Month: May 2003

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Somebody generally beats me to it

And quite often does a better job of it. That’s one of the reasons it took me so long to start my own blog. Jealous green-eyed rage. Regardless, I appreciate quality work when I see it, and I’d be remiss not to point it out to whomever might stumble in here. Isntapundit (no, not Glenn. The other guy) has a post up that perfectly illustrates the gun control movement in the personage of Andrew McKelvey, chief honcho of Americans for Gun Safety. Although the comparison to a deadly parasite was a bit graphic for dinnertime. Go read it. I’ll wait.

Journalistic Consistency, or: “All the news we see fit.”

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There’s an AP news story about the Case Western shooter. The headline reads: “Cleveland Shooter Had Military Training” (though they did leave off the hysterical exclamation point.) That’s good. That’s interesting. And it’s in keeping with the general liberal position that people who receive military training are all psycho-killers-in-waiting. The story relates:

The 62-year-old man accused of a shooting spree at a prestigious Cleveland university had military training with the Indian army and a grudge against an employee, authorities said Saturday. Ok, fair enough. But is it relevant? The article goes on to cover the fact that Biswanath Halder was wearing a “bullet proof” vest and some kind of helmet with a wig glued to it as he went through the building apparently firing indiscriminately. The story relates that “(Halder) never walked on the sidewalks, always down the middle of the street” according to one person interviewed. OK, that’s a little weird.

At the end of the article it states the source of the opening assertion:

The resume Halder posts on his Web site includes service in the Indian army, as well as experience in computer programming, designing electrical measuring equipment in Germany, real estate and financial planning. Very good – cite your sources.

Interest thus piqued, I ran a Google News search on Mr. Halder.

There was this story told us that 425 rounds of ammunition were found in his car,

this one that tells us all about the “poor man’s Uzi” that Halder used (and it – as most news stories do – gets crucial information wrong concerning guns and gun laws),

this one with the headline “Alleged Shooter Had Gun With 32-Round Magazine” (No exclamation point there either, but you know it’s implied.) The article discusses the ammunition used, saying: “The ammunition used were hollow-point bullets, designed for maximum amount of damage and minimal penetration.” Well, not exactly but then the press so seldom gets this stuff right anyway. Note too that the article quotes a “firearms expert” who says that the Cobray pistol Halder had “…could have a 32-round magazine in it and have 32 rounds in the gun.” Note that – COULD have. Did he, or didn’t he? Anyway, this article also contradicts the first story a bit, because the same expert is also denigrates Halder’s training. “Donnett said it’s clear that the alleged gunman had little training….’If this gentleman had really known what he was doing, the fatalities would’ve been way up,’ she said.” Harsh words for a man with military training.

(Oh, and there’s a photo on the site that’s apparently supposed to be the two guns in question. One of them might be a Ruger, the other is DEFINITELY not a Cobray. Guess they didn’t have one in their archives. I suppose I should be happy that they didn’t use a picture of a REAL Uzi.

Anyway, this story mentions Halder’s web site too. It says this:

Halder would write about destruction on his Web site, and there were anonymous postings calling him a moron, and a making fun of his fake hair and fake teeth.
One posting said, “People around you don’t like you, so take a hike and get out of our lives.”

This story has the headline: Case Western killing inflames gun opponents

Well THERE’S a surprise. But Halder’s a side-note in this story.

Then there’s this short blurb about the lawsuit over Halder’s web site that apparently sparked the shooting.

Anyway, it’s pretty apparent that the news organizations not only knew he had a web site, but where it was and what was on it.

So, why was there no mention of the fact that Halder was pretty rabidly against the war in Iraq, and a supporter of gun control? His site is down now, but it wasn’t immediately after the shooting or the media couldn’t have checked his resume. I got in before they firewalled the sites and looked.

It was apparent that the guy was one bat short of a full belfry.

Oh, right – Relevance.

