Unregulated Gun Shows Save Lives (Peer Reviewed Study)

Courtesy Dean Weingarten

In a paper published in 2008, comparing highly regulated Californian gun shows with relatively unregulated Texas gun shows, there was no statistical difference in suicide rates, or in homicide rates in California. The Texas gun shows, with far less regulation, showed a statistically significant drop in the homicide rate.

From the study, on page 4:

“But our results provide little evidence of a gun show-induced increase in mortality in Texas. In fact, we find that in the two weeks following a gun show, the average number of gun homicides declines in the area surrounding the gun show. Aggregating across all gun shows in the state, we find that there are approximately 16 fewer gun homicides resulting from the 200 gun shows in the average year. In the sections below, we discuss several possible explanations for this counter intuitive finding. However, it is important to keep in mind that while these results are statistically significant, they are quite small – representing just one percent of all homicides in Texas in the average year.”

The authors downplay this result. It is not mentioned in the abstract. From the study:

 Abstract 

Thousands of gun shows take place in the U.S. each year. Gun control advocates argue that because sales at gun shows are much less regulated than other sales, such shows make it easier for potential criminals to obtain a gun. Similarly, one might be concerned that gun shows would exacerbate suicide rates by providing individuals considering suicide with a more lethal means of ending their lives. On the other hand, proponents argue that gun shows are innocuous since potential criminals can acquire guns quite easily through other black market sales or theft. In this paper, we use data from Gun and Knife Show Calendar combined with vital statistics data to examine the effect of gun shows. We find no evidence that gun shows lead to substantial increases in either gun homicides or suicides. In addition, tighter regulation of gun shows does not appear to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths.

This was not a small study. It included data for 10 years and 3,300 gun shows. The two states chosen were California and Texas, contain 20 percent of the population of the United States. It was not conducted by firearm freedom advocates or the NRA.

The authors suggest two untested hypothetical reasons for the measured decrease in homicide:

1. The possibility that police are somehow more vigilant after a gun show and are preventing homicides… or
2. That criminals are using unregulated gun shows to sell their guns, thus depriving themselves of weapons to commit homicide with…

Both of those hypothetical reasons fail to overcome Occam’s razor. There are simpler, direct, obvious possibilities.

First, gun shows could make criminals more aware of the possibility of their victims being armed, thus causing them to delay their homicidal attempts.

When criminals notice that a gun show is being held in an area, and people can more easily buy and sell guns, it is reasonable to believe they would understand potential victims could be armed. This belief would result in fewer homicide attempts and fewer homicides.

Second, victims may be more likely to arm themselves at a gun show, thus increasing the potential for homicidal criminals to be deterred by an armed victim.

The authors of the study chose to ignore these obvious, direct possibilities.

In the study, the authors tell us the statistically significant difference could reduce homicides in Texas by 1%. They minimize that effect. If a restriction on private ownership of guns was shown to reduce homicide by 1%, it would be shouted to the heavens.

The evidence is clear: stopping private sales at gun shows costs lives.

It follows that so-called universal background checks may cost lives.

The demand that all private sales be approved of by state agents before they can be made, is counterproductive and will cost innocent lives.

If this seems counter-intuitive, there is considerable evidence more guns result in less crime. The logic to support this is not unreasonable.

Criminals often make rational decisions based on their understanding of the environment that they are in. If criminals believe their intended victim may be armed, they often chose another target, decide not to commit the crime, or decide to commit a non-confrontational crime such as theft from an unoccupied vehicle.

The statistical significance of the study shows this is not a random artifact of the data-gathering process.

 

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About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

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Alarmed Raised By Seattle Chief Candidate’s View That 2A Is ‘Inappropriate’

I talked to @madisonpolice chief Shon Barnes today; he didn’t mince words.

“Sometimes it requires an evolution of our thinking. What was written in 1789 may not be appropriate for 2022 unless we’re okay with kids being killed.”

“You’re referencing the 2nd amend.?”

“Yes I am.” pic.twitter.com/nK1wOaj65v

— Naomi Kowles (@NaomiKowles) May 25, 2022

A suggestion that the Second Amendment may no longer be “appropriate” in today’s society definitely should raise alarms about Shon Barnes, currently chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin, and a reported top candidate for the same job in Seattle, Washington.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says the Second Amendment and the rights it protects may be more appropriate now than ever before, considering the brutal stabbing murder of a Seattle Metro bus driver while on duty this week.

