Is Barack Obama’s honeymoon with Europe over already?
After months of the most effusive and unrestrained praise for America’s first serious Black presidential candidate, some of Obama’s most energetic European backers - the Germans - are growing skeptical.
“In the end, a disappointment is a deceit. So it’s for the best that we cast a serous German glance in the direction of the American Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. He has called for the death penalty for child rapists, defends the right to possess firearms and is the first candidate since the Watergate scandal to reject public financing of his election campaign in favor of private, unlimited contributions. ‘Hey,’ some on this side of the Atlantic now ask, ‘we thought he was one of us?’ Far from it.”
“The facade of the wise, eloquent and charming golden boy has begun to crumble. There is a second - other Obama. And he’s about to be discovered: unscrupulous, selfish, and overambitious.’
“Who is the real Obama? Nobody knows for sure. For now because of his vagueness, it’s still possible to project various expectations onto him, in USA as well as in Europe. But here and there the impatience is growing: Obama, perhaps the first Black President, must not only be flexible, he has to take a stand.”
This column is by Tony Campbell, who is a columnist for Examiner.com This cross post deals with the Supreme Court’s gun decision.
The Wild, Wild (North) West - A Supreme Mistake
by Tony Campbell
Earlier this week the Supreme Court outlawed the gun ban enacted by the District of Columbia. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Justices decided that the ban was unconstitutional as it violated the right of an individual to own a firearm through the Second Amendment.
In my opinion, they have made an error in judgment based on an incorrect interpretation of the Constitution. For those of you who have not read it lately, here is what the Second Amendment says:
“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 key phrase is the one before the comma; “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” The Constitution was a compromise between the states and a national government that allowed both entities to share power in a federal system. A State militia was necessary to protect the States from the National government and to protect the United States from foreign invasion (the British). The Second Amendment was written out of necessity because there was no standing army therefore mobilization of citizen soldiers was crucial to our defense as a nation.
In their landmark decision the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment differently. The majority decision reads: “Therefore, the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, which “amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of ‘arms’ that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” and the requirement that any firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock, which “makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense,” is ruled unconstitutional.”
The Second Amendment mentions nothing about a “lawful purpose of self-defense” against other citizens. The purpose was to secure the State, not for people to practice their personal brand of justice. This decision will have long-term consequences for public safety at every level of society. In Chicago, gun right activists have already filed a lawsuit to get their gun ban law repealed and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. I am a veteran, a member of the American Legion, and a citizen soldier in the Army National Guard. Repealing the gun ban in D.C. is wrong because the reason given for the decision is not applicable under the Constitution.
This is the wrong signal to send to a municipal jurisdiction that was making good strides in the reduction of homicides (85 as of June 27th) and a record number of firearm recoveries in 2007 (2,924). Time will tell if this ruling will be a blessing ….or will signal a return to record shattering homicide rates of the early 1990s.
Dick Polman has a MUST READ post on the Supreme Court’s decision on nixing Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. The first part deals with the McCain camp’s reaction but the broad and specific points he makes at the end is our Quote of the Day:
Have you noticed that, whenever Republicans don’t like a judicial decree, they complain about how “unelected judges” are “legislating from the bench” by ignoring the literal wording of the Constitution, thus imposing “judicial tyranny” on the people’s elected officials, who should be free to enact policy as they see fit without any meddling from the robed brethren?
Well, take a look at the ruling that overturns the D.C. handgun ban. The majority, led by Antonin Scalia, ignored the literal meaning of the Constitution. The Second Amendment has no wording whatsoever about an individual right to bear arms, or individual home-defense; the amendment talks only about the collective security of “the people,” led by “a well-regulated militia.” Having thus legislated from the bench, the Scalia majority threw out a law enacted by the people’s elected officials.
But since McCain and his surrogates got the policy outcome they desired, suddenly they have no qualms about unelected judges who stray from the literal meaning of the Constitution and appear to legislate from the bench.
