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To Keep and Bear Arms: Gun Rights Throughout American History

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In my previous blog post, I discussed why I think America should revise its gun laws by adding more comprehensive background checks and limiting access to assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

In this post, I will discuss one of the most prominent arguments against gun control: that the Founding Fathers passed the Second Amendment in order to prevent all gun regulations and defend against tyranny.

There are several practical difficulties with this argument. For one, America’s political system may be dysfunctional in various ways, but it is not (and is in no danger of becoming) tyrannical. America has strong civic institutions, watchdog groups, and an independent media. It spreads governmental power across various branches and levels. And for as much as some people complain about the lack of choice in elections, America still has a generally competitive system of free elections in which citizens can select their representatives.

Actually, many common complaints heard today are more indicative of democracy than any nascent tyranny. Tyrannies, by their very nature, rarely have trouble acting. In contrast, today’s American government seems caught in an almost constant stalemate. Even the health care bill, which many Americans dislike, was only passed after Congress had considered the issue for more than 60 years.

But assume for a moment that America is, somehow, teetering on the edge of tyranny. There is no way that assault weapons are going to protect people against the world’s largest and best-equipped military. If the Second Amendment is meant to protect against tyranny, then Americans should have the right not only to purchase assault weapons, but all manner of military weapons, such as rocket launchers and nuclear missiles. Anything less would put the civilian population at a distinct disadvantage against the American military.

This is, of course, fairly ridiculous. Society draws reasonable lines detailing acceptable behavior all the time, such as limiting access to military-grade weapons to the military. I would suggest that we similarly limit access to assault weapons in order to help stop mass shootings.

Far from endorsing violent uprisings against an elected government, some of the Founding Fathers spoke out vigorously against it. In 1794, President George Washington marched to western Pennsylvania to put down a tax revolt. The American Revolution was over and the Constitution had been adopted, guaranteeing a republican form of government. Now that Americans were represented in their government, political struggles had to replace armed conflict. As Washington proclaimed before he led several states’ militias out to confront the rebels:

And I do moreover exhort all individuals, officers, and bodies of men to contemplate with abhorrence the measures leading directly or indirectly to those crimes which produce this resort to military coercion… and to call to mind that, as the people of the United States have been permitted… to elect their own government, so will their gratitude for this inestimable blessing be best distinguished by firm exertions to maintain the Constitution and the laws.

Additionally, gun laws are not unprecedented expansions of governmental power. They have existed throughout most of American history. During the Founding Era, gun laws allowed government to track gun ownership, regulate gun powder storage, prohibit gun use in certain areas, deny gun ownership to certain individuals. A Boston law, for example, prohibited people from bringing loaded guns indoors. Other laws prohibited black people or people who refused to swear allegiance to the revolution from owning guns. In the years following the War of 1812, some states even banned carrying concealed weapons.

That guns were regulated during the Founders’ lifetimes should not be surprising. The Second Amendment frames gun rights in terms of trained militia service, rather than in terms of an absolute right:

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.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens meticulously documents the legal and historical context for a military framing of the Second Amendment in his District of Columbia v. Heller dissent. He notes, among other things, that the Second Amendment’s drafting history discusses gun rights in terms of military service, not in terms of an individual right. At the time, the Framers’ main concern was that Congress would disarm the militias. The Second Amendment prevented that.

Stevens also points out that James Madison was working with numerous proposed amendments while crafting the Second Amendment’s final wording. Some of these proposed amendments were much broader and more clearly established an individual right to own a gun. Madison instead chose the wording that placed gun rights in terms of military service.

So the Founding Fathers were aware of existing gun regulations and also couched the Second Amendment in terms of military service and states’ rights.

However, the history of gun laws in the United States does not end there. Americans continued to pass gun laws where and when they deemed necessary. Take the “Wild West,” for instance. Although films often portray the American West as a lawless place plagued by gunslingers and outlaws, the truth is actually quite different. Gunfights were rare, but gun laws were not. Frontier towns often banned concealed carry and required visitors to leave their guns with the town marshal until they departed.

