For Public Safety, We Need Less Government, Not More

Gun owners have fought back against gun-control laws, but ineffectively.

The gun-grabbers exploit every well-publicized shooting to advocate another new gun-control law — even if unrestricted gun ownership would have prevented the shooting, and even if the shooter was breaking existing gun-control laws.

Gun-control laws don't stop criminals from acquiring guns. And it weakens the case for gun ownership if we call for existing gun laws to be better enforced before passing new laws. This implies that the existing laws have merit.

They don't. Such laws have caused people to die when a waiting period has kept someone from acquiring a gun to scare off a stalker — or a gun-lock requirement prevented someone from using a gun in time to stop an intruder or attacker.

If we want Americans to be safer, we need to take the offensive and repeal all the gun-control legislation on the books. Criminals will have no more guns than they do already, but it will allow Americans to defend themselves — and it will probably inspire a number of criminals to seek a safer line of work.

The 2nd amendment to the Constitution says:

2. 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.

There are arguments over whether this means only a duly authorized state militia has the right to keep and bear arms — even though when the amendment was passed, there were no restrictions on anyone's right to keep and bear arms.

But the arguments are irrelevant. The 9th amendment states clearly that the Constitution does not deprive anyone of the right to keep and bear arms:

9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Nothing in the Constitution authorizes Congress to limit gun ownership, and so the right to defend ourselves is "retained by the people."

Unfortunately, politicians only talk about the Constitution, they don't respect it. And we aren't going to secure your right to defend yourself by pushing this issue in isolation.

We must show Americans the harm that comes to their own lives when any Constitutional right is violated — the right to say unpopular things, to practice unpopular religions, to defend yourself against predators, to be safe against vindictive cops and prosecutors, to keep your property safe against demagogues invoking the "public good," to have all your rights secured by strict adherence to the Constitution.

If you're a gun owner, you are always on the defensive — defending some weapon as legitimate, and then watching as your favorite politician agrees to a compromise that takes more of your freedom from you.

Your only hope is a President and Congress who believe the right to bear arms isn't a negotiable issue — that it's one of many fundamental Constitutional rights that can't be traded away.

You have to support candidates who believe in the entire Constitution, not just in the 2nd amendment. You need champions who will go on the offensive — who will say there are far too many laws in America, and that we must repeal all the useless, oppressive, dangerous, unconstitutional laws passed in the last 70 years, including those that limit the right to bear arms.

You will restore the right to keep and bear arms only when we put the gun-control advocates on the defensive.

And we will make America safer only when we end the government's ability to disarm innocent citizens.

Less government means less crime.

All crime is local. It occurs in the jurisdiction of a police department or sheriff's department somewhere. The Founding Fathers wisely provided no Constitutional role for the federal government regarding common crimes of any kind.

But, of course, the politicians never lose sleep over Constitutional limitations. They have passed federal laws against carjacking, vandalism, "hate crimes," kidnapping, discrimination, fraud, pornography, gun ownership, drugs, and almost anything some politician doesn't happen to like.

A federal police force provides no additional safety for you. Local-law enforcement agencies help each other capture fugitives, share fingerprints, and otherwise cooperate across state lines. They don't need federal police to help them protect you.

In fact, a federal police force makes you less safe. The federal government's involvement in law enforcement gives politicians another excuse to spend more of your money, it gives federal bureaucrats the power to dictate politically correct polices to your local police department, and it does more damage to your Constitutional liberties.

The Founding Fathers would be shocked to see today's federal police forces — such as the FBI, the BATF, and the DEA. They explicitly warned against giving the federal government the power to deal with common crimes. They knew that federal police forces could lead to events like the BATF-FBI massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco, and the shooting of an innocent woman and her child at Ruby Ridge.

Every federal law includes intrusive and expensive provisions you never hear about. Crime bills are no exception.

After the Columbine High School massacre, the House of Representatives passed the "Juvenile Crime Bill" — supposedly to reduce teenage violence.

