Believe it or not, guns can and do help ensure personal safety or at least provide an insurance policy of sorts toward the time one might want or need to ensure your or your family’s personal safety even if you don’t actually plug some human varmint dead.

Certain anti-gun folk seem to sincerely believe that the only reason Second Amendment advocates want to have a gun, or want other people to have the right to have a gun, is because guns are so great at killing people; that a gun not used to kill someone isn’t really worth having. But it isn’t true.

But we have plenty of reason to believe that Americans use a gun in the service of deterring a crime or potential crime over 2 million times a year. That does not require killing someone with the gun—about three-fourths of the time the gun does not need to be fired much less kill to deter. That should be blindingly obvious to anyone not looking for some new “scientific” excuse to disarm Americans. 

The opposing armies in the [defensive gun use] war are roughly staked out with these dueling positions: 1) “There are a really large number of defensive gun uses, so many that any reasonable person would have to admit that private gun ownership is some kind of social good” and 2) “While there may be a fair number of DGUs, the number is dwarfed by the number of violent crimes committed with guns, so never mind the people who save themselves with guns, we should let politicians concentrate not on speculative and uncertain defensive uses, but on the crimes and loss of life and limb that we can see and count which accompanies gun possession and use.”

Left out of any policy decision based on these sorts of macrostatistics, as always, is how much having a gun mattered to the specific individual person able to defend himself.

However large the number of DGUs, or how small; and however large the number of accidents or tragedies caused by guns, or how small, the right and ability to choose for yourself how to defend yourself and your family—at home or away from it—remains, and that numerical debate should have no particular bearing on it.

My King v. Burwell recap is up at SCOTUSblog. Excerpt:

In King v. Burwell, all nine Supreme Court Justices agreed on one thing. The King challengers claimed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) authorizes the Internal Revenue Service to issue tax credits and impose the related penalties only “through an Exchange established by the State,” and not through exchanges established by the federal government. “Petitioners’ arguments about the plain meaning of Section 36B are strong,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, and their interpretation is “the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.” Justice Antonin Scalia agreed, finding the meaning of that phrase “so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.”

There was no dissent about the plain meaning of the phrase “through an Exchange established by the State.” All seven of the other Justices joined one of those two opinions. Nor was there dissent about the fact that that phrase, used repeatedly in the statute, is the only provision of the Act that speaks directly to the question presented. Not a single Justice lent credence to the government’s assertions that this was a meritless case, or one that the Court should never have accepted. Nor was there dissent about the consequences of that provision’s plain meaning in the face of broad state resistance to the ACA. All agreed that withholding tax credits in the thirty-four states with federal exchanges could lead to adverse selection in those states, with premiums climbing higher and higher in a “death spiral.”

Where disagreement emerged was over the question of whether the former should alter the latter – whether the potential for adverse consequences “compels” the Court to disregard the universally acknowledged meaning of the operative text. The Court split six to three in favor of rewriting plain text, and rendering the requirement “established by the State” a nullity…

Roberts managed to conclude that “by the State” could be read to mean “by the federal government,” even though he acknowledged Congress explicitly defined “State” in a way “that does not include the Federal Government.” So perhaps spending more time with the statute would not have helped.

The King ruling is actually much, much worse than this excerpt suggests. Read the whole thing. For a reference guide to King, click here.

Negotiations in Brussels to resolve the Greek fiscal crisis appear deadlocked, with Athens heading toward default. German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that Greece make a deal before the markets open Monday. The Eurogroup will meet again tomorrow on the issue.

The European Union was supposed to create a de facto United States of Europe. But after last January’s Greek election it was obvious that the EU does not speak for Greece, or perhaps anyone else other than the Eurocrats, an amalgam of bureaucrats, academics, journalists, businessmen, politicians, and lobbyists who dominate Brussels.

To most EU leaders common people are an impediment. The Eurocrats reflexively intone “more Europe” in answer to every question, but voters increasingly are supporting protest parties, some populist, some worse.

Advocates weren’t shy about their ambitions. In 1992 German Chancellor Helmut Kohl predicted “creation of what the founding fathers of modern Europe dreamed of after the war, the United States of Europe.”

The Euro was one step in the unification process. A more powerful EU was expected.