In fact, according to Adam Winkler, a Constitutional law professor at UCLA:

Frontier towns in the west — places like Deadwood, S.D., and Tombstone, Ariz. — had the most restrictive gun laws in the nation… And these laws were enforced. The illegal carrying of a firearm was the second most common basis for arrests in the old west — right behind drunk and disorderly conduct. Gun violence was also rare, and gunfights extraordinary. Frontier towns averaged less than two homicides per year.

The infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral actually broke out because law enforcement sought to enforce a Tombstone ordinance banning people from carrying firearms in the town.

Americans have passed gun laws throughout history when they felt the situation demanded it. It seems that pragmatic gun regulations are as American as the right to bear arms.

FURTHER READING

“Nation’s founders balanced gun rights with public safety,” Adam Winkler, UCLA Today.

“The Secret History of Guns,” Adam Winkler, The Atlantic.

“District of Columbia v. Heller: Stevens Dissent,” Justice John Paul Stevens.

“Gun laws were tougher in old Tombstone,” Bob Drogin, LA Times.

“Breyer: Founding Fathers Would Have Allowed Restrictions on Guns,” Fox News.

 

The New Republican Dream

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Once upon a time, the Republican Party in America stood for balanced budgets, efficient government, and private enterprise. No more. To be sure, you will still hear many Republican candidates give lip service to such ideals, but their actions in office tell quite a different story. The GOP of today does not stand so much for small government as it does for no government at all, and it hopes to achieve this new American Dream through a systematic wrecking of the nation’s finances.

But before I delve into the details, I should first say that I want the Republican Party to succeed. Not the Republican Party of today, of course. I would prefer not to ruin the lives of countless Americans just to prove an ideological point. Rather, I would like to see the party welcome back the pragmatic centrists it has expelled — the Eisenhower and Rockefeller Republicans. The GOP seems to have wholly abandoned the legacy of the first post-New Deal Republican president. With a unified government (the presidency and both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans), many rightwingers wanted to see President Eisenhower attempt to roll back the New Deal. Instead, he launched a massive infrastructure project (the interstate highway system). A true believer in balanced budgets, he actually sought to pay for his initiatives by cutting military spending and keeping tax rates at levels that would sustain his administration’s expenditures.

The heart of Old Republican dogma — the balanced budget — predates Ike. Actually, it was not exclusively Republican — it was the general consensus, before John Maynard Keynes revolutionized economic theory and described how running deficits during recessions (and surpluses during booms) could help smooth out economic cycles. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt (in the earlier part of his presidency) both sought to balance their budgets, as did Coolidge and Harding before them. Tax cuts were good, if they could get them, but secondary to managing the nation’s finances responsibly. Put another way, when faced with a choice of either chronic deficits or a balanced budget, members of the Old GOP chose the latter.

Things started to change in the late 1970s, however. In California, citizens passed a ballot initiative, Proposition 13, that made it virtually impossible to raise taxes. The Reagan revolution added to the momentum, as the president called for and received massive tax cut legislation. One would (rightfully) conclude that such large tax cuts, even if spending remained flat, would result in huge deficits and increasing debt. But emerging New Republican orthodoxy placed less emphasis on balancing budgets and maintaining fiscal responsibility than at cutting the size of government and slashing taxes, at all costs.

The argument was that balancing budgets would necessarily follow cutting taxes. At a 1980 debate, Reagan framed it like this: “Well, if you’ve got a kid that’s extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker.”

The problem is, drastic tax reductions necessitate similar spending decreases to balance budgets. Although some revenue from the cut can be recouped thanks to increased economic activity, the ultimate effect is a net loss of revenue. (This economic consensus — that tax cuts do not “pay for themselves” — stands in stark contrast to the talking points of many GOP politicians). A huge loss of revenue, when coupled with the fact that any sizable cuts would necessarily affect politically popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending, leads to an untenable situation in which tax cuts are not followed by spending cuts.

