From Hate Speech to Hate Crime

      Ever since the tragic shootings in Tucson last week,  people have been discussing the possible link between  hateful political messages (nowadays disseminated primarily on the Internet) and  physical  attacks on public officials.   Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin  denounced  such connections as a "blood libel,"  an unfortunate choice of words.  But is she right?

     Since the end of World War II, the United States has endured the murder of one President  (John Kennedy), the shooting of another (Ronald Reagan),  the attempted assassinations of  Presidents Truman and Ford,  and the shootings of  two   presidential candidates  (Robert Kennedy and George Wallace).    Major public figures who never  sought elective office  (such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and  John Lennon) were  also  shot to death during this period, and several members of the House of Representatives were wounded by gunfire right in the House chamber in 1954.  

      Of course, there have also been assassinations of national leaders in other  countries  such as Egypt, Israel, Sweden, South Africa and  India during this time, but of these,  only India has lost more  top leaders than the US (1).    Why is the United States especially vulnerable to  political assassinations, and  are they driven by extremist political rhetoric?

      The fact that guns more readily available in this country than in most others cannot be ignored as a factor.  All the attacks mentioned above, in addition to the killings of three  previous   presidents (2), an attack on President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt  (3)  and  the wounding of  a  former president running for another term in the office (4) before World War II were all committed with guns.  (Significantly,  some of the foreign assassinations did not involve guns.   Prime Minister Verwoerd of South Africa was killed   with a knife and  Prime Minister Ragiv Gandhi  of  India with a bomb.)  The Second Amendment to our Constitution guarantees access to  guns, and political violence is one price that we pay for it.   As Nevada Republican senatorial nominee Sharron Angle put it last year, some people  she knows are looking at  "Second Amendment" solutions to political problems not solved to their satisfaction by elections.

      Hate-filled political rhetoric is not new in this country; the history books are full of it.   Actually  major American newspapers today  are  more moderate in tone than some that were published  in the 1800's, which carried vicious cartoons and attacks on Abraham Lincoln and subsequent presidents.   But not everyone gets quoted in the newspapers;  if you are not a prominent  current or former official, the best you can hope for is  a letter to the editor, which  will be purged of incendiary language. 

      The difference today is the Web:  anyone can  write on it,   and anything can be published  (like the Glazerbeam!)  The blogs and tweets and other electronic messages are subject to no quality  or even sanity control, so the most irresponsible and outrageous stuff  goes out and gets read.

           But do hateful messages on the Web inspire  actual violence?   Although there is no known connection between  the shootings in Tucson and any political  rhetoric anywhere,  the general answer is that it can.  Although  American assassins are usually characterized as "deranged loners",  even deranged loners  are often affected by what they hear and read.   A message that a certain politician is a traitor, a baby-killer or  whatever evil monster may focus the rage of a psychopath on a particular  target  For example, there is no question that Timothy McVeigh in the US and Yigal Amir  (who shot Yitzchak Rabin) in Israel were influenced  by the vitriolic rhetoric of others.

           Today's  Internet  facilitates contact between  like-minded people, so that no matter how absurd their conspiracy theories may be,  they are  comforted by the knowledge  that they are not alone.  A person is more likely to commit a violent act if  he (or she) believes that many others will approve the  crime.

           Those who spew vile verbiage about public figures on TV, radio or the Web are not legally liable if some nut with a gun acts on it.  But they should  be considered morally  accountable if   their words lead to criminal deeds.
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(1) Although Mahatma Gandhi never sought or held public office, he had hundreds of millions of followers in India at the time of his murder in 1947.  Prime Ministers  Indira Gandhi and her son  Ragiv were also assassinated.

(2) Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley.

(3) A bullet fired at  Franklin Roosevelt in Miami in early 1933 instead killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was seated next to him in an open car.

(4) Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot in Milwaukee during  the  1912  presidential campaign, died in 1919.

Clinging to Guns in Chicago

"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

"...they get bitter and cling to their guns,....."
Barack Obama, April 12, 2008



Among those clinging to their guns are David and Colleen Lawson, Otis McDonald and Adam Orlov, who are challenging the constitutionality of a total hand-gun ban enacted by the City of Chicago. The case was argued before the US Supreme Court on March 2.

On June 26, 2008, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in District of Columbia vs Heller et al. (1) that the Second Amendment cited above protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the law of the District of Columbia that prohibited handguns and placed onerous restrictions on other firearms was unconstitutional. In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens cited the initial clause of the Amendment to contend that it applied only to militias, not individuals. ( The US District Court for the District of Columbia had taken the same position, but was reversed 2-1 by the Circuit Court of Appeals. )

James Feldman, attorney for Chicago argued that states and cities should have the power to regulate guns, even if the federally-controlled District of Columbia should not. Attorneys for the plaintiffs contended that the right to bear arms conferred by the Second Amendment was incorporated into the limitations on state action of the Fourteenth Amendment, but questions from the justices indicated that the Court is not buying this viewpoint. I predict that the Court will affirm Heller, and hold that it applies to states and cities, so the Chicago gun-ban is also unconstitutional.

It is understandable that Chicago, long beset by serious gun-violence (2), would enact the ultimate gun-control ordinance. But is it a good law?

The plaintiffs in the Chicago case claim they want to be able to defend their homes with handguns against criminals. Although people should certainly call the police when criminals are barging into their homes, it will take officers time to get there. In those crucial minutes the criminals, who presumably are armed in defiance of local ordinances, can harm or even kill the residents of the home. A loaded gun in the hands of a potential victim, even if not actually fired, may be the best means of protecting their lives until police arrive, so I hope that the Court affirms their right to have and use one!

I believe in reasonable gun control: registration of firearms (together with ballistics data), licensing of owners and prohibition of private ownership of automatic weapons. Law-abiding people should have no problem with any of these restrictions. I also oppose the carrying of firearms in public places (except by police or licensed security guards) because an altercation between strangers could easily escalate into a shoot-out. But I agree with the plaintiffs that the City of Chicago has gone too far in banning handguns from private homes and stores; the law is "over-broad." If the Second Amendment does not protect your right to use a gun to defend your home, it does not protect you at all.

A gun is useless as a defense against criminals unless it is kept loaded and instantly accessible. But if it is so, then that gun is also a danger to members of the household and innocent visitors, particularly if there are children in the home. Although I live in a neighborhood with considerable crime, and have been the victim of a violent crime myself (3), I have never owned a gun and have no intention of ever acquiring one.

But the situation of every person and family is different, so I defend the right of other people to make the opposite choice.
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(1) Oyez Website.

(2) For example, the murder of seven men at the SMC Cartage Co. garage in Chicago on Feb. 14, 1929, (known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre) shocked the world and turned the public against the bootlegger gangs. Today, a shooting incident in which only 7 people were killed would be at most a minor story on the national news, and quickly forgotten.

(3) I was attacked and beaten near my home on the night of September 9, 2008. If I had been carrying a gun that night, I probably would have fired it. Since the assailants were unarmed, I might still be in jail.