Category ►►► Gun Rights and Occasional Wrongs

June 26, 2008

The 2nd Amendment DOES NOT "Confer an Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms"

But on the other hand, I must rise to dispute not only Erwin Chemerinsky (on the Hugh Hewitt Dean Barnett radio show today) and Barack H. Obama, but also John S. McCain, who issued a statement today that ends:

But today, the Supreme Court ended forever the specious argument that the Second Amendment did not confer an individual right to keep and bear arms.

I disagree; it's not specious (though the way the argument is used certainly is): It's actually perfectly true that "the Second Amendment did not confer an individual right to keep and bear arms."

Look at the wording of the Amendment (corrected to modernize punctuation):

The operative clause (the clause that contains the subject and verb of the sentence) is in blue. Nowhere does the amendment say that it confers that right; "to confer" in this case means "to bestow," to grant or give. But the amendment speaks of the right as if it already existed, predating not only the amendment itself but the Constitution, the country, and indeed, every other constitution, charter, or country that has ever been. The amendment only states that the Constitution forbids whichever entites it controls from infringing on that pre-existing right.

Bearing in mind that I'm not a lawyer -- though I sometimes play sea-lawyer or Philadelphia lawyer on the web (as today!) -- it's my understanding that the Founders saw constitutionally protected rights falling into two main categories:

• Those rights specifically created by the Constitution, such as the right to vote in federal elections and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances; these are rights that cannot exist absent not only a government but this particular government: You can't have a right to vote for your member of Congress if your country has only a king and his privy council.
• Those rights that are fundamental to all people everywhere, and which fall within the "inalienable rights" described by the Jeffersonian phrase "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." These are fundamental rights that the Founders believed should be protected by every government -- which includes the states as well as the feds.

Thus it's perfectly proper to "incorporate" to the states those fundamental rights protected by the Constitution, while not incorporating the created rights. Despite the fact that the First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law," I nevertheless agree with incorporating its fundamental protections to the states: the prohibition against establishing or prohibiting free exercise of religion, abridging freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or the right to peaceably assemble. I can see why the right to petition need not be incorporated, as that is a created right.

And yes, I am quite aware that individual states at the time the Constitution and the First Amendment were enacted had established state churches and did, in fact, prohibit free exercise of religion. Like the right to liberty versus the peculiar institution of slavery, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified in an environment of essential contradiction. Those contradictions would eventually have to be resolved; this resolution can come from new amendments (such as the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) or, post Marbury v. Madison, from the Supreme Court.

Today, I believe Americans, including judicial conservatives, would be utterly outraged if a state were to start jugging citizens for speaking out on issues, or rounding up Jews for heresy, or nullifying habeas corpus rights, so that the authorities could simply round up and incarcerate anybody they didn't like. We've long since completely accepted that not even the states can violate fundamental rights, at least of American citizens (most of us would extend that to any lawful resident of any nationality).

Deep down, we understand that our government did not give ("confer") those rights to us; we have them inherently and inalienably from our Creator, or even just as an inherent aspect of having consciousness and a conscience. The word "inalienable" means that fundamental rights cannot be taken or even given away. Even the mullahs of Iran cannot take away those rights; they can only violate them... and doing so constitutes a crime against humanity, making the mullocracy of Iran a criminal government.

(It's not necessarily our duty to enforce those rights; "we are champions of liberty everywhere, guardians only of our own.")

The way you determine which protected rights are fundamental is to ask whether its logically possible for the right to exist before the United States government was created.

It's obviously not logically possible to petition something, such as the United States government, that does not even exist; it's a silly exercise in semantics. Likewise, it's logically impossible to vote for your representatives before there is even a House of Representatives. Therefore, these are created rights, not fundamental rights.

By contrast, the right of freedom of speech was frequently discussed in the British Parliament long before we existed, and freedom of religion was argued for centuries, in many countries, before the 1780s. The fact that the concept of a right can be seriously discussed as policy means that it is not "logically impossible."

And it certainly is logically possible to envision a right to arms before the United States existed; arms existed, many countries allowed some or all of their subjects to be armed (such as England, where the stalwart yeomen were expected to take up arms to fend of foreign invasion; or Italy, where men and even women could carry swords and pistols to protect themselves). Therefore, by recognizing the right to keep and bear arms as a right and pledging to protect it from infringement, the Constitution clearly indicates that this is a fundamental right that was not "conferred" by the Constitution... no matter what Erwin Chemerinsky claims.

And I'm pretty sure the Founders would agree with me -- because all I'm doing is agreeing with them.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 26, 2008, at the time of 5:58 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

At Last... Court Rules Founders Meant What They Wrote In the 2nd Amendment

The decision was just released literally a few minutes ago, so no details yet. But the majority opinion was, as rumored, written by Justice Antonin Scalia... and it begins with a definitive, unnuanced, categorical statement that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects a right to keep and bear arms held by every American... not just those connected in some nebulous way to a "militia," whatever that word means in this day and age. (I don't know if it's limited to citizens or extends to legal residents; and whether it only applies to legal adults or reaches into lower teen ages -- in 1791, those in the militia automatically included all males between 16 and 40-something.)

This is a stunning blow to the national gun-prohibitionist movement; it knocks away the prop on which every federal proposal to ban whole classes of gun is based: the idea that the amendment only protects the "right" (?) of states to keep and bear militias. It was always a foolish and mendacious interpretation; but until today, it was one that had resonated with some appellate courts. (I don't know if this ruling affects state laws; see below.)

Many circus courts that held the amendment applied only to members of the National Guard hung their robes on an equally stupid misreading of U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). In that bizarre case, Jack Miller and Frank Layton were charged with transporting a short-barreled shotgun across state lines. The trial court found that the National Firearms Act -- the law they were accused of violating -- was unconstitutional because of the Second Amendment; the Supreme Court overturned that verdict.

The Court ruled, at core, that the amendment only protected possession of those weapons normally used in armies or militias. No evidence was presented that short-barreled shotguns were in common use among such bodies (though of course they were): The reason no evidence was presented, I believe, was that Miller's attorneys did not show up at the Supreme Court hearing -- as their client had inconveniently been murdered in prison while awaiting appeal.

The Court never reached the question of whether Miller was in any kind of militia; but that didn't stop numerous appellate courts from falsely claiming that the Court in Miller held that the amendment applies only to members of the "militia," which at that time had become the National Guard.

But today's ruling puts paid to that deliberate obfuscation; the only thing clear at this point is that the Court has definitively held that the amendment applies to everyone, not just those in one of the state National Guard units. But the major point I need answered is whether the Court has "incorporated" that protection to state laws, as it has with, e.g., most of the rights in the First and Fourth Amendments: What does the Court say about whether states are likewise forbidden from violating the right to keep and bear arms, regardless of what their state constitutions say (or don't say)?

Reaching that question was unnecessary in the Heller case, and I suspect they steered clear of such overreaching. But this ruling is certainly going to spark federal cases on precisely that question. The amendment does not even mention Congress, as many other rights in the Bill of Rights do; so I think there is at least a serious argument that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" would apply to states as well as the federal government.

That question, more than any other, will determine the scope of this ruling; it will surely be litigated over the next decade or so:

• If federalism trumps the Second Amendment, then most gun bans nationwide will prevail;
• But if the right trumps federalism, we'll see a wholesale striking-down of such bans nationwide.