Whereas American appetite for tax cuts is voracious, neither citizens nor politicians have had much appetite for cutting programs that comprise the bulk of U.S. spending: Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and defense spending. To the contrary, spending in these areas has trended upward while taxes have trended down. Reagan, for instance, ramped up military spending to bankrupt the Soviet Union while simultaneously slashing income tax rates. The result was huge, chronic deficits, and the Reagan Administration subsequently signed off on numerous tax increases. In fact, the Reagan Administration presided over largest peacetime tax increases in American history, as well as a tax reform that broadened the tax base and removed many deductions from the tax code, effectively raising revenue. The George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton Administrations similarly increased taxes and cut spending. These actions were driven by the very real need to address budgetary issues.

As this graph from Wonkblog shows, spending cuts were dominant in the Bush and Clinton deficit reduction packages (and were likely made easier due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War).

Today, however, New Republican dogma is to avoid any and all tax increases. Republican candidates clamor to take tax activist Grover Norquist’s “no tax pledge,” effectively tying their hands once in office. Break the pledge, and prepare to be bludgeoned by political adversaries in your next campaign. This, of course, sets the stage for a frozen Congress — how can you hope to govern if one side of the aisle is completely unwilling to yield any ground?

Note that every  Republican presidential candidate in a 2012 debate indicated they would walk away from a debt deal that cut spending $10 for every $1 tax increase. Now read this, from the Economist:

Put simply, no fiscal consolidation that the IMF has judged to be successful relied on public spending cuts for more than 83% of its impact. In successful fiscal consolidations, tax rises accounted for between 17% and 33% of deficit-reduction measures.

Deficit reduction is generally more successful when spending cuts are more numerous than tax increases. Reducing the deficit wholly through spending cuts is unprecedented, not to mention impossible, politically. There is a reason why Social Security, Medicare, and defense are known as “third rails” — you touch them, you die. Even were it possible, it is not clear that such a solution would be desirable or advisable. And, indeed, polls have shown that large majorities of Americans recognize the need for both tax increases and spending cuts.

Still, even tax increases to help balance the budget are anathema to the New GOP. Their primary goal, despite what they might say, is not to get America’s fiscal house in order. It is, in Grover Norquist’s words, to get government so small that you can “strangle it in a bathtub.” And to do this, they have employed a strategy known as “starving the beast” — cutting revenues to force a budgetary crisis, and then demanding that tax increases play little to no role in the fiscal consolidation.

This is the party that wants to claim the mantle of ‘fiscal responsibility.’

Three words: I like Ike.


Beck Check: The Roaring Twenties

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Glenn Beck spent a portion of his show on February 9, 2010 discussing President Coolidge and the Roaring Twenties. I analyzed his claims about Coolidge in an earlier blog post, and have returned to fact check his points on the Roaring Twenties.

He begins by calling the Roaring Twenties “arguably the most prosperous 8 years this country has ever seen,” credits Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon’s tax cuts, and cites innovation as evidence of this prosperity.

In 1920, there were only 5,800 people who had ever flown on an airplane. By 1930, it was seventy times that amount. RCA changed the world with the radio. Along with the radio came another invention or another idea: advertising. Now you could hear Babe Ruth hitting home runs anywhere in the country while someone was telling you about a product. Thomas Edison brought us movies in 1880s. You know when they really started to take off? In the 20s the true modern era motion picture arrived.

And so on. But were the Roaring Twenties really all Beck makes them out to be?

First, let’s deal with length. Beck notes that the economic expansion of the 1920s lasted 8 years — how does that compare with other U.S. expansionary periods? Of course, this depends on who you ask. For instance, the Post World War II economy could last from 1945 to 1960 or until the early 1970s. The Reagan boom beginning in 1982 could last until 1990, or it could have been part of a much broader boom that included the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton economies, ending in 2001. James Pethokoukis, writing in the U.S. News and World Report, even goes so far as to proclaim that this expansion lasted from 1982 to 2007 — that’s 25 years!