Conservatives are also supposed to respect legal precedent, not topple it. Yet, in this ruling, the Scalia majority ignored legal precedent; dating back to 1939, the high court had never unearthed an individual’s right to bear arms in the Second Amendment language. Yet now it has. Again, not a peep yesterday or today from the right-leaning advocates of “strict constructionism.”
And he sees a side benefit for Obama:
In the end, however, Barack Obama might actually benefit from this hypocrisy. The Scalia majority has provided him with political cover. From this point forward, whenever anybody charges that Obama intends to take people’s guns away, he can merely reply, “Nobody can take your guns away. The Supreme Court has now ruled that it can’t happen.”
Polman is correct in pointing out the short shelf life of passionate principles in 21s century America. Positions painted as vital and sometimes “finessed” to advance specific political agendas now all the time. This is one reason why for several years independent voters have been the fastest growing segment of the electorate.
Some dismiss independent voters as wishy-washy, or unable to make decisions. NOT. Some independent voters, in fact, had belonged to one party or both parties and gotten all worked up about issues and principles — and then concluded that key core values become expedient to win elections and advance agendas. So they step out of the parties, concluding that the parties have become political branding organizations rather than serious ideological guardians.
The too-muchness was overwhelming–too many smiles and hugs, too much arm-waving, too much cheering–above all, too much calculated color in a sequence out of a 1930s’ movie in the early days of Technicolor.
For Gail Collins, it evoked her generation’s “Field of Dreams”: “The symbolism was obviously supposed to stretch way, way beyond mere unity. Think the signing of the Magna Carta. Or that baseball movie with Kevin Costner. If you concede it, they will come.”
After a year and a half of sturm und drang, Democrats can be forgiven for crass celebration, but the aftertaste is that of an over-planned children’s party with nervous parents providing too much sweets, too many balloons, too many games.
After an overdose of clichés and platitudes, now comes the grownup part–inducing Hillary diehards to sign on and really mean it, coming to terms with the political Obama who is emerging from behind the Great Oz screen.
For a reality check on the former, try clicking on the justsaynodeal and hillaryis44 web sites. No smiles, balloons or cheering there.
More critical is how fast and how far will Obama enthusiasts go in accepting the fact that he is no longer a visionary figure but a practical politician who will disappoint some of them by negotiating his way through campaign finance, FISA, gun control and other minefields on the path to the presidency.
It was a great children’s party, but from now to November, it’s going to be grownup time.
It seems that the ink was barely dry on the Heller decision before the NRA began challenging other gun bans. This story comes to us from San Francisco, following a challenge in Chicago.
The National Rifle Association sued the city of San Francisco on Friday to overturn its handgun ban in public housing, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the nation’s capital.
The legal action follows a similar lawsuit against the city of Chicago over its handgun ban, filed within hours of Thursday’s high court ruling.
This story was brought to my attention over at Hot Air, where Ed Morrissey was commenting on it. As he points out, there are some subtle but notable differences between the San Francisco case and Heller.
This case will definitely provide better clarification of Heller. The DC gun ban reflected the limits of states and cities for general gun ownership restrictions, but a court could easily conclude that the government has more expansive rights on public housing. The city owns the housing and rents it to the tenants. However, such a ruling could have a huge and negative impact on the scope of other rights for public-housing residents. Do they have lesser 4th Amendment rights on search and seizure, too? Can the government place tighter restrictions on speech and the practice of religion in public housing?
While I agree that the apparent differences are interesting, I think there is little to fear. On every level there are reams of legal text on the rights of tenants vs. landlords. While it is tempting to treat public housing differently, in this case the city truly is nothing more than a landlord. While the property owner maintains and can exert tremendous power over what goes on regarding a leased property, I did some quick checking at FindLaw and see nothing which indicates that a landlord has ever been able to supress constitutional rights which do not directly affect the physical property. (i.e. real estate.)
