A position on gun control


The Aurora, CO movie theater shooting is only the latest event keeping the gun control debate on the front burner, but in fact it is something I have been thinking about for a long time, and have finally arrived at something I hope resembles a coherent position.

If you believe that ensuring public safety legitimately falls within the purview of government, then it is reasonable for the government to regulate, restrict and even ban certain types of weapons such as assault rifles. Now, this is a big if. Everyone should decide for themselves whether they believe that there is such a thing as public safety, and whether it is government's proper role to ensure it. But if you do, then it follows that it is also proper to restrict or ban certain forms of weapons. However, the Second amendment guarantees the individual's freedom to bear arms, and as currently interpreted by the Supreme Court, that freedom is absolute. Therefore, restricting or banning any form of weapon today would result in violation of constitutional law, and therefore we must not do it.

The problem is that the Supreme Court blew it when interpreting the Second amendment. Its text reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But the Supreme Court basically threw out the entire Militia clause – a grave mistake. There is a good reason why the Founding Fathers put the militia business in. In the early days of the republic, the army was small, weak and ragtag, with no formal reserves. Communication and industrial infrastructure was non-existent. The fledgling Federal government had no way to mobilize the army quickly in an event of an attack, and had to rely on the citizenry to be ready at a moment's notice to go into battle. With their own guns. Hence “...militia being necessary for the security of a free state...”

Today this is not the case. Even the most strident originalist has to acknowledge that some evolution in how we interpret the Constitution is inevitable for simple reasons of history and scientific progress (cars? internet? nuclear weapons?). Second amendment is a perfect example of where such evolution has to take place. Assault weapons are an instrument of war and should be treated as such. They are no different than an F-16 jet fighter or an Abrams M-1 tank. You don't show up at your local dealer's lot and drive off in one of those. The same should hold for an AK-47.

What about the argument that “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns?” I do find this argument compelling, but in the case of assault rifles and other high-powered weapons, treating them as instruments of war would go a long way towards addressing it. The government – specifically, the military – would have a great degree of control over their manufacture and distribution (and, indeed, specification), making them much more difficult to obtain illegally. Yes, I have just advocated increasing the amount of government control over something. But this should not be controversial. If you believe that a state can legitimately raise and maintain an army, answerable to a civilian, more or less democratically elected government, then most aspects of that army's operation will naturally fall within government's control.

There is a law enforcement side to this, too. Once assault weapons are fully militarized, penalties for their illegal possession and use should be very severe. If you steal a fighter jet (or smuggle in one bought overseas) and use it to attack people, that's a big deal. Far bigger than stealing a car and running over a pedestrian with it (as bad as that is). The same should hold for an AK-47.

So how to move forward? I believe the Second amendment should be repealed. Impossible? Today, it is. But it may not always be. Think about the Nineteenth amendment. Today, it strikes us as a ludicrous abrogation of the government's responsibility to protect individual rights. At the time, however, the social and economic impact of drinking was so immense, that a confluence of political and social forces enabled the amendment to pass. Yes, I realize that the Nineteenth amendment was woefully ineffective. See enforcement, above. It is also true that overall levels of drinking did decline during Prohibition, and have never gone back to pre-Prohibition levels after repeal. And besides, there is a qualitative difference between the desire to buy a bottle of gin and mix a round of martinis and the desire to buy and use an assault rifle, to say nothing of the relative number of people affected. My point is that as assault weapons proliferate and the shootings along the lines of the Aurora, CO movie theater, become more frequent and more deadly, political will will eventually obtain to repeal, or at least significantly reinterpret the Second amendment. It will take years, decades even, and thousands of people will have to die, but one day it may not seem as unrealistic as it does today.

Virginia Elections

I admit, with a fair amount of guilt, that I did not vote today in Virginia's gubernatorial and state house elections, even though on previous occasions, I have implored others to vote whenever possible. I simply could not bring myself to vote for a candidate who had views that are abhorrent to me in a deepest possible way, and since all candidates held at least one such view, well, there you have it. My equivalent of a vote of disapproval of all.

We realize that mathematically, the idea that each individual's single vote will affect the outcome of an election is absurd. I should concede here that if every voter took the previous sentence to heart, the system would collapse. But still, that is not why we vote, or at least not why I do. As I've said before, I vote because I can, while many millions of people around the world cannot, and because it is an opportunity to make a gesture of approval for a certain set of ideas and principles. The gesture is mostly to myself -- I don't go around shouting the names of the candidates I voted for and why I chose them. Still, I see it as a moral responsibility to make that gesture.