But we're not going to know the answer to that question -- or even whether the Court addressed it (probably not) -- until much later today, after lawyer-bloggers like Patterico and the lads at Power Line (not to mention Eugene Volokh, Beldar, Hugh Hewitt, and that lot) have had a chance to digest at least a significant part of the Scalia majority decision itself.

Keep watching the skies!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 26, 2008, at the time of 8:01 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

December 11, 2007

No She Didn't! Oh Yes She Did.

First we heard that Jeanne Assam -- a private, female security guard in Colorado Springs, Colorado and former Minneapolis police officer -- had shot and killed a Christian-hating gunman, who himself had already shot nine people at the Youth With a Mission missionary training center and the New Life Church, killing four of them.

(His name is known but will not be mentioned on this blog, as he does not deserve to be remembered. But his murdered victims do: They are Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, both slain at the Youth With a Mission center; and sisters Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, who were shot at the New Life Church.)

Then came the stunning news that in fact the Christian-hater was not slain by Ms. Assam; he killed himself:

[The Christian hater], the man who police say shot and killed four people at two separate locations in Colorado on Sunday, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the coroner's office said Tuesday.

"The death of [the Christian hater] has been ruled a suicide," the El Paso County Coroner's Office said in a statement.

I'm sure that Democrats, always anxious to deny hero-hood to (a) believing Christians and (b) chicks who carry guns, will now crow that the "gun nuts" jumped the -- oh, all right, I won't -- leapt to a conclusion, and that in fact she didn't stop the killer after all. (I also anticipate an attack on the fact that she was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department in 1997 for lying during an investigation of her conduct during an incident in that city; more about that anon.)

But wait; before throwing Ms. Assam under the bus, let's read the next sentence in that same CNN story above:

"It should be noted that he was struck multiple times by the security officer, which put him down. He then fired a single round killing himself," the statement said.

Back when I was actively debating gun prohibitionists, I encountered this odd argument all the time: Whenever I presented evidence of a private citizen who used a gun to stop a crime without killing the perpetrator, the prohibitionists refused to accept it; it was as if anything less than justifiable homicide were "inconclusive;" it was cheating, somehow, to use such cases in debate.

(I guess the nutty, liberal idea was that the only purpose of a gun is to kill; so if it didn't kill, then it must have done nothing!)

But that's paralogical. In the vast majority of cases where armed police use their service weapons to stop a crime or arrest a criminal, no shots are fired. And in the majority of cases where shots are fired, the suspect is not killed. If we nevertheless believe that cops should be armed -- and I've yet to meet a gun prohibitionist who was willing to argue that guns don't help trained police officers -- then it's no argument against concealed-carry permits for private civilians that most of the time, even when they use their gun, even when they shoot the bad guy, they don't kill him.

And in this case, I think two points are now crystal clear from the autopsy of the perpetrator of this homicidal hate crime:

• Jeanne Assam is clearly a big fan of "gun control": She hit the killer with multiple shots yet didn't hit a single innocent person.
• The murderer didn't kill himself because he felt remorse; he knew the spree was over... because Assam had already taken him down. Were it not for Ms. Assam, a parishoner at the New Life Church, many more people would have been killed.

I have never heard of a case where a spree killer simply stopped killing and went home; in every case I've read about, they keep shooting or stabbing until somebody stops them. Well... Ms. Assam stopped him; she stopped him cold, knocking him to the ground with multiple gunshot wounds. In fact, although he died by shooting himself in the head, it's entirely possible that had he not done so, he might still have bled out from the wounds that Ms. Assam inflicted.

Either way, it's clear Jeanne Assam deserves to get both ears and the tail:

Assam said she found cover in the lobby after [the Christian hater] opened fire in the church parking lot and walked into the building. She said she waited for him to approach, identified herself as a security guard, and shot him -- "and that's pretty much it."

"I'm telling you right now, she's the hero, not me. It was the bravest thing I have ever seen," [Larry] Bourbonnais said. "She had no cover. He fired -- I heard him fire three. I heard her fire three. And she just began -- she kept yelling 'Surrender!' the whole time. And she just walked forward, like she's walking to her car in the parking lot, firing the whole time."

Bourbonnais said when he and Assam reached [the Christian hater], "he had slumped backwards, slid down on the floor, and expired."

Larry Bourbonnais is a Vietnam combat veteran who was slightly wounded by a bullet fragment in the New Life Church shooting.

And by the way... let's deal with the charge that Jeanne Assam was fired from the MPD a decade ago for lying during an investigation of her conduct: It appears to be true. But so far as I can tell, the conduct that was under investigation was that she evidently swore at a bus driver while trying to handle an "incident" that occurred on the bus. Pardon me if I don't gasp and faint at the possibility that a cop used an obscenity and then claimed she hadn't:

Also Tuesday, Minneapolis police Sgt. Jesse Garcia said Assam was fired from the Minneapolis force in 1997 for lying during an internal investigation. Sgt. John Delmonico, president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, said police were investigating a complaint that Assam swore at a bus driver while she was handling an incident on a city bus.

Returning to the CNN article, I do have one suggestion for Ms. Assam: I recommend that she rethink her association with the New Life Church... at least until it gets itself a new pastor who actually understands what "forgiveness" means -- and what it requires:

Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church, told reporters Tuesday he and his church had already forgiven [the Christian hater], even though he is still angry about what happened.

"But being angry and being unforgiving are two different things," Boyd said.

"I forgave him immediately. I can't imagine what caused him to do that. I'm sad for his parents, who are having to bury a young son. But forgiving him was an immediate response of our heart," the pastor said.

I can only assume he was also sad for the parents of Johnson, Crouse, and Stephanie and Rachael Works; I have to assume it, because he's not quoted as saying so. Evidently, he considers all five deaths -- four innocent people and a murder -- to have the same moral value. So did he also "forgive" Jeanne Assam on behalf of the killer?

There are two insurmountable obstacles to this "instant karma" granting of earthly absolution:

1. How can anyone be forgiven who has never showed the slightest bit of remorse or repentence for the horrible, horrible thing he did?

Even Catholic priests cannot grant absolution to a person who has not truly repented of his sin, shown honest remorse, stopped committing the sin, and attempted to make restitution if possible. There is no evidence that this Christian-hating killer did any of the above, at least not by his own free will: He only stopped committing the sin because Jeanne Assam brought him down.

His suicide proves nothing; most spree killers, even before they begin their crimes, expect either to be killed by the cops or die by their own hands. They don't want to go to prison... they would rather enter eternal nothingness.

2. But second and more disturbing to me -- who the hell gave Reverend Boyd the right to forgive the killer for what he did to somebody else?

The only mortal person who ever has jurisdiction to forgive a crime is the victim himself. No one else. To think otherwise is to accept the most pernicious doctrine of liberalism: That all personal accountability must be jettisoned in favor of collective guilt -- and collective forgiveness.

Let's put it in a context that even liberals should be able to understand: Imagine that a man forcibly rapes his next-door neighbor's daughter...and then the next day, the local minister announces to the world that he forgives the rapist. What do you think would be the reaction of the rape victim and her family?

Such "instant forgiveness" by a third party is grossly offensive to the victim, her family, her friends, and indeed the entire body of that church; and I would hope that most of them would have the guts to tell the minister that it was time for him to hit the road... the congregation needs a spiritual leader who was not morally befuddled.

This moral dynamic does not change when, instead of rape, the criminal commits the even more horrific crime of murder. In fact, murder is literally unforgiveable in this world: Because only the victim can forgive, and because the victim is no longer around, there is no human left who can grant such extraordinary dispensation. If there is a God, forgiveness must be left to Him... if He chooses.