The owner can prevent the tenant from painting the walls, changing the carpeting, or otherwise physically altering the property. However, they can not restrict people of a given religion from renting nor prohibit them from praying inside the property. (This is not to say that a “nod and a wink” situation won’t exist where certain renters are excluded for “other reasons” of course.) The landlord can not claim that the police can enter the rental without a warrant, etc.
While the Kelo case of eminent domain tought me not to be too surprised at anything the Supremes may do, it seems to me that Keller has laid the base groundwork which will make the bans in Chicago and San Francisco fall without too much of a fight. Specific classes of people can still have their rights to gun ownership restricted following Keller, but general bans of “everyone in this given area” (even if “this area” is a public housing tract) being forbidden gun ownership has, I believe, fallen by the wayside. If the lower courts don’t completely ignore this definitive ruling, expect to see most of these bans falling like dominos soon.
For a change, I will refrain from expressing my personal opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the District of Columbia’s ban on hand guns, and I will especially refrain from “characterizing“–glorifying or demonizing– the Supreme Court justices for the way they voted.
On the latter–and as an aside–it has been fascinating to observe the diverging reactions by some to the flurry of decisions rendered by the Court in recent days–some of them on very emotional issues, such as on the death penalty for child rapists, on habeas corpus for enemy combatants, and on gun control. I am referring to the cable and radio talk show hosts and other pundits who one day applaud the Court’s decision as the next best thing since sliced bread, and sanctify the judges, and the next day deplore the decision and vilify the judges as tyrants or “vermin-wearing-black-robes” –sometimes referring to the very same swing judge or judges.
But back to the D.C “gun control” decision. As we know, on Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own a gun for personal use and overturned the District‘s 32-year old ban on handguns, the strictest gun control law in our country ( And, again, the Court was either glorified or vilified). What struck me about this effort seeking to give D.C. residents the right to keep and bear arms is how little, if any, has been said or written about an even more important right: the right to vote.
Now, I am well aware that the landmark Supreme Court decision, one that ostensibly applies the Second Amendment to residents of the District of Columbia, will have a tremendous effect on gun control laws far beyond the District. It would be nice, however, if the same people, organizations (such as the NRA) and politicians (such as Dick Cheney) who have worked so hard to give District residents the right to keep and bear arms, would work just as zealously to give these same Americans a far more fundamental right: the right to elect a voting representative in Congress..
Setting aside the national ramifications of the gun control issue and ruling, it seems to me that some are of the opinion that D.C residents are sufficiently responsible to own and use firearms, but not responsible or deserving enough to vote for a real representative in Congress.
Entire forests have been pulped to provide the paper for all of the commentaries in the day and a half since the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, but when all is said and done this is what it comes down to:
Justice Antonin Scalia, who in vociferously opposing the majority in the Gitmo detainee decision two weeks ago wrote that it “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” has no such concern when it comes ignoring the literal meaning of the Constitution, let alone the well being of residents of violent inner city neighborhoods.
* * * * *
A few blocks from the Supreme Court, David Addington and John Yoo, the two key players in justifying the use of torture on those detainees and other guests in the Rumsfeld Gulag, cozied up to microphones and did a bad cop-good cop routine that would make Heinrich Himmler blush.
The graceless Yoo showed none of the fire he exhibited in a recent Wall Street Journalop-ed piece justifying his infamous torture memos and copped a poor-pitiful-me attitude in trying to blow smoke up the asses of his questioners by asserting that he was merely a bit player — and a misunderstood one at that. Nobody, of course, believed him.
* * * * *
There is an emerging consensus in the wake of that Supreme Court ruling that Gitmo has to go, but where? John McCain proposes the Army prison at Ft. Leavenworth, but the base commander and Kansas’ two Republican U.S. senators are crying NIMBY.