KevinLeave a comment

Depending on the State for Your Safety

I’ll have more (much more) to say about this later, but I found this column by Dave Kopel interesting, as I have been studying the UK’s approach to gun control for quite a while, specifically the legal attitude concerning self-defense. So color me unsurprised when Dave followed up on the article with this feedback from someone who’s been there:

“I’m an alumna of Pepperdine University, a school which proudly owns a house/campus on Exhibition Road, literally across the street from the Imperial University, in the middle of South Kensington, right near Harrods, Hyde Park, the Albert Hall. Within two days of arriving for our first semester in London, our relatively small [American] class (37 students, 10 men, 27 women) was visited by a local police officer to instruct us on living in London. Her first question was to the women, ‘How many of you brought mace?’ Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn’t use it, shouldn’t even carry it, it was illegal.

That’s correct. Mace, teargas, and pepper sprays have been outlawed since passage of the 1953 “Prevention of Crime Act.” This made it illegal to carry an “offensive weapon” without being able to demonstrate a need for it. Offensive weapons included knives, pointed objects, and firearms, along with chemical sprays. In other words, you had to apply to the government and get their permission in order to carry anything with which to defend yourself. In 1953, remember.

“Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too.”

As mentioned above, carrying a knife for self-defense was made illegal (without permission from the State) in 1953, but what constituted a knife? That question was rectified with the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 which defined what an edged or pointed weapon was thusly:

“…any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed except a folding pocketknife.” and “This section applies to a folding pocketknife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds 3 inches.” So, if you carry a very small pocketknife, you’re OK, right? Are you going to take that risk? Small folding lockback? Illegal. Yup. Lockbacks are not considered to be “folding knives.” Carpet knife? Illegal. Boxcutter? Illegal. Leatherman? Illegal. Unless, of course you can prove in court that you had “need,” i.e.: that you used in for work and that you had it on you in conjunction with your work. Woe unto you if you stop by the pub on the way home with anything considered illegal on your person or in your car.

What happened to the English common-law assumption of innocence? It’s turned on its head here. You have to prove your innocence, because the law assumes that if you have something that can be used as a weapon, you intend evil.

If you’re interested, the British Knife Collectors Guild has a site covering the specifics of the laws there. To continue:

“Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.

“The feeling I got was, in London, it is not permissable to defend oneself. I also understood that this police officer thought Americans were more likely to be agressive and/or cause more damage to a potential attacker. She was warning us for our own good. I have to admit, she did not make me feel particularly safe.”

Yup. Depend on the State to protect you. You’re not qualified to protect yourself. It would sound like a Monty Python piece if it weren’t true. As Joyce Lee Malcolm has documented, England’s anti-self-defense laws have resulted in violent crime rates considerably higher than we have here.

Update: HAH! Glen Reynolds comments on this, too. But I didn’t see it until AFTER I had my post up. (How does he read all this stuff?)

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Welcome to the bathroom wall. The link goes to a post by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, which I will quote shamelessly (hey, I gave the link).

The Internet is a bathroom wall.

Consider: Anyone can write anything on a bathroom wall. There’s little accountability on a bathroom wall. It’s hard to tell who wrote what on a bathroom wall. Truth looks just like rumor on a bathroom wall. Great stuff is interspersed with awful, stupid stuff on a bathroom wall.

Most people know instinctively not to offer as verification or a point of information the phrase “Well, you know, I read on the bathroom wall that. . .” Yet far too many seem willing to lace their discourse and communications with “facts” gleaned from bulletin boards, e-mail and Web sites.

That from a 1998 Chicago Tribune piece by Eric Zorn. Now Eugene’s pithy comment:

The sad fact, which I’ve noted in many posts over the past year (and even setting aside egregious examples like the Jayson Blair affair), is that most media turn out to be a bathroom wall, too. An exaggeration, but less of an exaggeration that I’d like it to be.

Precisely. So, who says that one bathroom wall is superior to another? The reader does.

KevinLeave a comment

DISCLOSURE

I am strongly interested in the rights of individuals, in particular the restrictions upon our government to respect those rights.

As such, I’m not much of a fan of the government we have. In fact, I used to use this signature line:

The Constitution may not be the finest work ever set to paper,

but it beats whatever the government’s using these days.

