My March 23 Capitol Hill speech defending tax havens against fiscal protectionism is now a two-part Youtube series, complete with the powerpoint slides from my presentation. Unfortunately, we are fighting a defensive battle and the other side is making progress. If you have any suggestions for making stronger arguments for tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

ABC’s 20/20 did a hit piece on the Second Amendment and armed citizens on Friday night. The show responded to the growing sentiment that “if I only had a gun,” maybe an armed citizen could make a difference in a spree shooting such as the incidents at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. In reality, it ought to be called “if I had ONLY a gun.” Picking people without concealed carry permits to represent the armed citizen and rigging the scenario to ensure that they don’t defeat your narrative is propaganda, not journalism.

Several college students are selected to represent the “armed student” hypothetical, given some marksmanship training, and armed with training guns that shoot paint bullets. The firearms instructor who trained them plays spree shooter and storms the room. All of the students are hit before they can effectively engage the mock spree shooter.

The show handicaps this scenario in favor of the attacker in several ways. First, none of the students selected are actual concealed handgun permit holders who carry daily and practice regularly. Those with more experience get it from shooting Airsoft guns or from a form of shooting that does not involve drawing from concealment. The poor performance of the students in hitting the attacker is supposedly explained by the lack of law enforcement firearms training.

The simulation is too narrowly construed to show the full impact of an armed response. First, the experiment is limited to one armed student in the first classroom that the spree shooter hits. At Virginia Tech, the spree shooter entered several rooms, so a student in any room other than the first would be able to draw, find a position of cover and concealment, point the gun at the door, and wait for the assailant to enter. Second, the experiment supposes that an intended victim pulling a gun and shooting back, even if not immediately effective, does nothing to stop the attack.

These results don’t reflect the reality of an armed citizen responding to a spree shooter. Contrary to what the firearms instructor says, it is not “too much for a normal person” to deal with. Often, the mere confrontation with an armed response takes them out of their revenge fantasy and derails the killing spree.

Some examples:

1997, Pearl, Mississippi: A 16-year old boy stabs his mother to death, then goes to the local high school to continue his rampage with a rifle. An assistant principal hears the gunshots, retrieves a pistol from his truck, and confronts the assailant. The boy surrenders.

1998, Edinboro, Pennsylvania: A 14-year old boy opens fire at a high school graduation dance being held at a local restaurant. The restaurant owner confronts the boy with his shotgun, who surrenders.

2002, Appalachian Law School: Two law students with law enforcement and military backgrounds run to their cars, grab handguns, and stop an expelled law student on a rampage.

2005, Tyler, Texas: A distraught man ambushes his estranged wife and son as they are entering the courthouse for a child support hearing. After killing his wife and wounding several deputies, armed citizen Mark Wilson intervenes with his handgun and shoots the spree shooter. The shooter is wearing a flak jacket and kills Wilson with return fire. Wilson’s actions broke up the attack and gave law enforcement officers time to organize a response that ended with the shooter’s death. Wilson is later honored by the Texas legislature.

2005, Tacoma Mall: A spree shooter with a criminal record and five days’ worth of meth in his system opens fire at the Tacoma Mall. Concealed carry permit holder Dan McKown intervenes, but gives a verbal warning instead of shooting. McKown is shot and receives a spinal injury that leaves him paralyzed, but the shooter retreated into a store and took some hostages after being confronted. After complaining about life’s travails to his hostages for several hours, he is taken into custody and sentenced to 163 years in prison.

2007, New Life Church, Colorado: Volunteer security guard Jeanne Assam shoots a spree shooter as he enters the foyer of a church. The spree shooter’s blaze of glory is over, so he shoots and kills himself.

2008, Israel: A Palestinian man goes on a killing spree in the library of a seminary. Police officers stop at the door and do not go in after him. Student Yitzhak Dadon draws his gun and engages the shooter, wounding him. Part-time student and Israeli Army officer David Shapira blows past the cops, demanding a hat to identify him as a police officer and not the assailant, before entering the building and killing the spree shooter.

