YouTube's New Policy on Gun Videos

The New York Times recently ran a story about YouTube changing its policy about allowing videos

pertaining to "the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories, specifically items like ammunition, gatling triggers, and drop-in auto sears". According to YouTube, the new policy will go into effect in April 2018.

As announced in October 2017,  YouTube had already made clear its plan to take down "video tutorials" about how to make guns fire bullets more rapidly via the use of a bump stock device. That decision was in response to a mass shooting that month in Las Vegas, wherein the shooter used a bump stock to rapidly spray bullets and take lives.  

The policy is not entirely new, but more of an expansion on YouTube's existing policy about dangerous or harmful content. In my book, Guns on the Internet,  forthcoming from Routledge/Taylor & Francis in August 2018, I include a chapter on YouTube gun videos. 

(I found videos using search terms like "bumpfire" and "bump stock", among others.) My specific interest in writing this chapter was whether gun-related video content should be protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, using standards such as those established through prior court cases. In other words, to what extent does the gun-related content of a video constitute political speech, or contribute to the marketplace of ideas? In a way, YouTube gun videos represent an intersection of sorts of the First and Second Amendments, with the caveat that YouTube is not a government entity and can enforce standards that are much more restrictive than Constitutional free speech standards. 

Source: http://blog.k-var.com/news/nssf-youtubes-policy-causes-concern/

Will the new policy mainly affect commercial operations like GlockStore, or will individuals -- gun owner YouTubers -- be impacted as well? On the blog of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the new policy is, unsurprisingly, decried as "censorship". 

My guess would be that the policy will not be uniformly enforced. Will YouTube staff do searches on words like "bumpfire" and "bumpfiring" and remove each and every video with those words in the tagline? That might be in the tens of thousands of videos. They could do this, but then YouTubers may simply switch to other synonyms (e.g., "rapid fire shooting with __________" [fill in name of gun]).

Time will tell how much of an impact YouTube's new policy will make. 

Florida's New Gun Control Law

As many folks know, this month the Florida legislature passed, and Governor Rick Scott signed, a new gun control law in response to a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Image source: www.thestreet.com/story/14488770/1/

police-deal-with-active-shooter-at-parkland-fl-high-school.html

The new law establishes a waiting period of 3 days, or until a background check is conducted, with some exceptions (e.g., police officers, members of the military). It also raised the minimum age for buying a gun to 21 years old (up from 18 years); included provisions to allow school personnel to be armed; and banned bumpstock, even though no bumpstocks were used in the Parkland shooting. Bumpstock was used a few months earlier in a Las Vegas mass shooting. (For the record, a gun owner doesn't need a bumpstock to bump-fire, but that's another conversation.)

As the New York Times and other news outlets made clear, Florida's new law didn't cover other areas, such as banning specific types of guns (e.g., AR-15s), strengthening background checks, or banning so-called "high capacity" magazines that can hold upwards of 100 bullets. Gun owners will often complain that bans of magazines that hold a certain (high) number of bullets won't do much good, due to shooters simply being able to quickly reload -- as is shown here and here. Some of these points are outlined in this video by Colion Noir. The new law also didn't touch the issue of guns being left in and subsequently stolen from cars. 

Shortly after the new law went into effect, the National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit to stop it. 

Will the new law be effective? Will it prevent future shootings and keep schools safer? As Pam Bondi of Florida's Office of the Attorney General wrote in a statement, the bill is "not perfect, and sadly it will not bring back the 17 lives lost in the horrific school shooting, but the safety of our children is not a political issue - it's simply the right thing to do."

Time will tell.

The Most Surreal Photo

It happened yesterday. 

(Source: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/03/01/mobapp-sen-dianne-feinstein-giddy-trump-gun-bill.cnn)

On February 28, 2018, Presi-dent Trump hosted a televised bi-partisan meeting to discuss gun control legislation in response to yet another mass shooting, this one at a high school in Parkland, Florida. As CNN described it, Senator Feinstein "erupted with glee" at the President's seeming embrace of a variety of gun control measures.  Banning bumpstocks. Expanding background checks. Taking guns away <gasp!> from people who are seemingly dangerous and/or suffer from a mental illness. This about-face from a POTUS who was elected with great support from gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA). 

Unsurprising-ly, gun rights groups have pushed back. NRA spokes-person Dana Loesch announced that the NRA "doesn't back any ban" on semi-automatic firearms. The Gun Owners of America just today (3/1/18) issued a Current Action Alert that "Yesterday was a horrible day for the Second Amendment"; called the President the "Gun-Grabber-in Chief"; and called on its members to "call the President immediately", listing a phone number. 