Barnes made the comment in what was described as a“wide-ranging interview” in May 2022 with a television reporter in Madison following the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. When he mentioned the shooter’s purchase of two firearms, Barnes stated on camera, “We have a lot of things that are legal, but is it the right thing to do? We have to rise above that. And sometimes it requires an evolution of our thinking. What was written in 1789 may not be appropriate for 2022 unless we’re okay with kids being killed.”

“Simply because society may have evolved since the Bill of Rights was ratified does not mean we should surrender the right of self-defense, much less the right to keep and bear arms,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.

“If Barnes is selected to lead the Seattle Police Department, he should understand the rank-and-file supports the Second Amendment, and that since the city began pushing its gun control agenda ten years ago, the number of homicides has nearly tripled. We’re never ‘okay’ with kids getting killed. In fact, we’re not okay with anyone getting killed.

“We are also alarmed,” he continued, “that if Barnes thinks the Second Amendment may not be appropriate, what other rights does he think are outdated? What about the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination?

“Chief Barnes has a Ph.D.,” Gottlieb noted, “and he’s served with at least three law enforcement agencies during his career. By now he should have figured out you don’t fight crime by trying to disarm potential victims, but instead by making it clear to criminals they might literally have chosen a ‘dead-end’ lifestyle.

“In addition to the Second Amendment,” Gottlieb added, “Washington state’s constitution has one of the strongest right-to-bear-arms provisions in the country. Evergreen State citizens, especially those living in Seattle and surrounding King County, are not about to give up their rights. They can far better determine what is ‘appropriate’ in the Pacific Northwest, and our rights never go out of style.”

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Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

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Oral Arguments Heard Over Forced Reset Triggers

Rare Breed Triggers FRT-15 Forced Reset

Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the National Association For Gun Rights (NARG) v. Garland. The case centers on the legality of Forced Reset Triggers (FRT).

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has been at war with Rare Breed Triggers over the legality of forced reset triggers for several years. Rare Breed makes the FRT-15 which is the most popular FRT trigger on the market. Another trigger ruled a knockoff of the FRT-15 by a Federal Court is the Wide Open Trigger (WOT), which was produced and sold by the now-defunct Big Daddy Unlimited (BDU). The ATF claims that these triggers are drop-in auto sears (DIAS) and turn a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle into a machine gun. According to the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), any device that converts a semi-automatic firearm into a machine gun is considered itself to be a machine gun.

The ATF spent countless man-hours confiscating these devices from gun shops and the general public. After several failed legal challenges, Rare Breed Triggers teamed up with NAGR to sue the federal government in Texas over the devices. Texas falls under the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued the bump stock ruling in Cargill that ruled that bump stocks were not machine guns. The Federal government appealed the ruling and went to the Supreme Court, where SCOTUS agreed with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In District Court, Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the ATF overstepped their boundaries by declaring the Rare Breed FRT-15 and the WOT to be machine guns. He stated that these devices didn’t meet the statutory definition of a machine gun and ordered the ATF not only to stop enforcement action against sellers and gun owners but also to return the devices and send out a letter to the members of the organization correcting its mistake. He gave the ATF 30 days to comply, although they did get an extension. The final judgment also stripped the ATF of its power to enforce a FRT ban on anyone.

Lawyers of the Justice Department appealed the ruling to a panel of three judges at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but were facing an uphill battle. One of the key arguments is how Cargill applied to this case. In Cargill, the courts found that the trigger had to be pulled each time for a round to be expelled out of the firearm. That meant that bump stock was not a machine gun under the law. Likewise, the trigger has to be pulled each time for an FRT to work.

The government’s lawyer tried to argue this isn’t the same thing because a bump stock replaces a stock, whereas an FRT replaces the trigger pack. It highlighted the ATF’s test to “prove” that an AR-15 equipped with a FRT fired automatically. When the ATF held the trigger back with a zip tie, the gun continued to fire, but when explaining to the panel, the lawyer left out the fact that the trigger was still able to move due to the elastic nature of the tie.

The ATF’s lawyer also argued because the trigger must move to fire doesn’t mean a gun is not a machine gun. He highlighted that the bolts of machine guns move, and they are still considered to be automatic firing weapons. He didn’t address that if the bolt didn’t move, the gun could only fire a single round and would not be able to chamber the next round. This change would make the firearm a bolt-action rifle. He seemed ill-prepared for the questions, highlighting his lack of knowledge of how a gun works.