Lieutenant General William Caldwell IV says the Disciplinary Barracks, as the prison is formally known, would require a major revamping if foreign prisoners were to be brought in. This presumably would not mean having to add running water, a requisite for waterboarding.
* * * * *
The Fourth Branch of the U.S. government is unhappy about President Bush’s conciliatory gestures toward North Korea.
Mr. Fourth Branch answered question after question during an off-the-record sit-down with foreign reporters, but when the subject of the newly de-listed member of the Axis of Evil came up, participants say he froze and stared unsmilingly at his questioner for several long seconds, harrumphed that he was not the one to announce the decision, declared he was done taking questions and left.
* * * * *
Who are those people?
With 75 percent of Americans blaming George Bush for a hydra-headed economic meltdown, including the worst June on Wall Street since the Great Depression, and nearly that many people disapproving of the president’s overall job performance, you have to wonder who the holdouts are.
Why affluent John McCain supporters, of course, while Barack Obama is making substantial inroads among Americans who are struggling to make ends meet.
* * * * *
In a grown-up but no less immature version of a brat sticking his fingers in his ears and humming loudly so he can’t hear bad news, the White House told the Environmental Protection Agency that it would not open an email containing a document concluding that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled. The EPA found that there would be $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 30-plus years if auto emissions were curtailed.
The email remains in cyber-limbo, but the EPA was back this week with a sufficiently watered-down version that offers no conclusion.
* * * * *
Washington is full of boobs, but we’re not talking about politicians here. It’s exposed women’s breasts and even men’s willies, and Robert Hunt is very unhappy over this rampant immodesty.
The Texas rancher was appalled to find so many statues and art work of naked women and men when he visited the nation’s capital and recently proposed that the Texas Republican Party adopt a resolution calling for this filth to be removed from what he termed “our sacred cities.”
Photograph by Jim McMillan/Philadelphia Daily News
Our national schizophrenia on firearms defies rational explanation. In the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, both presidential candidates and, according to public opinion polls, most voters believe in “the right to bear arms.”
Yet only one out of three Americans owns a gun and, after mass murders like Virginia Tech, there is an upsurge of grief and outrage at the easy availability of deadly weapons.
Somehow, there is a disconnection between the idea of guns and the reality of what they do that can’t be explained away by NRA lobbying or the fierce protestations of “gun nuts.”
How do we reconcile the apparent contradiction that many of those who believe in preserving the life of fetuses are just as passionate about the right to own weapons that kill human beings after birth?
As most of you know the Supreme Court has been fairly busy the last few days handing down a series of rulings. I had hoped to post a little of my very amateur legal comments on the decisions but have been somewhat swamped by work lately so I haven’t had a chance to post until now.
Since it just came down today I thought I would start with the Heller decision (more properly District of Columbia v. Heller). This was another 5-4 ruling with the court liberals (Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens and Souter) on one side and the court conservatives (Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Roberts) on the other. As usual middle justice Anthony Kennedy provided the swing vote.
In this case he swung to the conservative side in helping to strike down the District of Columbia gun ban which had been in place since 1976. The suit was brought by Dick Heller, a security guard who was denied his application to keep a gun at his home in the District. Six others also joined as plaintiffs but Heller is the name we will remember.
In striking down the law, Justice Scalia stated that the basic right for individuals to keep and bear arms for self protection is protected by the 2nd Amendment. He rejected the argument by supporters of the law that the words ‘well regulated militia’ in the amendment meant that the right was only connected to military service.
His opinion goes into great detail, breaking down the words of the amendment part by part to support the position that the purpose is to protect gun ownership rights by individuals and that since the purpose of the right is, at least in part, to defend people against an oppressive government it would be illogical to then assume the right could only be exercised through the government (IE a formal government militia).
He also points out that at the time the amendment was adopted that militia had a much looser meaning, applying simply to the concept that the men of a given community would be expected to come to the defense of the citizenry in case of emergency, such as attacks by Natives.
The dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens takes a narrower view, interpreting the term militia in a more modern formal sense, saying that it applies only to legally recognized organizations such as the National Guard or a State (ie government) organized body.
Regardless of my personal views on the merits or flaws of private gun ownership, I would tend to side with Scalia on this debate. As he points out it would be ridiculous to say that on the one hand the 2nd amendment right is there to protect against an intrusive government but then to say that the only way to exercise that right is with government permission.
Of course this is just a cursory review of the opinions and I would urge you all to go to the various web sites to read it for yourself, I will be offering a more detailed analysis this weekend.
However it is also worth noting that the ruling really does not change that much. The DC law was pretty much an absolute ban on gun ownership, about as restrictive as you can get. The majority opinion makes it clear that they do NOT intend to strike down any gun restrictions, only ones as absolute as the DC law.
The court has previously affirmed laws that required gun licenses or waiting periods, as well as banning felons or the mentally ill from owning guns. They have also supported laws that restricted gun possession at schools or other public buildings. The ruling makes it clear that these positions still stand.
So if you have a local law that requires applications, permits, waiting periods and the like, it is unlikely anything will change. Guns will not be carried into schools or courtrooms, nor will the unstable be allowed to own them.
So as is often the case, the actual impact of the ruling is not nearly as broad as the hype suggests, though it is clearly a major statement of 2nd amendment rights.
Just to be clear, I happened to agree with and applaud the SCOTUS decision today regarding Second Amendment rights. You may see it differently, I know, but that’s one of the great things about our country. We can disagree on things like that. I just feel that the Second Amendment speaks to an individual right to keep and bear arms, not a right restricted to members of the militia. No, my problem today is not with what the Supreme Court decided, but once again with how they decided it. So if you are here looking for a long diatribe on the Heller case, move along. Nothing to see here.
I have now lost track of how many consecutive decisions the Supreme Court has handed down on a 5-4 split. And not surprisingly, you keep seeing the same four people on opposite and predictable sides for each question with one “swing vote” in the middle. (That being Justice Kennedy.) In any sort of sane world envisioned by the framers of our form of government, this simply would not happen.
The law is the law. It is neither conservative nor liberal, not red or blue, not Republican or Democrat. It’s simply a body of legislative work which must always pass constitutional muster when challenged. Supreme Court appointments were intended to be for a lifetime precisely to remove them from politics and bias or the influence of a fickle and shifting electorate. There are nine of them because the Constitution is not alway clear (and frequently silent) when questions are put to it, and the justices obviously will not always agree on all the fine points of interpretation. But the situation we have reached today is ridiculous to the point of parody.
People speak in unabashed terms about how we have “x number” of conservative justices and “y number” of liberal judges. Can we not see the poison we have injected into one of the most important functions in our judicial system? There shouldn’t be any conservatives or liberals on that bench. And in the majority of cases, impartial justices should be able to achieve a consensus much closer to unity on legal questions. (Or, at the very least, have more of a random sampling of which justices come down on which side.)
Our presidents have stacked the deck with a continuing parade of partisan hacks. I’ve fallen victim to this gang mentality myself. Being more of a social moderate-to-liberal, Libertarian type, I found myself worried that the court was “drifting too far to the right” for my tastes. Well, I’m as bad as many of the rest of you. With that admission taken care of, I would propose a new way to vet nominees for SCOTUS: leave it to the blogs.
Here’s how it should work. As soon as a nominee is suggested, turn the name over to Powerline and Daily KOS. If you find one of them saying, “Look at how badly this clown ruled on Coyote vs. Roadrunner in 2003! We can’t have this idiot on the court!” do a quick check of the other blog and see if they are saying, “The excellent ruling in the 2003 Coyote vs. Roadrunner decision clearly indicates this is an excellent choice.” Should we find both of these conditions present, toss the candidate out on their ear.
