THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Probably kind of key to put illegal possession in your title. 

I don’t know anything really about gun laws, but whats the point in not just getting the gun legal?

My understanding of it is he had a permit for the gun in the state of florida, but not in new york. I had no idea you needed a permit for each state you wanted to bring it to (seems kind of unnecessary), but then again I’m not really researching gun permit laws so much.

I’ll take the libertarian view here.  He shot himself.  He’s already been punished, leave it at that.  If he had hurt someone else then throw the book at him.

Sean - The article doesn’t make it clear, but it’s illegal to carry a handgun in NYC outside of your residence. There are very limited exceptions, but there’s no legal way Plaxico could have possessed a gun in a nightclub.

Could a deputized Shaq be permitted?

I’m with Rally on this one.  This really bothers me though—“Gottlieb noted that the public attention made it unlikely that prosecutors would accept a lesser charge.” So the system only functions as it should when under public attention.  I understand that there aren’t enough resources to prosecute every case to the fullest extent of the law but making famous people into pariahs has never seemed proper to me.

Also, while this is only vaguely related to the topic at hand, click my name to read an article about how to solve crime in St. Louis. There may be a lot more “Burress-es” in that area soon.

dan/#2 - I think some states honor out-of-state gun permits, but NY definitely does not. In fact, honoring out-of-state permits kind of defeats the purpose of having tougher gun laws, because then people could just go to a state with lax gun laws, get a gun, and bring it into NY

Rally/#3 - That defeats the whole purpose of the law. The law is designed so that people will be discouraged from even owning an illegal gun, much less using one.

Think of it like drunk driving. Even if you don’t hit anyone with your car, you still get arrested. It’s not whether or not you harmed anyone, it’s that you put yourself in a position to potentially hurt someone else. The illegal gun law is along the same vein. You don’t need to actually do any harm, you just have to have the capability to do harm.

good points on both, Tom

But owning a gun is not like drunk driving. First, their is no constitutional right to drunk driving, and that’s because nothing good ever comes of it.

Possessing a gun can have bad outcomes, but it also has enough benefits that it merits a federal right. It’s when someone abuses that right that they need to be punished.

Good points Brian. Perhaps the better comparison would be the right to simply drive a car. We all have a right to drive a car, but we can’t do so unless we are licensed. Same with possessing a gun. We have a right to own a firearm, but can’t do so unless we are licensed.

Whatever the better comparison is, it’s all just semantics. The point of the law is to discourage people from carrying unlicensed weapons. Saying that he didn’t hurt anyone so he should be let off the hook totally undermines that law. And even though a guy like Plaxico Burress faces a very stiff penalty for a “victimless crime”, the law is designed to stop criminals before they even get to the point of hurting someone.

What if the person who shot himself wasn’t a professional athlete, but just some random guy in the club? We would have no idea whether he had the gun for malicious reasons or if he had no intention of using it. By making it illegal and extremely costly (as far as jail time is concerned) for him to even carry the illegal gun, you’re putting up a roadblock to a potential shooting.

Plenty good comes from drunk driving.  I get home faster than waiting for a cab.  I don’t have to call a friend for a ride.  I don’t have to sit out in the cold waiting for a cab.  It’s free, versus cab fare.  And, yeah, sometimes I kill people.  If there was no benefit to drunk driving, no one would do it.

Possessing a gun can have bad outcomes, but it also has enough benefits that it merits a federal right.

It HAD enough benefits that it merited a federal right.  Yes it’s still a right but circumstances may have changed in the past couple centuries that change the ratio of Good-to-Bad about gun ownership.  Just because something made sense 200 years ago, doesn’t mean we need to blindly accept it today.

I guess I’m being argumentative, but we’re sabermetricians.  We question traditional thought for fun.

Mike, I’m not sure what you’re point is so I’ll just say that whether or not the 2nd Amendment is appropriate or necessary today is irrelevant to the debate at hand since it is currently in the Constitution and thus needs to be respected unless and until that changes.

