next year, however, we should be a definitive interpretation of what has been a moving target.

As the side of the firearms argument that relies on facts and not emotion, we should be looking forward to the decision.

We’ll keep you posted.

–Jim Shepherd

http://www.shootingwire.com/shooting_wire.html?date=2007-11-21

I came late to this party, but I’ll respond to the last couple of comments.

“Hilarious semantic nonsense. You can focus on semantics or you can dig further and work out that the US’s relatively laissez faire attitude to guns is accompanied by higher murder rates than other developed countries without a Wild West style hang-up about guns.”

It’s a little known Canada and Switzerland have more guns per capita than the US. While Canada is in the process of trying to register every firearm, their restrictions are about the same as most of the US. Even in America itself, guns were far more widespread in the 1950s. Yet we had far less crime.

Furthermore, countries like Britain have had less crime for the past 100 years and much of that time Britain had laws similar to the US with regard to the firearms. So, instead of firearm laws, the explanation of crime rate differences is the most obvious one. The US’s high crime rates stem from persistent socioeconomic differences as opposed to its lax gun control laws.

“For every time a gun is used in a home in a legally-justifiable shooting there are 22 criminal, unintentional, and suicide-related shootings.”

I’ve heard this statistic used before. A legally-justifiable shooting indeed happens very rarely. However, 99 percent of the time the brandishing of a weapon is all it takes to deter a crime. I have a good friend where this exact thing took place.

Furthermore, using that statistic is a non-sequitur itself. Once again, the question is whether gun laws reduce the number of deaths. So, to make an argument from that statistic, you would need to assume that gun laws would reduce those “22 criminal, unintentional, and suicide-related shootings.” I could make a full argument refuting that assumption, but I’ll just say that many of those 22 died in the jurisdiction with the toughest gun laws, DC.

“The implication being that people who are insufficiently polite risk being shot by armed people who feel disrespected. Very nice. So impressively macho.”

I know some people who would be shocked to know I have a gun. Movies have created this stereotype that gun owners are all macho action hero wannabes. Well, we aren’t. We’re normal people who would hate to ever have to use our guns. And, as the statistic you used showed, we very seldom do use our guns on other people.

We’re normal people who would hate to ever have to use our guns.

Here’s a rejoinder to those who assume that gun owners want to use them. What about smoke alarm owners? I have a smoke alarm in my home. Does this mean that I want to use it – that I want my house to catch fire so that I can be warned by the smoke alarm? Or how about seatbelts: a lot of people wear their seatbelts. Do people who wear seatbelts really want an occasion to arise in which the seatbelt saves their life – do they really want to have an accident?

“Would it make you feel any better if they was all pushed outta windows?”

That’s what used to happen hospitals. psych patient used to jump out of windows to kill themselves. in response the hospitals permanently sealed the windows and/or moved the psych ward to the lowest floor. what happened when you removed access to the easiest cause of death? the number of suicides dropped significantly.

I don’t want to get mired down in this discussion on gun control. I’m not much for debate. I only wanted to point out that “Non Sequitur” is latin for “It does not follow”. Therefore, the “(Anti?)” in the title makes zero sense.

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