2009, Houston, Texas: Distraught woman enters her father’s workplace and shoots one man with a bow and arrow. She points a pellet gun at two employees, both concealed handgun permit holders, who shoot her. Police show up and she points the pellet gun at them. They shoot her again and take her into custody.

The scenario is also unrealistic in that the student is seated dead center in the front row, a bad move for someone trying to conceal a gun on their hip under a T‑shirt; far better in the back of the room in a corner. Plus, the spree shooter is expecting resistance and knows where the armed student will be, advantages that will not be replicated in the real world. In one iteration of the scenario, a second assailant is placed a couple of seats away from the armed student. When the armed student draws to shoot at the assailant, he is blindsided by the co-conspirator. This isn’t a result of “tunnel vision,” as the program would tell you. This is a rigging of the experiment. A second assailant in placed practically next to the armed student, while our amateur is wearing a face mask that restricts vision? No one, not even the firearms instructor playing spree shooter, would win in that situation.

There are no magical powers that accrue to a sworn officer, contrary to the anti-concealed carry propaganda this piece puts out. A recent NYPD Firearms Discharge Report shows that hit percentages for a major metropolitan police department never rise above the 50% mark, even within two yards of the assailant. Unsurprisingly, people who carry a gun and train with it consistently outperform those who do not. The FBI’s report “Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers” shows that criminals who beat cops in gunfights practiced regularly while their victims only averaged 14 hours of firearms training a year.

The only thing that stops a spree shooter is a bullet, either from their gun when they commit suicide or from someone else who intervenes to stop further loss of life. Law enforcement responses that quarantine the shooter compound the problem, while aggressive “active shooter” protocols that push police officers into the scene in small teams or as individuals tend to reduce casualties. The police response is moving toward being on the scene as fast as possible with a gun; we ought to follow their reasoning and allow people to have a fighting chance, not advise them to play dead and call the cops on their cell phone. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

On the bright side, 60 minutes had a more balanced segment on the recent surge in firearm sales and prospects for a revival of gun control in Congress.

As Tad DeHaven mentioned the other day, CNN reported recently that business owners and residents on Hawaii’s Kauai island got together and made repairs to a state park — in eight days — that the state had said would cost $4 million and might not get done for months. Businesses were losing money since people couldn’t visit the park, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

“We can wait around for the state or federal government to make this move, or we can go out and do our part,” [kayaking company owner Ivan] Slack said. “Just like everyone’s sitting around waiting for a stimulus check, we were waiting for this but decided we couldn’t wait anymore.”…

“We shouldn’t have to do this, but when it gets to a state level, it just gets so bureaucratic, something that took us eight days would have taken them years,” said Troy Martin of Martin Steel, who donated machinery and steel for the repairs. “So we got together — the community — and we got it done.”

It reminds me of the story 20 years ago of how Donald Trump got tired of watching the city of New York take six years to renovate a skating rink, so he just called up Mayor Ed Koch, offered to do it himself, and got the job done in less than four months. He got so enamored of the skating rink that he ended up getting the concession to run it.

And it also reminds me of the stories in James Tooley’s brand-new book, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves, which talks about how poor people in China, India, and Africa have set up schools for their children because government schools were absent or of poor quality.

If government would get out of the way, businesses, churches, charities, and individuals would solve a lot more social problems.

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last week or so, you’ll have noticed that the big story in education has been the highly suspicious handling of an evaluation of Washington, DC’s, voucher program by the supposedly politics-out-of-policymaking Obama administration. The evaluation shows voucher students making clearly superior readings gains to students who applied for but did not receive vouchers, while math results were equal. In other words, vouchers seem to work. But it doesn’t matter: For all intents and purposes Congress killed DC choice last month, and throughout that murderous process this study was being held under wraps — for numerous possible, but all unacceptable, reasons — in the United States Department of Education.

