Category: Uncategorized

Well, if “Congress Shall Make No Law…” Doesn’t Mean What it Says,

Then yesterday’s District Court Decison on DC’s handgun ban is no surprise.

(T)he Court notes that even if it could conclude that the Second Amendment applies to the District of Columbia, plaintiff Hailes would nonetheless be unable to assert that she has a right to possess her firearm in her residence in the manner in which she desires (i.e., assembled and without a trigger lock) because she has failed to assert any form of association with a militia. See Silveira, 312 F.3d at 1060 (describing the school of thought that limits the right to bear arms as conditioned on membership in a militia as the “limited individual rights” model); Emerson, 270 F.3d at 219 (describing this school of thought as the “sophisticated collective rights” model).

—

(T)he Court finds that plaintiff Hailes’ challenge to the requirement that she maintain a trigger lock on her shotgun is legally distinct from the plaintiffs’ other claims and therefore the Court had to analyze the scope and purpose of the Second Amendment to determine whether the D.C. Code § 7-2507.02 is unconstitutional. Having done so, the Court finds that Ms. Hailes’ Second Amendment challenge to D.C. Code § 7-2507.02 must also be dismissed, as the text of the Second Amendment, the history surrounding its enactment and Supreme Court precedent that have addressed the Amendment all lead the Court to the conclusion that Ms. Hailes’ claims are not only lacking on the merits, but that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia.

Again, 9th Circuit Judge Kozinski’s words come immediately to mind:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet…and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths….When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases – or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

—

The Supreme Court reached the Second Amendment claim and rejected it on the merits after finding no evidence that Miller’s weapon – a sawed-off shotgun – was reasonably susceptible to militia use. We are bound not only by the outcome of Miller but also by its rationale. If Miller’s claim was dead on arrival because it was raised by a person rather than a state, why would the Court have bothered discussing whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia use? The panel majority not only ignores Miller’s test; it renders most of the opinion wholly superfluous. As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out to lunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

And the toboggan picks up just a bit more speed…

And, of course, the Supreme Court will pass on this one as well.

Clayton Helriggle (deceased) Might Get His Day in Court

I covered the case of Mr. Helriggle (briefly) back in November in a piece I titled The War on (some) Drugs™ Claims Another Victim. Unfortunately, the first of the earlier links is broken, but the second works.

Well, it appears that his family hasn’t given up, and the local prosecutor is considering convening a grand jury to review the case.

Helriggle death may be revisited

Greene County Prosecutor Bill Schenck said he intends to meet with investigators Feb. 2 to discuss possibly reconvening a Preble County grand jury to revisit the Sept. 27, 2002, shooting death of Clayton Helriggle by a police officer.

Helriggle was killed when, carrying a handgun, he came down the stairs of the home where he was living, surprising officers during a drug raid. One year ago, a grand jury declined to hand up any indictments in the shooting. Schenck, Greene County prosecutor, was appointed as a special prosecutor in the case, which was investigated by the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office.

“Some cases beg for their day in court. This case needs to be aired,” Schenck said Monday. He and Suzanne Schmidt, a Greene County assistant prosecutor who also worked on the case, are concerned about a public perception that Helriggle was a drug dealer. They and investigators will look into possible perjury charges against Kevin Leitch, whose grand jury testimony in January 2003 conflicted with what he earlier told Eaton and Preble County law officials.

“I think it’s fair to say there was no drug dealing by Mr. Helriggle,” Schenck said. “To have that (testimony) circulating bothers me and Suzanne, and it bothers the officers in Montgomery County, who spent months investigating the raid. If I knew my child was not a drug dealer, I would want that to be known,” he said.

Helriggle’s mother said she has dogged the prosecutors to consider charges against Leitch. “I think he should pay for lying,” Sharon Helriggle said. “I don’t think he should be able to get away with it.”

Mrs. Helriggle said prosecutors told her they wanted to shield her from having to appear again before a grand jury. “They said they didn’t want to open my wounds. I had to laugh when I heard that. My wounds haven’t closed; they probably never will.”