Of course, these booms were not uninterrupted. There were recessions in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and again in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Perhaps the 1920s were the United States’ longest uninterrupted boom? Not quite — there were recessions during the Roaring Twenties as well.

A peek at the National Bureau of Economic Research’s website, which has an excellent list of the U.S. economy’s expansions and contractions, shows that the U.S.’s longest uninterrupted expansion occurred from March 1991 to March 2001, from the end of the first Bush Administration through the Clinton years and into the beginning of the second Bush Administration. The second longest uninterrupted expansion occurred from February 1961 to December 1969 (the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon years), the third from November 1982 to July 1990 (the Reagan and Bush years), and so on. The longest uninterrupted expansion during the Roaring Twenties period lasted from July 1924 to October 1926 — not even in the top 10 for length of uninterrupted booms.

Clearly, the Roaring Twenties were not the longest boom in American history, but (as with all aspects of life) quantity and quality do not always correspond. So how about a comparison of content?

Let’s compare some indicators with similar ones from the three longest booms in American history (1991-2001, 1961-1969, and 1982-1990). First, we’ll look at the obvious — Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (the country’s economic output).

And the unemployment rates…

Thus, GDP growth was better in the three booms we’ve been examining than in the Roaring Twenties, while unemployment seems to have been lower in the Roaring Twenties. Ironically, the minimum wage may be to blame for at least part of the higher unemployment rates of the later three booms. The minimum wage was first established as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It was then re-established in 1938.

One of the economic consequences of the minimum wage is to increase unemployment. Think of it this way: a business owner has a certain amount of money available to spend on employees. If the amount he must pay his employees rises, but the amount of money he has available to pay them does not, he must fire someone. This force was absent in the 1920s, perhaps partially accounting for the lower unemployment rate.

Another aspect of the booms is income inequality. One of the ways this is measured is known as the GINI Index. The Gini Coefficient measures income inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 being absolute equality and 1 being absolute inequality. The following graph displays Gini estimates for the 1920s to the 1990s.

Unfortunately, the late 1990s and 2000s are not included in this graph, but the data shows that the GINI Index for families continued to rise, and even reached its highest reported point yet in 2006 at 0.444. As the graph shows, GINI estimates for the 1920s start somewhere around 0.425 and then quickly rise throughout the decade, peaking at around 0.5 before relaxing to 0.45 and then rising again to about 0.475 to finish.

This high level of inequality stands in stark contrast to the much lower levels enjoyed during the 1961-1969 boom, where the GINI Coefficient began at 0.374 and finished at 0.349.  Indeed, the lowest reported level of income inequality ever occurred in 1968, at 0.348.

The 1982-1990 boom featured greater inequality than the 60s, but still lower than either the 20s. The GINI Coefficient began at 0.380 in 1982 and stayed in the high 0.3s for the duration. It peaked at 0.401 in 1989 and finished at 0.396 in 1990.

Family income inequality increased yet again during the 1991-2001 expansion, starting at 0.397 and climbing to 0.435 at the end, its highest year. This 2001 level is higher than estimates from the beginning of the 20s, but lower than most other years of the Roaring Twenties.

Emmanuel Saez examined the share of total income of top decile (that is, the top 10th) and also the top 0.01% of earners in his paper, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States.” As the graphs show below, he found that the top 10% of earners held almost 50% of total income in the United States by the end of the Roaring Twenties. This is almost matched by the high level of income held by the top 10% at the end of the 1991-2001 boom (and exceeded in 2007, as an aside). The 1960s boom seems to be the most equitable, followed by the 1982-1990 boom, which saw increasing inequality, but not at the levels of either the Roaring Twenties or the 1991-2001 boom. Examinations of the share of the top 0.01% yield similar conclusions.

