The Only Way to Stop a Bad Guy with a Gun, Is a Good Guy with a Gun, Right? Michael Dorf - Dorf on Law
go to original July 14, 2016

Jordan Klepper: Good Guy with a Gun (The Daily Show with Trevor Noah)

According to a familiar gun-rights slogan, “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” The slogan is literally true. By definition people who possess guns in violation of the law are criminals. The power of the slogan, however, comes from the fact that such people are criminals not only because they are in violation of the law forbidding gun possession, but also because the sort of person who is willing to possess a gun in violation of the law is also likely to be willing to violate the law in other ways. He is inclined to commit other crimes, aided by his gun. Worse, because law-abiding citizens are unarmed in the world in which guns are outlawed, the gun-toting criminal is more likely to succeed in his various felonious acts because he need only evade the police. Ordinary unarmed civilians are no match for him.

But there is a flip side to the guns/outlaws slogan. It might go like this: “When guns aren’t outlawed, outlaws blend in with ordinary citizens.” As states and localities increasingly allow open carry of firearms in public, it becomes increasingly difficult to detect and apprehend people with felonious intent.

Three sorts of harms may follow. First, law-abiding civilians and police may let down their guard. In a jurisdiction that forbids open-carry, a civilian or police officer who sees someone carrying a firearm has reason to be suspicious and alert. By contrast, in jurisdictions that permit open carry, presumably the mere carrying of a weapon in public does not give rise to the sort of suspicion that police need to stop someone. As a result, a criminal in such a jurisdiction can get a crucial head start. Even a few seconds can be critical, even if, say, the cashier at the convenience store is himself armed.

Second, because of the first dynamic, widespread open-carry will tend to lead to deadly escalation. The cashier who sees the customer with a pistol on his hip or a rifle over his shoulder may think to himself: “He could be a law-abiding citizen just exercising his right to open carry, but he could be planning to hold me at gunpoint while I empty the cash register for him. I better not take any chances. I’ll draw my gun first.” As a segment on The Daily Show illustrated, in a so-called active-shooter scenario, it can be extremely difficult to distinguish between a “good guy with a gun” and a “bad guy with a gun.” Open-carry laws turn virtually every public encounter into just such a potential scenario.

Third, the tendency towards a shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality that open-carry laws foster will have a strong racial bias. In the split second that legally armed civilians and police officers have to figure out whether the armed individual they see before them is a good or bad guy with a gun, they are likely to fall back on heuristics. Even well-trained police officers who are not conscious racists will likely act in response to implicit racial bias.

Read the rest at Dorf on Law

Related: Buying a Gun in the US Is Actually Easier Than Buying Some Food Items (Mic)

Related: Black, Latino Unity Grows Amid Racist US Policing (teleSUR)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!