by Jacob Sullum

About the author: Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at the libertarian Reason magazine.

On the night of Sunday, June 2, 1996, someone set a fire in the entryway of a two-story apartment building on 17th Avenue in Brooklyn. The fire spread to the walls and ceiling of the first floor, then up the staircase and into the apartment on the left. When the fire trucks arrived at 1:08 A.M., heavy black smoke was billowing from the windows.

“I can vividly remember a woman in the street screaming as we pulled up, ‘There are people upstairs,’” says John Kroon, who at the time had been a firefighter for just 15 months. While his colleagues hooked up their hoses and pushed their way into the lobby, Kroon...