The Soho Forum Debates

Does defensive gun use stop crime? Would more gun control save lives? Those were the topics of a public debate recently hosted by the Soho Forum, featuring Gary Kleck, a criminologist from Florida State University, and Paul Helmke, the former president and CEO of the Brady Center/Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as well as the former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Kleck argued that there are at least four times as many defensive gun uses by potential victims as there are by criminals, and that new gun controls would reduce the defensive uses far more than the criminal ones. Helmke questioned Kleck's take on the data.

The debate was held on September 13, 2018, at the SubCulture Theater in Manhattan's East Village. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated. Comedian Dave Smith, host of the podcast Part of the Problem, was the opening act.

The full resolution read: While laws that prohibit gun ownership would reduce crimes perpetrated by criminals, that benefit would be more than offset by the foregone opportunities for defensive gun use by victims of crime.

It was an Oxford-style debate in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, and the side that gains the most ground is victorious. Kleck, arguing the affirmative, prevailed by convincing about six percent of audience members to change their minds.

All Soho Forums are turned into Reason videos and podcasts. Go here for a full archive.

Kleck's research has focused on the impact of firearms and gun control on violence, deterrence, and crime control. He is the author of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, which won the 1993 Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology. He also wrote Targeting Guns (1997) and, with Don B. Kates, Jr., The Great American Gun Debate (1997) and Armed (2001), and, with Brion Sever, Punishment and Crime (2017).

Helmke is a professor of practice at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and he is the founding director of the Civic Leaders Living-Learning Center in Bloomington, IN.

Edited by Todd Krainin.

"Modum" by Kai Engle is licensed under a CC-BY creative commons license.

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The post Would More Gun Control Lead to More Crime? A Debate appeared first on Reason.com.

There has been a staggering reduction in global poverty over the last four decades. In China, sustained rates of economic growth have lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty. Ethiopia, a country once synonymous with famine, has grown faster than China while nearly halving its poverty rate over the last 15 years. Across the planet, developing countries large and small, from India to Ghana, have seen astonishing successes in alleviating poverty, exceeding even the most optimistic economic forecasts.

How did this extraordinary shift happen? Do poor countries need more markets, or more government?

Two of the world's best-known development economists, Joseph Stiglitz and William Easterly, met on August 27, 2018, at the SubCulture Theater in Manhattan's East Village to debate these questions. The event was sponsored by the Soho Forum, a monthly debate series partnered with Reason. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated.

Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former chief economist of the World Bank, is a professor at Columbia University. He credits thoughtful and aggressive government intervention for the rising fortunes of China and Ethiopia. In his view, markets are a tool to stimulate economic growth—but not always the most effetive one. "You always are going to have a mixture of governments and markets," he says. "And the only success is going to be where you get the right mixture."

Easterly is a professor of economics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He argues that China only achieved stellar growth rates after the Communist Party started to recede from economic life and created a space for markets to thrive. Likewise, Ethiopia prospered only after the disintegration of a repressive Communist regime, known as the Derg, paved the way for widespread privatization of industry and commerce.

Produced by Todd Krainin.

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The post Can the Free Market End Global Poverty? Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz vs. NYU's William Easterly appeared first on Reason.com.

Should social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube only remove users who make true threats or incite violence? Or do they have an ethical obligation to hold their users to a higher standard?

That was the topic of a recent public debate hosted by Reason—a West Coast version of the popular New York City-based debate series, The Soho Forum—pitting Thaddeus Russell, author of A Renegade History of the United States and host of the Unregistered podcast, against Ken White, an attorney at Brown, White & Osborn, author at the legal blog Popehat, and co-host of the podcast All the President's Lawyers.

Russell argued that corporations that accept tax breaks and public subsidies should be more accountable to the public. White held that social media sites deserve the same set of speech rights and limitations as ordinary citizens.

Both speakers agreed with the broader libertarian point that private websites have the legal right to do what they want. The debate hinged on a broader point: What should the culture of free speech, free expression, and ownership look like on our social media platforms?

It was an Oxford-style debate, in which the audience votes on the resolution before and after the event, and the side that picks up the most votes wins. White won the debate by picking up 20 percent of the votes.

The debate was held on November 1, 2018, at Reason's Los Angeles studio.

Edited by Ian Keyser. Recording by Meredith Bragg, Paul Detrick, and Zach Weissmueller.

'Machinery' by Kai Engel is licenced under CC BY-NC 4.0

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The post Should Facebook and Twitter Censor Themselves? A Debate. appeared first on Reason.com.

Should the federal government be able to "urge," "encourage," "pressure," or "induce" social media companies into censoring free speech about COVID-19? A recent ruling in federal court said no. That ruling is the subject of this month's Soho Forum Debate between law professor Kate Klonick and professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. The resolution is: "The making of national internet policy was hindered, rather than helped, by the July 4th federal court ruling that restricted the Biden administration's communications with social media platforms."

Arguing for the affirmative is Kate Klonick, an associate professor at St. John's University Law School, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a distinguished scholar at the Institute for Humane Studies. Her writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times , The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and numerous other publications.

Arguing against the resolution is Jay Bhattacharya, M.D. Ph.D., a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, as well as a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. His peer-reviewed research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals. Dr. Bhattacharya was one of three main co-signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020, an open letter published in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.

The post Social Media Censorship and The First Amendment appeared first on Reason.com.