All Posts Tagged With: "Gun Control"
Intellectuals and Society
If you trace back to the origins of almost any damaging public-policy idea in America, you find it rooted in the imagination of some intellectual. Just to pick one field, consider housing. Why do we have huge tracts of depressing, unsafe, unclean public housing in some of our largest cities? That did not simply happen—the [...]
24Feb2011 | George C. Leef | 5 comments | ContinuedPrivate Guns, Public Health
David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at Harvard University, harbors a deep aversion to guns. His book embodies the institutional prejudices of a cohort of academics notable for their abiding predisposition for state control over individuals for “the public good.” So ingrained is the bias that it almost dashes one’s hopes that firearms can [...]
12Jul2010 | Timothy J. Wheeler | 0 comments | ContinuedCan Gun Control Work?
Can Gun Control Work? is a first-rate addition to the literature on gun control. The book is not an attempt to advocate either side of the debate. Instead, it is an analysis of whether various types of control can achieve their stated objectives, especially reducing violence and crime. Jacobs concludes that gun control cannot work, [...]
6Jul2010 | Jeffrey Miron | 0 comments | ContinuedDo We Really Want a Right to Health Care?
Do you have a right to health care? People want a right to health care because they think it will guarantee them the services they need. But might obtaining health care as a political right rather than a market commodity have a downside? The government cannot produce or purchase an infinite amount of health care. [...]
20Apr2010 | Theodore Levy | 4 comments | ContinuedIn case you missed it
The Washington Post had a profile of Tom Palmer in the Sunday paper. He recounts how a gun possibly saved his life when he and a colleague were accosted after dark: “We were what they perceived as a couple of faggots, which was the term they used, walking through their neighborhood,” he said. “And it [...]
23Feb2010 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat The Drug Warriors Have Given Us
Does anyone still think the “war on drugs” is a good idea?
That may strike some people as an odd question under the circumstances, so let’s take it from another direction. Have you seen the news stories about the violence on the border being perpetrated by the Mexican whiskey and cigarette cartels?
No? That’s probably because there was no such violence and are no such cartels.
So why are there violent cartels in marijuana, cocaine, and heroin but not in whiskey and cigarettes?
All together now: prohibition.
17Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 8 comments | ContinuedGun Control: An Economic Analysis
In Economics 101 we teach students about several fundamental concepts, including the relationship between means and ends, forward-looking behavior, the use of substitutes, opportunity cost, and the role of moral hazard. Further, we insist that these concepts can be used to help understand the world around us and have applicability far beyond the classroom. Yet, [...]
20Jan2009 | and Scott A. Kjar | 12 comments | ContinuedA Property-Rights Theory of Mass Murder
Stephen Carson, a software engineer, writes independently from St. Louis. This article is condensed from “Killing and Stealing: A Property-Rights Theory of Mass Murder,” which first appeared in The Independent Review, Winter 2007, and was reprinted in Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close (The Independent [...]
1Sep2008 | Stephen W. Carson | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Reviews – April 2008
- Globalization by Donald J. Boudreaux Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
- Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty Reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves
- Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie by Clayton E. Cramer Reviewed by George C. Leef
- The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond by Barry Eichengreen Reviewed by Waldemar Ingdahl
Capital Letters
Bike Helmets, Children, and Libertarian Philosophy To the Editor: In response to Ted Roberts’s article criticizing the admonishing of children to use bicycle helmets (“Take Your Bike Helmet to the Safety Museum,” February), I’d like to offer a couple of unscientific, anecdotal items from my own experience. One is from a few decades ago, when [...]
1May2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – April 2003
Guns and Violence: The English Experience by Joyce Lee Malcolm Harvard University Press • 2002 • 352 pages • $28.00 Reviewed by Clayton Cramer Joyce Lee Malcolm’s new book is not the masterpiece that her previous book, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, was. Still, there is much to commend, [...]
1Apr2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedNew Laws Will Protect Americans from Snipers?
The handcuffs had barely been slapped on the two Maryland sniper suspects—John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo—before the so-called liberals began invoking their crimes as a pretext to undermine the rights of all Americans. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, writing on October 31, 2002, invoked federal crime statistics indicating that “the number of [...]
1Feb2003 | James Bovard | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – December 2002
Republic.com by Cass Sunstein Princeton University Press • 2001 • 202 pages • $29.95 Reviewed by Andrew Cohen Developing technologies such as the World Wide Web and e-mail have become fixtures in our daily lives. But is the Internet consistent with human flourishing in a free society? In Republic.com, Cass Sunstein, a prominent legal scholar [...]
1Dec2002 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Seven Myths of Gun Control: Reclaiming the Truth About Guns, Crime, and the Second Amendment
Guns increase the incidence of violent crime. Using a gun to deter crime is more dangerous to the intended victim than the perpetrator. Guns pose a special threat to children. Such statements, reinforced in the media, are accepted at face value by many Americans. But are they true? According to Richard Poe, editor of FrontPageMagazine.com, [...]
1Oct2002 | Tom Welch | 10 comments | ContinuedDamned Lies and Statistics
One of the most infuriating aspects of the “information age” is that it makes it easy for those who want to undermine freedom to get their way by peddling falsehoods. Statistics can be among the most damaging of falsehoods. Undoubtedly you’ve seen them at work on behalf of meddlers who want something from government: statistics [...]
1Oct2002 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedWhere’s the Objectivity?
During a recent scandal, William Bennett wrote a book titled The Death of Outrage. The bigger scandal, however, is the death of objectivity, or the ability to evaluate an argument or claim with detachment. Many people look only to see if it supports their agenda. If it does, it’s good; if it doesn’t, it’s bad. [...]
1Aug2002 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedAlaskan Courtesy
*Mary Pemberton, “Alaska Court: Mentally ill can keep concealed weapons,” Associated Press, January 11, 2002. All quotes are from this report. Alaska is most often thought of as simply a snow-covered tundra far to our north. Rarely do Americans find themselves looking to that Arctic wilderness for reason to celebrate a renewed sense of personal [...]
1Jun2002 | Scott McPherson | 3 comments | Continued-
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