How dare Boyd offer forgiveness on behalf of four people who are no longer capable of deciding for themselves whether the killer deserves it? This is worse than Bill Clinton apologizing for slavery: At least the president didn't presume to forgive the slavers on behalf of the slaves!

So hats off to Jeanne Assam; she did good, even great. But honestly, she deserves a better religious guide than the mealy mouthed, liberal, PC-worshipping Brady Boyd.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 11, 2007, at the time of 5:38 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

November 21, 2007

"Apt Natural - I Have a Gub"

Inveterate (or invertibrate) movie-goers will of course recognize the title immediately, coming from one of the first crime "mockumentaries" ever made.

So what can we expect as the Supremes warm up to the great gun-rights debate next year?

The decision itself will hinge on one fundamental question that has been controversial since the early 20th century, but was fairly commonly held, I believe, prior to 1900: Does the Second Amendment protect the gun rights of each individual legal resident -- or does it only protect the "rights" of states to have National Guard units?

(States do not have "rights," of course; only powers, privileges, and immunities. But gun prohibitionists are forced to use the word "rights," because that's what the Second Amendment uses, and they must match.)

All the blather about constitutional amendments being outmoded won't make a dent on the court -- either side; everything will hinge on what the words actually meant when they were written and what they mean today. The complete text of the amendment reads:

Yes, I know; it's overpunctuated by today's standards. But it was written in 1789, and different rules for punctuation applied.

Clearly, when the Founders ratified this amendment two years later, they envisioned a national militia in place of a standing army (they were down on permanent armies making permanent war).

The idea was that if we were attacked, word would go out to every hamlet and town (or "every omlet in town," as I used to think), and all the Minutemen would drop their scythes -- or their printing presses, though they'd better step nimbly out of the way if they didn't want to lose a toe or two -- grab their "Kentucky" long rifles (made in Pennsylvania), and band together into an unbreakable wall of national defense.

Obviously, we don't do things like that anymore... so how should we interpret the amendment now?

Those of us who believe in gun rights argue that with the rise in urban residency and the increased firepower of criminals, individuals still need private arms in order to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, [and] promote the general welfare." We argue that crime statistics, particularly those by Professor John Lott, demonstrate that an armed populace has less crime, not more, without any measurable increase in accidental gun deaths or injuries.

Those who support gun prohibition hang their hats on the first four words, arguing that the original purpose -- the citizen's militia that took the place of a standing army -- no longer exists, and the only corresponding extant entity (since the Dick Act, a.k.a. the Militia Act of 1903) is the National Guard (divided into state commands).

Therefore, the prohibitionists will argue, the rights "granted" by the amendment devolve upon the various states, which control the National Guards when not activated by the federal government.

I find this argument untenable for that very reason: Passing lightly over the idea of states having "rights," how can states possess the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms," if in the same breath we agree that D.C. can simply federalize those arms (and the folks keeping and bearing them), thus removing them from state control? It's utterly contradictory.

Ergo, either the amendment means nothing -- or else it means that the rights granted protected adhere only in "the people," as the words themselves make clear. In all other uses in the Constitution, "the people" translates to each individual person.

(Fundamental rights are not "granted" by the government, of course, but by "Nature and Nature's God." Governments can only protect them -- or violate them.)

Note that the Founders had no difficulty writing "the states" when they meant the states, as for example in the Tenth Amendment, which explicitly distinguishes between the states and the people:

I believe any fair-minded reading of the Second will lead a judge to agree that "the right of the people" in that amendment means the same as the exact, same phrase in the Fourth Amendment: an individual right held by each individual person. Thus, I believe that we can count on the four fair-minded judges, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, to vote to uphold the circus-court ruling finding the D.C. gun ban "unreasonable and unconstitutional."

I likewise believe, based upon their well-enunciated constitutional gestalt, that we can rely upon Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter to vote to restore the gun ban.

As usual, Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the National Enigma. But (be sure you're sitting down), I consider Justice John Paul Stevens to be a wild card... he might actually side with gun owners, basing his decision upon the second-amendment analysis of some liberal con-law professors, of which the most important are Lawrence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz, both of Harvard.

If I had to guess, I would expect that the Court would vote to confirm the decision of the D.C. Circus (overturning the Washington D.C. gun ban) by 6-3; I have a hard time believing that Justice Kennedy would vote against a position on such a controversial issue to which both Roberts and Stevens agreed.

On the political front, I'm not sure how much this will affect the presidential election. I disagree with Glenn Reynolds, who wrote:

This is probably bad for Democrats, given that most Americans believe they have some sort of right to arms under the Constitution.

It's also probably bad for Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, who have generally been less supportive of gun rights than the other GOP contenders.

First, regardless of positions in the past, both Giuliani and Romney have rushed to get out in front of this case -- on the side of the angels. Rudy Giuliani:

Rudy Giuliani made the following statement today regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to review the Court of Appeals ruling in Parker v. District of Columbia:

"I strongly believe that Judge Silberman’s decision deserves to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Parker decision is an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean."

Mitt Romney:

Today, Governor Mitt Romney issued the following statement on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review District of Columbia v. Heller:

"It is my hope that the Supreme Court will reaffirm the individual right to keep and bear arms as enshrined in the Bill of Rights and protect law abiding gun owners everywhere. To further guard this fundamental liberty, as President, I will take care to appoint judges who will not legislate from the bench but will instead strictly interpret the Constitution."

Second, the great Democratic gun-control debate was in the 1990s... ancient history, as far as most voters are concerned. Except for some diehards in ultra-liberal districts or states (e.g., Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, 100%), the Democrats have pretty much dropped gun control from their electoral lexicon...

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Carpetbag, 95%), who was a loud gun prohibitionist as recently as 1999-2000, nowadays barely mentions the topic. The closest I found was this April 2007 snippet:

"You have to balance the Second Amendment rights against keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and people who are unstable -- and that has always been what everyone I know has been seeking to accomplish," Senator Clinton said. "Maybe this tragic incident will get us to think about how to get back to that balance."

This hardly sounds like a response that would satisfy Rosie O'Donnell.

I like this piece, by the bye: The candidates were each interviewed a week after the Virginia Tech shootings; if ever there were a time to smoke out gun prohibitionists, that would have been it. Here is what Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL, 95%) said:

While Obama suggested there may be a need for restrictions on so-called semiautomatic guns, he contends Democrats must steer clear of alienating "lawful" gun owners. "I'm a strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsmen to have firearms. I'm a believer in homeowners having a firearm to protect their home and their family," Obama said. "It's hard for me to find a rationale for having a 17-clip semiautomatic."

(I must confess puzzlement about Obama's 17-clip semiautomatic; I don't think I would buy one -- those "clips" must stick out like quills on a porcupine -- but I'd sure love to hold one in my hands... assuming I could find the grip hidden among the antenna-farm of clips.)

Finally, we have John Edwards; he mentions hunting but not self-defense... but he doesn't rule it out, either; he simply ignores that reason for owning a gun:

"I believe in the Second Amendment and I think it's important for hunters rights to be protected. It's part of my culture because of the way I grew up," Edwards said during a news conference Friday night in Des Moines. "But I don't think you need an AK-47 to hunt...There's some weapons that are not necessary for sportsmen and hunters."

(I'm sure that Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, 100%, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-CT, 95%, and Gov. Bill Richardson all favor heavy-handed gun control; but really, who cares? They're about as likely to be elected president as "Mother" Sheehan.)