But it was the photo of the President next to a gleeful Senator Feinstein - showing him documents, POTUS nodding in agreement - that really struck me. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

How much do gun rights groups and members hate Dianne Feinstein? A lot. In fact, in visiting a story posted at Breitbart.com about Trump's February 28th gun control  meeting, I found this ad (shown above) with a picture of the Senator holding a rifle alongside the question, "Oppose gun control?" On its blog, the Gun Owners of America has a post entitled "Hypocrisy... I name thee Feinstein."

In yesterday's meeting, President Trump chided Republican Senator Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) for being "afraid of the NRA". Toomey was a co-sponsor, along with Democrat Joe Manchin (West Virginia), of the Manchin-Toomey amendment, written in 2013 in consultation with the NRA on the request of President Obama in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. The Manchin-Toomey amendment ultimately failed to pass in the Senate, coming up several votes short. And yet President Trump has breathed new life into it. Who'd have thought?

Back to the President's comment about legislators being afraid of the NRA - yes, they are. We all know this, and so does the gun lobby. (Remember Senator Marco Rubio ducking & dodging a Parkland student's question about not taking any more NRA money? Three words: painful to watch.) After the Manchin-Toomey bill's defeat in 2013, Senator Manchin stopped talking about the bill or gun control. Back in 2015 I reached out to him via Facebook about the bill, in connection to a book I was writing (Guns on the Internet; due out from Taylor-Francis/Rouledge in fall 2018). He never responded. I suppose that makes sense. The NRA took out an ad against him, "Tell Manchin to Stand with West Virginia". "Manchin is working with President Obama and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Concerned? You should be. Tell Senator Manchin to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment", the ad's narrator intones. And who can forget a decade earlier, gun rights advocate Charleton Heston taking aim (pun intended) at Presidential candidate Al Gore at a NRA convention for his (Gore's) gun control stance. "For everyone within the sound of my voice, to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS" [rifle raised above his head]. The convention crowd subsequently erupted in applause.

As some have asked, will Trump be the POTUS who - ironically - disrupts the legislators-gun lobby relationship, and brings about gun control measures? Something his much-hated-by-the-gun-lobby predecessor couldn't claim by the end of his eight years?

Well... let's see what tomorrow brings. I'd say it's 50-50 that tomorrow POTUS is back to pushing for arming teachers. 

New Jersey Bail Reform: It's working, but...

A year ago (early 2017) under Governor Christie, New Jersey switched from a cash bail system to one wherein judges use a risk assessment algorithm to determine whether a defendant should be released or locked up in jail while awaiting court processing. As noted in a Feb. 20th, 2017 story for NJ.com, the system was "similar to the federal system and the one in place in Washington, D.C., but New Jersey is the first to roll out such a system statewide." As reported for a September 2017 story in Wired.com, factors that determine a person's risk score include their age at present arrest; whether their arrest was for a violent offense; prior convictions (both misdemeanor and felony); past history of violence; and any prior incarcerations. The call for, and action on, bail reform have spread to other locations including Atlanta, GA, Philadelphia, PA, Maryland, and even New York City with Mayor de Blasio announcing that one of the notoriously dangerous Riker's Island jails will close by summer 2018.

The complaints about bail include that it disproportionately, and unconstitutionally, impacts the poor, keeping them locked up because they cannot afford their bail. Not being able to afford bail, or being denied bail, means that an accused individual ends up incarcerated before being convicted. They're technically innocent until proven guilty either through trial or accepting a plea bargain; but they're not free to go home. How free can someone be as a 'pre-trial inmate'? A long delay in processing their case may have an individual sitting in jail for months, potentially in violation of their Sixth Amendment right to a speed trial. 

In early 2017, New Jersey's Bail Reform and Speedy Trial Act  was heralded as ground-breaking, although not everyone was pleased with the change. The bail bonds industry, for one, has been hurt by the shift. Police and some prosecutors also complained about the risk of releasing potentially dangerous individuals back into the community. (But then again, there's that pesky Sixth Amendment thing. Dangerous, possibly; but not yet convicted.) 

Fast forward a year to February 2018. How is New Jersey's new no-cash-bail approach working out? A newly issued report from the New Jersey Judiciary notes that the data show "a reduction of the pretrial jail population by 20% from January 1, 2017 to January 1, 2018, and a reduction of 35% from January 1, 2015 to January 1, 2018." The new approach also seems to have increased the speed with which defendants are initially processed through the court, in keeping with the new law's requirement that the accused be indicted within 90 days; and intent that the amount of time they can spend in jail awaiting trial be limited. This is all good, right?

