Month: November 2003

Damn, I Wish I’d Written That

Dave at Pervasive Light links to this piece by Jonathan David Morris concerning the link between the recent Lester Campbell and Stratford High School incidents. Money quotes:

Stories like those of Mr. Campbell and Stratford High don’t happen in a vacuum. There’s a very real pattern here. There are forces at work in this country trying to “protect” us from things. If it’s not guns, it’s drugs. If it’s not drugs, it’s bad choices. But whatever it is, it always ends up costing us a fortune.

Our better welfare is a billion-dollar industry. From concealed carry statutes straight on down to seatbelt and helmet laws, we’re consistently told our welfare depends on new rules, police powers, and legal settlements. We buy into this bait-and-switch every time. Which is great if you’re a congressman — since you can vote yourself a pay raise, collect a nice pension, and gerrymander your way to absolute power — but not if you’re anyone else.

When politicians try to protect us from ourselves, they often only protect themselves from us. That’s a problem.

Read the whole thing.

I wish I’d written it.

FINALLY!

I’ve been running this blog for about six months now, and finally I’ve attracted the attention of a GFW an anti. It goes by the (appropriate) nom de plume of “flamebait,” and like all its type does not leave a valid e-mail address.

First, in response to One More Example it left this comment:

Keep arming yourselves against murderers and rapists it still won’t help you.

You are far more likely to die when your super polluting SUV rolls over.

Or you have one cigarette too many.

Or all of that fast food you eat leaves you with obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Or your children end up with athsma and emphysema from the off-gassing compounds that are used in new home carpets, flooring, etc..

Or you end up with athsma, emphysema or cancer from all of the household chemicals you use when you clean.

It goes on and on. You are far more likely to have your life impacted by any one (or all) of those things before you are attacked by an assailant despite what the evening news tells you.

Rapists don’t pay for TV spots, SUV makers do. Murderers don’t pay for network ads, household cleaners do. Armed muggers don’t pay for magazine ads, cigarette companies do.

You Americans are scarred of all the wrong things.

What we can gather from this is that “flamebait” is not an American, so not understanding the American attitude is understandable. We can also assume that “flamebait” is an environmentalist a Luddite, given its apparent horror of SUV’s, fast-food, and chemicals, so don’t expect much in the way of logic.

Second, in response to Yup, He’s a Thorougly Dangerous Man! it writes:

Let’s see… He had a gun and it still didn’t stop him from getting robbed. Even after he pulled it out the assailant still went for the cash and got away with it.

Wow, guns really help huh.

Note the last line is formed as a statement, not a question. Yes, “flamebait”‘s mind is all made up – guns never help people defend themselves – ever. And if they do, it’s an aberration.

Finally, in response to Aren’t Sawed-Off Shotguns Illegal? “flamebait” pulls out all the stops. Yes, this one encouraged me to sit down and generate a response before I go to bed. The alleged thought processes behind this one are so illustrative of the gun-control mindset that it merits it. Let’s dissect that response nearly line-by-line:

As far as I can tell, the only reason the intended victim isn’t dead is pure luck. How would your opinions change if the intended victim was shot as well?

Luck, it is said, is often largely a matter of being prepared. How would my opinions change? Not at all. That was a risk that the intended victim took upon himself. It is his choice as to whether a forcible response was correct – not the State’s. He made his choice, and regardless of whether he’d been injured or killed I believe he made the right one.

Or the victims children if they were present? or someone on the street walking by?

He was the man on the scene at the time. The choice was his to make. As a result, one perpetrator won’t (apparently) ever perpetrate again, and the other may very well be wounded. I will be the first to say that things might not have gone as well, but resisting crime is never immoral. Not resisting crime encourages more. That is, I believe, why England and Wales has the highest rate of violent crime in the developed world – self-defense there has been made, for all intents and purposes, illegal, and the mindset required has to a large extent apparently been bred out.

Defending self and family is risky.

So is submitting meekly.

But institutionalized submission to it is destructive to society.

The choice belongs and should belong to the individual.

(Yes, we kill each other far more, but we mug, assault, and rob each other far less. But we’ve always killed each other at a much higher rate than Europeans. It’s apparently an American cultural trait. Only after English law made defending oneself legally risky did their violent crime rates begin to climb, and now they’re far higher than our own with the singular exception of murder – which is apparently not an English cultural trait, but one they’re learning.)