Conservatives supported the bill because they didn't notice its gun-control provisions, and probably because they didn't want to appear insensitive in the midst of a supposed crisis.

Liberals supported the bill because they didn't notice that it gave the government more power to use warrantless wiretaps, allowed police to intercept messages going to your pager, promoted drug-testing of all school children, and gave increased immunity to police who might commit violent crimes against you.

As usual, the politicians had practically no idea what they were voting on.

Not only is federal law enforcement dangerous, it is very expensive. As with any other kind of bill, the politicians see anti-crime bills as opportunities to enact unrelated programs for their political allies.

For example, Bill Clinton made a big show of a proposal for the federal government to pay for 100,000 new local patrolmen. The final version of the law, passed in 1994, appropriated $8.8 billion for the new policemen along with a load of non-crime goodies for anyone with the political clout to get on the gravy train.

In 1999, the Inspector General's Office audited the program. It found that all the subsidies had been duly paid, but where were the cops? Only about 40,000 had been added to the nation's police forces.

The President often congratulates himself on the success of this program. He thinks so highly of it that in 1999 he asked Congress to appropriate another $6.4 billion to put an additional 50,000 cops on the streets by 2005.

Getting the federal government out of local law enforcement will mean less government, not more — and it will reduce the cost of local law enforcement, reduce your taxes, restore many of the liberties you've lost, and make your neighborhood safer.

Once again, less government means less crime.

Asset forfeiture laws allow government agents — federal, state, or local — to seize your property if they suspect it may have been related to a crime.

It doesn't matter that the property was only incidental to the crime. It doesn't matter that you didn't commit the crime. It doesn't matter that you didn't even know a crime was occurring — or perhaps saw the crime and risked your life trying to prevent it. It doesn't matter that no one is ever convicted of the crime — or even charged with the crime. It doesn't even matter that no crime actually occurred. If government agents suspect that your property might have been related, however remotely, to a crime that might have occurred, even if you had no knowledge it was occurring, the agents can seize the property.

For example, if drug warriors learn that your child's friend brought a marijuana cigarette into your home without your knowledge, your house could be seized under the asset forfeiture laws.

Roughly 80% of the people who lose property to seizures are never charged with a crime. All of them have to sue the government to get their property back.

At the federal level, asset forfeiture is used by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the IRS, the FBI, the Coast Guard, the Postal Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Department of Health & Human Services, the Food & Drug Administration, the Customs Service, the Immigration & Naturalization Service, and the Department of Housing & Urban Development. And over 3,000 state and local governments have their own forfeiture laws.

Although the laws were enacted to fight organized crime and large-scale drug operations, they have turned into a brutal fund-raising tool for law-enforcement agencies. For any department that wants to augment its appropriated budget, asset forfeiture is a gift from Heaven. And human nature dictates that many law-enforcement officials pay more attention to cases involving property that can be seized, and less to cases in which your life or property may be threatened.

Seized property usually is sold at auction, and the law-enforcement agency keeps all or most of the auction proceeds for its own use. However, sometimes the agency will keep the assets and use them — especially cars and buildings. Sometimes the seized property is stolen by government employees. Or it may simply be left forgotten and moldering in a government warehouse.

Asset forfeitures total over $2 billion a year in property — allowing many state law-enforcement agencies to be self-funding. These agencies no longer plead for money from the legislators; their seizures provide the money to buy whatever they think they need.

Asset forfeiture is a mockery of the Bill of Rights. There is no presumption of innocence, no need to prove you guilty (or even charge you with a crime), no right to a jury trial, no right to confront your accuser, no right to a court-appointed attorney (even if the government has just stolen all your money), and no right to compensation for the property that's been taken. Somewhere hidden in the 4th and 5th Amendments there must be a clause saying these Amendments don't apply to asset forfeiture.