But if we manage to find a candidate that has John Hindraker saying, “Oh my God! Look how they ruled in Tom vs. Jerry! No way!” and then you see Markos Moulitsas Zúniga screaming, “Are you kidding me? Their ruling on Micky vs. Minnie clearly shows they MUST be fillibustered!” well… you may just have yourself a winner. If we restrict our choices to those judges who completely enraged the hyperpartisans on both sides at one time or another, we might just begin to repair our highest court.
Teddy Davis of ABC tells us that gun control advocates are preparing themsleves to lose the current round of Second Amendment arguments in front of the Supreme Court.
The nation’s leading gun control group filed a “friend of the court” brief back in January defending the gun ban in Washington, D.C. But with the Supreme Court poised to hand down a potentially landmark decision in the case, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence fully expects to lose.
“We’ve lost the battle on what the Second Amendment means,” campaign president Paul Helmke told ABC News. “Seventy-five percent of the public thinks it’s an individual right. Why are we arguing a theory anymore? We are concerned about what we can do practically.”
Far from thinking it’s over, however, Brady Campaign advocates are still hoping to lose the battle but win the longer war.
While the Brady Campaign is waving the white flag in the long-running debate on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms or merely a state’s right to assemble a militia, it is hoping that losing the “legal battle” will eventually lead to gun control advocates winning the “political war.”
At the heart of this issue are two key questions for our country to decide. The first deals with the language of the Second Amendment and will likely always elicit debate. Did the founders mean that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right for all Americans? Or were they only referring to the fact that nearly all adult men at the time were subject to be called to service in the state militia at any given moment and, as such, should always be able to arm themselves for battle? Compared to the rest of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself, there is relatively little writing by the founders explaining their reasoning. It seems as if they felt the statement was clear and self-explanatory. Had they not included the phrase, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” it would likely not be an issue at all.
The second question is more complex than the first. Even if we assume (as, for the record, I do) that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right, we are left with questions as to if, where, and when the government can place limitations on that right. None of our constitutionally assured rights are completely free of limitations, but the government is typically very cautious about imposing such limits. Can states or even individual towns and cities revoke those rights for all citizens within their borders? They can not shut down a newspaper, but they can provide for the prosecution of people who publish libelous material.
Can the District of Columbia legally enforce a sweeping ban regarding gun owership for every citizen within its borders, even if they have never been accused of any crime? And if they can not, what limits can they place on gun owners? We may find out the answers to some of these questions as early as today.
April 14th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Some younger Americans may not quite get Barack Obama’s swipe at Hillary Clinton, suggesting she is posing as Annie Oakley in his reference to her comments on guns — part of the increasingly aggressive tone between the two camps in light of the controversy over Obama’s comments about people in small towns being bitter.
READ THIS for a quick summary of Oakley, who was one of the Old West’s cultural figures, a legend in the late 19th and 20th centuries — and one of America’s first female superstars. In the late 20th century, her tale spawned movies, a TV show and — most famous of all — Irving Berlin’s immortal Broadway classic “Annie Get Your Gun.”
It’s usually a smart move when politicos use cultural references about their foes. Walter Mondale used the slogan from a commercial “Where’s the beef?” against Senator Gary Hart. It is said that Jackie Kennedy came up with the linkage of her assassinated husband JFK with the musical “Camelot,” and the song from the original cast album has been played on some tributes to him. You can also see the cultural reference technique used to great advantage, in terms of show business, in the employment of quick satire bits on the animated cartoon “Family Guy.”
Using a cultural phrase is “high concept” — immediately recognizable. In this case, Obama’s reference would have connected more to baby boomers. A cultural reference also conjures up a whole slew of other images associated with it. Used correctly, it could be an advantage.
Here is a rare treat that will explain the Annie Oakley reference to younger Americans. Here, from a very rare kinescope of the 1957 TV adaptation of the musical done live in front of a studio audience is Broadway legend Mary Martin (South Pacific, The Sound of Music, Peter Pan) playing Annie in the character’s most defining song — You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun. FOOTNOTE: To this day I remember watching this TV production live…I was in elementary school.