He then tried to argue that NAGR was not an actual member organization because its membership doesn’t vote on leadership and policies. Lawyers for NAGR pushed back, pointing out that the organization’s members all have a common purpose for protecting the right to bear arms. The judges didn’t seem persuaded by the government’s arguments.

The government lawyers also argued that they should not have to notify the public that FRTs are not illegal and shouldn’t have to give back the ones they took. They claimed this was an impossible burden, although they had the records of the owners of every single one they confiscated, and every address mailed a letter demanding the triggers be turned in. It seemed this was the government’s most significant issue. Although it is less clear how the judges viewed this argument, it didn’t seem like they were persuaded.

After the panel issues its ruling, the losing party can request an en banc hearing from the full Fifth Circuit bench or directly appeal to SCOTUS. When that happens, Biden will no longer be president. If the ATF loses, it might be one of the first decisions a Trump DOJ must make.

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About John Crump

Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.

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Police Blackout of Madison Shooter’s Social Media Denies Information Public Has Right to Know

TikTok is Monitoring American’s Thoughts On Gun Control, iStock-1169692106

“We will not be releasing specifics of the social media accounts at this time,” Madison WI Police Chief Shon Barnes announced at a Tuesday press conference to update the media and public on the murders at the Abundant Life Christian School.*

Why not? What doesn’t he want the people who pay for him and his department to know? Especially at as time when, before facts are known, Democrat politicians and gun prohibitionist groups are out there screaming the solution is more citizen disarmament edicts.

Add to that the natural suspicion that information inconvenient to the “progressive education agenda is being suppressed, much as in the case of the infamous Nashville shooter “manifesto”:

Barnes also addressed speculation online that the shooter was transgender in response to a question, but he stressed how the shooter’s identity was not important. “Whether or not she was, he was, they were transgender is something that may come out later, but for what we’re doing right now, today, literally eight hours after a mass shooting in a school in Madison, it is of no consequence at this time,” he said.

Others are saying, “Accounts being linked to Rupnow online show an obsession with possible white supremacist ideologies and infamous past school shooters, as well as a chilling message from the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.”

That’s not something legitimate to know, but jumping to gun grab conclusions is? If the rumors are unfounded, releasing the killer’s unredacted social media would help squelch irresponsible suspicions. If it turns out to have a legitimate basis, then it’s a valid point to raise when what to do that could bring changes to law, is being discussed.

And it doesn’t help bolster trust when this is followed by Chief Barnes pledging that he is “committed to transparency.”

This is exactly why, unlike some “gunfluencers” who advocate suppressing shooter names, I’m against keeping them held back. When government takes away access, government controls the narrative and steers the population to the conclusions it wants believed, or at least accepted, without mass pushback. Since when do my colleagues, who know full well the depths of government deception to advance a political agenda, trust that?

Covering tracks under force of law is nothing less than motivated political censorship by those in power and has no place in the discourse of a supposedly self-governing people. As much as notoriety might be a goal of morally diseased killers, the larger one is success.

The prime objective should be to deny that success, and that will only be done when we can stop the freedom deniers from also denying the reality of harder targets capable of repelling and overcoming evil. Do that and the motivation for attacks will fade dramatically, and those who aren’t dissuaded will rack up lesser scores before they’re put out of all our misery.

* Case in point: the video that contained the lede quote has been replaced since I found that story link. I also see an alleged quote from Chief Barnes being repeated by influential gun prohibitionists on X.com (and some pro-gun YouTubers) saying, without a substantiating link:

 “Stop asking why schools don’t have bullet proof glass & metal detectors at all the doors. Ask why schools HAVE to. That’s the question that needs to be asked”

(I can’t find those words in any Google News search. He may have said them, but I can’t steer you to a credible source—yet. If I find one, I’ll add a comment below.)

“Stop asking why schools don’t have bullet proof glass & metal detectors at all the doors. Ask why schools HAVE to. That’s the question that needs to be asked” https://t.co/NuNj5d59Zw

— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) December 16, 2024

A more important question is “Why are responsible adult citizens prevented by law from defending themselves and their precious charges?”

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About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

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Key Case Movement in the Battle Over Your Right to Own an ‘Assault Weapon’

The latest developments from the Supreme Court provide a vital update for all advocates and followers of Second Amendment rights.