You can bet that the sawed off shotgun that was used was probably stolen from some “law abiding citizen’s” home and is now being used in home invasions; or it was until he was shot.

Possibly. And your point? Oh, wait, that comes later…

How many home invasions do you think he successfully pulled off because of the shotgun before his luck ran out?

Um, this appears as though you’re suggesting that the shotgun caused other home invasions? Or are you just suggesting that the shotgun ensured that other home invasions were successful? How so? You need to be more clear. The fact is that I don’t know how many other home invasions this pair (or the individual with the sawed-off) have attempted, but “home invasions” are far more common in England, per capita, than they are here. Criminals there don’t need to fear that they might be met with lethal force.

A sawed-off shotgun isn’t a magic talisman, it’s merely a weapon – as this incident illustrates.

I reiterate: Not resisting crime tends to encourage more crime. Even you seem to understand that.

You joke about Mr Reid having a laoded(sic) gun next to his bed, “Unsafe Storage” you laugh, are you not far more likely to get killed in the United States by your own gun than you are by an unknown assailant?

Depends on how you twist interpret the statistics. Since the majority of firearm-related death in this country is by suicide, then statistically you’re more likely to die “by your own gun” than “by an unknown assailant.” I’ve covered the case of suicide extensively here, if you’re interested. (Read the link before flying off the handle, eh?) However, if you’re talking death by criminal action, then no.

If “Safe Storage” laws were in effect, the only people they’d affect would be the victims. What “Safe Storage” laws say to the citizen is:

“You’re not responsible enough to decide whether keeping a gun available for self-defense is a good idea or not. The All-Powerful, All-Knowing State knows that it’s not, so don’t do it or you will be criminally prosecuted.

Depend on the State for your defense. You’re not qualified.

Problem is, it’s not the legal responsibility of the State, and it’s not logistically possible anyway. I’ve got quite a bit to say about that here.

How many American children die due to unsafely stored guns in their homes? Is it still a joke to you?

You miss the point. The death of children is never a joke. It’s too many, but I believe it’s far fewer than you’d imagine. I cover that topic also in this post.

The number of children who die by accidental gunshot (in a country with possibly 250,000,000 guns, where possibly 40% of households contain at least one gun) is about 160 per year, and that’s for “children” up through 18 years of age. Just for comparison, more than that die in bicycle accidents, and almost seven times as many drown. Unsecured guns are apparently not that dangerous, since the gun control groups indicate that twenty percent of gun owning parents surveyed kept a loaded firearm unsecured in the home.

That’s a lot of guns.

Now, I have a question: How intrusive must the government become in order to prevent or even significantly affect less than 200 accidental deaths a year?

“Safe Storage” is the joke.

And finally, the kicker:

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like crime or criminals anymore than you do. Where our opinions differ is that I believe that all guns should be outlawed.

Of course you do. And from that statement, you also apparently think that, by outlawing them, you’ll make them go away.

I recommend that you study the success of that tactic. It doesn’t work. In fact, by all the evidence, it doesn’t help. Guns are a technology – and not a particularly difficult technology either. You can’t stuff that genie back in the bottle. They aren’t going to go away no matter how much you wish, meditate, chant, pray, or legislate.

First, you cannot disarm governments – they aren’t going to do it. And governments have historically, by far been the largest killers of their own people than criminals have been. So, as long as my government is going to be armed, I think I’ll be too. Second, laws that ban things only keep those things out of the hands of law-abiding people. See (again) England, where the only people with handguns these days are A) the criminals and B) the government. Third, because firearms are merely a technology, then eliminating that technology doesn’t fix the underlying problem, which is people willing to use violence to get what they want.

There was a time when there were no guns.

The world of that time was run exclusively by large men with swords.

It wasn’t a particularly safe, nor free, nor democratic world.

Firearms aren’t a panacea, but neither are they a pestilence. They come with a significant cost, but what they have provided is greater personal freedom of the individual – for good and for bad – than at any time in the history of man.

The most governments can do is disarm the good people.

We forget that at our own risk.

Not Slacking

I see by SiteMeter that, although I haven’t posted since Tuesday, I’m still getting about 200 hits a day.

Thank you.

Sorry about the lack of posting, but work has intruded severely. Up early, back late, and for the last three days – out of town. I got home last night at 11 PM and I leave for a job site tomorrow morning at 5 AM.

