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Worst Week inWashington
The Fix’s By Chris Cillizza
wrong end of the score. Witness Tuesday’s Democratic Senate runoff
I
in Arkansas. Left for dead after the state’s May 18 primary, Sen. Blanche Lincoln defied the odds by claiming her party’s nod. While her opponent on the ballot was Lt.
Gov. Bill Halter, it was widely acknowledged among political insiders — and some outsiders, too — that Lincoln was really running against national organized labor. Labor with a capital L— and, for this exer- cise, consisting of the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Em- ployees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — had grown sick of the incumbent’s apostasy on the Employee Free Choice Act and the health-care public op- tion and decided to make an example of her.
n politics, as in sports, success is meas- ured by wins and losses. Moral victories are usually claimed by those on the
That included roughly $10 million in televi- sion ads slamming Lincoln for having gone Washington (the horror!). One ad showed a pic- ture of her large house in the D.C. suburbs as evidence of her Potomac fever. In the final days before the runoff, some la- bor leaders semi-openly celebrated their ex- pected victory, saying no moderate Democrat would dare stray from unions on high-profile is- sues in the future. Then Lincoln won. Afterward, labor officials insisted that they had triumphed by losing — that putting such a scare into Lincoln would ensure fealty to their agenda by other moderates in her mold. May- be. But labor played to win, not to narrowly lose.
In a week when Washington Nationals fans
were the clear winners — thank you, Stephen Strasburg! — national unions found themselves on the other end of the spectrum. Organized la- bor, you had the Worst Week in Washington. Congrats, or something.
Have a candidate for the Worst Week in Washington? E-mail
chris.cillizza@
wpost.com with your nominees.
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KLMNO
Myths about gun control
5 by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig G
un regulation is as American as Wyatt Earp, the legendary fron- tier lawman who enforced Dodge City’s ban on gun-carrying within town limits. But two years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court decided for the first time that the Second Amend- ment grants a personal right to keep and bear arms, a decision that cast doubt on the future of gun control regulations in this country. Now, the court is considering a challenge to Chicago’s ban on handgun ownership — a regulation that has been in place for nearly 30 years. Would a repeal of the ban have a major impact on gun violence in Chi- cago or in other parts of the country? It’s a tricky question. And dis- agreements on the answer come from several persistent myths about guns in America.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
1
This anti-gun-control slogan, a perfect fit for bumper stickers, has infected the public imagination
with the mistaken belief that it’s just criminals, not weapons, that lead to deadly violence. The key question is, really,whether guns make violent events more lethal. While mortality data show that attacks are far more likely to be fatal when a gun is involved, gun-control opponents argue that this difference simply reflects the more serious, deadly intent of offenders who choose to use a gun.
But in a groundbreaking and PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KRISTIN LENZ Dept. of What If
Clarence Thomas in 2012! T
by Kashmir Hill and David Lat
he end of the Supreme Court term later this month marks a milestone: four years in which Justice Clarence Thomas hasn’t spoken during oral ar-
guments. That’s more than 250 cases heard, and not one word from Thomas, the longest silence of his nearly 19 years on the bench. Is he unhappy? Bored? Restless? This is not his normal state. When the justice from Georgia steps out of his black robes, he’s a gregarious fellow. When addressing law students, bar asso- ciations or Congress, he is charismatic and compelling. At a speech at the Uni- versity of Florida this year, he cracked self-deprecating jokes and made football references. “Many of you are passionate about your Florida Gators, but how pas- sionate are we about the principles that underlie our country?” he asked. Unfor- tunately, his people skills are wasted in the stuffy, stilted, stylized interactions between lawyers and Supreme Court justices. Soon after the election of President
George H.W. Bush, when he was ap- proached about serving as a federal judge, Thomas — then the director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Com- mission — said he couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life on the bench. But his friend, federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, responded: “It’s not like slavery, Clarence. You can always leave if you don’t like it.” Twenty years later, Thomas is still honored to be a judge. “But I wouldn’t say I like it,” he said in a speech at Chapman University in 2007. “There’s not much that entices about the job.” So why not step down? Thomas should leave his perch at 1 First Street — and head for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The Republican Party is in disarray, with no clear message — as shown in last week’s primaries — and with no obvious candidate to challenge President Obama in 2012. Thomas could be the GOP’s new standard-bearer. He has enviable name recognition, both as a long-serving jus- tice and as the author of the bestselling 2007 autobiography “My Grandfather’s Son.” And he has already survived the nasty political attacks that marked his 1991 confirmation hearings. A Thomas candidacy would bring ra- cial diversity and a moving personal