Needless to say, this becomes impossible when the likelihood of finding such a set of ideas and principles embodied in the stated opinions of a single candidate is pretty much nil. Yes, politics is the art of the possible, we've been told a thousand times, and that you pick the least of all evils, that you vote for the candidate whose "bad part" is less objectionable than the others'. And there have been occasions in the past where I have done that. But there is a limit. I believe that it is possible to reach a level of objectionableness beyond which my moral principles do not allow me to go, and I have reached it this year. Let's hope that for our society's sake, that does not become a pattern, though I frequently fear it it might.

Roquefort

A grass-roots reaction to government idiocy from one of my favorite local businesses. I don't really have anything to add right now to what Jill (the store owner in the video) says.

Rick Warren

I have never had anything original to say about mainstream politics, and I don't see that changing any time soon, but this touched a nerve too much to keep quiet. Maybe I'm just in a cranky mood this morning. Needless to say, I hang my head in despair on a regular basis over the mere fact that there needs to be a religious figure at the inauguration of the US President at all. He delivers what, exactly? A blessing of some kind, in most people's understanding? Proof positive that the Constitution's non-establishment clause is not at all the same as a true separation of church and state, which we do not have. But Obama's choice of Rick Warren is deeply distasteful in a specific, as well as a general, sense. Details here and here. Yes, these details come from Christopher Hitchens, whose style is not exactly conciliatory, but for my money, he is almost always on point, and I am incredulous at the fact that now that Obama has been anointed the next god of the United States, his choice of Warren is not receiving any mass coverage, unlike his association with that other bigoted crack-pot pastor, whose name I've blocked out of my mind. Status quo we can believe in. Oh well, we slither on through the sewers of political pandering.

Same-sex marriage

One of the hotly disputed issues in the most recent election was California’s Proposition 8, which proposed to allow same-sex marriages. I always found it odd that gays had such a strong desire to marry, though on reflection perhaps I shouldn’t have. The institution of marriage, as I see it, allows couples who choose to cohabitate and otherwise share their lives to claim that their union has been sanctioned by an authority. That authority is either religious or governmental. I have no issue with having your union religiously sanctioned, if that is meaningful to you. But that is not what the gay community is seeking. If all they wanted is an imprimatur of religious authority, the debate would have been confined to the religion(s) in question and would not have become a political hot button. It follows, therefore, that it is the government’s eyes in which they want to legitimize their unions. I have long found this desire odd, not only when applied to gays but in general.

Quite simply, the decision to be together, or not, is none of anyone’s business but the couple’s, and no government has any moral right even to express an opinion on two people’s choice to be together, much less pass legislation that can in any way affect that choice. Unfortunately, engendered initially by the authority governments have historically derived from religions (long and fascinating story there), for centuries governments have done exactly that. From what I understand (I admit that the minutiae of relevant laws is not my forte), most states in the US today confer some legal benefits on married couples to which non-married individuals are not entitled. Whether related to taxes, property rights, or something else, it is these benefits that groups which are not allowed to marry in the legal sense, such as gays, are seeking. The argument is that not conferring these benefits, or even a possibility of attaining them, on certain groups, is tantamount to discrimination. It goes without saying that unless you believe that the government continues to derive its authority from some divine source, it is way out of line in concerning itself with marriage. What I find deeply sad is that there isn’t a greater outcry against this shameless moral, philosophical and, in many cases, practical intrusion into people’s private lives. The very idea of a legal marriage, i.e. a union of two people recognized by the government, is tantamount to discrimination – against single people. It is incomprehensible to me why the unmarried – a far larger groups than gays – are not clamoring for this discrimination to be redressed.

So why in hell did J. and I get married three weeks ago then? A topic for another post.

Vote

My initial comment about the importance of voting was going to be something along the lines of having an ethical responsibility to do it because we can, and the vast majority of people in the world can't, etc., but so far that argument has moved people less than I expected. But I got into a conversation with a colleague recently. The colleague is a dedicated anarchist, in the sense that he believes that government has no purpose (not even a minimal purpose as I believe) and that all spheres of human endeavor, including criminal justice, are best handled privately. It is a fascinating viewpoint, far better researched and supported than one might assume, but that's a topic for another day. The relevant point here is that he does not vote for the obvious reason that the concept of voting is meaningless to him. One of the things we got to discussing is how, starting with an imperfect but functional democracy such as ours, a system of the sort he advocates could come about. Discounting instant and total consensus (really a form of a unanimous vote), we agreed on two possibilities – violent revolution, and democratic process. I don't think I need to remind anyone how I feel about violent revolutions and why. The democratic process, on the other hand, could be used to abolish itself, annul the Constitution and dissolve the US government. In other words, his system could be brought about by a vote. Conclusion: go vote tomorrow, even if you believe it is meaningless or would prefer a world where voting is unnecessary. Philosophical principles are at stake.