As for the current situation, this is a case where both sides are wrong: Burress acted terribly and the law is excessive and unconstitutional.

Plaxico undoubtedly behaved foolishly and recklessly. While he may have a legitimate reason to own a firearm, carrying it loaded, unholstered in the waistband of his sweatpants while out drinking and partying is jaw-droppingly dangerous and asking for someone to get hurt. Driving drunk is indeed a good analogy- even if driving should be a basic privilege, operating a motor vehicle in a way that risks peoples lives should be strictly outlawed.

However, that’s also why the charges against him are bogus. Imagine if someone got drunk, climbed behind the wheel of a car, flew through a crowded intersection and crashed into a wall. Now imagine that person getting arrested and risk spending years in jail not for driving drunk, not for getting into a crash and not for almost hitting other motorists, but because the state he was in didn’t recognize other states drivers licenses and didn’t allow non-residents to get a permit to drive. Furthermore, imagine that the state made it extremely difficult for people who are residents to drive legally.

In such a scenario there would be two huge problems with the actions of the state. First, the charges against the person completely miss the actual crimes he committed. Second and more broadly, the laws on the books go way beyond merely setting standards of safety and instead are intended to keep the vast majority of law-biding citizens from driving at all. That makes them excessive.

So my reaction to this is sort of a pox on both their houses: 1) Burress should be severely punished by the government for his actions that night and I am stunned that that isn’t happening
2) Burress should fight the charges against him as vigorously as he can, preferably all the way to the Supreme Court

What possible good reason does anyone
(other than a law enforcement officer) have for carrying a gun around in Manhattan?  Plaxico was going to hunt deer?  A car is for transportation.  A gun in New York City is for what practical purpose exactly? If Plaxico were mugged he was expecting, what, to pull out his gun and defend himself, like Gary Cooper in High Noon? I’m sure that would have gone well. In fact there is no good reason to be carrying a gun in New York City, any more than it is permitted to carry a hand grenade or pull a live tiger around on a leash.  Comparing driving a car to carrying a gun, at least in New York City, doesn’t work.

Yes, if a person is mugged (or worse), having a gun could indeed protect them. Not only that, but if thugs and thieves know that people could have guns on them, they are less likely to engage in random criminal acts.

It’s a wonder Canada and Great Britain isn’t overrun with common criminals…

I don’t understand the snark. The point is simply that there are rational reasons for some people to believe they might need a handgun. birtelcom thinks that there is absolutely no logical reason why anyone in a big city should even consider carrying one. That’s bunk. Whether the best public policy is more or less restrictive gun laws is a completely different issue.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

Gun control laws have not done anything good for the British.

That’s a pretty terrible article.  Five ridiculous rulings and a bunch of cherry-picked years of statistics doesn’t really convince me. 

From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England’s inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled.

Did you know Jack Morris belongs in the hall of fame?  It’s true, he won the most games between 1980 and 1989.

The best part is, the ridiculous rulings at the bottom of the article are supposed to prove that the law is out of control in England, but above that the author cites ”In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world’s crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.” Well no kidding.  You’re telling me that in a country where people are prosecuted for waving around toy guns, there’s more “crimes”?

I’m curious to know what some of the pro-gun people here think about the combination of guns and alcohol.

Plaxico’s situation is extreme because even if you believe that people should generally be allowed to carry guns, you might concede that the state has a right to restrict the rights of people to carry guns when they are intoxicated and/or when they are in bars/clubs.

If I’m sitting at the bar telling some drunk Yankee fan that Derek Jeter is a crappy fielder with a terrible UZR, I’d much rather get punched in the face than shot.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

Murders per million:
618 Columbia (#"1")
...
45 USA
...
15 Canada
14 UK
...
5 Japan

***

Other crimes:
http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/cri-crime

Rape:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita

Canada is horrible, while US and UK are similar.