Well, on Saturday the Washington Post editorialized about the whole stinkin’ mess, and in so doing revealed something new: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan decided not to allow any new students to enroll in the program for the 2009–2010 school year, despite the program not being scheduled to end until 2010–2011. And, though it is close to unthinkable politically that both Congress and the DC City Council will reauthorize the program — just as Congressional enemies of educational freedom planned when they wrote those stipulations into law — it is not absolutely impossible. But in good hitman style, Duncan is making sure the job gets done, holding the pillow over the victim’s face as long and tightly as possible to make sure there won’t be any unforeseen and inconvenient coming back to life.

Oh, and irony of ironies? According to the Post, Duncan is doing this extra bit of dirty work because [italics added] “it is not in the best interest of students and their parents to enroll them in a program that may end a year from now.”

The Economist has posted rebuttals to first-round arguments in my tax debate with French economist Thomas Piketty. Piketty seems to think that everyone with a high income has a “grabbing hand” that comes at someone else’s expense.

The debate over tax rates on the rich is important, but Piketty is important in himself because he is widely cited in the media and elsewhere as if he were a neutral authority. For example, President Obama’s budget featured a chart showing that the top 1 percent of earners have greatly increased their share of national income over the decades, using Piketty’s numbers.

But Alan Reynolds has found serious flaws in Piketty’s calculations. Piketty bases his calculations on tax return data, but reported income under the federal income tax has changed greatly over time. 

The bottom line is to be suspicious when you see a chart on income trends that is sourced to this advocate of 80 percent tax rates.

I count both Ramesh Ponnuru and Ezra Klein as friends. (I’m so post-partisan.) Why, oh why must they force me to choose between them??

Ponnuru had an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times where he reaffirmed his membership in the Anti-Universal Coverage Club. Klein responded in a way that’s sure to satisfy his base, but I think he left the reality-based community wanting. Are you ready for the fisk?

Klein suggests that if “80+ percent of Americans … think the system needs fundamental changes or a complete rebuild,” then 80+ percent of Americans must support universal coverage. Hmmm, bit of a stretch. In fact, I can recall one poll where nearly one-third of likely Democratic primary voters rejected universal coverage.

Klein suggests that giving consumers the freedom to avoid unwanted state health insurance regulations would mean that Arizonans wouldn’t get coverage for colorectal cancer screening, and that there would be no mammogram coverage in Idaho. Mmm, that’s good crazy. I refer my right honorable friend to the episode where The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn made a similar claim about mandates for prostate and cervical cancer screening. I looked up the services covered by the plans made available to the Cohn family by the University of Michigan. It turned out that six out of the seven available plans cover both prostate and cervical cancer screening — even though Michigan requires insurers to cover neither. (I offered to wager Cohn a fancy dinner that his family has coverage for both, but I never heard back from him. Foolish, really, to let me know where he gets his insurance. Klein would never give me such an opening … or would he?) What Ponnuru proposes is to let Arizonans and Idahoans and everyone else choose what their health plan covers. Imagine that: people rationing medical care according to their preferences, rather than the preferences of employers, interest groups, bureaucrats, health policy wonks… Why Klein clings to such regulations despite zero evidence that they actually increase access to the targeted services is beyond me.

Klein criticizes Ponnuru for proposing to replace the current tax preference for job-based coverage with a tax credit available to everyone, much like John McCain proposed during his (latest) presidential campaign. Ponnuru cites a study estimating that tax credits would reduce the number of uninsured by 20 million. Klein counter-cites one study estimating that tax credits would have zero net effect on the number of uninsured, and a second study estimating that those who transition from job-based coverage to the “individual” or “non-group” market would pay an additional $2,000 per year for an identical policy. Klein’s criticisms sound persuasive — provided you know precious little about the topic. For one thing, the two studies Klein cites are actually the same study. Pity, really. Had Klein found a second study to support his position, perhaps it would not have been quite so flawed as the one he did find. Here’s what I wrote back in September about that study’s flaws:

Thomas Buchmueller et al. estimate that replacing the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with Sen. John McCain’s proposed health insurance tax credit would have zero effect on the uninsured. Yet their estimates neither incorporate nor even acknowledge factors that would tend to increase coverage. First, workers who lose ESI would see their wages rise significantly as labor markets force employers to “cash out” those workers.

