Politics: America's Great Gun Game

I was going to file this post under "Books," but "America's Great Gun Game," by Earl McDowell, is only a book in the loosest, most academic sense of the word. That is, it's got pages, and a cover, and there's stuff printed on those pages, but what's inside isn't really worth the paper it's printed on. I ran across it sitting on the "New Release" shelf in our law school library, and I'd be remiss if I didn't give it the fisking it deserves (what's really scary is that it's in the law school library at all).

The book is pro-gun-control, but more than that, it's deceptive and poorly written. Obviously, I have a strong gun rights bias, but I can at least identify facially valid arguments that gun control works or that the Second Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to keep and bear arms. If you're going to argue for gun control, at least do so in a superficially rational way.

Case in point - the Second Amendment chapter of the book puts out McDowell's assertion that the SCOTUS "ruled five times that the Constitution does not guarantee the free and clear right to own a gun." You'd think a big point like that would have the U.S. Supreme Court cases right there, with their proper case citations (problem is, of course, that the Court has never really ruled on that exact point). Instead, McDowell cites another pro-control book for this assertion, and the whole thing is a wash.

Another fun section is the part about CCW laws. Since there really isn't any evidence that concealed weapons permit holders commit more crimes than other people (they don't, by the way), McDowell has to string biased inference after inference together to make the case against CCW. He cites the VPC report claiming 2,100 arrests in Texas over the period of five years, which doesn't tell you anything about actual convictions (on average, half the people who get arrested are never charged with anything) or the overall rate of CCW arrests vs. the larger population.

In the end, the whole thing reads like a parody of the typical VPC hyperbole, and so becomes fairly humorous for anyone with a passing knowledge of the subject. Even the cover features an ominous picture of a revolver pointed at the reader - when in doubt, go for the scare, I guess.