Regardless of the actual beliefs of the Democratic front runners, and regardless of what they would really do if they got into office, none denies an individual Second-Amendment right to keep and bear arms; and Obama openly affirms it.

Thus, I just don't see this issue cutting significantly against the Democrats: Anybody who believes that they're secretly in favor of gun prohibition (as I believe) is almost certainly already in the GOP camp for 2008. So don't look for gun rights to tip the scales of the presidential race.

Nevertheless, if the case is adjudicated as I expect, it will be a stunning and wonderful day for civil liberties in America; and if it goes the opposite way, it will be a black mark we shall never live down. And even if there is no direct affect on the presidential race, the case should at least reopen the national conversation on individual rights vs. State power -- which should definitely benefit Republicans downticket.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 21, 2007, at the time of 5:27 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 17, 2007

Fighting Back Was Not an Option, Part 2

Three sober, responsible, respectable, intelligent gentlemen have made a very good case for not discussing so-called "solutions" (on either side of the aisle) for such terrible crimes as yesterday's massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt of HughHewitt.com and John Hinderaker of Power Line each says that there will come a time for understanding the macro-politics of the shooting spree; but that time is later. Now is the time for grieving, they argue -- and for healing. Hugh just said some hours ago that everyone should talk as if the parents who lost their children are listening. And I completely understand his point.

I just don't agree with it.

Were I actually talking to one of the bereaved, of course I wouldn't start discussing how to prevent such evil in the future. But I'm not; I cannot imagine anyone suffering such a loss reading a political blog the next day. It's absurd.

I'm talking to readers who, while they may be in shock, did not actually lose a loved one in this particular shooting. Any pain and loss they feel, however real and wrenching, is due to empathy with the victims.

Empathy is a vital and decent response; a man who feels no empathy for a parent who lost a child is probably a psychopath. But empathic pain is simply not in the same league as the actual pain of such a terrible loss to those who suffer it themselves. Even those who know what such pain is like from personal experience don't feel it as intensely when empathizing with a stranger as when it happened to them.

I can well understand those in the midst of such agony not wanting to hear or see anything about how to prevent such atrocities. Their brains are filled to bursting with memories that have abruptly become more precious than diamonds yet sharper than a razor. But for many of the rest of us, our pain is not so much in the gut as in the psyche... and the only balm for psychic pain is cool-headed, rational thought about solutions to the problem.

If you don't agree, I won't be offended. Stop reading this post; because from here on, logical analysis is all it will contain.

I will put the rest in the extended entry, forcing you to make an overt action to continue.

The one possibly odious trick I have played is the title, which makes a political point itself: I see the circumstances of the Virginia Tech shooting and of the British hostages as betraying the same very poignant -- and dangerous -- perspective: helplessness as a virtue.

But the two circumstances also differ in a way that at first appears vast, but upon reflection seems not so great after all. When a soldier, by inaction, renders himself helpless, we call it cowardice; but civilians do not seem to be under the same duty as a member of the military, one who has voluntarily assumed responsibility for protecting and preserving his society.

Surely, however, adult civilians are not completely bereft of any such responsibility; in fact, assuming personal responsibility for the lives and freedoms of others is, by my reckoning, exactly what separates the child from the adult. When a boy or a girl freely accepts that he has a certain duty towards his fellows, even when nobody will ever know whether he fulfilled it or not, that is when boy becomes man and girl becomes woman.

The epiphany is usually a series of small revelations that mount up over time, but it can also strike like the fangs of a diamondback in the dark night of the soul. Either way, dawn can begin at any age past puberty and can take a number of years, or a few short days... or else a lifetime can pass without the change completing.

The epiphany is this: Each one of us is a foot soldier for civilization; when evil threatens, we must do our utmost to thwart it.

Your utmost may be as simple as snitching on your best friend when you discover he has systematically looted the company you both work for... or as profound as Virginia Tech Engineering Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, who gave his last full measure blocking the doorway to his classroom, allowing his students time to escape out the window.

If President Bush is decent, he will award a Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the highest award a civilian can receive -- to Professor Librescu (later, when his loved ones have recovered a bit more).

But if Bush is just as well as decent, he would instead award the Medal of Honor, which is available only to active-duty members of the military. Because when the shooting started, Professor Librescu's society had come under attack by a demonic evil; and every adult man and woman on the scene, each already a member of the unorganized militia of the United States of America, was instantly activated to defend his civilization, including Professor Librescu.

There is no difference in my mind between Professor Librescu using his own body as a human shield and a National Guardsman being activated and sent to Iraq, and both should be equally eligible for the Medal of Honor.

But Professor Librescu was 77 years old when he died; there was little he could do against a young, armed man like the killer (whose name is known, but which I will not honor with remembering) beyond delaying him for a minute or two. Professor Librescu did what he could, and it was enough: He saved many lives that were, in some sense, his responsibility. He was a teacher -- and his last breath was spent teaching the greatest lesson of all: transcendent duty.

But what about the other presumably adult men and women at that campus? Most were nowhere near the scene and therefore never had the opportunity to test their courage, their honor, and their worth. This is a minor tragedy in itself; it's the subject of one of the greatest poems ever written in English: "Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard," by Thomas Gray.

But there are others; there are also those who were there, who were close by. What did they do? How did they acquit themselves?

Did they gather those around them and hurry with them to safety? Did they save themselves? Each of these is a minor virtue, and I don't want to knock it. Sometimes, such minor virtues are all that a person can achieve, given the time, place, and opportunity.

But surely there must have come a time when a man or woman, hiding not far away, saw that the gunman had turned his back. What that person did in that moment is the true assay of character.

Maybe someone charged at the gunman -- but foul fate intervened, and the butcher heard, turned, and added another victim to his hellish toll. Anyone so killed is as heroic as Professor Librescu.

But -- and I hate the thought, even as it screams insistently -- it is virtually inevitable that there were others who were there, who saw an opportunity, but who were frozen to the spot with dread. Or else they talked themselves into believing that there was nothing they could do. Or worst of all... some must have done nothing because they had been carefully taught that "nothing" was what they were supposed to do. I cannot help thinking that for many students at Virginia Tech yesterday, just as for the fifteen British sailors and marines, "fighting back was not an option," because to them, it is never an option.

That's a job for "professionals."

Let me take a brief detour here to a post written by Dean Barnett, and to what he said yesterday while guest-hosting on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. I like Dean, though I've never met him. But I think he has exactly the wrong attitude about this spree killing. Dean wrote:

What makes tragedies like this one so gut-wrenching, though, is precisely their inexplicable nature. They are truly, literally senseless.

And yet it’s in our nature to try to make sense of the things we don’t or even can’t understand. But I’ll tell you something: Searches for reasons and explanations here are going to bring us up empty. The painful fact is that terrible things happen. There are evil people who do evil things. There’s nothing more to it than that. There’s no policy prescription that can make things like this never happen again.

This from the same man who earlier worried that that dreadful phrase would become "the epitaph of the Western world!" Dean makes a catastrophic logical error in this passage: He conflates the agent and the enabler.

He is correct that nothing we do can completely prevent evil people from attempting to perpetrate such heinous acts; but there is a great deal we can do to frustrate them when they try. And the failure even to try to stop evil is the great enabler of evil.

We know this; it's even an aphorism: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. So why does Dean Barnett so blithely absolve those good men and women who had a shot but did nothing?

Because Dean, like everyone else who grew up in post-World War II America, has been bathed from birth in the fountain of futility. There's nothing you can do; don't even try. Let the authorities handle it... they're professionals. We must sit quietly and wait for instructions.