A new report from the Department of Justice has good news and bad news. The good news is that the DEA had “a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen” since 2002. Of course they can’t actually figure out what was on all those stolen computers, unlike the 160 laptops the FBI has lost or had stolen during the last 4 years — they think at least 10 of those actually had sensitive information on them. It is known that at least one of the missing DEA computers did in fact have sensitive data on informants. That’s the kind of thing that could get people killed. For those keeping count, there are 231 laptops missing from the DEA in the last 5 years. New policies include encryption of some data, but frankly this is one of those cases where the best security is to minimize the data that can be breached in the first place.
Oh, but that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that even though they are losing fewer computers, they are losing more guns: 22 lost and 69 stolen. Many of the weapon thefts could have been prevented by simply following policies already in place, which is frankly inexcusable.
Maybe things work differently at the Department of Justice, but I think I would be fired if I lost a laptop full of company data, or if my own stupidity in the workplace caused a firearm to be stolen. Mistakes happen, sure. But sometimes you can’t afford to make mistakes at all. “Oh gee, I’m sorry!” won’t put an outed investigation back on track, or bring back a human being killed with a stolen gun.
In The Right Kind Of Gun Rights Jonathan Rauch writes about our central right to defend ourselves. He illustrates this with a story about a gay fellow who successfully defended himself from a gay bashing mob.
The Supreme Court is soon to decide a case that deals with the line between self defense and irrational excess. And it appears that the only reasonable option is to impose a standard of “reasonableness” on the Second Amendment.
That amendment…may have made sense in 1790, but today the insurrectionary rationale would seem to imply a right to keep and bear surface-to-air missiles and grenade launchers, among other things…the Court would clear up confusion about the Second Amendment by unambiguously identifying the core right it protects as reasonable self-defense by competent, law-abiding adults.
Reasonable self-defense leaves room for firearms regulation. Exotic and highly destructive weapons could be restricted or banned, because no one needs a machine gun or grenade launcher for protection against ordinary crime. Felons, not being law-abiding adults, could still be barred from gun ownership.
Most of the government’s gun laws, in fact, would have no trouble passing the self-defense test, …because most gun laws are reasonable and don’t leave people defenseless. As for the insurrectionary purpose of the Second Amendment, the Court could either repudiate it explicitly or pass over it in silence, consigning it to irrelevance.
The self-defense test is good policy, because it aligns the Second Amendment with modern needs and sensibilities. It is good law, because it rescues the amendment from being a dead letter or an embarrassment.
I would prefer that all guns were banned because I am more scared of being caught in crossfire than I am of being the object of an attack. And if I were the object of an attack my ability to anticipate it is so limited that I would have to live in constant paranoia for a gun to make a difference. It is not a life I choose to live.
But I accept that society evolves at its own pace and ours is not yet ready to let go of our gun legacy, while most other modern cultures around the world have. Unfortunately things may have to get much worse before they get better. And I am sad for the inevitable heartbreak.
February 16th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
Bizarre is one of the most misused words in the news media, and CNN really hit the ball out of the park with this one:
“A firearms dealer in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Friday confirmed a bizarre link between the graduate student accused of killing five people at Northern Illinois University and the gunman in last year’s deadly shootings at Virginia Tech.
“A Web site used to buy gun accessories by Steven Kazmierczak is owned by the same company that operates a site patronized by Seung-Hui Cho, the company said.”
A coincidence perhaps, but there is nothing remotely bizarre about the link. It often times is easier to purchase firearms and firearm accessories in the U.S. than alcohol, cigarettes or birth control products.
What is bizarre is that so many people refuse to acknowledge that there is a link between the daily gun mayhem in the U.S. and the ready availability of the means to that end.