I’m spending today with my wife, who hasn’t seen me much either. (You can guess, dear readers, who is more important to me – you or her. No offense.)

Hopefully I’ll have some time next week for new posts, but I’m not holding my breath at this point.

One More Example: Gun Control Only Disarms the Victims

AlphaPatriot has the story from Papua New Guinea of a horrible home invasion.

A horrific attack on a family in Port Moresby has prompted calls for Papua New Guineans to be granted the right to arm themselves against murderers and rapists.

In an incident that shocked a city accustomed to a high level of violence, 10 drunken bandits last week attacked a family home, murdering a man who tried to protect his wife and two daughters, aged nine and 13.

The woman and her daughters were forced to watch as their father was shot and chopped up with an axe.

The three were then dragged outside and pack-raped.

The wife said the criminals then placed her husband’s body in their bed and set fire to the house.

“…to be granted the right to arm themselves….”

In 1857 the Supreme Court of the U.S. said that, among the “privileges and immunities” of American citizens was the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went.” But that decision said that blacks therefore couldn’t be citizens.

The right to be armed for “lawful purpose” was, as the Supreme Court said in its U.S. v Cruikshank decision of 1875: “This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” But that decision made it perfectly legal for the states to strip certain American citizens of that right, because it left: “the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes….”. Our fellow citizens didn’t protect that right, and neither did our Federal courts.

That right was never protected in Australia or any of its possessions, and now the people there are seeing the result of having that right legally stripped. As AlphaPatriot remarks, the attackers didn’t need a gun. They had overwhelming force on their side even without one.

BUT THEY HAD A GUN, AND THEIR VICTIMS DIDN’T.

The law-abiding have a snowball’s chance of getting “the right to arm themselves against murderers and rapists” back if they’re going to wait on the State to give it to them.

I am an unabashed supporter of America. I truly believe that it’s the best of all possible places to live, and that our form of government is superior to all others ever practiced.

But it’s far from perfect.

It’s a good distance from ideal.

To be honest, it’s got some significant flaws.

When our Founders sat down and constructed our tripartite system of government with its checks and balances among the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches, they made certain assumptions (how could they not?) about the behavior of their descendants. First, after much wrangling, the Bill of Rights was attached. With that addendum, they recognized the risk of government infringment – even via popular, democratic government – and hoped that the Bill of Rights would remind the generations to come that some things should remain inviolate, even if it appeared to be a good idea at the time. With that change, I think, they hoped the Constitution represented the blueprint of a truly foolproof system of fair, representative government. I believe they felt that our system of a free press would act as an additional check on government corruption, and the idea of an armed populace would serve as the final one, given failure of all the other safeguards.

But they knew, I think, deep in their souls, that nature keeps making better fools.

In a recent post from Samizdata, Perry de Havilland notes that “Woodcutters cut wood. Politicians make laws.”

These simple truisms go a long way to explaining MP & blogger Tom Watson’s support for passing laws regarding the use of fireworks. On his blog, and on this blog in our comments section, the Honourable Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East calls for more regulation and makes it clear that fireworks will simply be banned if that does not produce the desired effects. And yet when talking about an incident in which a woman was injured by some idiot throwing a firework he himself notes:

Granted the little thug that conducted this assault was breaking existing laws

…and then proceeds to ignore that fact from then on. I do not know Tom Watson personally but I heard him speak in Houses of Parliament and he seems both affable and reasonable for a politician. But as Brian Micklethwait’s article today says regarding the ‘problem’ of obesity, it is only to be expected that a person whose salary depends on passing more laws to, well, always insist on passing more laws.This is something I’ve noted as well. The Frank & Ernest cartoon showing the two bums standing in a law library, staring at the stacks, where one says “It’s frightening when you think that it all started with just ten commandments” is bang on the money.

I can identify the flaw in the Constitution:

The key to understanding the American system is to imagine that you have the power to make nearly any law you want. But your worst enemy will be the one to enforce it. – Rick Cook

but I don’t see what we can do about it now. I think the flaw is that the Founders never thought that we’d forget that basic reality. It’s not like we weren’t warned:

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. – Thomas Paine, Common Sense, (1776), Chap. 1.

Aside from the Bill of Rights, they made no provisions for that eventuality. They warned us in their writings, but didn’t codify it in the Constitution itself. I guess they hoped we’d live up to their expectations, rather than down to their fears.