As with every other sane person, Dean must reject this rot -- intellectually. But as with every other child of the second half of the 20th centry, overcoming the doctrine of moral inertia requires constant mental battle. Don't get involved. Don't make waves. Would you rather be a live coward or a dead hero? According to the doctrine, the answer to that last question is "live coward," incredibly enough; good thing Professor Librescu was too old to have been infected.

Yesterday, while he guest-hosted for Hugh, Dean read an e-mail from a listener who groped for words to describe the eighteen-year course in the doctrine of moral inertia endured by everyone who passes through the public school system (and most of the private ones as well).

The writer was trying to talk about the professionalization of America, where every decision is left up to the "experts;" but Dean dismissed the e-mail out of hand, because its writer bemoaned the suppression of dodgeball, which appears to have annoyed Dean beyond all reason.

It was a metaphor, but it went right over his head. "Dodgeball wouldn't have solved this problem," Dean snapped -- and I had the awful impression that he imagined the e-mailer was saying students should literally have thrown basketballs at the shooter. In his post, he put it this way:

One emailer said that we had turned our kids into a bunch of wusses, and that if we brought back things like Dodgeball, things would get better.

It was a sneer, and I was very disappointed in Dean. I hope he reconsiders; what the e-mailer meant was that schools have systematically beaten the fighting spirit out of American children, who then grow into dispirited adults, for whom "fighting back is not an option."

We can overcome such conditioning; that's why I have not given up on Western Civ, unlike some. But it takes effort and will.

Here is a sidebar story about the doctrine of moral inertia, its reach and falsity and how it was overcome. Sachi tells this story from her own experience:

It really makes no difference what tools the students should have used to fight back. If someone had had a gun, that would have been useful; but absent a firearm, a running tackle would work just as well, albeit with a great deal more personal risk. (Aboard Flight 93, the weapon of convenience was a rolling food cart.)

If several people had compacted together to rush the shooter simultaneously, he couldn't have killed them all -- and likely would be so startled that he didn't kill any of them.

How many innocent lives would have been saved, had just one or two people done his utmost, not merely to allow some students to escape, but to thwart the evil itself?

We don't know, but that's a lesser issue: The greater issue is that, by fighting back against evil, the students, faculty, and staff at Virginia Tech would have fired the shot heard round the world, the meme that "fighting back is always an option." Whenever such a massacre is aborted by extraordinary courage on the part of ordinary people, we send the message that good men (and women) must do something to prevent the triumph of evil.

But whenever we allow the moment to pass, and we remain hunkered down, hoping the butcher wanders away -- translation: oh Lord, please let him shoot that girl over there instead of me! -- we send exactly the opposite message: We reinforce the unAmerican idea that "we must sit quietly and wait for instructions."

We will lose forever that which makes us exceptional, not just Americans but all men of the West. And worse, we will lose it to terrorists and psychopaths, to tyrants and the grey horde... none of whom deserves such a cheap victory. We will console ourselves that there was nothing we could do; but in reality, we will have sat down and surrendered to a bunch of nobodies for a fistful of nothing.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 17, 2007, at the time of 7:38 PM | Comments (74) | TrackBack

March 9, 2007

D.C. Circus Overturns D.C. Gun Ban - UPDATED

UPDATE: See below.

A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has just overturned the longstanding (since 1976) ban on private gun ownership in the District of Columbia, and has also overturned the requirement that even those guns allowed must be kept in a partially disassembled condition locked in a safe.

The ruling was 2-1; the majority opinion appears to have been written by Reagan-appointee (1985) Judge Laurence Hirsch Silberman; the dissenting vote was by Karen LeCraft Henderson, a Reagan-appointee as a district judge, 1986, and a George Herbert Walker Bush-appointee to the circuit court in 1990.

UPDATE: The third judge is Thomas Beall Griffith, appointed by George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2005; and the opinion is here (hat tip to Blake Dvorak on Real Clear Politics).

The Associated Press characterizes the majority and dissenting opinions thus:

In a 2-1 decision, the judges held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued intermittent enrollment in the militia...."

"The district's definition of the militia is just too narrow," Judge Laurence Silberman wrote for the majority Friday. "There are too many instances of 'bear arms' indicating private use to conclude that the drafters intended only a military sense."

Judge Karen Henderson dissented, writing that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia because it is not a state.

That last argument -- if that's really what she said -- is preposterous, since that would open the floodgates to deny incorporation within D.C. of a host of other rights guaranteed by the first ten amendments to the Constitution... including freedom of speech, freeedom of religion, the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, and so forth. I can't imagine the Court taking that tack; but I can very much imagine AP mischaracterizing the core of Judge Henderson's dissent: She might have written something much more intelligent.

The New York Times truculently complains about this decision, as --

Most federal appeals courts have said that the amendment, read as a whole [by which they mean only reading the subordinate, dependent clause -- the Mgt.], protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias -- in modern terms, the National Guard. But in yesterday’s decision, the majority focused on the second clause [that would be the actual subject-verb-predicate of the sentence -- the Mgt.], saying that the amendment broadly protects the rights of individuals to own guns -- an approach that has been embraced by the Justice Department and by some constitutional scholars ["some" meaning in this case "virtually all" -- the Mgt.].

It may be true that "most federal appeals courts" think the Second Amendment protects the rights only of members of the National Guard; but if so, that's because most federal appeals courts have racked up a dismal record comprehending the only Supreme Court case to address the issue: U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939).

In Miller, the Court held that the Second Amendment's purpose was to ensure that we would always have a ready supply of trained and armed citizens to be called up as the militia. They ruled, therefore, that the amendment only applied to the kind of weapons ordinarily in use by individual soldiers in armies and militias.

Jack Miller, suspected of robbing banks, was arrested under the National Firearms Act of 1934 for transporting a short-barrelled (or sawed-off) shotgun across state lines without having purchased a special stamp from the government. He defended himself on Second Amendment grounds and usurpation of state police powers, claiming the NFA was unconstitutional; the judge agreed and struck down the law.

The United States attorney appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed and remanded the case back to the district court for further proceedings (which never took place). The Court issued three substantive holdings:

• That the Act was a federal revenue act, therefore within the jurisdiction of Congress;
• That the Second Amendment only protected the keeping and bearing of military-style weapons;
• And that short-barrelled shotguns did not qualify.

(The prosecution actually argued that Miller did not qualify for Second Amendment protection because he was not a member of any organized militia, but the Court considered and rejected this argument. Instead, they wrote a lengthy analysis showing that "the militia" consisted of all military-aged men -- which refutes the misunderstanding that Miller restricted gun rights to members of the National Guard.)

The finding about short-barrelled shotguns was simply wrong; such guns are widely in use in military units today (including ours) and have been since long before Miller. Alas, Miller failed to show up at his Supreme Court hearing, having inconviently been murdered in prison; his attorneys also failed to show up, their case being moot. (The co-defendant, Frank Layton, also didn't show up; but I'm not sure why.)

Thus, no defense argument was made. Had there been one, they could easily have demonstrated that both machine guns and short-barrelled shotguns were in widespread military use, and (one presumes) the district-court decision would have been upheld.

Since then, appellate court after appellate court has wrongly -- and I believe deliberately and with malice aforethought -- misinterpreted Miller as having claimed that only the gun rights of members of the militia were protected... and also that "the militia" consists of the National Guard.

