Science may be the noblest endeavor of the human mind, but I believe (though I cannot prove) that the most crippling and dangerous kind of ignorance in the modern West is ignorance of economics, the way markets work, and the ways non-market allocation mechanisms are doomed to fail. Such economic ignorance is toxic, because it leads to insane politics and the empowerment of those whose rhetoric is altruist but whose true agenda is coercive control. – Eric S. Raymond
Month: January 2005
I Will Not Register. Ever.
South Africa has apparently chosen to create a huge new population of criminals by revising their licensing and registration laws, reports the Cape Times earlier this month.
Gun licence chaos looms, say owners
Fatima Schroeder
January 06 2005 at 06:48AMFirearms dealers say that there is no way the government can hope to re-register the millions of legal guns in the country in the four years from January 1 that it has given itself.
Adding to the load will be the thousands of new gun licence applications that will be made to the Central Firearms Registry this year.
Well, apparently not, as it appears that the overwhelming majority of new license applications are being denied.
Since Monday, the 2.8-million firearm owners across the country could apply to renew licences for their 4.5-million firearms.
The Firearms Control Act, implemented in July, makes it compulsory for applicants to have a training test to gain a proficiency certificate before applying for a competency certificate. People must have a competency certificate before they may apply for a licence.
More of those “common-sense” rules, right?
According to gun dealers, only one firearm licence has been issued in the past six months.
So much for the “thousands of new licenses.”
Of concern is that gun owners who do not have their licences renewed would be in possession of illegal firearms – a criminal offence.
Otherwise known as a “GOTCHA!” Disarm yourself or be a felon. No need for a door-to-door search. You know who was licensed, if they haven’t turned in their registered firearms, go lock ’em up!
Andrew Soutar, chairman of the South African Firearm Dealers Association, said that many gun dealers had gone into liquidation.
The Central Firearms Registry had processed 69,000 licence applications a year until March last year under the old laws, which entailed less complicated procedures, he said.
At this rate, he calculated that it would take about 65 years to renew licences.
A law that’s impossible to implement? That’s no reason not to do it! While you’re at it, let’s repeal gravity!
Responding to a request by the Cape Times, Pretoria police communications official Mohlabi Tlomatsana released figures that showed more than 10,000 licences had been issued between July and November last year.
Tlomatsana acknowledged that the figure included applications made before the new law came into force.
Asked how many of those licences had been approved under the new act, he responded five hours later, saying that processing the request was “time-consuming”.
Asked how many competency certificates had been issued in the last six months of last year, Tlomatsana said the question was “academic”.
Gun dealers claim the police are reluctant to give the figures sought by the Cape Times as only one licence has been issued under the new act.
Can’t imagine why they’d be closed-mouthed about it, then. Can you?
The South African Firearm Dealers Association completed a countrywide survey shortly before Christmas and 80 dealers responded saying they had not been informed of any licence approvals or issuing of competency certificates since the new law had been implemented.
The owner of Cavendish Guns, Dusty Millar, said applicants had battled to get firearm licences because the government had not put proper systems in place before implementing the law.
He said that because of the dearth of ranges and accredited trainers, applicants had struggled to obtain competency certificates in the six months after the law came into effect.
Millar said this was harming the firearm industry and six dealers in Cape Town had closed down since July 1.
“People are getting illegal firearms because it is more difficult to get a licence.”
Fr. Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University course in Economics: “Supply and-a Demand. That’s it.” Supply always meets demand.
Osman Shaboodien, an instructor at Buccaneer Guns, shared Millar’s sentiments.
“I don’t think there’s one dealer who hasn’t suffered because of the new act. But it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s starting to look better purely because the training procedures are coming through.”
Right. AFTER a large number of dealers have been put out of business, and the law guarantees that thousands of people currently licensed will be unable to renew.
But “it’s starting to look better.” For a government that wants to disarm its citizens.
If, however, the handling of applications for new licences did not improve, many firearm dealers would have to close down, Shaboodien said.
In a letter to the Cape Times, the Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on safety and security, Roy Jankielsohn, said the act could hit firearm owners and dealers as well as the tourism, film and private security industries.
Tlomatsana denied that only one approval had been issued under the new act, and said the procedures had been put in place.
The renewal deadlines are:
Those born between January1 and March 31 can apply during 2005;
Those born between April 1 and June 30 can apply during 2006;
Those born between July 1 and September 30 can apply during 2007; and
Those born between October 1 and December 31 can apply during 2008.
Meanwhile gun owners were responding positively to the 90-day firearms amnesty and had been handing guns in at police stations around the country, officials said.
While the police are not yet able to say what types of illegally held guns were being surrendered, they said people were taking advantage of the amnesty.
People with unlicensed firearms or ammunition can hand them in at any police station without fear of prosecution.
I’d LOVE to see a list of what gets turned in. The last time England tried it they got an anti-aircraft machinegun and some hand grenades.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said the amnesty would run from January 1 to March 31, during which time the police would accept items brought in by people who no longer wished to be illegally in possession of them.