Alas, the organization has three presidents, who compete for attention and authority. The parliament has only passing connection to the people of Europe. No European would die for Brussels, not even the Belgians, who barely averted the break-up of their badly divided nation.

But the EU carries on, secure in the support of the vast majority of the continent’s elite. The Euro crisis has shaken this political foundation, however.

Until January the popular revolt was contained. But then radical left-wing Syriza won a near majority. The new government rejected the Brussels consensus and default threatens, which most likely would mean a Greek exit from the Eurozone (“Grexit”) and possibly even from the EU.

However the crisis is resolved, the march toward ever greater power in Brussels appears over. Euroskeptic and radical parties are on the rise.

Among the most spectacular Euro villains?

1. Helmut Kohl. The first chancellor of a united Germany, Kohl agreed to sacrifice the legendary German Mark for the Euro.

2. The Greek political establishment. Both the dominant parties, Pasok and New Democracy, profited from the sclerotic and venal state they created.

3. Greece’s creditors. They lent money at near-German interest rates to a nation unlike Germany.

4. The International Monetary Fund. Originally created to support a system of fixed exchange rates, it has become one of the primary financiers of Greece.

5. Alexis Tsipris and Syriza. This disparate movement of the left believed in fiscal alchemy—more government spending, taxing, and regulating would turn into a roaring economy.

6. The European Central Bank. The ECB shifted from economics to politics when it began buying the bonds of deeply indebted European states, most notably Greece, to subsidize the improvident.

7. The Greek people. Euro-subsidized borrowing allowed them to prosper despite their economy being littered with bloated bureaucracies and privileged cartels, and hamstrung with debilitating regulations and profiteering politics.

8. The French political elite. France’s people suffer from stultifying state controls and high taxes. The right is as statist as the left.

9. The European Parliament. More often than not voters use EP contests as an opportunity to protest against unpopular rulers at home.

10. Angela Merkel. She has spent her years in office doing as little consequential as possible. A Eurocrat to the core, she opined: “We have a common currency, but no common political and economic union. And this is exactly what we must change.”

The European story is reaching its climax and no one knows how it is going to end. Greece and the European establishment might yet come to terms and the Euro might stagger along. But this almost certainly is not the Eurozone’s last crisis.

As I point out in Forbes: “It appears that many Europeans have had just about as much Europe as they can stand. In coming months and years the debate is likely to be over how much and how fast they can roll back ‘Europe’.”

Just because today’s opinion was expected by all doesn’t make it any less momentous. A five-justice majority writing through Justice Kennedy finds that there’s a constitutional right for gay and lesbian couples to get marriage licenses — at least so long as everyone else gets them. (We’ll set aside the question of why the government is involved in marriage in the first place for a later time.)

In sometimes-soaring rhetoric Kennedy explains why the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of both substantive liberty and equality means there is no further valid reason to deny this particular institution, the benefit of these particular laws, to gay and lesbian couples.

Not surprisingly, all four conservative justices dissented. Indeed, it’s interesting that each of them wrote his own dissent, each riffing on the same theme. That is, regardless of your views of how to define marriage this is a decision that should be left to the people in their states, not to courts.

Chief Justice John Roberts in particular said that people who benefit from today’s ruling should celebrate it, should celebrate this development in our society. But make no bones about it, this doesn’t relate to the Constitution. (Where was this principled logic yesterday?)

In any event, this will be a case that is studied for generations. There aren’t clear, bright-line rules about levels of scrutiny or any other legalisms — avoiding that artifice is all to the good — and it’s a landmark ruling that shows how far we’ve come. It was in 2003 that the Court had to invalidate the criminalization of gay sex and a mere 12 years later it commands state officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Good for the Court — and I echo Justice Kennedy’s hope that both sides now respect each other’s liberties and the rule of law.

Justice Anthony Kennedy has been called the most libertarian member of the Supreme Court (though Ilya Shapiro finds his libertarianism “faint-hearted”). So maybe it’s no surprise that in the Lawrence (2003), Windsor (2013), and Obergefell (today!) cases, Kennedy wrote a majority decision finding that gay people had rights to liberty and equal protection of the law.

As I note in The Libertarian Mind and in an article just posted at the venerable gay magazine The Advocate, libertarians and their classical liberal forebears have been ahead of the curve on gay rights for more than two centuries: 

As the Supreme Court prepares for a possibly historic ruling, most of the country now supports gay marriage. Libertarians were there first. Indeed John Podesta, a top adviser to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton and founder of the Center for American Progress, noted in 2011 that you probably had to have been a libertarian to have supported gay marriage 15 years earlier.