Obama

I know I keep promising to keep politics out of here and fail, but this is an election year after all, and for the first time in my life I live in a state that's expected to be competitive in the general election, I need to start worrying about this stuff.

In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Obama has said (as quoted by the WaPo):

America, we cannot turn back, not with so much work to be done, not with so many children to educate and so many veterans to care for, not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save, not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend

Where oh where did he find that it is the government's job to do any of these things?!?!

Walter Tejada

When I moved from DC to Arlington last February, I consoled myself by thinking that the relative loss of the urban environment I loved so much would be partially offset by not having to deal with activist, nanny-like local governments under the likes of which DC and Maryland have been suffering since time immemorial. Instead, we have Walter Tejada, our newly elected county board chairman. Apparently, he is threatening to push on us a triple whammy of proposals – banning trans fats in restaurants à la Montgomery Cty., banning smoking in public places and encouraging people not to own cars. The last one is the least offensive – it amounts, as far as I can tell, to an advertising campaign, though there are murmurs of a shared bike program. Spending public money on such advertising is problematic, no question about it, but I suppose we need to learn to live with the fact that if that's as far as it goes, we're not so badly off.

The other two are completely infuriating, but not because I want to eat Wonder Bread slathered with margarine while puffing on a Marlboro. They cut straight to the question of a government's job. I've struggled for years with the idea of public health, and finally concluded that there is no such thing. It is not the government's job to ensure that its citizens are healthy, even if “healthy” is defined according to well-researched science. It's simply none of its business what lifestyle choices its citizens make. But wait, you might reply, we're only talking about the public sphere, and it is the government's job to care about that. It is not trying to prevent you from eating trans fats at home, after all, only in restaurants. Even if you accept that premise, the argument doesn't hold water. A restaurant is not public sphere; being open to the public does not make it so. It is a private enterprise, and the government has no business dictating what goes on in its kitchens (unless they are making a dirty bomb out of smuggled uranium, I suppose, but even that is a tough sell unless the government can prove an intent to detonate it). Banning trans fats in a public school cafeteria is one thing. Trying to ban it in restaurants is something entirely different, and much more sinister. Someone who cares enough about trans fats has the responsibility to learn which foods have them and then avoid ordering them when going out, or patronize restaurants, which already exist, that voluntarily eliminate them.

Smoking is no different. I concede that second-hand smoke from your cigarette is more harmful to those around you than the trans fats in the margarine on your plate, and more difficult to avoid. But the principle is the same. Non-smoking restaurants and even bars have long existed, and if the government stopped trying to ban smoking by fiat, they would become a tremendous business opportunity, and I guarantee you many more would open very quickly. The same public/private principle applies: I can buy a smoking ban in a county courthouse, but not in a privately owned business.

About the only sensible thing Tejada has proposed so far is allowing the addition of rental units to private houses, though unfortunately it's couched in affordable housing rhetoric. House owners should be able to add rental units to their houses simply because the house is their private property. And if your neighbors don't like the fact that a large immigrant family just moved into your English basement, it's not the government's job to ensure that your neighbors are happy – it is the neighbors' own.

Opinions

It is a slow day in the op-ed section of the Washington Post, apparently. Surely Anne Appelbaum, usually an incisive, or at least a relevant, commentator, could find something better to write about than John Darwin? How about Putin's anointment of a successor? How about it, Anne? You understand Eastern Europe from the inside, and have been one of the few to remember that when an iron curtain falls, those who erected it do not go away quietly. Surely you have something to say about Medvedev and the West's naive hope that he would be better than Putin because he is not a former KGB officer?

SUVs

In a recent column, the Boston Globe takes Toyota to task for selling the Sequoia, a full-size SUV. Their complaint, essentially, is that Toyota is encouraging its customers' bad behavior:

“...the company remains happy to profit off Americans who cannot look past their hood ornament.”

As much I think most large SUVs are unnecessary, I am with Toyota 110% on this one. Last time I checked, Toyota, along with thousands of other corporations, was in the business of selling product at a profit. So if the customers will buy the Sequoia, Toyota will sell the Sequoia. It's a no-brainer.