One of the points Beck makes when discussing the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties is the innovation associated with the period. He appears to describe innovation in terms of something once great, now long lost. Yet innovation remains a strong part of our capitalist system. Beck awes his audience by telling them about the great leaps in technology that were made in the 1920s, and how the long-lost capitalism of Coolidge and Mellon made expensive technologies affordable.

But aren’t these processes still occurring today? Consider, for a moment, computers. In 1984, 8.2 percent of U.S. households had a computer. By 2000, 51 percent of households had computers. That’s an increase of a whopping 522 percent! This is how capitalism works — competition drives down prices. The Roaring Twenties do not hold a monopoly on innovation and advancements in technology.

Of course, other than simply listing the accomplishments of these various years (which are many) and the price drops as technology advances, how does one measure innovation? I’ve sorted through copyright registration and population figures to derive some glimpse at innovation in these various booms. The following graph lists the number of copyright registrations in the beginning and ending years of each boom, the populations of those years, and then the registration figures divided by the population (revealing how many copyrights were registered per person in the United States for those years).

Not only do the number of copyright registrations rise with each successive boom, but they also rise per person — a real increase. This is with the notable exception of the 1991-2001 boom, in which copyright registration figures actually decrease in per person terms, though they remain above figures for the Roaring Twenties and the 1961-1969 boom.

Productivity gains, too, may be some indicator of innovation, as new technologies make manufacturing more efficient.

These estimates show productivity gains in each of the four booms, with the average yearly percentage change in productivity in the Roaring Twenties and the 1990s booms being almost a full percentage point higher than those of the 60s and 80s booms.

Perhaps we can see, through these somewhat rudimentary lenses, the steady progression of innovation.

As far as comparing booms goes, a paper by economist Robert J. Gordon notes the similarities of the 1990s and 1920s booms:

Growth in real GDP, real GDP per capita, employment, and productivity were almost identical, the conventionally measured unemployment rate was identical in 1928 and 1999, inflation was negligible (1920s) or low (1990s), and the late-1920s stock market boom is the only such episode in the century that comes close to the stock market’s ebullience in the late 1990s. Like the 1990s, the 1920s witnessed prosperity, a productivity revival, low unemployment, and low inflation. Both decades featured an explosion of applications of a fundamental “General Purpose Technology,” electricity and the internal combustion engine in the 1920s and computer hardware, software, and networking communications technology in the 1990s. Both decades appear to mock the existence of a Phillips-curve tradeoff between inflation and unemployment.

Of course, these figures are limited in that they are solely economic indicators. Bobby Kennedy noted the inadequacy of such measurements in 1968:

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

To provide a broader picture of the four booms, I’ve examined three other indicators — life expectancy gains, 5 to 7 year old enrollment (in school) as a percentage of the 5 to 7 year old population, and high school graduation rates and gains.

As would be expected, steady gains were made over time in life expectancy. However, averages of yearly percentage change show that the greatest gains were made during the 1991-2001 boom (0.22%), and the worst gains were made during the 1961-1969 boom (0.05%). The averages show a decrease actually occurred during the Roaring Twenties (-0.52).

As seen from the graph, the lower levels of enrollment in the Roaring Twenties (about ten percentage points below the 1980s/1990s levels of enrollment) also provided greater room for improvement, and, indeed, the Roaring Twenties saw greater gains in 5 to 7 year old enrollment as a percentage of that population (1.27%, on average). The 1960s boom also saw a high level of improvement, on average, as did the 1980s (the data for the 1980s also shows the movements of the baby boom generation out of secondary school and into college). Finally, the 1991-2001 boom, although maintaining a high level of enrollment in the 97%-98% range, saw a decrease in the yearly percent change of enrollment, on average (-0.08%).

(Quick note — the rounding to one decimal place should account for the oddity that occurs in 1967-1968, when the percentage change is -0.05 while the graduates as a percentage of the 17 year old population appears to stay the same).