This particularly relates to people who have inherited or have been given firearms for which they do not have licences, people who may have kept ammunition after getting rid of a gun, or even security companies or other businesses that may have outdated equipment in their possession.
I will not license. I will not register. Period.
The ACLU Defines What is and What Isn’t A Fundamental Civil Liberty
…and don’t you forget it!
Found via Clayton Cramer’s blog, Different River reports that the ACLU has decided to edit the First Amendment:
The ACLU is misquoting the Constitution, apparently in order to make a point that is actually false. They are claiming that “freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment,” when in fact it is the second. Here is what this page on the ACLU web site says, as of this moment:
It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Yeah, it “no accident” – it’s next door to a lie. See the ellipsis there? Those three little dots, indicating the ACLU deleted something they didn’t think was relevant? Wonder what’s in that spot in the actual First Amendment? What’s in there is the actual “first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment.” For comparison, here’s the actual First Amendment, complete without ellipses, from the website of the National Archives and Records Administration
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is easily understood, though, as I found in this Reason Online interview of ACLU President Nadine Strossen. You see, the ACLU has taken it upon itself to define what is and what isn’t a freedom or a “fundamental civil liberty.” Here’s what Strossen had to say:
…our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.
See? Doesn’t that just clear it all up?
No Nuance Here
Today’s MSNBC piece by Howard Fineman wherein he announces the death of the “American Mainstream Media Party” (“party” in the political sense) is one of the most concise and cogent explanations I have seen for what the news media has become, and I think his declaration that the party was founded by the action of Walter Cronkite “step(ing) from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam” is absolutely true. In fact, I keep expecting Peter Jennings to stand up any night now and declare the “quagmire in Iraq” lost and unrecoverable, (I know, he does pretty much nightly, but I mean blatantly in an editorial statement as Cronkite did after Tet) fully expecting that his declaration will cause an immediate loss of national support and a subsequent withdrawal in shame. (But then again, perhaps he actually reads his Nielsen numbers.)
When I read this paragraph though, it reminded me of something from much earlier last year:
Texas Gov. George W. Bush arrived on the national scene in the 1990s intent on dictating the terms of dealing with the AMMP — or simply ignoring it altogether. Already well-known as the son of a president, he focused on raising money and holding private chit-chats with donors and political supporters who would journey to Austin for off-the-record talks. His guru was not an image-making man (as Ailes had been for Nixon, and Deaver with Reagan) but a direct-mail expert, Karl Rove. Rove and Bush decided that most forms of “exposure” offered by the AMMP would be likely to do more harm than good. So why bother unless they could completely dictate the terms of engagement?
Back in April, PressThink did a piece on Bush’s attitude towards the press, from which I excerpted this:
…a reporter says to the president: is it really true you don’t read us, don’t even watch the news? Bush confirms it.
And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You’re making a powerful assumption, young man. You’re assuming that you represent the public. I don’t accept that.
Which is a powerful statement. And if Bush believes it (a possibility not to be dismissed) then we must credit the president with an original idea, or the germ of one. Bush’s people have developed it into a thesis, which they explained to Auletta, who told it to co-host Brooke Gladstone:
That’s his attitude. And when you ask the Bush people to explain that attitude, what they say is: We don’t accept that you have a check and balance function. We think that you are in the game of “Gotcha.” Oh, you’re interested in headlines, and you’re interested in conflict. You’re not interested in having a serious discussion… and exploring things.
Further data point: The Bush Thesis. If Auletta’s reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren’t a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role– official or otherwise.
Fineman’s piece illustrates that, not only did the Bush campaign have that policy and execute it, it was correct (and successful). Rather and CBS attempted a major “Gotcha” and had their asses handed to them by the new media – a voice that even four years ago would probably have not been powerful enough to be heard. To Mapes and Rather it didn’t matter whether the story was true (though I’m certain they believe it yet) it only mattered that they would be believed, banking on CBS’s reputation as “the Tiffany Network.” But that credibility, previously only eroded, has now been completely washed away.
Regardless, the attack on Bush was, in the fevered imaginations of Burkett, Mapes, and Rather, “to represent the interests of a broader public.” It was to save us Red-Staters from ourselves by convincing enough of us not to vote for Bush. Bush and his advisors understood from the outset the adversarial nature of the press and did its best to neuter it. Open attack was all that was left to the American Mainstream Media Party as the election drew near. All their other teeth had been effectively pulled.
Glenn Reynolds corrects Fineman on an important point, though:
Political parties aren’t noted for their honesty or lack of bias, and when the media became a sort of political party (which it denied for years, but which is now so obvious that Fineman can pronounce its death) it became less honest, though it’s not clear that the press was ever as disinterested as it sometimes pretended. That’s why when Fineman writes, “Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto,” I think he’s wrong.
The reality of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press would be worth holding onto — if it had ever existed.