If today's Court holds to the precedent of Miller, they must rule that the right to possess a pistol, which is certainly part of the ordinary accoutrements of ordinary soldiers in modern armies and militias, is undeniably protected by the Second Amendment; and that this right inheres in all individual persons, not just those in the National Guard.

The Court must reach the same conclusion textually if they examine the very words: the phrase "the right of the people" is never used in any other part of the Constitution to mean "the right of the states," but always as an individual right enjoyed by each individual person, subject to reasonable restrictions (for example, you can prevent convicted felons and the dangerously insane from possessing guns, just as you can restrict their liberties in other ways).

But if the Court holds that the D.C. law is unconstutional, it would also mean that the decades-long federal prohibition against possession of sawed-off shotguns and of machine guns is likewise unconstitutional. I will listen eagerly for the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of liberal teeth if the Court is bold enough to carry this decision to its logical end.

In fact, the same decision should also toss out all state or federal laws prohibiting concealed carry, except in extraordinary circumstances, such as in a court room or other governmental building. Concealed carry is much less disruptive to civil life, and I prefer it.

This is a very good case to finally have it out in the Supreme Court; and this is a very good Court to resolve such a case. I don't know how Justice Sandra Day O'Connor ruled on gun-rights cases, but I wouldn't be surprised if Justice Samuel Alito were more open to the constitutional argument. Justice Antonin Scalia may not like people owning or carrying guns; I have no idea. But he certainly believes in following the actual words of the Constitution; same with Justices Clarence Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

I'm pretty sure that the usual suspects would vote to overturn the D.C. Circuit: Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter. As usual, the swing vote would be Justice Anthony Kennedy. (Power Line and Patterico know much more about such matters than I; I hope they will comment.)

There is no reason that "reasonable restrictions" could not include demonstrated proficiency with whatever general class of weapon you possess (not of each and every possible model within the broad category; that would be quite unreasonable). Thus, a person should be able to "qualify" with a pistol, a rifle, or even a select-fire weapon capable of firing continuous rounds with a single trigger-pull (a machine gun). Thereafter, the qualifying person could not be prosecuted simply for possessing or carrying such a weapon -- though carrying a gun openly could still be prohibited as "brandishing" or "threatening."

But I long to see a final resolution of this long-term legal controversy. More than anything else, the right to keep and bear arms is a hallmark of a free people... and I want to know whether we Americans are still free.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 9, 2007, at the time of 6:09 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

November 24, 2006

Doom Is Nigh - for "Movement Libertarianism"

Daniel Weintraub, in his excellent Bee-blog California Insider, published a brief little post about the 92 year old woman who was shot by Atlanta police after she opened fire on them when they attempted to execute a search warrant. This is Weintraub's entire take on the matter:

The government is spying on peace protestors in Sacramento and killing a 92-year-old woman in Atlanta after breaking down her door in a "no-knock raid" while looking for a drug dealer. Maybe it is time for the government to take a time-out.

As a fellow libertarian, I found his take rather disturbing. I thought maybe he simply wasn't aware of all the facts and was just believing the liberal hype. So I sent him links to the two stories on Patterico's Pontifications that brought forward factors that should mitigate too quick a pronouncement of police brutality:

• Libertarians Jump the Gun in Story of Shooting in Atlanta
• Is the Search Warrant in the Atlanta Shooting Case “Public Record”?

(Patterico just now put up another post, Cops in Atlanta Shouted that They Were Police and Wore Vests Labeled “Police”; but I didn't send this one to Weintraub.)

Weintraub's response confirmed what I thought originally: he e-mailed me that, since he opposed the entire drug war and supports legalization, the fact that the cops were serving a lawful search warrant when she opened fire did not change his mind at all: police shouldn't break through doors (even after identifying themselves as police) to catch drug dealers. If they had to enforce such laws (Weintraub asks), why didn't they just stake out the residence and arrest him outside?

Daniel Weintraub and I are both libertarians, and his response perfectly encapsulates the terrible crisis facing contemporary libertarianism... which will shortly kill it if not addressed. His comment, and his subsequent defense of it appealing to the libertarian impulse against anti-drug laws, has touched a raw nerve: this, on a nutshell, is why, since 9/11, I find myself reluctant to admit I'm a libertarian. Libertarianism has not responded well (or at all, actually) to the crises we face today.

First, I also support legalization of all drugs (except antibiotics). But that's not the point, and it wasn't the point Weintraub made -- no matter what he intended.

First, surely he doesn't believe that cops should only enforce laws they personally support? For a libertarian, that would be far worse than the situation now -- since a libertarian (such as myself) must assume that the laws the cops don't support are precisely those that protect our liberties from abuse by the government. Police tend to be authoritarian; that's why they're drawn to law enforcement. Do we really want them picking and choosing which laws they like?

The points about the shooting that Weintraub's brief brief missed, which Patterico brought out, are these:

1. The police were attempting to search the premises on the basis of a legitimate search warrant -- not the "wrong house" (as early reports claimed);
2. It was the old woman, not the cops, who began shooting;
3. She shot three officers before they returned fire;
4. Bullets fired by a 92 year old are just as deadly as bullets fired by a 22 year old;
5. The police have every legal right, and 95% of Americans would say moral right, to return fire when fired upon.

If you're going to attack the cops' actions, you must respond to these points; if not, the natural response of readers who have learnt them is to dismiss you as a crank, which I'm sure was not Weintraub's intention.

He raises the question of why they didn't just arrest that one guy. But how should they know he's the only person involved in the crime? For that matter, how does Weintraub know that the old lady wasn't involved herself? Old people commit crimes too. Maybe she liked the money.

Patterico also notes that a few days ago, a Texas state trooper pulled over a motorist to cite him for violating the state's seatbelt law. Now, I oppose seatbelt laws too, though I always wear my seatbelt (and always have since long before the same law was enacted in California); but again, I hope we agree that police shouldn't get to pick and choose which laws they enforce and which they routinely ignore.

As he approached, the motorist, who later stated he thought the stop was "unconstitutional," stepped out of his car and shot the officer point blank with a Ruger Mini-14 -- a gun that is functionally identical to the semi-automatic version of the M-16. The officer died.

The motorist was 72 years old. The police video got out to YouTube, and it's clear the officer hesitated to shoot at the motorist when the guy pointed his rifle... probably because he didn't want to shoot an old man; this hesitation led to his death.

We libertarians oppose seatbelt laws; so should we blame the Texas trooper for stopping the motorist, and think he more or less got what he deserved for enforcing such an anti-liberty law as the seatbelt requirement? Is this a mature political philosophy?

Movement libertarians (as opposed to Republican libertarians -- and not just the Libertarian Party) have opposed, almost en masse, virtually every security response we made to 9/11; but they have proposed nothing to take their place. They're worse on this score than the liberals, who at least accept that we need some security. The whole L. Neil Smith/Sam Konkin/New Libertarian/New Isolationist branch of libertarianism ("movement libertarianism") flatly states that "George Bush is the real enemy," and jihadism is either ficticious -- lies spread by "the State" -- or merely the moral, libertarian response of Moslems to our "oppression" of them (which they never specify).

This puts me in a real crisis of conscience: I have considered myself a movement libertarian since I was 19 years old; but on the other hand, liberties don't just float in air: liberty and duty are the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

E.g., as a libertarian, I believe that every sane, non-criminal, mature person should be allowed to carry a concealed gun. But by the same coin, it's also the duty of every person to intervene, as best he can, to protect the innocent from criminal attack. That's the bargain, that's the duty side of the liberty of carrying a gun. Without such social trade-offs, society crashes to the ground. Even libertarian "saints" like Murray Rothbard, Friederich Hayek, and Robert Heinlein understood that.