Again, the low levels of the Roaring Twenties (about 50 percentage points below 60s levels) provided a greater room for improvement (6.55% yearly percentage increase on average) — and it took advantage of that room, increasing the percentage of the 17 year old population that graduated from high school every year of the boom! Although the other booms saw higher levels of graduation, none of them can boast continuous improvement (the 1960s boom saw great gains, as well, but also some declines). In fact, the 1991-2001 boom saw a steady decline, before leveling out just below its beginning 1991 level.

So the picture, on a whole, is mixed. Perhaps the comparison itself is fundamentally flawed because of vast differences of the times. The Roaring Twenties were not the longest boom in American history, nor were they greatest, in terms of GDP and output. They saw the highest levels of income inequality out of the four booms we’ve examined (though the 1991-2001 boom comes close) but also a lower level of unemployment. The life expectancy retreated a bit, on average, though schooling enrollment and graduation made real gains. Productivity in the manufacturing sector, also, was high, though lower than the 1991-2001 boom, and copyright registrations were lower per person than in the three other booms.

The true picture is complicated, and for Beck to frame the Roaring Twenties as the high water mark of United States economic history (“arguably the most prosperous 8 years this country has ever seen”) is simplistic and dishonest. Nevertheless, the Roaring Twenties were a prosperous period in United States history that, according to the data examined, saw numerous gains in various aspects of life.


Band-Aid Plan To Fix Health Care Won’t Work

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(Published in the Main Line Times and the Delco Times)

As the attempt to reform our health-care system crescendos, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the debate lost its way. Perhaps it never truly began in the right direction.

Between the fear-mongering and the screaming, it seems some of the most pressing issues – medical inflation and warped incentives – have been sidelined. And why? Perhaps because they are more complex. These issues require quite a bit of explanation and historical context, which doesn’t always fly too well in a sound-bite culture.

One of the main problems regarding our health-care industry is its lack of any organization. There was no grand design in its creation; it is a Frankenstein monster, cobbled and patched carelessly together since its birth in the wage controls of the World War II era, with little regard for consequences.

Yet, any grand design is practically doomed from the beginning, as the only two viable options – a single-payer system or a complete overhaul of incentives and the creation of a truly free market – are both met with opposition. Consequently, we receive a bill that is the worst of both worlds.

True, the House bill does work at creating a marketplace in the health insurance exchanges (an important, but underplayed, provision), but it also includes a public option. Supposedly, the public option is meant to control prices by adding a more virtuous competition into the marketplace, but when you look at the details – its limited eligibility, and the fact that prices will be set by negotiations with health care providers – it doesn’t seem as if it will control prices at all. After all, medical inflation has not left Medicare and Medicaid, two government plans, unscathed.

So, who is to blame? The Democrats or the Republicans? Both. To their credit, the Democrats have actually gotten the ball rolling on health-care reform and have put forth a bill, though their proposal remains flawed.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are too busy trying to give President Barack Obama his “Waterloo” (this can be seen in the misnomer “Obamacare,” which would be more accurately titled “Congresscare”) and preaching about fictional provisions such as nonexistent “death panels” to actually provide legitimate criticism and a legitimate alternative.

Both accept money from the big health insurance and pharmaceutical giants and allow them to actively craft the bill as well.

We, the citizens, are also to blame. We are too easily led by the talking heads to one particular conclusion. A single-payer system is not the devil, and it does not ration care any more than our current system does. Any system we adopt will require a give-and-take.

A single-payer system will cover everyone, unburden businesses that pay for employees’ health care (and thus help small businesses). It will purge the system of waste, but everyone will be required to pay through taxes and waiting lines — secondary, optional care will be a bit longer (though primary care may very well be shorter, as it is in Britain).

Remember, the government is already inextricably involved in our health-care system. A complete rebuilding of the health-care free market, hand in hand with other reforms (like tort reform), can control prices through innovative market forces and reshaped incentives. Both plans are bold and both have their strong and weak points. What we can’t afford is another plan that simply slaps a Band Aid on the issue and kicks it along to the next generation.