And while we’re at it, isn’t it bizarre that in our society the solution of the first resort for almost anything that ails you is to pop pills instead of trying to work through the problem, and yet an unfortunate number of people do extremely awful things like Mr. Kazmierczak when they stop popping them?
Déjà vu won’t do. Recurring nightmare is a better description for what happened yesterday on a college campus in DeKalb, Illinois–an armed-to-the-teeth gunman, random shooting, sudden deaths.
This time there were five victims, plus the shooter, who stepped from behind a curtain in a lecture hall and started firing indiscriminately before killing himself on the stage. He had a shotgun, a Glock pistol and another handgun.
Ten months after Virginia Tech, the body count is mercifully lower, but the aftermath will be the same.
A special agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is at the scene, promising to “be urgently tracing the firearms and learning the history of the weapons” to “learn where they came from and how the shooter came to possess them.”
Last April, John McCain responded to the Virginia massacre by saying, “We have to look at what happened here, but it doesn’t change my views on the Second Amendment, except to make sure that these kinds of weapons don’t fall into the hands of bad people…Obviously we have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.”
Now, as the Republican nominee-to-be courts the favor of his from-my-cold-dead-hands constituency, will his response be any different? If McCain is consistent, the rest of us will have to mourn the victims without him.
Is the response of the GOP and the National Rifle Association still that the students should have been armed?
Would someone with a death wish be deterred by knowing that many of his victims may be armed?
Are we reaching the tipping point where we are more in danger from renegade gunmen than we are from organized criminals?
How come other developed countries are more progressive than us on gun control, health care, energy efficiency, environmental protection, social safety nets, separation of church and state, acceptance of evolution, science and math education…
Vice President Richard Cheney, parting company with the official Bush Administration position on the test case before the Supreme Court on the Second Amendment, signed onto a brief Friday urging the Justices to strike down the District of Columbia handgun ban without ordering any further proceedings.
The brief — representing the views of a majority of the members of the Senate and of the House — explicitly endorsed the “categorical approach” that the D.C. Circuit Court used in declaring the pistol ban invalid under the Second Amendment. That decision, the brief argued, should simply be affirmed, thus nullifying outright the local law. The brief can be downloaded here.
In contrast, the Justice Department — speaking for the Administration — told the Court on Jan. 11 that the Circuit Court had used too strict a constitutional standard, and should be told to reconsider its decision. The government filing took no direct position on the validity of the D.C. law. The Circuit Court should reconsider that question, the Department contended, using a “more flexible standard of review.” The Department did urge the Court, though, to rule now that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to have a gun for private use. The filing was not labeled as a supporting brief for either side in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), now scheduled for argument March 18.
This dual-role thing that Cheney gets to fulfill, even though prior Vice Presidents have done the same, has just always felt so…improper. Can anyone tell me why Read the rest of this entry »
Washington’s Walking Embarrassment is still sitting proudly in his Senate seat and, along with his Idaho colleague, Michael Crapo, is blocking President Bush’s nomination of Michael Sullivan to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
According to the Editorial Board blog of the New York Times, “Mr. Crapo’s spokesman said his boss is hearing from gun owners and dealers with ‘concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership.’ It may be, he said, ‘that the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven’t done anything wrong.’
“It’s a remarkable claim to make in a month in which a young gunman in Nebraska shot 11 people, killing eight of them, at an Omaha shopping mall, and another killed four young people in two attacks on religious organizations in Colorado, before taking his own life.
“The Colorado gunman, according to the Denver Post, spent a year buying guns and ammunition…and all of his purchases were within the law. When a large shipment of ammunition was sent to a post office box owned by the gunman, the authorities were alerted, the paper reports–and specifically determined that he had a legal right to receive it.”
Awaiting action by the Senate Ethics Committee on his little Minneapolis men’s room misunderstanding, Sen. Craig is maintaining the record that earned him an A+ from the National Rifle Association. The voters who saw him inducted into Idaho’s Hall of Fame this fall must be proud.