We’ve had 214 years since the ratification of the Constitution with politicians endlessly making laws – some good, some necessary, but the overwhelming majority at best useless, at worst malignant. As I pointed out below (along with a highly appropriate political cartoon), Henry Louis Mencken in the 1930’s described politics with deadly accuracy:

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

That’s the flaw – when the only tool you have is a hammer, sooner or later every problem begins to look like a nail. If you have a body of people whose only power is to pass laws, then they’ll pass laws. About anything and everything, but in large part to: A) enrich themselves and B) ensure that they keep getting re-elected by enriching the people who get them elected. As the cartoon says, “The power to take his money and give it to you.” Not, of course, before taking his percentage off the top, though. And they’ll pass law to make it easier to get re-elected, and harder to be unseated. And they’ll pass laws to gather more and more power so that they can “Do something!” when the populace demands it.

As Perry notes:

And therein lays the problem at the heart of modern democratic states: so much of society has been made amenable to literal force (i.e. political action) that it makes little difference in the long run who is in control of the democratic means of coercion, the end result for civil liberties and several ownership (including self-ownership) will be the same. Face it, in Britain there is little to choose between Tory Michael Howard and NuLabour David Blunkett when it comes to which of them has abridged more civil liberties whilst serving as Home Secretary. Likewise, Janet Reno may have presided over the mass murder of a bunch of wackos in Waco, Texas, but is anyone really going to claim John Ashcroft is not continuing the process of shredding the much vaunted Bill of Rights?

The problem is the whole meta-context of seeing as axiomatic that politics is always acceptable just so long as it gets the imprimatur from a plurality of the politically engaged. Until enough people are willing to look to the moral basis of a law and simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of laws just because they are laws, we will always have politicians singing their siren song for your votes to empower not you, but themselves, by offering to solve your every problem with more laws. It is not enough to just not vote for them, you must find innovative ways to not cooperate with them.

“Until enough people are willing to look to the moral basis of a law and simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of laws just because they are laws….” THAT is the basis behind Jury Nullification. That is the basis behind civil disobedience. But look, for example, at this comment left in response to the recent self-defense incident in NYC involving an 80 year-old man using a .38 revolver to defend himself against a mugger (Via Pervasive Light):

The law is the law.
It may not be right or just, but it is the law.
“Justification” is not absolute.
“Necessity” is not excuse enough do [sic] violate any law.
If you break the law, then you should be prepared to face the consequences.
I disagree with the law, but it is the law. Until overturned, it should be obeyed (or those who decide to disobey it ought be ready to pay).
Follow the Law said @ 11/07/2003 02:03 PM EST

Another poster, blogger Amy Alkon says:

Regarding the charges against this guy, the law is the law. Guns must be registered.

What we were protesting was the fact that Mr. Campbell had both of his firearms confiscated by The State, and was charged with not having them registered. But “Follow the Law” doesn’t see a problem with that. In fact, he disavows Jury Nullification in a later response:

And if you honestly think the law is just what the jury says then I guess all white juries letting off fellow whites for lynchings was ok, too. After all, the jury is never wrong and they decide the law in a vaccum.

—

I side with Rev. King: break the law, but do it happily and take your punishment if you think you are just with a smile.

He’s got a point. Jury Nullification is an evil thing when it condones evil. But that is a failure of The People, not The Law. “Follow the Law” is one of those who Perry protests against. One of the masses who is “amenable to literal force”. He (or she) accepts the legitimacy of laws because they are laws – and so does Amy. Is there no point for people like this at which a law should rejected? How about when the punishment is ridiculously excessive? Like, say, ten years without parole for an 18 year-old because he had consensual sex with a minor? Confiscation of your very expensive personal property because you didn’t get a $200 tax stamp? Having your land sold out from under you because – while the state conformed to the letter of the law – you didn’t manage to pay your taxes on time? Having your school raided by the cops – and guns stuck in your face – because somebody was selling drugs in your school? And, of course, having your only means of self-protection confiscated because you couldn’t afford the time and money required to even apply to the State for their permission.

And those are only this week’s examples.