So it comes as no surprise that I’m not real enamored with the Republicans, and I find the Democrats abhorrent. Of course, I think the Greens are flakes, and the Libertarians tend to be flakes of a different shape.

Anyway, bearing this in mind, I invite you to read Rachel Lucas’s transcription of Barbara Walter’s Hillary interview. Uh-huh.

KevinLeave a comment

I can see I’m going to spend a considerable amount of time linking to other sites for my (hopefully only temporarily) nonexistent reader base, but this one is classic and should not be missed:

Kang’s Classroom: Politics 101

Warning: Don’t drink anything when you read this. You’ll need a new keyboard.

KevinLeave a comment

In relation to the “What is a right” essay…

I posted below, I found this quotation attributed to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I don’t have any other information detailing where it was published, so I’ll hold off on actually laying it at his feet (though if someone can give me a pointer, I’d appreciate it). However, it says in a paragraph what took me an entire essay — Rights are what a society believes they are. (Of course, I was trying to win something, and it was oriented specifically towards the right to arms, but….)

Here it is:

To some degree, a constitutional guarantee is like a commercial loan, you can only get it if, at the time, you don’t really need it. The most important, enduring, and stable portions of the Constitution represent such a deep social consensus that one suspects if they were entirely eliminated, very little would change. And the converse is also true. A guarantee may appear in the words of the Constitution, but when the society ceases to possess an abiding belief in it, it has no living effect. Consider the fate of the principle expressed in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government is a government of limited powers. I do not suggest that constitutionalization has no effect in helping the society to preserve allegiance to its fundamental principles. That is the whole purpose of a constitution. But the allegiance comes first and the preservation afterwards. (My emphasis)

Indeed.

What is a “Right”?

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Before I go to bed (who am I fooling, I’ll stay up and read Cryptonomicon until midnight again) I thought I’d post this essay that won me membership priviledges over at AR15.com a few months ago. It was short due to the 8,000 character limit for single posts to that forum. This should be an interesting exercise in HTML coding…

What is a “Right”?

Webster’s has several definitions:

1: qualities (as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval
2: something to which one has a just claim: as a: the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled b: the interest that one has in a piece of property – often used in plural (mineral rights)
3: something that one may properly claim as due

All accurate, but incomplete. In speaking of the “Rights of the People” we refer to definitions 2 and 3, “something that one may properly claim as due” or “to which one is justly entitled.” Some would add “endowed by the Creator.” What about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” Robert Heinlein wrote about those in his 1959 novel Starship Troopers:

“Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

“The third ‘right’ – the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

So, what of the “right to keep and bear arms?” Like all “Rights of the People” the right to arms is a social construct – a declaration by a society of what is “right and proper,” and generally agreed to by the population. A society is, by definition, a group with similar beliefs. The enumerated right to arms is historically a fairly new, and a very rare one. Throughout history, the strong have made the rules and the weak have lived under them. Our English ancestors won a limited right to arms from the nobility through centuries of fighting their battles for them. In 1689, the English Bill of Rights proclaimed “That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.”

When our forefathers wrote the Constitution and debated on our Bill of Rights, they looked at their own recent past and at what England had done with that law, and concluded that it provided too much opportunity for interference. In St. George Tucker’s American Blackstone 1803 review of American law, he wrote:

“In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.”

Thus then, as now, government worked to retain the exclusive use of armed force.

Our founders intended to prevent this. Their wording was simpler:

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The meaning of these words went essentially unquestioned for a hundred years. There were questions about just who the People were, but not what “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” meant. The 1857 Dred Scott decision looked at the question of who “the People” were, and declared that slaves and former slaves could not be “the People” because:

(Citizenship) “would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

Then we fought a war, in no small part to determine just who “the People” were.