Total crime:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

UK, US, Canada all similar.

***

These are of course reported (or prosecuted) crimes.  I’m sure some countries have alot of under-reported crimes, and so, the comparisons are not as simple as we’d like.

#19 I do not know about other states, but in mine (which is a much issue unless ‘due cause’ state) it is illegal to take a weapon into a bar/tavern/lounge/nightclub/etc. and that seems completely reasonable to me.  No one that I know that carries a weapon legally would argue otherwise.  They know that drugs and weapons do not mix.  Of course, there are plenty of deadly weapons around (glasses, bottles, etc.) regardless of the law.

As to being ‘pro-gun’, you could say I fall in that category.  Twice I have been accosted by gun wielding aggressors that did not legally have guns, and twice the situation was resolved without bloodshed due to the threat of my legal gun.  Strangely enough, both times involved multiple people I did not know coming onto my property with the intent of committing a crime.

"Gun” can certainly be differentiated between handgun, shotgun, AK47s, and worse.

And “location” can certainly be differentiated between personal property, public space, and private establishments.

You can more than reasonably argue for the right to own a shotgun in your own home.

It would be extremely difficult to argue for the right to carry an AK47 while you are picking up your kid inside his school.

Everything in-between is different shades of gray area.  And, I would have to think that in most cases, we would agree, and the debate should center on the nuances of the middle position, rather than on the all/or nothing extreme positions that never lead to a happy resolution.

The same can be said about the DH rule!

I think the initial premise of this thread was that 3.5 years is an extremely harsh penalty for gun possession. My first instinct was to agree, but now I’m not so sure. Please excuse all the generalizations/simplifications that follow.

Let’s simplify things and assume that there are two types of people in a city: law-abiding citizens and criminals (and I’m not counting illegal possession of a firearm as a crime for these persons). Anti-gun people think the ideal situation is for nobody (including criminals) to have a gun. Pro-gun people think that criminals will have guns no matter what, so law-abiding citizens should be allowed to have them, too. I think both groups would agree that the worst scenario is that all the criminals have guns, but none of the law-abiding citizens do.

If you’re going to make it illegal to carry a gun, you want to do it in a way that discourages criminals from carrying guns. If the penalty is a slap on the wrist, then criminals will still carry guns because a night in jail and a small fine isn’t a strong disincentive. But, a slap on the wrist combined with the mere fact that it’s illegal is a strong disincentive for most law-abiding citizens, so they’ll stop carrying guns. So, a slap on the wrist will result in the worst possible outcome: criminals are the only ones with guns.

On the other hand, a 3.5 year jail sentence is a pretty strong disincentive for everyone, including criminals.

Guns and alcohol are a terrible combination. In Pa, it ic a crime to drink while hunting.

I am a gun rights person, but I’ve felt the need to own one since I was married. I have no time for hunting, and I feel personally safe at work and in my neighborhood.

When my son turned 21, he bought a .45 got a concealed carry permit. I was concerned that he was only doing it because he could, not because he should. Now he’s stationed in Korea, so I have the gun in my closet, unloaded, but it’s there if I need it.

My Dad, a life member of the NRA, recently passed away, and his collection sold for nearly $40,000 at auction.

Tango, #20.  It is difficult to pin down the higher murder rate as a product of American gun culture.  These rates differ drastically among racial groups in the more diverse US population.

Mike #11, et al.  For an insightful article as to why the gun control debate is so misguided, click name.

I’ll try again with the link:

http://declineandfallofwesterncivilization.blogspot.com/2008/06/high-court-asserts-american-individual.html

Ben, I wasn’t suggesting a direct and single causal link.  And I don’t know that America necessarily has a more diverse population than elsewhere.

Didn’t necessarily think that you were, Tango, though I know that belief is pervasive, and thus the comment.

The demographic statistics are pretty readily available on the giant farmers almanac that is wikipedia.