Michael and Sharon Helriggle in September filed a federal civil lawsuit, seeking damages for what they allege was the wrongful death of their son.

Schenck said he would like to know what caused Leitch to change his testimony. “Was he just confused? If he was lying, why?”

The warrant to search Helriggle’s farmhouse at 1282 Ohio 503 North was based solely on Leitch’s information that his girlfriend purchased a small amount of marijuana there and that she told him up to 13 pounds of pot would be on the premises the day of the raid. Police found only a small amount of marijuana in the raid.

Leitch, who was awaiting sentencing on more than a dozen Preble County convictions of forgery, theft, burglary, breaking and entering and safecracking, told officers and deputies that one of Helriggle’s roommates was dealing marijuana from the house. At the grand jury, however, Leitch, now serving a three-year term at Lebanon Correctional Institution, contradicted his earlier statements and said Helriggle was the drug dealer.

Four days before the raid on the Lanier Twp. farmhouse Helriggle shared with four roommates, Eaton Police officer Jeff Cotner told investigators he heard from a confidential informant that Leitch planned to break into the farmhouse and steal the marijuana. The day before the raid, police stopped Leitch’s car, found a cache of stolen weapons, and took him in for questioning. It was then Leitch told officers about the alleged 13 pounds of marijuana. Authorities then went to a local judge for a search warrant, and the raid was hastily planned.

A subsequent investigation by the Dayton Daily News found the officers had little or no training for such a SWAT-type raid; little or no intelligence was gathered about the layout of the farmhouse; the number of people inside; and what, if any, weapons might be inside. As officers were nearing the gravel drive to the farmhouse, the original plans for the raid were changed.

As the raid unfolded, the wrong entry team entered the house first; shots were fired by police at two dogs inside the kitchen; and a flash-bang grenade added to the confusion. One officer, hearing the shots behind him and thinking he had been shot, saw a figure coming down a back stairway — which officers did not know was there — and fired a single round from his shotgun, striking Helriggle in the chest. He died at the scene.

Schenck said he and Schmidt will speak to the Montgomery County investigators who put together an 800-page report on the shooting and subsequent administrative review. On the advice of their attorneys, the officers involved in the raid did not cooperate in the administrative review, which was intended to see if procedures and policies were followed.

Schenck praised the the grand jury and Montgomery County investigators, and “quite frankly, even the Preble County officers, for the most part, who were out there. They were just doing their job.”

He said, however, questions remain unanswered.

“The whole scenario, for whatever reason, just leaves you wringing your hands,” he said. “All of us who spent time on this case feel a tremendous amount of pain.”

Understand this: due to the War on (some) Drugs™ agents of the State can get a search warrant on the word of one known criminal, perform a no-knock raid on your house, shoot your pets, and kill an innocent family member.

And suffer no penalty for it.

It’s “just doing their job.”

And people say the War on (some) Drugs™ is a good thing.

Sorry. I don’t agree.

UPDATE, 1/21/04: More links to stories about the incident:

Family, friends of man killed by police dispute authorities’ account

War on Drugs Can Claim a Deadly Victory

(Not specifically related to this case:) EXPLOSIVE DYNAMIC ENTRY

From this op-ed:

The most telling aspect of Montgomery County Sheriff Dave Vore’s investigation into the Preble County sheriff’s now disbanded regional SWAT team was its members’ refusal to cooperate.

All four of these links and many others can be found here.

What HE Said!

Kim du Toit in his typical signature style, responds to this piece which is the very definition of a “striver”.

If You Haven’t Visited Flashbunny, You’re Missing Out

An original member of my blogroll, and a fellow poster at AR15.com, Flashbunny has put up some seriously good (and quite often hilariously pointed) stuff. For example, his Soldiers of Surrender magazine cover made the rounds of the internet a while back, and I’ve linked to his excellent Flash movie “The RKBA is Outdated” more than once.

He’s got a new one up.

Congratulations, Chicago.

Bald, Boldfaced Moral Equivalence

In a recent comment exchange at another blog, an (unsurprisingly anonymous) respondent said this, directed at me:

Under Communism man exploits man. Under Capitalism its(sic) the other way around.