Asset forfeiture laws allow an angry neighbor or a desperate business competitor to make your life a living Hell by telling the police anonymously that you're storing drugs or illegal weapons in your closet. You can lose not just your closet, but your entire house or any cash kept in the house — even if the police don't find any drugs or weapons.

To reduce crime and protect your right to property, it's important that we repeal all federal asset forfeiture provisions. I hope this will lead to the repeal of all state and local asset forfeiture laws.

Reducing government power by getting rid of these laws will refocus police on chasing violent crime, instead of lucrative seizures — making your life safer.

Once again, less government means less crime.

The crime rate can be reduced dramatically by ending the War on Drugs and stopping the prosecution of other victimless crimes. This will free up resources to control true crime — the kind that hurts and terrorizes people.

Our prisons are packed with non-violent criminals — which frees violent murderers, rapists, and robbers on early release and through plea bargains. We need to send the pot smokers and other non-violent prisoners home, and make room for the thugs who terrorize innocent people.

This is covered in more detail in chapter 10 of The Great Libertarian Offer, and my proposals to free non-violent prisoners are on page 237.

One of the cruelest consequences of the War on Drugs has been the invention of federal sentencing formulas. These are rules established by Congress that require judges to impose fixed sentences, without hope of parole, for various crimes.

Beyond a very narrow range of discretion, a judge can reduce a defendant's sentence only if the defendant provides "substantial assistance" in convicting others — and only if the prosecutor approves (a clear violation of the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches).

In 1986 basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. House Speaker Tip O'Neill saw this as an opportunity to show that Democrats are just as tough on drugs as Republicans. He exploited Bias' death to rush through a bill before the 1986 elections. The bill fixed the minimum sentences for a whole range of crimes, but mostly concerning drugs. Republicans eagerly embraced a bill that responded to their long-standing complaints that judges are "soft on crime" — especially drug crime.

Few Congressmen took the time to read any part of the bill. There were no hearings, and there was virtually no discussion of the bill before it was passed. This reckless legislating has caused gross injustices in the sentences imposed on non-violent criminals and innocent bystanders, overflowed the nation's prisons, and destroyed thousands of lives.

Laws are rarely repealed — not even bad ones. Instead, a law is "fixed" by passing an additional law — which usually makes matters even worse. When it was found that the 1986 bill wasn't putting away big-time drug dealers for long sentences, Congress passed a 1998 bill that made everyone in a drug organization responsible for every crime committed by anyone in the group. That meant the errand boy who never carried anything more important than sandwiches and coffee could receive the same sentence as Mr. Big.

I know you won't be surprised to learn that this law didn't catch any big fish either. In fact, it did just the opposite. When a major drug dealer was caught, he provided "substantial assistance" by ratting on everyone underneath him — allowing him to get a light sentence. Because of the 1998 law, groups of smaller fish went to prison with long sentences that had been intended for the big barracuda.

This has caused the prison population to explode — with more and more people entering prison and staying longer. The Justice Policy Institute has estimated that on February 15, 2000, the prison population of the United States reached 2 million.

But this explosion in the prison population hasn't taken violent criminals off the streets. For the most part, it has scooped up only low-level drug offenders or innocent people who were fingered by high-level dealers providing "substantial assistance."

One example was Clarence Aaron. In 1992 he was a 23-year-old college student in Mobile, Alabama. He had never been in trouble with the law when he agreed to drive some friends to a drug transaction in Baton Rouge. When caught, the friends provided "substantial assistance" by testifying against Clarence. Although he had never dealt drugs himself or even touched any, Clarence was given three life sentences without possibility of parole.

His only hope now is a Libertarian President who will pardon him. If I am elected President, I will provide that pardon from the inauguration platform.

The mandatory minimums are a travesty, spawned by the travesty that is the War on Drugs. They must be eliminated, and sentencing discretion must be returned to judges who can consider all the circumstances when passing sentence.

Wiping victimless crimes off the law books and ending the mandatory minimums will not only end the cruel and unusual punishment of people who are either innocent or who have committed minor offenses. It also will dramatically reduce the prison population and make room for the violent thugs you don't want to meet on a dark street.

