Gun Control: Point-of-Sale vs. Point-of-Shoot
Gun control is considered good when it's unlikely to work, but considered racistly evil when pragmatic.
A remarkable aspect of modern American discourse is that gun control is considered an admirably liberal policy when carried out in its most ineffectual manner by restricting the right of law-abiding citizens to buy rifles at retailers. But gun control is also considered a far right wing racist conspiracy when proposed in its most effective manner — by preventing criminals from carrying concealed handguns by catching them in the act.
I call this point-of-sale vs. point-of-use gun control.
Virtually nobody else thinks in these terms, however.
From the Washington Post news section:
Appeals court overturns ruling that Richmond police targeted Black drivers
The decision reinstates an indictment for a Richmond man charged with illegal gun possession following a traffic stop.
August 6, 2025
By Salvador Rizzo
A federal appeals court panel has ruled that police officers in Richmond did not show a pattern of disproportionately targeting Black drivers for traffic stops, overturning a lower-court decision from last year that took local law enforcement to task for alleged racial disparities in policing.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit unanimously found that the officers stopped Keith Moore, the defendant in the case, in 2020 because he was driving a vehicle with a fake temporary license tag, not because he was Black.
When police attempted to pull him over, Moore ran several stop signs, crashed into a curb and then ran away before being arrested, according to court records. Police found a gun inside the vehicle, and Moore was indicted for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Sounds like they pulled over the right guy!
The federal district judge who handled the case, John A. Gibney Jr., found that Richmond police stopped Black drivers five times more frequently than White drivers, based on six months of data from 2020. In sternly worded written opinions and comments from the bench, Gibney said Moore had fallen prey to discriminatory policing, declaring that “the time has come for this practice to end.”
This seems like a legal question that should have been answered once and for all over the last 60 years, but instead it seems to have hardly been discussed.
Is the purpose of traffic stops purely to improve driving safety? Or is it to improve public safety in general, such as by catching criminals carrying illegal handguns?
According to the CDC WONDER database, blacks in Richmond, Virginia died 93% more per capita in motor vehicle accidents in 2018 through 2024 than did whites in Richmond.
So blacks being pulled over 5 times as frequently in Richmond sounds excessive.
But Richmond-resident blacks died an insane 29 times more often from firearm homicides than did whites:
A large fraction of Richmond whites are civil servants, who are not terribly shooty.
Still, across the country in 2018-2024, blacks died by firearm homicides about 13 times more often per capita than did whites.
But it is considered awfully racist to know basic hatestats like this.
So, should Richmond blacks be stopped 2x as much or 29x as much? Or perhaps 5x as much is a reasonable compromise?
The judge tossed Moore’s indictment last year. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia appealed. The 4th Circuit panel said the data on traffic stops used in the case did not prove racial animus by police, and said Gibney had acted more like a “legislative committee” than a jurist.
“After a thorough examination of the record, we conclude that the evidence was insufficient to show that Moore’s stop and arrest were the product of racially discriminatory purpose,” Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote in a 22-page opinion issued Friday, joined by judges Pamela A. Harris and Nicole G. Berner. They were appointed by presidents George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, respectively.
The 4th Circuit panel acknowledged Gibney’s “larger concern” about racial disparities in traffic stops across Virginia, as shown in the state’s own data, but said the experts in Moore’s case had failed to prove that Richmond police practices were biased.
Alternatively, the 29 times higher firearm homicide victimization rate (29x higher!) among blacks in Richmond might suggest that cops should pull over blacks more.
The appeals court ordered Moore’s indictment reinstated. …
Niemeyer said the six-month dataset did not show that the rate of traffic stops of Black drivers in Richmond was disproportional.
The 5x disparity is disproportional to the rate at which Richmond blacks get themselves killed in car crashes (2x) but not to the rate at which blacks get themselves killed in shootings (29x).
He also said police had a sound basis to initiate Moore’s traffic stop because the same officers had spotted the same fake temporary license tag number on two other vehicles they had pulled over earlier that day.
Seems reasonable.
The main reason we don’t have a rational discussion of this question is because it’s considered racist to know how much more frequently blacks shoot each other.
I got pulled over about a month ago when I was driving on the freeway in the pre-dawn hours to the airport for an early morning flight. I was going the speed limit in the far right lane when he lit me up (always disconcerting when it happens).
He had the bright spotlights on from behind and he used his loudspeakers to tell me to roll down all four windows, obviously worried the car was full of gangbangers or drug cartel members.
Then he walked up to the passenger window, realized he had pulled over an old white guy wearing khakis and a short sleeve dress shirt, and then mumbled some bullshit excuse about giving me a warning for failing to signal a lane change and I was free to go. It was obviously just a pretext to pull me over because he thought there were some bad guys in the car.
And I didn’t mind at all. That’s how it is supposed to work.
All of the questions of legal "disproportionality" stem from the Griggs-v.-Duke-spawned precept of "disparate impact". But the law—particularly the common law—isn't supposed to work that way. You are supposed to be prosecuted or freed based on whether or not you committed a crime, not based on whether or not your prosecution falls within or without a preconceived quota.
"Disparate impact" is unconstitutional and an affront to justice generally. Unfortunately it has also been US law for the last half century. Maybe the Vibe Shift and Students v. Harvard will turn the tide against "disparate impact", as seems to have happened at this Appellate Court. But ultimately the Supreme Court will have to overrule the Disparate Impact doctrine explicitly, as Dobbs did to Roe, and Students v. Harvard did to affirmative action. Maybe this will be case that does it?
The legal doctrine of "disparate impact" is itself based on the obviously and provably false assumption that all US races must behave exactly the same at all times, now and forever, despite the fact that nothing in nature is always equal, and that the government accepts and promotes gross ethnic disparities in other spheres. So avoiding a respawn of the toxic "disparate impact" concept requires the polity to grow up and accept the facts of life and stop trying to enforce a mollifying fantasy. Will the passing of the Boomers suffice?