To that I say, “Amen.”
OK, Now Some GOOD Political Cartoons
Even some by apparent lefties. First up, from the normally leftward-leaning Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic:
Even Steve gets RatherGate.
And here’s the Las Vegas Review Journal‘s Jim Day’s take on the same subject from November 29:
Robert Arial of South Carolina’s The State is usually dependable. Here’s his commentary on the Ukranian election:
Chuck Asay of the Colorado Springs Gazette has a bit of a zinger for the global warming enthusiasts:
Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press Gazette illustrates the kind of “aid” going to Indonesia out of the oil-rich, Muslim Middle-East:
And I’ll conclude with four from my favorite political cartoonist, Mike Ramirez – the only good thing about the L.A. Times:
Art may be in the eye of the beholder, but I know what I like, and knee-jerk America-bashing isn’t it.
But Rather Still Has a Job at 60 Minutes II
Color me shocked, but CBS has fired four people over RatherGate. Danno wasn’t one of them. Here’s my favorite quote from the story, though:
“The combination of a new 60 Minutes Wednesday management team, great deference given to a highly respected producer and the network’s news anchor, competitive pressures, and a zealous belief in the truth of the segment seem to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles,” the report said.
(Emphasis mine) Yet:
The timing of the story prompted charges of political bias against CBS News.
While the panel found that some actions taken by CBS News encouraged such suspicions, “the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content.”
(Emphasis mine.)
Right. There’s a “zealous belief in the truth of the segment” by the producer and the anchor, and it comes out “during a tight and hotly contested presidential race,” yet the panel “cannot conclude” that the “zealous belief” pushing the story was “a political agenda.”
I’m surprised they found justification to fire anyone, then.
But, I have to admit, it was more than I expected.
UPDATE: I just heard on ABC radio news that the report “found no evidence” of a political agenda. That’s not what I read. “We cannot conclude” is not equivalent to “no evidence of.”
Further update: You’ve GOT to check out Ravenwood’s discovery. LOL funny.
“…Obvious, Tendentious, Simplistic, Wrong, Unfunny, Self-righteous and Annoyingly Small-minded.”
Thus sayeth James Lileks in today’s Bleat about today’s political cartoonists. And with a few minor exceptions, I wholly concur. James has several links to excellent examples (a couple of which go to the Washington Post, which requires registration – three tries of Bugmenot to no avail.) So here are just a few examples of cartoonists I found that meet that description given above:
David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
This was one of Lilek’s examples, and a damned good one.
Chris Britt of Illinois’ State Journal-Register.
Can’t have a political cartoon set without some asshole opinion on “gun control.” Apparently Mr. Britt missed the recent report indicating that decades of study of gun control laws has proven that, well gun control hasn’t seemed to accomplish anything.
Mike Lane of the Baltimore Sun.
Apparently $350 million plus a carrier strike force isn’t enough for Mr. Lane. We must also cancel the inauguration! Besides, if it isn’t government spending, it really isn’t charity. Putz.
Rex Babin of the Sacramento Bee.
Apparently there’s absolutely no problem with Social Security! None at all! It’s all smoke & mirrors, just like WMD! Bushitler just hates old people and wants to turn them into Soylent Green. Putz again.
Milt Priggee – independent.
And I can see why. Yes, Bushitler is responsible for all those horrible deaths. And there’s no reason for them! No, if we’d just keep our warmongering to ourselves, the world would be beautiful, with fluffy bunnies and chocolate rivers! But the hundreds of thousands killed by Saddam are, well, not our business. We shouldn’t interfere. It’s not our responsibility.
And here’s the most disgusting one I found:
John Darkow of Columbia, MO’s Daily Tribune.
I see Mr. Darkow and Ted Rall have the same outlook. That’s not to say that there aren’t some good cartoonists out there, but “hate America” seems to be the theme for the vast majority of them. Perhaps if I have some time later, I’ll dredge up a few good ones.
My Most Abject Apologies
I’m burned out. And right after such a nice link and compliment from Kim, too. I’m working ridiculous hours, and I just don’t have the will nor the time to write much at present, yet I’m still getting over 500 hits a day on average. Thank you for your patronage, but as I said a couple of posts ago, January looks like it’s going to be a mighty thin month.
Maybe tomorrow. I need to work, I just don’t know if I’m going to actually go to work.
It’s Saturday, and I’m in the Office
But that’s OK. Others are taking up the slack for me, like Ravenwood’s excellent fisking of a cliché-filled diatribe against the .50 BMG rifle.
Back to work…
(No, the kind that pays the light bill.)
England isn’t Alone in its Idiocy, Obviously
Read this Packing.org thread (link now broken) about someone who states he came to the defense of an assault victim, and has now been charged for behaving defensively when the attackers came back. Read all the comments in the thread, as well.
And read Phelps’s take on it too. (Link still good, 9/5/07) That’s where I found the link originally. BTW, I concur with Phelps.
“No, Ace. Just you.”