The 2A Attorneys in Gray v. Jennings Delaware “assault weapon” ban litigation have filed a submission to SCOTUS as the three AR-15/Magazine ban cases continue their move through the Court’s consideration process. Mark Smith Four Boxes Diner discusses.

The case of Gray v. Jennings, alongside other pivotal cases concerning AR-15 and magazine bans, is coming to a head as the Supreme Court expedites its processes, hinting at significant sessions in early 2025 that could shape the future of gun rights in America.

The Essence of the Appeal

The Gray v. Jennings case, originating from Delaware’s imposition of an “assault weapon” ban, is a critical point of contention. The appeal to the Supreme Court is not just about reversing a lower court’s decision but about setting a precedent on how similar cases are handled nationwide. The legal team has pushed for an expedited review, aiming for the Supreme Court justices to discuss this during their January 2025 conferences.

Why This Matters

For those deeply invested in upholding the Second Amendment, these cases represent more than legal disputes; they symbolize the ongoing battle for maintaining the right to bear arms as envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. The outcomes could either reinforce the Second Amendment or lead to more stringent controls on firearm ownership and usage.

Key Dates to Watch

Mark your calendars for these crucial dates:

• January 10, 2025: The first conference where the Supreme Court might decide to hear the case.
• January 17 and 24, 2025: Subsequent conferences that could further influence the course of this legal battle.

Depending on the justices’ decisions, each of these dates could be a turning point in whether to take up the cases for a full hearing or deny them outright.

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Gabriel Gray, et al., Petitioners v. Kathy Jennings, Attorney General of Delaware, et al.: Background of the Case

Gray v. Jennings centers on a legal challenge to Delaware’s ban on so-called “assault weapons,” which includes certain models of semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15. The case emerged from gun owners and Second Amendment advocates challenging the state’s legislation, arguing that it infringes upon their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.

Legal Journey

The lawsuit was initially filed in the federal courts of Delaware and eventually made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The appellate court upheld Delaware’s law, applying a test that many Second Amendment advocates feel does not properly weigh the historical tradition of firearm regulation in America. Critics of the decision argue that the court did not adequately consider the significance of these firearms in lawful self-defense and recreational use, which they claim are common uses protected by the Second Amendment.

Core Legal Issues

At the heart of Gray v. Jennings are questions about the standards used to evaluate Second Amendment claims and the types of weapons that fall under the protection of the Second Amendment. The plaintiffs argue that widely owned semi-automatic rifles are used for lawful purposes and should not be categorically banned. They also contend that the criteria used by the Third Circuit to uphold the ban—emphasizing public safety concerns over individual rights—are inconsistent with Supreme Court precedents that affirm the individual right to own commonly used firearms for lawful purposes.

Significance of the Case

Gray v. Jennings is significant for several reasons:

• Precedential Impact: The case could set a crucial precedent for how courts interpret the Second Amendment, especially following the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, which affirmed the right to keep and bear arms as fundamentally individual.
• Legal Standards: The decision will likely address the legal standards that should be applied when evaluating restrictions on firearms, potentially influencing future gun legislation and judicial decisions across the United States.
• Public Policy and Sentiment: As gun control remains a hotly debated issue in America, the outcome of this case could influence public policy and legislative approaches to firearm regulations at both state and federal levels.

Looking Ahead

As Gray v. Jennings proceeds to possibly be heard by the Supreme Court, its implications stretch far beyond Delaware. The case represents a critical junction in the ongoing debate over the balance between gun rights and public safety, making it a landmark case with the potential to affect millions of gun owners across the country. The decision could either reinforce the protective scope of the Second Amendment or grant states more leeway in regulating firearms, thereby shaping the landscape of American gun rights for years to come.

Buckle Up

As we approach these pivotal dates, it’s crucial for supporters of the Second Amendment to stay informed and engaged. The decisions made in early 2025 could redefine the landscape of gun rights in America. Remember, the fight for maintaining our freedoms is ongoing, and each legal milestone plays a crucial role in this enduring battle.

Stay tuned, stay informed, and most importantly, stay committed to the cause. The preservation of our rights often hinges on our collective vigilance and action.