What followed was another ninety years of bad laws aimed at keeping slaves and sons of slaves disarmed “for the public safety.” Laws to keep “those people” from being armed were introduced across the nation. The 14th Amendment was passed to ensure equal protection under the law for all, but the courts played along. U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875 told us that the job of the federal government was to ensure all citizens received equal rights under the law, but the states were free to pass laws restricting the enumerated right to arms – at least to certain undesirables. In 1939, U.S. v. Miller proclaimed that the arms protected under the Second Amendment were somehow only those of military usefulness, but subsequent decisions using Miller as precedent proclaimed that Miller said that there was no individual right to arms. Once again, government worked to restrict arms to “those like us” – and then, later, “those like us” meant “those with power.” Inevitably, our system of government – established by the people, for the people – has become more and more “us versus them.” The “useful idiots” who fear guns, and the powerful who use them band together to change the meaning of the right to arms in the public mind.

A “right” is what the majority of a society believes it is.

What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” if it gets you put in jail? What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” if using a firearm to defend yourself or someone else results in the loss of your freedom, or at least your property? What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” when you live in a city that denies you the ability to keep a gun in your home for self protection?

This is a battle for public opinion, make no mistake.

It is a battle the powerful and their useful idiots have been winning.

Your rights are meaningless when the system under which you live does not recognize them. Or worse, scorns them.

If you want to keep your rights, it is up to YOU to fight for them. Liberty is NEVER unalienable. You must always fight for it.

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
 Winston Churchill

(Yup, this HTML stuff is going to take a while to get good at.)

KevinLeave a comment

So, this blog is largely dedicated to the rights of individuals, and the right to arms in particular. To get started on the right foot here’s an essay I wrote a while back for the late, lamented Themestream.com. It’s one of my early bits so it’s not as polished as I’d really like, and while I’ve tweaked it a bit to make it fit better here (taking out references to people on Themestream, etc.) I haven’t changed it much. I’m still getting the feel of Blogger and HTML coding.

Anyway, without further ado,

Why DO I Own a Gun?

It’s a reasonable question, one asked of me some time ago on another forum.

On that forum I had written about being a gun owner, and how I got to where I am today. The question of why, however, puts a bit different light on the subject.

As is the case for the majority of gun owners, my father owned guns and still does. However, he was never an avid shooter, and in my recollection has never been a hunter. His guns were his fathers, except for the revolver he purchased after our home was burglarized twice. Guns were just something he had, and they were not really thought about.

However, I have been keenly interested in firearms for most of my life, an interest not shared at all by anyone else in my immediate family. So why do I own a gun? Well, in fact I own several. First and foremost I own guns because I am a recreational shooter. I shoot for sport. It is my number-one hobby. I do not hunt, though I understand the appeal. I am a shooter, and to me hunting is taking your gun for a walk. My particular interest is International Handgun Metallic Silhouette shooting. In this sport the competitor attempts to knock down steel targets shaped in the profiles of chickens, pigs, turkeys and rams at various ranges. It is quite demanding because the longest range in competition is 200 meters and the targets at that range weigh about 50 pounds. An accurate gun, a good aim, and a powerful cartridge are all required to do well.

Most people don’t realize how popular shooting is. My sport is just one of many practiced all over the country. Here is just a short list of shooting sports: Bullseye, High Power, Trap, Skeet, Sporting Clays, Practical Pistol, 100 yard Benchrest, 1000 Yard Benchrest, Bianchi Cup, Schutzenfest, International Defensive Pistol, Steel Challenge, Biathlon, Olympic Free Pistol, Rifle Silhouette, and perhaps the most popular of all, Cowboy Action.

There are many, many more. These are all organized shooting sports with written rules, sanctioning bodies, and scheduled matches. Competitors spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on their equipment and on ammunition for practice and competition. My last competition pistol cost more than $600.00. Used. An Olympic Free Pistol may easily cost in excess of $2,000. Shotguns for Trap, Skeet, or Sporting Clays may cost $5,000 or more. My hand-assembled ammunition costs me about twenty-five cents a shot for the components, so a typical match costs me about ten dollars just for that, not including the 70 mile round trip to the range and the entrance fee. And no, we don’t win prizes.

