Today’s Washington Post has a lengthy article about crime and firearms in the District of Columbia and in neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Here is the most important sentence from the article:  “In the national gun-control debate, a salient fact often has been overlooked: Legislative efforts aimed at curtailing the availability of the most lethal weapons merely play at the margins of this huge gun population.”  It hasn’t been overlooked here, but, yes, overlooked by Obama, Biden, Bloomberg, and others pushing gun control proposals that will not really address homicides.

Here are a few other points from the Post analysis:

• Only a small fraction of the firearms seized by the police might fall within a definition for so-called ‘assault weapons.’: “Far more typical for local police is the matter-of-fact recovery of a handgun, which passes with little or no public notice. Handguns account for about eight of every 10 firearms confiscated in the analysis period.  Nearly 70 percent of the handguns seized were semiautomatic pistols, most often 9mm models, with magazines of varying capacity.
• “Homicides by gun in the city and the county are down by about 70 percent over the past six years.”  Recall that city officials were alarmed when the Supreme Court ruled the city’s strict gun control laws unconstitutional five years ago.  Then-Mayor Fenty said he was “outraged” that the courts ruled that his constituents would be able to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense.  Fenty said crime would be going up.
•  “The vast majority of the millions of guns in circulation nationwide will never become crime guns.”
• According to the ATF, the firearms that do become crime guns have been on the streets over a dozen years. “Recovered guns have often changed hands multiple times.”  These black market transactions are going to take place—even if there are new regulations concerning background checks.  The Post article relates an incident where the police were executing a warrant at a residence and a man “sprinted from the yard, tossing guns from his pants: a Cobray M11, a 9mm semiautomatic machine pistol, a .45-caliber minimax Llama handgun, and a Glock 19. Police arrested the man, a felon on probation, and found a rusted handgun and rifle at his home.”  The legal code said he wasn’t supposed to have those guns, but he did.

Bottom line: Gun control proposals have no significant impact. They generally restrict the actions of persons who care about staying within the rules. After controls are enacted, some politicians are surprised by the fact that criminals are able to obtain guns and use them to commit crimes. Jerome Earles, a felon quoted in the story, said he carries a gun around even though he knows it is illegal to do so. “It ain’t right, but I carry my gun” he said.

Cato will be hosting an event on the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the Heller case on June 4.  For additional Cato scholarship about firearms and crime, go here.

I regularly cross America’s borders, so I’m happy that a new court ruling will make it harder for border agents to search and seize travelers’ computers.

In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially exempted border searches from the Fourth Amendment.  Only in the most extreme cases, such as detaining or strip-searching a traveler, is “reasonable suspicion” of criminal conduct necessary.

Only once in decades of travel have I been forced to hand over my computer.  But thousands of other Americans have had to do so over the years, and it is much worse when the government takes the computer for a “forensic” review elsewhere. 

However, in April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in U.S. v. Cotterman, that while a simple search involving a quick review of a laptop likely is constitutional, a more detailed review “transformed [the search] into something far different.”  Thus, “reasonable suspicion” was required.

The dissenters complained about treating differently someone who hid digital child pornography on his computer and “hid” printed child pornography in his briefcase.  But as I pointed out in my new Forbes online column, there are important differences:

One is that international travelers know their belongings are subject to visual search.  A briefcase and printed materials also are inherently less secure against private snoops as well as government investigators than password-protected computer files.

Moreover, as the appellate majority observed, “The amount of private information carried by international travelers was traditionally circumscribed by the size of the traveler’s luggage or automobile.  That is no longer the case.  Electronic devices are capable of storing warehouses full of information.”  While it is easy to separate the business and personal as well as the innocent and incriminating among personal effects, it is not so easy to similarly divide computer files.  Concluded the judges:  “A person’s digital life ought not be hijacked simply by crossing a border.”

Very true.

Of course, Cotterman’s offenses were horrid.  But the court concluded that “Reasonable suspicion is a modest, workable standard that is already applied.”

Catching criminals is important.  However, it is a free society that we are protecting.  Traveling internationally should not require sacrificing one’s basic freedoms.

Most times when I write about campaign finance laws, the context is a presidential race or Supreme Court case.  But these restrictions on political speech – the protection of which is the main purpose of the First Amendment – abound in local politics and state courts even without FEC intervention or presidential finger-wagging.

Here’s a case from California that literally just came across my transom:

Last year, John Mlnarik ran for Santa Clara City Council.  Mlnarik is the sole shareholder of a small business, a law firm with seven employees – a fact revealed in several mandatory campaign disclosures.  Because his money is partly tied up in his business, along with two personal loans to his campaign he also made a third loan (for about $6000) via his business.  He fully disclosed the loan and its source.

More than three months later, after the election, the City of Santa Clara issued a citation against Mlnarik for receiving an excessive loan “from a third-party source.”  Yet the City Code also states:  “For purposes of the contribution limits … [a]n individual and any corporation in which the individual owns a controlling interest, shall be treated as one person … . Nothing … shall prohibit a candidate from making unlimited contributions to his/her own cam­paign.”  And under state law incorporated into the City Code, an individual’s income includes his business’s income; an individual’s real property includes his business’s real property; and an individual’s investments include his business’s investments.

Given this logical overlay, and the fact that his sole ownership and the loan’s source were both fully disclosed, Mlnarik thought he was following the law.  After all, as the Supreme Court reiterated in 2008, “the use of personal funds … reduces the candidate’s dependence on outside contributions and thereby counteracts the coercive pressures and attendant risks of abuse to which … contribution limitations are directed.”  (Davis v. FEC, quoting Buckley v. Valeo).

The City, however, cited the following from its Code:  “[U]nless a term is specifically defined in this chapter, or the contrary is stated (or clearly appears from the context), the definitions set forth in [a portion of the State Government Code] shall govern the interpretation of the provisions of this chapter.”   The State Code, in turn, includes a 192-word definition of “candidate,” which – along with many other possible definitions – states that “ ‘Candidate’ means an individual who is listed on the ballot.”  Thus, while Mlnarik was free to make unlimited loans to his campaign, he supposedly violated the law by making a campaign loan via his wholly owned business, which itself wasn’t a “candidate.”

Mlnarik argued that the City law was unconstitutionally vague – after all, how is one to know whether a term’s contrary meaning “clearly appears from the context”?  (If it does, then the State law’s definition of “candidate” must not be used – and there would be no case against Mlnarik.)  As noted above, the “context” was a law that repeatedly makes an equivalence between a person and his or her business; moreover, the law has eight statutory purposes, three of which (Mlnarik argued) were actually advanced by allowing sole business-owners to contribute to their own campaigns via their business, while none of the eight purposes was thwarted.  If that’s not the contrary “clearly appearing,” what is?

Nevertheless, the City refused to drop the case, and the trial judge denied that the phrase “the term[’s] … contrary … clearly appears from the context” was unconstitutionally vague (in a quasi-criminal case!).  Mlnarik is now attempting to appeal further, but he has been warned that state law may not permit an additional appeal – even though his constitutional argument couldn’t be heard by the administrative hearing officer, and thus has been heard only once, and then only by one judge.

So not only is there an underlying First Amendment violation, but there are due process infringements squared or cubed.  And all this because a candidate for office “loaned himself” $6,000 and fully disclosed all aspects of the transaction.

You can’t make this stuff up!