SCOTUS Forces Maryland to Deliver On Key Second Amendment Case Argument ~ VIDEO

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Biden’s Legacy In Tatters As Departure Looms; Gun Control Hypocrisy Hurt

Joe Biden is leaving office next month with his gun control agenda rejected and his legacy in tatters. Joe Biden IMG whitehouse-gov

ANALYSIS—With a month remaining before history and the 2025 calendar sweep him out of office, President Joe Biden will leave the White House with his “legacy” in tatters; a testament to his career of bluster, dishonesty and gun control extremism made completely irrelevant by his pardon of his own son following convictions for gun crime violations.

Two new polls show Biden’s popularity at a low, and it could sink further following his reaction to the Abundant Life Christian School shooting in Madison, Wisconsin after which the president predictably called for actions by Congress which have no rational connection to the facts of the crime.

Fox News is reporting the results of a new Marquette Law School poll conducted Dec. 2-11 which show Biden has a 34 percent approval rating and a 66 percent disapproval, down four percentage points from October and the lowest showing for Biden in Marquette polling since he took office.

A new Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Dec. 18 shows Biden with a 45 percent approval rating for his job performance, but a 53 percent disapproval, which has been virtually unchanged for weeks. According to Rasmussen, only 23 percent “strongly approve” of Biden’s job performance while 40 percent “strongly disapprove.”

Biden may leave office having done more damage to his gun control crusade than he might possibly imagine. Writing for the National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke observed, “I do not think that President Biden and his friends appreciate the extent to which this act has damaged their calls for stricter gun control. Unlike the case in Wisconsin, Hunter Biden’s behavior actually was connected to one of the policies that his father demands every time he speaks on the issue. In President Biden’s estimation, one of the major problems with America’s gun laws is that the federal background check process is insufficiently extensive. And yet, less than a month ago, President Biden pardoned his own son for lying on the form that sits at the heart of that process.”

Cooke’s remarks were being published about the same time Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, released a scathing reaction to Biden’s “crass exploitation” of the Wisconsin school tragedy, which appears at AmmoLand here. Perhaps the most memorable remark in Gottlieb’s condemnation was this: “Biden, and his fellow gun prohibitionists all know the incident in Madison would not have been prevented, even if all of the laws he now wants passed had already been in effect. It is dishonest to suggest otherwise, but, of course, honesty has hardly been the earmark of the Biden administration.”

Eric Friday, counsel for Florida Carry, was quoted by TheGunMag.com noting, “There is no excuse for continuing to regulate law-abiding citizens. There is no excuse for denying parents, teachers, and staff, the ability to defend our schools with the same guns they carry every day in other locations to protect themselves and their families.”

For more than 50 years, Joe Biden has been leading the charge for gun control, working with other notorious Capitol Hill gun prohibitionists such as Senators Chuck Schumer, Chris Murphy, Richard Blumenthal and the late Dianne Feinstein and their elitist allies at Everytown for Gun Safety. While calling himself “a Second Amendment guy” because he owns a shotgun, Biden has championed every anti-gun-rights bill he could. He defended every restriction now on the books…right up to the moment he signed that pardon for his son, taking elitist Beltway hypocrisy to a new low, according to critics.

When Biden leaves office Jan. 20, Second Amendment advocates are hoping returning President Donald Trump will immediately dissolve Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a mini-bureaucracy created last year for the sole purpose of lobbying for Biden’s extremist gun control agenda at taxpayer expense.

And now, on the eve of Trump’s return to the Oval Office, a new McLaughlin poll released this week has some startlingly bad news for Biden and his fellow anti-gunners.

The Second Amendment Foundation commissioned the poll, which reveals a majority of American voters believe Trump and a Republican majority in Congress will better protect Second Amendment rights than Democrats.

Jim McLaughlin, CEO of the famous polling firm, detailed the results: “Americans continue to cherish their Second Amendment Rights as the results of our recent national survey clearly show. Overwhelming majorities of voters want their political leaders in Washington to defend Second Amendment rights (77%).  Furthermore, three out of four voters (76%) say it is important to nominate and confirm judges to the federal courts who will make it a priority to strictly follow the Second Amendment and nearly two-in-three voters (63%) think President Donald Trump will make it a priority to protect and defend the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners. It is safe to say that Americans are clearly excited about the results of the November elections and the rights of gun owners remain very important to voters.”

Revealing charts may be found here, here and here.

