New Op-ed: Bad Brief: The Bush DOJ shoots at the Second Amedment

Here is the new op-ed that I have this morning at National Review Online:

A lot of Americans who believe in the right to own guns were very disappointed this weekend. On Friday, the Bush administration’s Justice Department entered into the fray over the District of Columbia’s 1976 handgun ban by filing a brief to the Supreme Court that effectively supports the ban. The administration pays lip service to the notion that the Second Amendment protects gun ownership as an “individual right,” but their brief leaves the term essentially meaningless. . . .

UPDATE: For different perspectives see here and here.

New Op-ed: BLOOMY'S BILLIONS: 'REFORMS' BOOST HIS '08 EDGE

CAMPAIGN-finance regulations keep on wrecking havoc with America's elec tions, entrenching incumbents and reducing voter turnout. Now they could help make Mayor Bloomberg our next President or at least give him great influence over who wins.

Bloomberg is reportedly talking of devoting $1 billion of his own money to win the White House as an independent - vastly outspending any conceivable combined outlays by the Republican and Democratic nominees, even if they forego public financing. . . .

New Op-ed: The High Cost of Higher MPG restrictions

Here is a new piece that I have in Human Events:

Who can oppose making cars "more efficient"? Could you imagine what would happen to legislation requiring cars to be less "efficient"? Certainly there weren't many such politicians in Washington, DC. President George Bush signed the Energy Bill on Wednesday and overwhelming numbers of Congressmen and Senators voted for it.

But what counts as "efficient" isn't always obvious. . . . .

Op-ed on New Jersey Eliminating Its Death Penalty

New Jersey on Monday became the first state to end the death penalty since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. Yet despite all the media attention this is generating, New Jersey, with about 428 murders in 2006, has never used the death penalty since it was reinstituted.

Too bad, because research indicates that it would have saved lives.

A Quinnipiac University poll released this month found that by an overwhelming 78% to 18%, New Jersey voters want the death penalty at least for cases involving serial and child killers.

The most recent Gallup poll shows that 69% of Americans favor the death penalty. Yet opponents continue to force a widespread public debate over its effectiveness. . . . .

New op-ed: Media Coverage of Mall Shooting Fails to Reveal Mall's Gun-Free Zone Status

The oped can be read here.

New Op-ed: Does the Fear of Jail Actually Prevent Crime?

Here is a new op-ed that I have at Fox News:

According to a brand-new and extensively covered study by the JFA Institute, a George Soros funded group, the U.S. prison system doesn’t deter crime and is "a costly and harmful failure.”

Prison is supposedly so useless that the U.S. prison population could be cut in half with no effect on crime.

This distrust of prison reducing crime is not new, but many have a hard time believing the simplest rule of economics: if you make something more costly, people do less of it. People accept that this principle applies to what we buy in grocery stores, but not to “bad” things that people might do.

New Op-ed: Women's suffrage over time

I have a very long op-ed (over 1,300 words in today's Washington Times):

Women's suffrage ushered in a sea change in American politics that affected policies aside from taxes and the size of government. For example, states that granted suffrage were much more likely to pass Prohibition, for the temperance movement was largely dominated by middle-class women. Although the "gender gap" is commonly thought to have arisen only in the 1960s, female voting dramatically changed American politics from the very beginning.

New Posting up at Jurist.law.pitt.edu

Here is a piece that I have just had posted at Jurist.law.pitt.edu

What is also interesting is how the Supreme Court has rewritten the question posed by DC. DC originally asked that the question be: "Whether the Second Amendment forbids the District of Columbia from banning private possession of handguns while allowing possession of rifles and shotguns." The new question is: “Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

What is most striking about this revised question is that the court appears to be questioning the city's claim that the ban comes "nowhere close to disarmament of residents. The District's overwhelming interest in reducing death and injury caused by handguns outweighs respondent's asserted need . . . ." DC adds that they don't believe that the regulations that lock up and require the disassembling of guns does not "prevent the use of a lawful firearm in self-defense." Of course, this is highly debatable because under DC law as soon as a rifle or shotgun is made operational it becomes illegal.

But taking DC claims as accurate, locked guns are simply not as readily accessible for defensive gun uses. In the U.S., states that require guns be locked up and unloaded face a 5 percent increase in murder and a 12 percent increase in rapes. Criminals are more likely to attack people in their homes and those attacks are more likely to be successful. . . .

New Op-ed: Why do we care if people tip a waitress?

I have a new piece out on Fox News stemming from the problems that Hillary Clinton got in regarding tipping:

But it is not a silly or trivial issue. The perceived cover-ups surely gave the story much more coverage and made what might have just been a simple oversight look much worse, and the issue is a lot deeper than just Clinton using the waitress as a campaign prop.

What if, for the sake of argument, Hillary Clinton decided not to pay the tip? Why would this be so upsetting? . . . .

New Op-ed: DEATH PENALTY'S DEADLY VACATION

THE Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively halted U.S. executions via lethal injection until it can rule on a challenge to the constitutionality of a particu lar execution "cocktail."

This is just the latest example of the whittling away of the death penalty - the courts have already cut executions by over a third since 1999. But this latest suspension of executions is likely to demonstrate yet again that the death penalty deters crime. . . . .

