November 2, 1999

by Peter J.M. Orvetti

Banning The Ban
DeWine Whines About Merger
Plodding Insurrection

Banning The Ban

In Montgomery County, Maryland, Circuit Court Judge Vincent E. Ferretti Jr. has ruled that a referendum aimed at banning handguns in the community of Takoma Park must be removed from today's ballot because the questions did not follow Maryland state law, which prevents towns from enacting gun control laws except under narrow exceptions. "This is a state issue, and [city officials] ought to keep out of it," Michael L. Cohen, a Takoma Park resident who was one of two people to sue the city over the proposed referendum, told the Washington Post. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa109.html

According to David B. Kopel in the Cato Policy Analysis "Trust the People: The Case Against Gun Control", "[f]ew public policy debates have been as dominated by emotion and misinformation as the one on gun control. Perhaps this debate is so highly charged because it involves such fundamental issues. The calls for more gun restrictions or for bans on some or all guns are calls for significant change in our social and constitutional systems. Gun control is based on the faulty notion that ordinary American citizens are too clumsy and ill-tempered to be trusted with weapons. Only through the blatant abrogation of explicit constitutional rights is gun control even possible. It must be enforced with such violations of individual rights as intrusive search and seizure. It most severely victimizes those who most need weapons for self-defense, such as blacks and women.

"The various gun control proposals on today's agenda--including licensing, waiting periods, and bans on so-called Saturday night specials--are of little, if any, value as crime-fighting measures. Banning guns to reduce crime makes as much sense as banning alcohol to reduce drunk driving. Indeed, persuasive evidence shows that civilian gun ownership can be a powerful deterrent to crime…. In 1911 state senator Timothy Sullivan of New York promised that if New York City outlawed handgun carrying, homicides would decline drastically. The year the Sullivan law took effect, however, homicides increased and the New York Times pronounced criminals 'as well armed as ever.' Gun control does not reduce crime; gun ownership does. Gun control insists that citizens rely on the authorities. Gun owners know better than to put their lives and liberty in the hands of 911 and the police. Gun control and the Bill of Rights cannot coexist. The advocates of gun control believe that government agents are more trustworthy than ordinary citizens. The authors of the Second Amendment believed just the opposite."

DeWine Whines About Merger

Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), who chairs the antitrust subcommittee, is concerned about the proposed $35.89 billion merger of CBS and Viacom. DeWine says he feels the merger will limit competition and diversity in the media industry. "The idea of another media conglomerate, with holdings in so many related market segments, seems, somehow, a little bit ominous," he said in a statement.

"Antitrust is thought by some to be the bulwark of free enterprise. Without the vigilance of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, so the argument goes, giant corporations would ruthlessly destroy their smaller rivals and soon raise prices and profits at consumers' expense," wrote William F. Shughart II in the 1998 Cato Policy Analysis "The Government's War on Mergers: The Fatal Conceit of Antitrust Policy". "But antitrust has a dark side. Opposition to mergers, though in theory based on worries that competition may be impaired, often in practice comes not from consumers whose interests antitrust is supposed to defend, but from competitors faced with the prospect of a larger, more aggressive rival. Because they respond to the demands of competitors, labor unions, and other well-organized groups having a stake in stopping mergers that promise to increase economic efficiency, the antitrust authorities all too often succeed, not in keeping prices from rising, but in keeping them from falling.

"The politicization of antitrust is not just a matter of historical curiosity. Politics stalks many of the high-profile cases brought by President Clinton's trustbusters, including Primestar's planned purchase of a key satellite slot as well as the mergers proposed between Staples and Office Depot, WorldCom and MCI, and Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. When the antitrust authorities intervene to reshape markets at the behest of competitors, private decisions about how best to organize production are displaced by government decisions. Innovative firms are penalized, scale economies are lost, and competition is thwarted, not enhanced."

Plodding Insurrection

As the U.S. bombing campaign over Iraq wears on, the Iraqi opposition in exile began its biggest gathering in seven years in New York Friday with tacit support from the Clinton administration, Reuters reported. The Iraqi National Congress is attempting to organize credible alternative to the government of President Saddam Hussein in the hope of winning world support. The United States added the goal of "regime change" to its Iraq policy last year and provided $97 million to the Iraqi opposition in last year's budget, mostly in the form of services and surplus Pentagon goods. U.S. defense officials said Thursday that the first direct military training of opposition members will start at a Florida Air Force base this week.

Should the United States be so involved in Iraq nearly a decade after the Gulf War? The option of active U.S. participation in a revolt against Hussein has great drawbacks, Ted Galen Carpenter wrote in the commentary "Washington's Unnecessary Persian Gulf Obsession". "No matter how emotionally satisfying the option of ousting a thuggish dictator may be, using U.S. forces to remove Saddam would make Washington responsible for Iraq's political future and entangle the United States in an assortment of intractable problems. Defenders of the U.S. obsession with Iraq invariably cite two justifications: protecting the Persian Gulf oil supply and preventing Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The oil rationale was nonsense even at the time of the Gulf War -- and prominent economists as ideologically diverse as Milton Friedman and James Tobin pointed that out…

"Although preventing Iraq from getting nuclear, chemical or biological weapons is a more serious objective, that justification is flawed as well. For one thing, Iraq is hardly alone in its ambitions. U.S. intelligence agencies admit that some two dozen nations possess or are acquiring chemical weapons, and at least a dozen nations possess or may soon possess biological weapons. (Those countries include several of Iraq's neighbors.) After the tests by India and Pakistan, it is clear that eight nations are now nuclear weapons states, and several others are little more than a screwdriver's turn away from that status. That raises the question of how many wars of nonproliferation the United States is willing to fight… Washington should terminate its obsession with being Saddam's jailer. U.S. leaders should especially ask themselves why Iraq's neighbors are not sufficiently alarmed at the alleged Iraqi threat to their security to endorse Washington's coercive policy. If they are not terribly worried about Iraq, why should America -- thousands of miles away -- be so concerned?"