To their credit, Toyota did respond, though their response was far more meek that it could have been. It appeared in the company's official blog on their website, read presumably by people who are already fans of the brand or owners of its products. Why not reply in the very paper that published the original attack? As an op-ed perhaps, or at least a letter to the editor? If the Globe has any journalistic integrity left, they would publish it in a second. But I digress. Eventually, after criticizing Derrick Jackson, the author of the original article, for lapses in fact checking (trivial in the grand scheme of things), and praising some of their fuel-efficient models (also irrelevant to the main point), they do eventually get to the meat of the question:

“...how can Toyota be responsible to its stockholders (to whom it is compelled by both law and by ethics to be responsible), and to its customers, if it fails to offer such vehicles [as the Sequoia]?”

and eventually, almost all the way at the end:

“Toyota’s position is that people should make their own decisions about what they drive. It’s our job to provide them with the best choices possible, which is precisely what we’re doing.”

Thank you. Amazing that this still needs spelling out, isn't it?

What is Jackson trying to argue here, exactly? As far as I can see, it is that companies like Toyota should be dictating what consumers buy by offering only those products. That, not to put too fine a point on it, is preposterous. See above – Toyota is not in the nanny or moral righteousness business. They are in the business of selling cars. But maybe something more sinister is going on here. Whenever the question of fuel economy and the wastefulness of SUVs comes up, the discussion turns very quickly to the proposals, currently before Congress, to revise government fuel economy standards. Jackson, needless to say, if wholly in favor. So is he really saying that if companies don't dictate what people buy, the government should do it, even if it is done indirectly, by legislating what the companies sell? A nanny state, one that purports to know what's good for its constituents and require, by law, that they behave in accordance with their own moral standards? Do I need to remind him that in a world where people aren't free to buy a giant SUV, he probably would not be free to write about it?

Executive Privilege, Pizza and Beer

I intuitively abhor the Bush-Cheney agenda of unlimited expansion of presidential power, not because I am a tree-hugging pinko commie, but because the balance of powers is a pillar of our democracy. If that's compromised, what's left? Is it also not true, however, that decision making by committee is the most inefficient and ineffective way to make decisions? And what is the US Congress, if not the most extreme expression of just such a form of decision making? So should I not therefore cheer any movement towards curtailing the insanity that is the US Congress's day to day operations, with its oversight hearings, filibustering and back-room dealing? No, of course not -- it all gets back to Winston Churchill in the end.

All this was discussed with C.S. last night over some beer and pizza at Rustico. He pointed out that the extreme form of decision making by committee practiced by the US Congress actually causes some decisions not to be made, and some laws not to be passed, thus helping our entire system to be less unwieldy than it otherwise might, or at least helping it grow more unwieldy at a slightly slower rate. Perhaps.

The beer raised fewer questions -- it was Rustico's bi-monthly glass giveaway, a double feature this time -- Otter Creek and Wolaver's, which have apparently merged. Wolaver's brought a Farmhouse Ale as well as a pale ale supposedly on cask (we didn't try it). Otter Creek had something they called an Australian-style Sparkling Ale, an Oktoberfest and, I think, a brown ale that we didn't try. Of the ones we tried, the Farmhouse was probably the best of the bunch -- fairly funky and barnyard-y, it interpreted its name literally. I expected something along the lines of the Smuttynose Farmhouse (warning: serious beer geek info) which is a Belgian saison-style beer, but this was all good old American micro -- hoppy and dry. Still, distinctive and enjoyable. The Oktoberfest was good as well -- a bit lighter in color and less malty than a typical German Oktoberfest, but definitely a well-crafted brew. Mysteriously, it showed up somewhat warm and flat, English-style. I didn't order the Australian-style stuff (unfortunate name -- I instantly though of the Foster's oil can), but C.S. did, and I tasted a bit. A noble effort, but not my style -- dry, but not particularly hoppy. Kind of creamy and smooth on the palate. And it didn't strike me as any more sparkling than anything else.

The pizza, for once, was almost a complete miss. The combination of ingredients was worthy of California in the early days of Wolfgang Puck: duck confit, cracklins and brie, and in retrospect, there is a good reason why this sort of "experimentation for its own sake" cuisine didn't last. But this is C.S. we're talking about, and if I didn't try this with him, I certainly wouldn't with anyone else. So we ordered it. What showed up was a thick layer of uniform off-white cheese, already rubberizing in the now-cool evening air, sprinkled with an equally uniform layer of crispy brown crumbs. Which was the confit and which were the cracklins,
there was no telling, either by color, texture or flavor. Perhaps a blender was involved. The real offender, however, was the brie -- apparently the kitchen melted it complete, with rind, and while there are very few foods that I truly dislike, brie rind is one of them. The pizza tasted musty and off-putting. Thank goodness for the abundant beer.