Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Frequent commenter here, recently upgraded to fellow-blogger, Cylarz takes to the Calguns.net site to ask an important question, what with this perfect storm going on: The Sandy Hook tragedy recently passed, pressure on to keep things pleasant for the holidays, and anti-gun kooks all over the place using their favorite straw man fallacy. How does one deal with:
“Oh, okay. So does that mean the Second Amendment guarantees my right to a bazooka then? Can I mount artillery on my pickup? Do you really think we have an unfettered right to tanks, jet fighters, and battleships as private citizens?”
I’ve already settled somewhat into my “favorite” ways of dealing with this. One, I absolutely agree with the government’s right to interfere with such things if the artillery, tanks, jet fighters or battleships are stolen. Otherwise, as is the case with all other things, with no laws being broken they can jolly well go back to learning how to live within a budget like the rest of us. Two, in my case I’ve worked closely with the government to implement such restrictions, in the form of security controls on a large network…implementation is important, especially where safety is concerned. No, we don’t want our safety, or that of our kids, to be dependent on such a thing. Devil’s in the details. Three, hard cases make bad law. And four — what other rights can we give up, should we try and find some, to make ourselves more safer? If I can find some statistics that say crime comes disproportionately from single-parent households, maybe we can have the government force single mothers to give up their kids for adoption, or get married within a year?
Four is a good number, but I don’t consider myself well-equipped for such a boxing-in, which does seem to be commonplace right about now. Also, while I am most partial to #4, it has perhaps the lowest potential out of all of them for keeping things civil, since it (deliberately) places a burden on a participant who is in all likelihood unprepared for it.
We can always use more tools.
The simplest is usually the best. “Hmmmmm…artillery on the pickup, a privately owned battleship…when and where did that happen, exactly?”
I particularly liked this one, comment #5.
I typically respond with “If that’s the case the 1st Amendment only applies to quill and ink, printing presses, and town criers.”
The commenter in #12 points to the Supreme Court cases of Heller and McDonald. “When the law is on your side, pound the law,” as the saying goes. Following the McDonald vs. City of Chicago case brings us to one of thirty-three Amici Curiae, submitted by Sens. Hutchinson and Tester and others, which makes several points, including…
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1. Section 5 of that same Amendment provides that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” This Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment’s basic guarantee in Section 1 to prevent the individual States from infringing many of the guarantees of liberty found in the Bill of Rights. It is clear from the nature of the right to keep and bear arms and the history of the Fourteenth Amendment that this right likewise applies against the States.
Devil’s Advocate, though: What about the situation in the title of this post? You can go ahead and buy a nuke? Doesn’t government have a role to step in and stop this?
Well, apart from the observation that such a vision is invalid because it relies on untruth, it can lead to lawlessness itself. I was thinking about that fan-made Superman movie from about a year ago, and one thing that impressed me about it — aside from Clark Kent’s new girlfriend being unbelievably annoying — was that I ended up rooting for little “Alex” Luthor. Pay attention to the plot, now…he wants Superman to tell him where the land deeds are, that his father willed to him. Superman refuses because he knows that once this younger Luthor has access to the land that is lawfully his, in every way, the punk kid’s gonna, gasp, build some nuclear power plants there. So we have this evil Superman conspiring to ruin the world by depriving us of the energy we need to go about living our lives, thereby driving up the cost of oil and gas. Boo, hiss. Go Alex Luthor!
The point to be made here is, the vision has been lost somewhat between following the Constitution, and arriving at a good outcome. We imagine a conflict to exist where it doesn’t, necessarily…of course, perhaps it’s just shorter and quicker to connect this “stop him from buying a nuke” reasoning to the invasion of Iraq. Interesting, I think, how some on the left become enthused fans of local sovereignty all of a sudden, when we stop talking about U.S. citizens’ rights, and start talking about foreign nations. Presto change-o, we’re paralyzed from doing anything about Saddam Hussein acquiring a nuke, until such time as it is absolutely proven he was trying to buy Uranium from Africa. And, in response to the obvious question of “can we proceed with the discussion based on the premise that he was, and examine part relevant to our discussion, which is the government’s prerogative to control and restrict the private acquisition of such materials?” — of course that’s an emphatic negative. Prove Saddam was trying to get this stuff or we have nothing to talk about there.
I’m not sure how & why it works differently for our country’s citizens. But, at this point, I have to admit my interest in forming the perfect counter-argument, diminishes somewhat. If the above counterpoints remain unaddressed and the opponent still wants to kick up dust and play the “Can I buy a Howitzer?” game, at this point I’m more inclined to turn Cheesecake Nazi myself. Conversation’s running out of steam. Probably never had any.
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Hey, just found that site yesterday looking for repair kits for my (pre-ban) 30 rd. magazines. As my state, NY, which already has more gun restrictions than most states, including banning (post ban) 30 rd. mags, is frothing to enact new legislation between Christmas and New Years.
Though I’m sure I have nothing to worry about as there’s nothing like some politicians in a hurry, they always get it right. Yup.
Anyways, great link and discussion, thanks for sharing, Morgan.
BTW, have a great Christmas & New Years and of course, have a wonderful wedding. Congrats.
- tim | 12/20/2012 @ 11:04In legal principle, yeah, the Second Amendment arguably gives you the right to all that stuff. Being able to (a) buy it licitly or build it, (b) keep it loaded, clean, fueled, oiled and in working condition, and (c) store it/garage it/hangar it/berth it are another thing entirely.
- Rich Fader | 12/20/2012 @ 22:39The perfect counter-argument is “Because fuck you” but I’m not sure that’s actually helpful.
- chunt31854 | 12/21/2012 @ 07:12Here’s the way I look at this:
The Constitution is all about structuring and limiting the government. One of the primary limitations is the Balance Of Powers.
The significance of the Bill of Rights is that the citizenry, We the People, are unavoidably part of the government, and yet nothing in the Constitution constrains us in any way, except that we may not commit (carefully defined) treason.
Why? Because the damage that one person can do is severely limited compared to the government; our own natural limitations are our check and balance.
Thus, it is often argued that the Second Amendment is absolute, even in the face of misuse, because a single madman or criminal is very limited in the damage he can inflict. He therefore has a great deal of freedom.
The military is quite different; it wields enough power to impose a tyranny, or to simply destroy an entire nation. Therefor, its power is diffused throughout a complex chain of command.
At least, that was the way the Founders understood things.
But now introduce true Weapons of Mass Destruction: nukes, bioweapons, dispersable poisons, and the like. Any one person that controls such a weapon can do government scale damage with no check or balance.
So, any one person can have any weapon he wants, as long as that weapon can only do limited damage–say, kill a couple of dozen people before being take down by armed citizens, including the police.
Any more than that, the weapon must only be deployable at the end of a well trained and highly disciplined military, a military drawn from an armed and liberty loving populace. (I’ll note further that the government would have to go very far wrong to be willing to wipe out its own cities. If the people allow their government to go that far wrong, as ours is trending towards, they’re doomed anyway.)
Fader brings up another good point: Enforcing industrial environmental and safety regulations on a newspaper’s printing plant is not a violation of the First Amendment, unless these regs are applied only to papers not supporting the current regime. So, yeah, you can have the nuke–but you have to adhere to all the military safety procedures, including instituting a well defined chain of command and allowing frequent inspections and training drills to verify that the regs are being followed.
Balance.
- djmoore | 12/22/2012 @ 16:03