story to the Republican ticket. Thomas was born into poverty in Pin Point, Ga. He didn’t have indoor plumbing until he moved to Savannah to live with his grandparents at age 7. “[My grandfather] told us that if we learned how to work, we would be able to live as well as he and Aunt Tina did when we grew up,” Thomas wrote in his memoir. “. . . Our first task was to get a good education, so that we could hold down a ‘coat-and-tie-job,’ and he wouldn’t listen to any excuses for fail- ure.” Through hard work and a dedica- tion to education, including degrees from Holy Cross College and Yale Law School, Thomas became a distinguished lawyer and public servant. Thomas is well suited for political of-
fice. On the nation’s highest court, he has had to reflect and rule on the country’s most divisive issues. He also has political experience predating the court. He worked as an assistant attorney general in Missouri and then for the Reagan ad- ministration in the Department of Edu- cation and as head of the EEOC. And it’s clear that Thomas prefers the open road over cloistered chambers. During the court’s summer recesses, he enjoys driving around the country in his motor home, parking at Wal-Marts and seeing “a part of real America,” as his wife put it in an interview with WNYC’s “The Takeaway.” Thomas says he loves it because it “gets you out among your fel- low citizens.”The justice could spend the next two years in his RV, simply adding a sign to its side: “Vote Clarence Thomas!” His wife could do more than drive. Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is a longtime political insider who worked on Capitol Hill and for the conservative Heritage Foundation. She’s adept at political orga- nizing and fundraising, and she recently launched a nonprofit, Liberty Central, focused on training and supporting citi- zen activists involved in the “tea party” movement.
She has described the goal of Liberty
Central as helping “more citizens be- come active and engaged in protecting our core founding principles.” Perhaps it’s time for her husband to become more “active and engaged” by entering the arena of electoral politics. Thomas’s presidential platform would
have broad appeal, especially among Re- publican primary voters. His libertarian leanings are reflected in his judicial opinions, such as his questioning of the federal government’s regulatory author-
ity under the commerce clause. And a bonus for Ayn Rand fans: Thomas tradi- tionally makes his law clerks watch “The Fountainhead” after they arrive in chambers. Would it be insane for Thomas to
leave a lifetime appointment to run for president? Well, he is a judge, so let’s talk prec- edent. If elected, Thomas would not be the first person to serve as both presi- dent and justice: William Howard Taft was president from 1909 to 1913, then chief justice from 1921 to 1930. And Thomas wouldn’t even be the first to at- tempt this in the reverse order: Charles EvansHughes, appointed to the court in 1910, resigned in 1916 to run as the Re- publican nominee for president. He lost to Woodrow Wilson by a mere 23elector- al votes. Lawyers tend to be risk-averse, so let’s consider the downsides for Thomas if he leaves his post. The most obvious is giv- ing Obama a third Supreme Court va- cancy. But this problem should not be overestimated. Thus far, Obama has not nominated hard-core liberals to the court; his recent choice of Solicitor Gen- eral Elena Kagan disappointed many on the left. Furthermore, Republican sena- tors would subject Thomas’s successor to a much higher degree of scrutiny than replacements for liberals David Souter and John Paul Stevens, possibly even fili- bustering a nominee they viewed as too left-wing. And, if he won in 2012, Thom- as could appoint conservative justices of his choosing (possibly to fill a liberal’s seat, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s). What if Thomas left the high court,
ran against Obama and lost? It wouldn’t be the end of the world for him. Al- though Hughes failed in his presidential bid, things turned out well: He served in the executive branch as secretary of state under Warren Harding and eventually returned to the court, succeeding Taft as chief justice. There’s an entire world beyond 1 First
Street just waiting to be explored. Thom- as belongs out in that world — not co- oped up inside a marble palace, separat- ed from the people by a bench, trapped underneath black robes. Clarence Thomas in 2012!
david@abovethelaw.com kashmir@abovethelaw.com
David Lat is the founding editor and Kashmir Hill is a co-editor of Above the Law, a legal
blog.
often-replicated look at the details of criminal attacks in Chicago in the 1960s,University of California at Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring found that the circumstances of gun and knife assaults are quite similar: They’re typically unplanned and with no clear intention to kill. Offenders use whatever weapon is at hand, and having a gun available makes it more likely that the victim will die. This helps explain why, even though the United States has overall rates of violent crime in line with rates in other developed nations, our homicide rate is, relatively speaking, off the charts. As Ozzy Osbourne once said in an
interview with the New York Times: “I keep hearing this [expletive] thing that guns don’t kill people, but people kill people. If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?”