Translation: A majority of American voters put Trump and the GOP in charge for a reason. American gun owners are tired of being the collective whipping boy for Democrats who are determined to turn the right to keep and bear arms into a government-regulated privilege while attaching blame for crimes they did not commit and would never condone. The Madison mayhem allowed Biden one last opportunity to showcase just how detached from reality his gun control scheme has become.

Biden’s reaction to the Wisconsin school tragedy was predictable. Instead of offering some semblance of intelligent strategies to deal with the specific circumstances of the crime, the president offered what CCRKBA’s Gottlieb justifiably described as a “one-size-fits-all gun control wish list.”

As a result, the president is slowly headed for the door having been labeled by both Gottlieb and Cooke as “irrelevant,” a description which Biden will carry back to Delaware having been pushed aside months ago by his own party in its failed attempt to retain power.

It would be the ultimate irony if Joe Biden were to be remembered as the president who brought an end to his party’s gun prohibition addiction by demonstrating just how feeble and hypocritical it is, and likely always has been.

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About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.

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Trump’s Jan. 6 Political-Prisoner Pardons Could Address Some Real Injustices ~ VIDEO

Opinion

On his first day in office, President-elect Donald Trump promises, he will pardon at least some of the 1,500 or so people who have been charged with crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

He notes that most of those defendants were not violent and that they faced a lot of pressure to plead guilty, as about 1,000 have done so far.

Trump’s most vociferous critics are apt to view any pardons in these cases as an outrageous and self-interested attempt to excuse the behavior of “insurrectionists” who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But even though Trump himself is largely to blame for the riot, which was inspired by his unfounded insistence that then-President-elect Joe Biden had stolen the election, [we shall see about that] he raises some valid points about prosecutorial power, which can lead to unjust results that might be remedied by the prudent use of presidential clemency.

As of Nov. 6, the Justice Department reports, about 590 people had been charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement agents or officers or obstructing those officers” during the riot. They included 169 defendants “charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”

More than 300 defendants had pleaded guilty to felonies, while 661 had pleaded guilty “only to misdemeanors.” Defendants who pleaded not guilty, by contrast, typically have been convicted of felonies.

Prosecutors had a bunch of potential charges to choose from, including misdemeanors such as demonstrating inside the Capitol, “disorderly or disruptive conduct,” and entering or remaining in a restricted building without authorization. The sentences in such cases ranged from probation to short jail terms. Even defendants who received relatively light sentences may have grounds to complain that the charges they faced were not deployed consistently.

According to a recent report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, four FBI informants “entered the Capitol during the riot,” while 13 “entered the restricted area around the Capitol.” [See “FBI had 26 informants at Jan. 6 Capitol riots — and most were involved, bombshell DOJ report confirms “.]

None of those informants has faced prosecution.

Although the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office claims that is consistent with its policy of “generally” not charging protesters who did not enter the Capitol itself, that does not explain why the four informants who admittedly entered the building got off scot-free.

The potential felony charges in the Capitol riot cases, which carry much more severe penalties, included violent crimes such as assaulting police officers. But they also included offenses that were not necessarily violent, such as obstructing “an official proceeding,” which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison under 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

Given the possibility of such charges, Trump said on “Meet the Press” this month, defendants who pleaded guilty “had no choice.” Because prosecutors can severely penalize defendants who insist on a trial, he added, the criminal justice system is “very corrupt” and “very nasty.”

The Section 1512 charge, which figures in a quarter of the Jan. 6 cases, illustrates that point. Although the Supreme Court ruled last June that the offense must involve attempts to conceal evidence, meaning it does not cover the conduct of the Capitol rioters, that seemingly important decision is expected to have little impact on the outcomes of these cases.

The Justice Department says “there are zero cases where a defendant was charged only for violating” Section 1512. And even in the 26 cases where defendants pleaded guilty to that charge alone, the agreements explicitly allow prosecutors to pursue other charges now that they can no longer rely on this statute.

When you combine that sort of discretion with the puzzling practice of imposing sentences after trial based on allegations that the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, it is not hard to see why some Jan. 6 defendants may have received excessively severe penalties.

If Trump draws appropriate distinctions and uses his clemency powers carefully — a big “if” — he can mitigate those injustices.

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About Jacob Sullum

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum. During two decades in journalism, he has relentlessly skewered authoritarians of the left and the right, making the case for shrinking the realm of politics and expanding the realm of individual choice. Jacobs’ work appears here at AmmoLand News through a license with Creators Syndicate.

Jacob Sullum

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