In addition to the literally millions of rounds fired yearly in organized competition, millions more are fired in practice and just for fun. Ammunition manufacturers report that they sell a combined one billion rounds of .22 rimfire ammunition each year. (I confess to consuming about a fifteen hundred rounds each year of that total.) Shooting as a sport is POPULAR, and while it can be an inexpensive hobby, it can get pricey fast. The point is, recreational shooters don’t exactly fit the stereotype that the media keeps presenting.

I have also been an avid reader for most of my life. My reading has spanned fiction and non-fiction – history, philosophy, mystery, science-fiction, fantasy, technical. In my youth I read just about everything I could get my hands on having to do with World War II. Perhaps I am a throwback to that time, but I believe in duty, honor, personal responsibility, and individual rights. My reading, much more than my formal education, has brought me to study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the history that surrounds these documents and those who wrote them. Because of my readings, I have what I feel is an intimate understanding of the rights of and the responsibilities conferred upon the citizens of this nation.

Listed second in the Bill of Rights is the guarantee to the people that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed by our government. One reason for this guarantee is the common defense of the State in the form of a militia. It is not the only reason. Each of us is responsible for the safety and security of ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, and our nation. It is OUR responsibility to combat crime, whether it is armed robbery or reckless driving or governmental corruption. Our freedom of speech and freedom of the press serves to expose corruption. Our ability to call the police department and bear witness in court to crime when it occurs serves when the crime is not directed at us, or when bodily injury is not likely.

However, when we ourselves are confronted with crime directly, it is our duty to resist as best we can. This belief stands in direct conflict with what we’ve been told by the police and other “officials” for the last several years. “Do as you’re told” they tell us “and you (probably) won’t get hurt. Nothing material is worth your life.” They’re right. Nothing material is worth my life. My duty and my honor, however, are not material things.

No, I am not saying that I will immediately throw myself on an attacker and sacrifice my life for no good reason. That’s not honorable, that’s stupid. But to defend my wife against assault, I might do that very thing. I might also do it for a stranger. I decide when a violent response is appropriate, not some uninvolved “official”. To that end I have decided that being armed is preferable to not being armed. I am capable of using firearms, willing if necessary to use lethal force, convinced in my own mind that I have the logical capability to decide if lethal force is necessary, and secure that once I have made a decision that I will be able to live with myself. Further, I am comfortable with the idea that others have made the opposite choice and are willing to take their chances (which are realistically pretty good) remaining unarmed. However, I take extreme exception to those who would tell me “I don’t feel safe because YOU have a gun – you must get rid of it”. I am not a danger to anyone who is a law-abiding citizen. How DARE someone try to restrict my ability to defend myself!

I don’t recommend universal militiarization – i.e.: everyone armed all the time. That’s as insane as the idea of universal disarmament. But I do believe that those who are armed act as a check on those who would commit crime. The evidence backs me up. Wherever laws have been passed allowing or even encouraging average citizens to keep arms for defense, violent crime has dropped, not increased. Wherever laws have been passed prohibiting or severely restricting average citizens from keeping arms for defense, crime has increased, not gone down. Facts seem to be useless against those with firearms phobias, though.

The last reason I own a gun is probably the most controversial. It’s the one that gets gun owners branded as “nuts”, “kooks”, and various other derogatory terms.

I own a gun in order to keep my government in check.

That is the primary reason the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution. The men who wrote it created a whole new form of government, one untried before in history. They did this in the full knowledge that governments are run by human beings, and that some human beings lust for power. They understood that, even with all the checks and balances engineered into the Constitution, with time and patience and even with good intent, the system they set up could fail and tyranny could again rise up. They understood that if the force of arms could be restricted to only the government, that the consent of the governed would become unimportant to those in charge.

So I own a gun. Just as a reminder those in charge that they’d better mean it when they swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. The Declaration of Independence says it best:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

It would be tough to throw off such a government starting with only small arms, but it’s been done. It would be impossible without them.

(End of essay. Have a comment or question? I haven’t figured out how to add a comment function yet, so drop me an e-mail at: gunrights AT comcast DOT net)