VH: I agree with you 100%. Some of the commentators were simply amazing (as you mentioned, Bob MacCoun’s comments in the policing panel were particularly insightful). The organizers did a great job pairing.

(1) what does “More instruments, less law” mean?

(2) Apropos of Bakos & al: That people should have taken the “informed minority” argument seriously for more than a quarter-century without empirically testing it is simply shocking. And I’m not talking about Claude Rains, Casablanca shocking. I mean it seriously. Is any more evidence needed that L&E is operating in its own hermetic ideological and/or theological universe?

Obviously it’s the case that if the 2nd Amendment is incorporated, state and city regulations which restrict gun possession by non-felons impair citizens’ rights. (That’s not to say they are unconstitutional impairments — we don’t know the level of scrutiny that applies, after all.) Who could disagree with that proposition after Heller?

Have you read the paper? What do you think of it?

(Also, by conjoining “guns off the street” with “out of the hands of felons” you implied, contrary to your subsequent comment, that “guns on the street” are wicked– although I would be happy to join your apparent suggestion, if indeed you intended to proffer it, that laws which severely restrict gun possession by non-felons impair Second Amendment rights.)

1) This isn’t a VC comment thread. Watch your tone.

2) I didn’t write that VC folks want to see felons with guns, although I think that some folks on the VC have different views of the relevant risks and benefits of looser gun laws, which would produce more felons with guns, than other folks on the VC, and me. What I wrote was: “Indeed, the surprise of the paper is how well pot works as a method to get guns off the streets and out of the hands of felons (Volokh Conspirators’ perfect storm of bad outcomes).” Since most guns on the streets are in the hands of non-felons who are simply holding unlawfully, I think that pot-as-social-control means a significant restriction of citizens second amendment rights (at least in terms of chilling effects). Additionally, the real part of the process that matters is restriction of pot, which also is a major source of annoyance to some VCers who are libertarian.

The “Volokh Conspirators” do not want “guns in the hands of felons on the street.” (Some V. Conspirators apparently do favor guns in the hands of law-abiding people– so they can defend themselves against those felons for whom you feel such empathy.)

Your asinine suggestion that the Conspirators regard the arrest of dangerous felons as a “bad outcome” seems more likely to make you look foolish than them.