Also Capitalism has transmuted into Corporate Fuedalism.(sic)

There’s a tremendous, horrifying moral equivalence to that first two-sentence quip. Certainly “man exploits man” in each system, but the underlying snarky implication is that both systems are equally flawed merely because “man exploits man.”

What unmitigated horseshit. What a puerile, half-witted thing to say, especially if one actually means it.

I thought about firing off an irate response, but I figured A) it would have been useless because the poster probably was ignorant and didn’t really understand the reality behind that first little agitprop quip, and B) it was better to make a point for anyone else reading who thought, “Yeah, Man! Tell it like it is!” or whatever the modern vernacular is. (I believe it condenses down now to the single syllable: “WORD!”, but I could be mistaken. Modern vernacular changes so fast these days.)

So I replied:

Hmm..Under communism man slaughters man (to the tune of around 100,000,000 souls last century.) Under capitalism (in a democratic government), some people are poor but nobody starves to death. Particularly, nobody starves to death because somebody in the government thinks it’s necessary that they do.

Makes the choice a bit easier, doesn’t it?

Corporate feudalism? And just who is bound to the corporation as master? Examples?

The poster and I have mutually agreed to not clog another blogger’s comments with our discussion, but as of yet I have received no response to my invitation to continue either here or in email.

I am not surprised about that, either.

I STAND CORRECTED!

And pleased about it! Esme of word gets around informs me in a comment that you can see individuals fighting crime in England.

Homeless heroine foils robbers

A BRAVE Big Issue seller foiled a bank robbery by wrestling one of the attackers to the ground.

Kerry Crank, 35, held the thug in a bear hug as he fled with £2,000 from Birmingham Midshire building society as terrified customers looked on.

A female student then leapt on the man and helped Kerry pin him to the pavement.

Other shoppers, including an elderly woman, joined in as police raced to the scene.

Kerry said today: “I saw the first man run off and then the other robber ran past me. I just grabbed him.

“He was struggling because he had the cash and was shouting at me. Another girl, a student who was American, was helping me keep him there and in the end there was me and a load of other women holding onto him.”

He managed to break away but was trapped by two police who arrived at the scene.

Kerry, who has been homeless for around four years, said: “We were all really shocked afterwards but I just acted in a split second.”

There’s more to the story, but that’s the heart of it. There is, of course, the obligatory “citizens shouldn’t do this” warning, but still.

Ms. Kerry most probably need have no fear of a civil suit for use of excessive force.

It’s nice to know they’ve still got it in them. At least the ladies do. (They tend to be more pragmatic and less likely to put up with idiocy, I’ve found.)

More Guns, Less Crime

In a bit of reciprocal linkage, I found this interesting post on Les Jones Blog concerning the number of guns in America.

Seems according to the BATF’s Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report for 2001 a bit over 3 million new guns entered the American market that year, and about one million were handguns. Note, please, that this is about average.

Yet crime, including violent crime, has continued its decade-long drop. (Three million firearms per year over ten years is a net increase of 30 million firearms, ten million of which would be handguns.)

Wheras last year, regardless of the UK’s complete ban on handguns, violent crime continued to increase there, especially crimes committed with handguns.

Draw your own conclusions.

Words of Wisdom

In relation to the post immediately below, I want to quote my favorite philosopher, Robert Anson Heinlein on the topic of poverty and “bad luck.”

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.

Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

More on Mush-Filled Minds

The discussion continues. Australian blogger Kent from Where do the buses sleep responds to my post below.

Let me say up front that I’m no worshipper of Rush Limbaugh (whom neither Esme nor Kent would probably be familiar with, since one is in England and the other Australia), but in this case Rush’s witticisms are quite accurate. The first post title was a take-off on his “young minds full of mush” comments, but Kent’s response is stereotypical of Rush’s “Affluenza” descriptive. Let me quote:

I am indeed ashamed, and glad, that I have enough to eat, and own a computer. I have these things through luck, not hard work. And people in Ethiopia, or those living well under the poverty line in the US, Australia, or anywhere in the world, are lacking these things through bad luck.