Suppose we had a libertarian society where anyone who wanted was allowed to carried a gun. Now suppose there is a violent criminal assault against an innocent victim who cannot fight back -- a child, say, or an old person, or a petite woman who cannot handle a gun properly, or a handicapped person. If none of the smug libertarians standing around intervene to save the innocent, if they "stand on their principles" that it's the responsibility of the victim to defend himself (even if he physically can't), and if such attacks therefore become routine... how long do you think that "libertarian society" will last? A society of pure narcissism is unsustainable.

The failure to recognize any duty whatsoever (in trade for liberty) is the great failing of the contemporary libertarian movement: it has morphed from Jeffersonian liberalism to ultimate narcissism. Most libertarians today demand an end to drug laws, not because they really believe in liberty -- because if they did, they would be at war with the greatest destroyers of libertry in the world today, Communists and jihadis -- but because they want to smoke dope.

Most contemporary "libertarians" are in fact simple libertines; but a society of human beings cannot be governed by libertinism. Even those who are not libertines but actually support (verbally, that is) human freedom have been duped by libertines into believing that we can have liberty without the responsibility to defend it, by force if necessary.

But Weintraub didn't just attack the Atlanta cops; he also attacked "spying on peace protestors in Sacramento" as a similar example of (one must presume) un-libertarian activity by the State.

Can he really be unaware that many of those "peace protester" groups -- such as International ANSWER, International Solidarity Movement, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- are in fact front groups for either Stalinists or jihadis? That they raise money for terrorists and aid and abet "sleeper cells?"

Don't libertarians support "spying" on people who are plotting to take away our liberty, and who have demonstrated the willingness to kill us by the thousands in order to do so?

And we know that we libertarians oppose the drug war, but what about the drug problem? Drugs do, in fact, cause terrible problems in society -- and not just those associated with the artificially high price of drugs, like burglary and robbery to support the habit.

Drugs are very dangerous and destructive. So where is the libertarian program to minimize that destruction? I have been a movement libertarian for 27 years now, ever since I read David ("son of Milton") Friedman's book the Machinery of Freedom... and I have never heard anything but mantras that people have the freedom to "kill themselves." All right in theory; but in practice, rampant drug use destroys minds, souls, and society... what are we libertarians going to do about that, to take the place of the anti-liberty "drug war?"

The sound of crickets chirping.

Weintraub fails to mention that the "92 year old woman" opened fire on the officers first while they were simply trying to conduct a search pursuant to a lawful search warrant. They didn't simply kick down a door and assassinate some random nonagenarian, which is what his phrasing implied. Do we libertarians say that the cops should just refuse to enforce laws we don't like? Or are we saying those officers got what they deserved, and in future, they should just walk away whenever someone resists using deadly force?

If libertarianism continues down the path it currently follows, it will utterly discredit itself -- and utterly discredit the principle of maximal liberty in the process. If libertarians, working hand in hand with liberals, manage to overturn all the security measures we've enacted since 9/11 woke us up (movement libertarians oppose the Patriot Act, tracking terrorist financing, aggressive interrogation of enemy combatants, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan War, and surveillance of any kind, against any target, by "our enemy, the State"), then we will get hit again and again... and the response will not be pretty.

The American people, who (quite understandably) want to survive, will demand intrusions upon our liberty so much more severe than what we have now that even liberals will look back and long for the days of the Patriot Act, NSA surveillance, and the SWIFT program.

Like it or hate it, we are at war; the war was declared by the other side in 1979; and those people have not the slightest interest in, concern for, or even the vaguest understanding of liberty for Daniel Weintraub or Dafydd ab Hugh: to them, most of Americans are dhimmis, fit only to serve the Faithful... and Weintraub and I are nothing but Zionist pigs, fit only for death, as their version of the Koran demands. Why aren't libertarians standing up as a group -- or even as individuals -- to defend liberty against these monsters?

And if we're ever going to see the day Weintraub and I both hope for, where no drugs (in his case) or only one class of drugs (in mine) are proscribed or controlled by the State, then the absolute worst way to go about it is to imply that officers who get shot while trying to execute legitimate search warrants, and who return fire against the person shooting (rather than just walking away and refusing to enforce the law), are simply assassins who like killing old women.

We cannot skate by on Harry Browne libertarianism. Now that he's dead, let's bury that crabbed and egocentric vision of libertarianism deep, at a crossroads, with a stake through its heart.

We need a robust and responsible libertarianism that equally recognizes responsibility and duty alongside liberty, tails alongside heads, the yang to complement the yin. We need a libertarianism that can identify the true enemies of liberty, not simply those closest to home. And we need a libertarianism that accepts practicality when necessary, rather than always being willing to let the other guy die for our lofty theories.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 24, 2006, at the time of 5:12 PM | Comments (62) | TrackBack

December 12, 2005

When Mob Violence May Actually Be a Good Thing

Violent attacks -- reprisals, now -- back and forth between the Arab-Moslem population of Cronulla, Australia (a southern suburb of Sydney) and the white Australian population are both disturbing and interesting. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Mobs of men have damaged a number of vehicles in an outbreak of fresh violence in the southern Sydney suburb of Cronulla tonight.

A reporter from radio station 2GB said "chaos" had broken out in the beach shopping centre with vehicles damaged and police making arrests as mobs of men roam the streets.

They're disturbing in that both the Arab-Australians/Arab immigrants and the white Australians are increasingly using race as a proxy for deciding whether a person is good or bad. Racism is the ugliest and lowest form of tribalism, in my opinion; and it's depressing to see it bubble forth whenever danger threatens. (It happens here too, when concerns about illegal immigration cross the line into generic immigrant bashing.)

But there is also an element of hope here... because mobs of patriots standing up to Moslem rioters is precisely the element that was missing from the recent riots in France, where nobody, it appeared, was willing to stand up for his country and culture.

After Australians were legally disarmed by repressive anti-gun legislation in 1996, following a highly publicized mass gun murder, violent crime in Australia increased markedly: from 1995 to 2001, assaults rose by 39% per 100,000, rape by 19%, and robbery by 70%... while all three categories of crime decreased during the same period in the United States, as many more states made it easier for civilians to get concealed-carry permits. The murder rate in Australia did decrease, but only by 11%; it plummeted 32%, three times as much, in the U.S. (Australian numbers from "the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as compiled and reported by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC)," then posted by the website linked above; American stats can be obtained online from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of the Department of Justice).

But even so, and even in despite of the racially tinged nature of the Australian mobs, there is still a refreshing brashness to the Aussies who will not "respond" to Moslem violence by sitting quietly in the dark and waiting for instructions from the hapless government. Of course, the Australian government is not "hapless," as the Chirac government in France was: it took Paris more than a ten days before they decided to "crack down;" and even then, the riots only receded when the rioters got tired and bored. The violence in France eventually ebbed down to the normal rate -- of 900 cars torched every night.

I trust John Howard a lot more than Jacques Chirac, or even Nicolas Sarkozy, French minister of the Interior (that is, the top cop in France -- and probably the next president). After the Sydney police warned about rampaging racism -- they seemed to apply the term only to the white rioters, not the Arab rioters -- Howard responded in a measured way, noting the danger of both racism and also hysterical charges of mass racism; the Sydney Morning Herald quotes the prime minister:

"Mob violence is always sickening,'' Mr Howard told reporters.

"Attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity, is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians irrespective of their own background and their politics,'' he said.

"I believe yesterday's behaviour was completely unacceptable but I'm not going to put a general tag [of] racism on the Australian community.

"I think it's a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I'm simply not going to do so.''

Howard continued by warning that the police were not going to stand idle while lives were threatened and property damaged:

Mr Howard said he fully supported the actions of police at Cronulla and said that anybody who broke the law yesterday or on the previous weekend, when two lifesavers and a camera crew were assaulted, should be apprehended and prosecuted.

Mr Howard warned anyone considering further violent behaviour they would face the full force of the law.

Yet it remains to be seen whether he means it (and has the political power to carry through), or whether this is just tough talk. The French government talked very tough throughout the riots while doing virtually nothing for days. In the meanwhile, both sides have now tasted the wrong end of violence, and each knows that it can be burned as well. I expect this in itself will dampen enthusiasm for the fight.

Mob violence is always ugly, but we should think a second time before opining that it is always wrong; the Birmingham bombing was an act of mob violence -- but so was the Boston Tea Party. Like nearly everything else in life, nuance is important: the former was a horrific act of terrorism intended to frighten blacks into accepting American apartheid, while the latter was a legitimate act of protest against unrepresentative government.

In the Australian case, the mob might cut either way; but I have faith that the innate decency of Australian culture will steer sentiment towards defending Australian and Western values and away from the knuckle-dragging racial hatred we've seen in, e.g., Zimbabwe.

Of all the countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, I've always thought of Oz as the closest to America in spirit, even as it's the farthest in geographical distance.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 12, 2005, at the time of 5:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 2, 2005

Arms For the Poor

According to the Brussels Journal, the French police are quite simply unequipped to enforce lawn order in Paris, or any other cities where areas have become de facto part of the ummah. This is evidently true not only in France but the rest of Europe, even including Great Britain: the typically unarmed and overawed police cannot make arrests, and the terrified firefighters cannot fight arson fires with the arsonists shooting at them.

France

Since [Nicolas] Sarkozy became Interior Minister he has insisted on more police presence in Muslim neighbourhoods. This triggered last week’s riots in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, when policemen went in to investigate a robbery and two teenagers stupidly got themselves electrocuted while hiding from the police in an electricity sub station. Many French politicians now probably regret that the police had the audacity to investigate a robbery in Clichy. The result of the incident so far has been six consecutive nights of rioting that is now engulfing the entire Paris suburban area and might soon affect other parts of the country. Last night at least 69 vehicles were torched in nine suburbs across the Paris region. Officials say that small, mobile gangs are harassing police, sometimes even shooting at them. The gangs are setting vehicles, police stations and schools on fire throughout the region.

Denmark

“For several nights in a row Rosenhøj Mall has been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. ‘This area belongs to us’, the youths proclaimed. [...] ‘The police have to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes on down here’. [Elipses sic]

All your base are belong to us?

Great Britain

Commenting on the situation in Britain, Theodore Dalrymple wrote in City Journal: “Surveys suggest that between 6 and 13 percent of British Muslims -- that is, between 98,000 and 208,000 people -- are sympathetic toward Islamic terrorists and their efforts.... This is the tightrope that the British state and population will now have to walk for the foreseeable future.” It applies to all West European nations. Where, however, is the boundary between carefully walking the tightrope and falling victim to the Stockholm syndrome? The latter would mean that Western politicians act as hostages of the Muslim extremists.

The European Collapse

One proposed solution is to send in the army. "In a war, use the army, rather than police." However, to do so is to admit that civil authority has completely lost control of the nation, and the politicians simply refuse point blank to make that admission. Instead, they hide, serve out their time, and hope to retire before the Noahide flood: "après moi, le déluge," as another famous Frenchie said.

Besides -- this is my own speculation, not that of Brussels Journal -- European military forces are not exactly known for their steadfast determination and willingness to stay the course, even when they start taking casualties. They're not as tough, resourceful, battle-hardened, experienced, or well trained as, say, the Army of Greater Iraq. I'm not so sure the French military (except perhaps la Légion Étrangère) would do any better at quelling the rioting than the police (or the firefighters, for that matter). The British Army is rather better than the armies of the continent; but even they have too great a tendency to so "softly, softly," as in Basra in Iraq.

There is old story that in 1967, in the Six Day War, the Israelis realized the Arab axis put together by Gamil Nasser of Egypt was about to invade the Holy Land. In a lightning-like pre-emptive strike, the Israeli Air Force struck the Egyptian and Jordanian air bases. Then the Israeli infantry, armor and artillery, and paratroopers swiftly pounded the Gaza and Sinai (Egypt), the West Bank (Jordan), and the Golan Heights (Syria) in a coordinated assault that bordered on genius.

Twenty-four hours later, the Italian Army surrendered.

The American Way

The solution seems simple to me. France and the rest of Europe (including Britain) need to enact the right for all citizens to keep and bear arms. Small arms, I mean: weapons a man can comfortably bear.

The advantages are myriad and manifest:

• Each person has a tremendous incentive to protect his own life, his family, and his property; so motivation is high.
• There are tremendously more citizens than there are police or soldiers. Even if only a small fraction of the people choose to carry a weapon, they will still dwarf the authorities.
• The armed citizen is right on the spot: he is, in fact, the intended victim... so the bad guys will come find him.
• As we're finding in Iraq and Afghanistan, the locals are better at spotting people who don't belong (or known violent thugs) than the cops, and certainly more than military troops who may not even be from that region of the country.

The studies above indicated that between 6% and 13% of British Moslems "are sympathetic toward Islamic terrorists and their efforts;" similar numbers probably apply across Europe. The corollary to this is that possibly as many as 85% are un-sympathetic; isn't it about time Europe armed that 85%? For those of you who worry that Europe would be arming the very people it's afraid of, may I remind you of findings of such folks as John Lott anent domestic gun-control attempts... the bad guys already have their guns. They're already armed. France, et al, can either dis-arm the good (or not so bad) guys... or else finally allow them to defend themselves.

I suspect that most European politicians would literally rather lie down and die than allow their citizenry to be armed (the latter could lead to the former, or so they may fear!) It would be an even greater blow to Socialism than bringing in the army. But it would have the advantage of putting individual self-interest and the distributed swarm attack on the side of decency and good, not criminal evil.

And it might just work. It seems to work here; and even without the traditional American ethos of self-reliance and defense of home and hearth, it could hardly be worse than what they have now.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 2, 2005, at the time of 11:43 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 20, 2005

Right to Own Weapons...

Correction... this is a great day for litigation reform!

AP and all the nets are reporting a fantastic breakthrough -- in something that should have been a no-brainer. Congress has finally agreed that victims of criminal misuse of firearms cannot sue the gun manufacturer for damages (presumably for having the temerity to manufacture products that can potentially be misused). Bush is, of course, expected to sign the bill into law.

(In a startling corollary development, Congress also enacted legislation preventing victims of drunk drivers from suing Chevrolet and Toyota for building cars in the first place.)

The real intent is clear: unable to persuade American voters to vote to ban guns (perhaps due to that pesky Second Amendment), the Left decided to try to sue them out of existence by legally blaming gun manufacturers for the actions of criminals who buy, borrow, or steal guns to commit their crimes.

As A.E. Van Vogt wrote in "the Weapon Shops of Isher":

The right to own weapons is the right to be free.

Today, thankfully, America is the land of the freer.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 20, 2005, at the time of 4:14 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

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