That effect would help all workers afford health insurance — but particularly older and sicker workers, because they would get cashed-out more.

Second, the authors estimate that non-group enrollment would double, yet they ignore that administrative costs would fall in a thicker non-group market.

So that $2,000 mark-up really wouldn’t be $2,000. Even if some mark-up remained, workers could reduce their premiums by purchasing less coverage. Not all that crazy a concept, considering that the tax treatment of job-based insurance encourages people to buy too much coverage.

Then there’s this effect, which would further reduce premiums for healthy workers:

Third, the authors acknowledge that employment-based insurance forces the healthy to subsidize the sick, yet they ignore that the non-group market would reduce premiums for a majority of workers by allowing them to avoid that hidden tax.

The study’s authors also ignored the premium-lowering effects of McCain’s proposal to allow people to avoid unwanted regulatory costs (e.g., mandated benefits):

Fourth, though the Congressional Budget Office estimates that state health insurance regulations increase premiums an average of 13 percent, the authors ignore that McCain’s proposal to let consumers shop nationwide for insurance would further reduce premiums by allowing consumers to avoid that hidden tax as well.

A few random clarifications. Klein fears living “in a space where insurers could still discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.” That’s Church-of-Universal-Coverage-speak for, “I want price controls on health insurance.” Government can outlaw the practice of charging higher premiums to the sick, but it cannot outlaw the reasons behind those higher premiums. So when government prohibits insurers from competing on price, insurers respond to those underlying reasons by competing to avoid the sick. Yes, yes, it’s that pious preference for price-controlled premiums that unleashes the beast of adverse selection — and prevents the market from developing innovative insurance products that help sick people pay those higher premiums. Klein fears a world “where millions of Americans will still lack access to health insurance,” because to the devout, access to insurance matters more than access to health care. Klein fears that when people move from ESI to the individual market, risk pools will get smaller and insurers will get stronger. Yet risk pools would get bigger, and insurers weaker relative to consumers. Klein believes we can “ensure that all Americans have health coverage, [and] that their coverage is comprehensive,” and that we can do all that without rationing “access to health services.” How? Just “bring down costs in the system.” Riiiight.

To cap things off, Klein claims that Ponnuru and I think the U.S. health care sector as it exists is “fine.” I really can’t blame him for arguing with straw men.

In the end, Klein’s case against Ponnuru boils down to the same absurdity I found in Buchmueller and colleagues’ case against McCain:

The McCain plan would eliminate forced subsidies: of the sick by the healthy (via ESI and community rating) and of particular providers by unwilling consumers (mandates for chiropractic coverage, etc.). Buchmueller et al. would have us believe that if we stop robbing Peter to pay Paul, not even Peter would benefit. A more balanced critique might have been more persuasive.

Klein spends a lot more time thinking about health policy than Ponnuru does. But you’d never know it.

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• • Georgia Examiner writer and blogger Jason Pye offered his thoughts on Ilya Shapiro’s post about the “Jefferson 1.”
  • Wes Messamore finished his list of the top 100 libertarian blogs and Web sites.
  • Free Marketeros editor James Barcia linked to Juan Carlos Hildalgo’s new report on the success of El Salvador’s free market reforms.
  • Health care writer John Goodman discussed John Cochrane’s recent Policy Analysis on market-based strategies to improve health security.
  • At NRO’s The Corner, Veronique de Rugy is following the debate between Cato scholar Chris Edwards and French economist Thomas Piketty over whether the rich should pay higher taxes.