And what about the chilling of our freedoms by these innumerous laws? What about those of us unwilling to “do it happily and take our punishment?” As the “Geek with a .45” put it recently:

The fact that things have gone so far south in some places that people actually feel compelled to move the fuck out should frighten the almighty piss out of you.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I would’ve dismissed that notion, that people were relocating themselves for freedom within America as the wild rantings of a fringe lunatic, but today, I’m looking for a real estate agent.

—

When was the last time you built a bonfire on a beach, openly drank a beer and the presence of a policeman was absolutely no cause for concern? Hmmm?

And what other laws has Big Brother passed that you can think of that were done merely to protect us from ourselves?

And we’re supposed to “do it happily” and take our punishment “if we think” we are just.

I don’t fucking think so.

Claire Wolfe was right – “America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”

The real problem with the Constitution? The Founders never imagined we’d become sheep.

Postscript: Dave at Pervasive Light raised $1265 for Lester Campbell. I hope Mr. Campbell buys another .38 with some of it.

Blogosphere to Albert Gore Jr.: – We Remember

Via Feces Flinging Monkey, Jay Caruso bitch-slaps Algore‘s assertion that Dubya has “taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, ‘big brother’-style government — toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book ‘1984’ — than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America.”

Go read. And be pissed.

Just ONE Reason to Read Ipse Dixit

This week’s Caption This Picture contest winner:

“Can you find the nine candidates for the Democratic nomination for President?” – Daniel Aronstein

THAT’s a classic!

Aren’t Sawed-Off Shotguns Illegal?

Police: Man shoots intruder

Two men armed with guns who burst into a home in the 400 block of Victoria Drive Wednesday and demanded money got a little surprise when one of the people inside the home had better aim, police said.

One of the intruders, identified by police as Rameek Neal, 22, of Lancaster, was hit and is now listed at the hospital as a quadriplegic. Police are still looking for the second man.

Quadriplegic, eh. I bet he now wishes he hadn’t done the home invasion.

According to police reports, Neal and another man knocked on the door of the home sometime before 10:30 Wednesday night.

After one of the home’s occupants opened the door, the two men forced their way in, baring guns and demanding money, police said. Reports said the man police have not yet arrested pointed what witnesses said was a sawed-off shotgun at the two people in the living room. Neal, meanwhile, left the living room and went to the home’s master bedroom, police said.

Think he had the NFA paperwork for that scattergun?

Nah. Me either.

What big-ticket item do you think they can confiscate from him?

Inside the bedroom, police said Neal threatened the two occupants who were in bed. According to police, Neal threatened to shoot or beat them with a pistol if they did not give him money.

Police said one of the bedroom’s occupants, Omar Reid, 25, reached out of bed, grabbed a pistol from the dresser and shot Neal as Neal shot at him.

Let’s see: A loaded gun kept in a dresser drawer next to the bed. That’s unsafe storage, isn’t it? Are there any children in the home? Does he have a permit for that firearm? Oh, wait, this is a suburb of Philadelphia, not New York City.

With Neal down on the ground at the foot of the bed, police said Reid left the bedroom and walked into the living room, where he encountered the second man.

Both men fired at each other, police said.

The man Reid fired at fled from the home. Police said Reid was not hit.

He has a sawed-off, they shoot at each other across the distance of a living room (couldn’t be more than seven or eight yards, tops) and he misses!

Neal, who was found by police still laying in the bedroom, was flown to Crozer-Chester Medical Center for his injuries.

Police are still looking for the second man, who they say may have a gunshot wound.

And probably has stained underwear.

It would be poetic justice if Mr. Reid hit his second target.

Police said Reid’s actions are being considered self-defense.

I should hope so!

&ltbradycenter&gtBut these people should have done what the criminals wanted! Then maybe no one would have gotten hurt! There’s a poor victim in the hospital who’s now a quadriplegic!&lt/bradycenter&gt

Good.

He was THIS Close!

It must make serving time a lot less dull…

Women’s jail prisoner admits he’s a man

A convicted marijuana grower has told prison authorities he is a man – after spending more than eight months locked up with women.

An inquiry has been launched after Billie Jo Hawks told wardens at Kentucky’s Correctional Institution for Women that a mistake had been made.

For eight months before that, Hawks, 43, had been held in the women’s section of a detention centre having been convicted of growing and trafficking marijuana.

He was then transfered to the jail, and it wasn’t until he faced a medical examination that he alerted wardens of the error.

I bet there are some red faces in the Corrections department, and it isn’t Mary Kay blush.