Except that there's the issue of cost, which was raised back in 2016. As recently reported by both NJ.com and the Press of Atlantic City, the new system appears to be going broke fast, with costs greatly exceeding revenue brought in. (The program is funded by court fees, rather than funding through the State's budget.) As noted in the report, the new law set up a Pretrial Services Program, which operates 24/7 (as in every single hour, every day) and statewide employs a staff of 267, including managers and supervisors. Judges and other staff are on call to "address emergent matters". The report notes that in "slightly less than one-third of the counties, county jail staff assist in responding to emergent monitoring alerts. Pretrial Services staff handle these emergent alerts in all other counties." As noted in NJ.com on February 13, 2018, the "highest tier of pretrial monitoring, which requires defendants wear GPS monitoring bracelets, was particularly taxing on court staff.... Keeping tabs on the 3,686 defendants entered into that tier last year required 24-hour staffing. In a few counties, local jails have taken up the duty of responding when a defendant goes missing, but in most jurisdictions around the state, that responsibility fell on the civilian court staff." Similarly, as noted in the Press of Atlantic City on February 16, 2018, counties have had to hire additional staff for sheriff's and prosecutor's offices, and the courts, because of a 48-hour deadline to decide whether an individual can be freed or must remain in jail. As noted in the article, "Courts now must be open on weekends and holidays to adhere to this deadline."

So in a nutshell it comes down to money. And where it will come from. The New Jersey budget is already running a deficit. The state's pension program is coming up around $50 billion short. The new Governor, Phil Murphy, got elected with an ambitious set of promises, including raising the minimum wage to $15/hour and making tuition for community college free. Maybe he'll pay for this through the millionaire's tax he promised, or from new tax revenue brought in through legalizing recreational marijuana. Where could funding needed to keep the Pretrial Services Program running come from? It's a program with good intentions, to make due process more fair for the poor and pre-trial court processing more in line with the Sixth Amendment. While not on the top of the Governor's to-do list, funding the state's new approach to (no) bail shouldn't fall off the radar either. 

Lessening the Opioid Crisis, Helping Addicts

This week marks the anniversary of two high-profile drug-related deaths of artists. On February 2nd, 1979, Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose in Greenwich Village, NJ. Thirty-five years later on the same day, Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of an accidental drug overdose, also in New York. (Sid Vicious image source: https://www.biography.com/people/sid-vicious-246010)

Drug use, drug addiction, and drug overdose are nothing new, of course. Remember the crack epidemic of the 1980's? In 1971 President Nixon launched a war on drugs that would continue for decades. We know now that the drug war did little to stem drug use, and mostly managed to throw lots of people into prison.  

We now find ourselves in the midst of an arguably preventable opioid crisis. Preventable because, it has been revealed, major drug distributors hired away Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lawyers and got those lawyers to help them draft new legislation that would weaken the DEA's ability to successfully prosecute the distributors for flooding the market with prescription narcotics like fentanyl. Deaths from these legal drugs have skyrocketed. The new Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act was signed into law by President Obama in April 2016. In other words, this is a crisis of our own making. This echoes some speculation that the crack epidemic of the 1980s was facilitated by actions of the CIA in a drug-sales-for-gun-purchases arrangement with the Contra army in Nicaragua. (This, and the fate of journalist Gary Webb who wrote the article "Dark Alliance" about the CIA's role in the crack explosion, were the subject of the movie "Kill the Messenger".) The word 'epidemic' gets thrown around a lot, but in this case I think it fits. 

So how do we fix this? Various suggestions have been proposed. Here are mine.

(1) Change the law back. If the new law has made it "virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents", which "had allowed the [DEA] to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street" then fix that. Give the DEA its teeth back.

(2) Get addicts the detox they need. Detox covers the first 5-7 days of stopping using a drug, and it's a critical period. Some drugs are physically harder to stop using than others. Heroin, as most people know, has a very nasty detox. Alcohol and marijuana detoxes are also unpleasant. Cocaine detox? Very few physical side effects. (Mental & emotional reactions are another issue.) Having an addict spend a week at an inpatient detox facility (e.g., in a hospital) can help tremendously, and facility staff can be available 24/7 during this time should any medical problems arise.  


(3) Get addicts the ongoing treatment they need. Since many addicts also have addictive personalities, ongoing resources -- for weeks, months, years -- are important. Twelve-step programs like Narcotics Anonymous can be tremendously useful in connecting addicts with other recovering addicts who 'get it'. An added bonus? It's basically free. (Similar to church service, a basket gets passed for a suggested $1 donation to cover expenses like coffee. But contributing isn't mandatory.) (NA logo image source: http://southbrowardna.org/)