Once again, less government means less crime.

Every senseless law enacted by big government erodes the public's respect for the rule of law. And there have been plenty of senseless laws.

With government invading your bank account, your bedroom, your bathroom, and your closet, many people can no longer see the difference between laws to punish violent criminals and laws to regulate your private business. With the line blurred, it's too easy for individuals without much moral training to step over it and hurt others. If it's okay to smuggle into your home a toilet larger than the federal government allows, maybe it's okay to smuggle out of the office a little of your employer's property.

Respect for the law also means insisting that police, prosecutors, and courts respect your civil liberties. Without the rights promised you in the Bill of Rights, you are living in a police state. Among those rights are:

• Your right to be secure in your person, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure. (4th Amendment)

• Your right to be safe against double jeopardy, to remain silent if suspected of a crime, to due process of law, and to just compensation if your property is taken for public use. (5th Amendment)

• Your right to a speedy and public trial, to know of every witness against you, to cross-examine those witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel for your defense. (6th Amendment)

• Your right to a trial by jury. (7th Amendment)

• Your right to be released on reasonable bail, and to be free of excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment. (8th Amendment)

• Your right to privacy or any other common right that hasn't specifically been forfeited in the Constitution. (9th Amendment)

These rights have been sliced and diced by asset forfeiture laws, by the practice of retrying in federal court individuals who have been acquitted in state court, by search and arrest warrants issued on anonymous tips, by confiscation powers given to the EPA and other federal agencies, and by mandatory minimum sentences imposing cruel punishments.

The abuses of civil liberties by the police, prosecutors, and courts have done little to keep violent criminals off the streets. But they have turned the lives of many innocent people into nightmares.

Professional criminals are versed in the laws they break; they know how to limit the risk of prosecution. The innocent know little about the 1,001 new laws passed each year — and so they're shocked and helpless when a government agent moves in on them. This is why tough new laws aimed at crime always seem to hurt the innocent more than the guilty.

The Declaration of Independence says that "Governments are instituted among Men" to "secure these rights" to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." A government that does that and no more will be immeasurably more just, more efficient, and more respected than our government is today, and you will be freer and more prosperous.

The Great Libertarian Offer will reduce the federal government to just its constitutional functions — automatically removing thousands of federal laws from the books, automatically restoring hundreds of lost rights, and automatically restoring the rule of law.

This will do far more to reduce crime than all the new prisons, new money for law-enforcement agencies, and new intrusions on your liberty.

Once again . . . 

Crime rates will drop to the level of a generation ago only when we reduce our dependence upon government. . . .

1. Repeal gun-control laws and criminals will start fearing innocent citizens.

2. Get the federal government out of local law enforcement, and law enforcement will be much more effective and less expensive.

3. Repeal the asset forfeiture laws, and crime-fighting agencies will refocus on the most dangerous criminals, rather than on the most valuable property.

4. End the prosecution of victimless crimes — especially drug crimes — and the courts will tell the truly violent criminals to step to the head of the line.

5. Reduce the enormous number of pointless and harmful laws and regulations, and citizens will respect the laws that remain.

Will these five proposals do away with crime entirely? Of course not. Even the freest and most prosperous country in the world will have people who try to get what they want by taking it from others.

But you can have a peaceful city and a peaceful neighborhood. And you can have it without making big government any bigger — but instead by reducing our reliance on government and relying more on citizens who have an interest in minimizing crime.

Libertarian solutions are sometimes accused of being too extreme. But what could be extreme about wanting to reduce crime, making our schools safer, and setting our citizens free?

The real extremists are those who continue to let children die in school shootings and drive-by killings rather than give up their love affair with big government.

(This is a chapter from The Great Libertarian Offer by Harry Browne, published in 2000. The book contains proposals to reduce government and thereby reduce social problems in dozens of areas. Information on the book is available by clicking here.)