Gun laws affect only law-abiding citizens.
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Teenagers and convicted felons can’t buy guns — that’s against the law already — so the only
people affected by firearm regulations are the “good guys” who just want a weapon for self defense. At least that’s one line of reasoning against gun control. But law enforcement benefits from stronger gun laws across the board. Records on gun transactions can help solve crimes and track potentially dangerous individuals. Illinois law requires that all gun owners have a state ID card and that transactions be recorded, allowing police to potentially link a gun used in a crime to its owner. The ban on felons buying guns, part of the 1968 Gun Control Act, doesn’t stop them entirely, of course. In fact, most homicides involve someone with a criminal record carrying a gun in public. Data from 2008 in Chicago show that 81 percent of homicides were committed with guns and that 91 percent of homicide offenders had a prior arrest record. But the gun laws provide police with a tool to keep these high-risk people from carrying guns; without these laws, the number of people with prior records who commit homicides could be even higher.
When more households have guns for self-defense, crime goes down.
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Fans of the Heller decision in D.C., and people hoping for a similar outcome in Chicago,
believe that eliminating handgun bans and having more households keep guns for self-protection leads to less crime. The rationale: More guns enable more people to defend themselves against attackers; there might also be a general deterrent effect, if would-be criminals know that their victims could be armed. Such arguments cannot be dismissed. The key question is whether the
self-defense benefits of owning a gun outweigh the costs of having more guns
in circulation. And the costs can be high: more and cheaper guns available to criminals in the “secondary market” —including gun shows and online sales —which is almost totally unregulated under federal laws, and increased risk of a child or a spouse misusing a gun at home. Our research suggests that as many as 500,000 guns are stolen each year in the United States, going directly into the hands of people who are, by definition, criminals. The data show that a net increase in household gun ownership would mean more homicides and perhaps more burglaries as well. Guns can be sold quickly, and at good prices, on the underground market.
In high-crime urban neighborhoods, guns are as easy to get as fast food.
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There are roughly 250 to 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. That number
strikes some as so high that regulation seems futile. Opponents of gun control cite the sentiment of one Chicago gang member, who said in a 1992 newspaper interviewthat buying a gun is “like going through the drive-through window. Give me some fries, a Coke and a 9-millimeter.”
Our own study of the underground gun market in Chicago, with Columbia sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh and Harvard criminologist Anthony Braga, contradicts this claim. Handguns that can be bought legally for around $100 sell on the street in Chicago for $250 to $400. Surveys of people who have been arrested find that a majority of those who didn’t own a gun at the time of their arrest, but who would want one, say it would take more than a week to get one. Some people who can’t find a gun on the street hire a broker in the underground market to help them get one. It costs more and takes more time to get guns in the underground market —evidence that gun regulations do make some difference.
Repealing Chicago’s handgun ban will dramatically increase gun crimes.
5
Many legal analysts predict that Chicago’s handgun ban is done for. While proponents of gun
control may feel discouraged, the actual impact could be minimal, depending on what regulations the court allows Chicago to put on the books instead. New York City, for example, makes it quite difficult for private citizens to obtain handguns through an expensive and drawn-out permitting process that falls short of an outright ban. Local officials from Dodge City to
Chicago have understood that some regulation of firearms within city limits is in the public’s interest, and that regulation and law enforcement are important complements in the effort to reduce gun violence. Even before the repeal of D.C.’s handgun ban, the city’s police reestablished a gun-recovery unit and focused on seizing illegal firearms. The city’s homicide rate has been relatively flat the past several years. If the court decides that Chicago must follow D.C’s lead in getting rid of its handgun ban, we can only hope that it leaves the door open for sensible control measures.
pcook@duke.edu jludwig@uchicago.edu
Philip J. Cook is the ITT/Terry Sanford professor of public policy at Duke University. Jens Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation professor of social service administration, law and public policy at the University of Chicago.
Outlook’s editors welcome comments and suggestions. Write to us at
outlook@washpost.com.
SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2010
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