It’s a guilt thing. Would you feel guilty showing off your new Mercedes (bought as soon as you were old enough to get your drivers licence, with your parents money) to somebody your own age, born an orphan, with no money at all, and through no fault of their own? I hope so. I would.

So, Kent equates having enough to eat to getting a brand-new Mercedes for one’s sixteenth birthday. Oookay. Trust me, Kent, if the overwhelming majority of people quit working (or their parents quit working) their “luck” will come to an abrupt halt.

But wait! There’s more! This time in the mush-brain vein:

(Y)es, investment into such research does bring benefits to the economy. But not to everyone. I live in Australia – the Mars mission has not done a single good thing for me, or my country’s economy. If I was living under the poverty line (as plenty of people living a few kilometres from me do – not just Ethiopians), then I would feel aggrieved by the money spent on space exploration.

Because you would feel that your society owed people a minimum standard of living, correct?

The argument that the money is being spent on the future of the human race does nothing for them. The money spent on an astronauts shoe could literally give them good food, clothing, and shelter for years.

(Emphasis mine.) Excuse me, but why should these people be given food, shelter, and clothing when the rest of us work for it?

Think this through: In order for the “unlucky” to receive “food, shelter, and clothing” from the government, that government must first take the necessary money from those of us who work and earn it. And they do so at the threat of imprisonment or worse if we don’t comply. That’s an unassailable fact. This is the position of another person I responded to long ago who called such redistribution “obligatory charity.” As I said back then, if it’s obligatory, it’s not charity. It’s extortion at gunpoint.

OK, the argument then is that the money is to be extorted from us anyway, only the distribution differs, but here’s the actual difference: One is investment in the future of the entire human race. The other is the continuation of the welfare state. And it can reasonably be argued that the result (at least in the U.S.) of the “War on Poverty” has been nothing less than the expansion of the welfare class and the destruction of the group it was supposed to save.

Kent argues:

(Y)es, investment into such research does bring benefits to the economy. But not to everyone. I live in Australia – the Mars mission has not done a single good thing for me, or my country’s economy.

Possibly not. We spent about $800 million on that particular project, which is a drop in the bucket. We’re probably still using radiotelescope stations in Australia, though, so his assertion isn’t quite accurate, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. However, Australia does benefit from the American space program. He benefits from the spin-offs that have created new technologies, products and services. Others more involved in that aspect than I can certainly provide a long list of the world-wide benefits of our investment in space exploration, but I think the problem is that Kent’s argument is more one of “what have you done for me lately?”

Space exploration is something that capitalist systems have a hard time with. It’s a long-term investment. Instead of concentrating on the next-quarter return, it’s one that pays off slowly and long in the future. Francis Porretto wrote an interesting piece recently on just what kind of government would be best for a long-term space program. I highly recommend it. And he’s right, our system of government is far from ideal for such a long-term project, but all it will require from us is will. So long as we really understand the worth, we will have the will.

So I’m not optomistic.

Kent concludes:

It’s an argument of empathy, of compassion, in the end. People are dying, or leading miserable lives, due to nothing but lack of money, which there is plenty of going around, and everybody seems to dodge arguments as to why we shouldn’t help them. And these people aren’t just starving in far-away, Communist-or-otherwise dictatorships. They’re everywhere, tucked away in the anonymous suburbs of our Western democracies. They are not quite the beacons of equality and prosperity that we might like to believe.

There is a major schism between Kent’s worldview and my own. I recognize that there are some people who are poor, or dying, or “leading miserable lives” through no fault of their own. But I don’t believe that government redistribution of money to “save” them will correct the problem.

Governments are not empathic nor compassionate. They are bureacracies. Bureacracies are not interested in fixing problems. Bureacracies are not interested in helping people. Bureacracies are interested in getting bigger. In increasing budgets. In expanding influence. (See “War on Poverty” above.) People are empathic. People are compassionate. And people who look to government to handle the administration of “obligatory charity” have brains full of mush.