Just seven years ago, in the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton all opposed gay marriage. The Libertarian Party endorsed gay rights with its first platform in 1972 — the same year the Democratic nominee for vice president referred to “queers” in a Chicago speech. In 1976 the Libertarian Party issued a pamphlet calling for an end to antigay laws and endorsing full marriage rights.

That’s no surprise, of course. Libertarians believe in individual rights for all people and equality before the law. Of course they recognized the rights of gay people before socialists, conservatives, or big-government liberals.

In the article, and more so in the book, I talked about some of the history of classical liberal-libertarian thinking on gay rights in earlier centuries, perhaps beginning with the pioneering criminologist and reformer Cesare Beccaria in 1764.

The Declaration of Independence promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to Americans. Of course, not everybody enjoyed those rights at first. But eventually those ideas took root and led to the abolition of slavery and later to civil rights and women’s rights. It took even longer for people to take seriously the idea of homosexual activity as a matter of personal freedom and to recognize gays and lesbians as a group deserving of rights.

It was the classical liberals, the ancestors of libertarians, who first came to that recognition. From Montesquieu and Adam Smith in the 18th century to the Nobel Prize–winning economist F.A. Hayek in 1960, it was libertarians who insisted that (in Hayek’s words) “private practice among adults, however abhorrent it may be to the majority, is not a proper subject for coercive action for a state whose object is to minimize coercion.”

More in The Libertarian Mind and at the Advocate.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced today that he was canceling Baltimore’s Red light-rail line while approving suburban Washington’s Purple Line. However, that approval comes with some caveats that could still mean the wasteful transit project will never be built.

The latest cost estimate for the Purple Line is nearly $2.5 billion for a project that, if done with buses, would cost less than 2 percent as much. The Purple Line finance plan calls for the federal government to put up $900 million, the state to immediately add $738 million, and then for the state to borrow another $810 million.

Instead, Governor Hogan says Maryland will contribute only $168 million to the project, and that local governments–meaning, mainly, Montgomery County but also Prince Georges County–will have to come up with the rest. It isn’t clear from press reports whether Hogan is willing to commit Maryland taxpayers to repay $810 million worth of loans, but it is clear that local taxpayers will have to pay at least half a billion dollars more than they were expecting.

Local Purple Line advocates claim that the line will pay for itself by increasing property values along the route and therefore property tax revenues. In fact, this is a zero-sum game: any increases along the route would be matched by decreases in property values elsewhere in the county. But from the rhetoric, it seems likely that they will propose to use tax-increment financing–which takes all of the tax revenues from increased property values–to pay the county share of the Purple Line. But that may not even be enough to cover the cost.

So it is possible that the Purple Line will never get built. That would be a win for Maryland taxpayers; a win for commuters, because the Purple Line is predicted to increase traffic congestion; and a win for transit riders, because the Purple Line is so expensive it will almost certain force Maryland Transit to cut bus service.

Some say that today’s decision maintains business as usual for Obamacare, taxpayers and consumers. The Supreme Court upheld the subsidies (also known as the Premium Tax Credit) to consumers in the 34 states that rely on the federal exchange. Proponents of these subsidies argue they help keep health insurance affordable.

The subsidies lower the out-of-pocket cost to consumers who get them, but at what cost? Consider a 64-year-old consumer in Hialeah, Florida (one of the largest areas impacted by King v. Burwell) who is receiving the maximum subsidy of $7,488 per year. Of the 87 plans offered in the marketplace, 16 entail zero cost to the consumer. Premiums for these “free” plans range from $6,300 to $7,200. There is no incentive for the consumer to shop prudently from these 16 plans. The consumer does not get to keep any unused subsidy, creating incentives to choose health plans with additional features of only marginal value. The taxpayer – not the consumer – picks up the cost of the imprudent choices.

In addition to discouraging shopping based on plan value, the premium tax credit offers a set of perverse incentives, especially on the decision to earn more than 400% of the poverty line and on reporting your income for the upcoming year.

Today’s decision may very well mean business as usual, but there are serious economic issues with how the subsidy is set up.