Some comments are coming in on this piece. See this by Art DeVany, Clayton Cramer, Free Republic, and Prairie Pundit.


I got this email from someone who read my piece.

First, I accuse Mr. Lott of no less than intellectual dishonesty with regards to some of the statistics he uses. To begin, the sentence "while African-Americans have committed 53 percent of all murders since 1980 in which the killer's race is known, they have accounted for only 38 percent of the executions." While at first glance, this seems to indicate that racial bias is non-existent in death penalty cases, one must remember that murder in itself, while necessary, is not sufficient for the death penalty to be handed down. Thus, the total number of murders is not a measure of the number of cases being considered for the death penalty. In fact, because the circumstances involved are relied upon almost exclusively (ie. the victim, prior history, etc.) when deciding whether or not to hand down the death penalty, simply citing these numbers does not tell the whole story in the least. . . . the author conveniently forgets that not every state has the death penalty. For instance, Michigan, New York (from 1978-94, well within the time that this statistic draws from), Massachusetts, as well as the District of Columbia do not currently execute anyone. These states (and district) all have some of the highest black populations in the country. . . .

The problem is that the gap between blacks and their share of executions and murders has gotten larger over time. This was originally in the op-ed, but got cut for space constraints. (The numbers before 1980 are pretty meaningless because even when an execution took place, there was only one execution a year.)

Further, your piece misses the point in its entirety. It is deceitful to say that the Court "effectively halted U.S. executions via lethal injection," because it does not tell the whole story. I'm sure you know that the issue at hand is whether the lethal injection itself constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" . . .

There are two points. 1) The point of the piece was to address some of the general arguments that have been presented agains the death penalty. 2) There are so many issues that one can get into in 700 words. I figured most people know this claim you point to and can judge for themselves whether lethal injection is so cruel.

This is simply a temporary stop-gap measure designed to ensure that the constitution is not trampled. This case currently before the Supreme Court does not aim to question the constitutionality of the death penalty itself.

Does the moratorium increase the chances that the death penalty through lethal injection will be ended? If lethal injection is found to be "cruel," would hanging or a firing squad be cruel? In any case, does it then lower the cost of criminals committing murder?

Thus, not only is this piece intellectually dishonest, but the most extreme instance of a "jack story" that I can imagine. . . .

Thanks for you thoughtful comments. But I must confess that I don't know what "jack story" means.

A further discussion of these issues can be found in my book, Freedomnomics.

New Op-ed: "Guns Don't Kill Kids, Irresponsible Adults With Guns Do"

Should your doctor ask your child if you own a gun?

Guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatric say "yes."

They warn that “Children are curious even if they’ve had some sort of firearm training. That’s why parents taking responsibility for safe gun storage is so essential.”

Doctors across the United States are being advised to interrogate children about mom and dad’s "bad" behavior.

It sounds simple enough, but the problem is that the advice ignores the benefits and exaggerates the costs of gun ownership. . . .

Here is some discussion on this piece.

New Op-ed on Why the Press Likes Campaign Finance Regulations

LAST week saw an outcry over the unfairness and content of MoveOn.org's New York Times ad belittling Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us." But the episode also illustrates a much more fundamental problem with campaign-finance regulations - the advantage that these laws give to the institutional press over ordinary citizens. It's time to admit the unenforceability and hidden favoritism of campaign-finance regulations. . . .

New Op-ed in NY Post: Falling Bridges?

CONGRESS this week held the first nationwide hearings in the wake of the deadly Minnesota bridge collapse, and most Americans seem to think we need to spend much more to fix what The New York Times calls our "crumbling bridge system." Even in advance of this week’s hearings on the issue, House Transportation Committee Chairman Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN) said: "If you are not prepared to invest an additional five cents in bridge reconstruction and road reconstruction, God help you."

In fact, our nation’s bridge system is far from crumbling — the number deemed "structurally deficient" has fallen every year since 1990, dropping by a total of almost 50 percent. . . .

New Op-ed: DC asking for Cert on Gun Ban

To me the most interesting part of DC's request for cert was how little time they spent discussing the constitutionality of the law and how much time they spent on a purely public policy discussion.

In asking the Supreme Court to let the District of Columbia ban handguns, the city has a simple argument: Whatever one thinks of the Second Amendment, banning handguns is a "reasonable regulation" to protect public safety. The problem for the city is that anyone who can look up the crime numbers will see that D.C.'s violent crime rate went up, not down, after the ban. . . .

For some commentary on the piece see: here, here, here, here, here.

More on Salmon

The Endangered Species Act Out of Control (Fox News)

New Op-ed: More Guns, Not Less, Would Prevent Shooting Massacres

My newest op-ed is up on Fox News:

With school starting, the April 16 attack at Virginia Tech that left 32 dead is still on many people’s minds. Some are looking for guarantees that such an attack won’t happen again.

But Virginia Tech’s just released report on how to stop future tragedies was pretty disappointing, and this coming week’s Virginia Governor’s task force report isn’t likely to be any better. The university proposes more counseling for mentally troubled students, internet based billboards to alert students of emergencies, putting both the police and fire departments into the same building to allow better coordination, more surveillance cameras, and locks that make it easier for students to get out of buildings. . . . .