The Third Amendment

A lawsuit has popped up in Nevada regarding homeowners who were ejected from their home during a siege of their neighbour's house by police.

As militarized as the police are getting, I don't think they are soldiers as described by the third amendment to the Constitution.

For reference here is the full text of the relevant article: "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

That's fairly clear and somewhat self-explanatory. Depending upon the facts and circumstances, it's entirely possible that the court may find the police justified in their actions.

A Much Needed Amendment

In the wake of several bills being enacted by one or both of the houses of Congress that no one apparently ever read, I think I have come up with a way to see that does not happen again.

I offer the 28th Amendment:

Amendment 28- All Laws to Be Written By Hand

1. From the date of ratification of this Amendment forward, any law passed by the Congress under this Constitution must be hand written entirely by a member or members of Congress. No mechanical, electric or electronic device being permitted to aid such writing.

2. In addition to #1, above, all budgetary, tax, spending or debt laws must be written in a member's blood. The member must be one who voted for the final version.

3. Any law not entirely hand written by a member or members of Congress will be void and without effect.


The third clause is probably superfluous, but I included as you need to give the editors something to remove. Also it hammers home what the effect of non-compliance would be.

If nothing else, this will give Congress something to do other than pester the citizenry. Of course, if we get Universal Health Care, this would also mean that carpal tunnel would be. automatically covered.

Law and the Face of Evil

This is a hard one to write. I'm still that angry.

Attorneys are required to have a set number of hours of continuing legal education each year. In Georgia, the requirement is twelve hours. Today, I attended this seminar. The speakers were largely well balanced on the issue of the second amendment rights. Most were well-prepared (Bob Barr being the notable exception. I am so glad I didn't vote for him. He seemed nice though.)

Two of the speakers were people I disagree with. One was a Mr. Eric Proshansky. He is leading the New York City civil case against the gun dealers. While I suspect he agrees with his client's stance politically, he was nonetheless professional and did an excellent job of advocating an unpopular position in the face of a polite, but hostile audience. He came across as a fighter and possibly a former debate team captain. Were he in private practice, he is an advocate I would recommend to clients without a qualm.

The second speaker with whom I am in disagreement is the point of this post. Professor Eric Segall teaches Constitutional law at Georgia State University Law School. He is an intelligent man. He was one of two Georgia State Law Profs that discussed the Heller case. And he crawled me.

As a minor point, he referred to the Supremes as being comprised of four conservatives, one swing vote (Justice Kennedy) and four moderates. By definition, the four dissenters are not moderates. They are liberals or leftists, but not moderates. So he did us the favour of signaling his bias and contempt for accuracy in one sentence.

Basically, he exemplified the leftist elite. The stereotypical "we are smarter, better, brighter and more capable than you plebeians. Just go away and let us run the world for you." Unfortunately, attorneys are already arrogant so that kind of condescension did not play well.

But the major point I am making is his utter contempt for precedent and, to a lesser degree, inherent rights. He is a bright fellow. He is intellectually corrupt. If we, as a profession and as a nation abandon precedent as the basis for judge made law, then what we are left with are an aggregation of subjective judgments that can be over-ruled without restraint. We would be a nation held hostage to judicial and legislative caprice. The United States would be exactly opposite of the nation it was founded to be.

Maybe Mr Segall wants to live in such a world, but I do not. Further, if he truly thought his stance through, he would realize that however much subjectivity may be justified as a metaphysical position (which view I do not hold), at law we have to use an absolute standard, even if it means pretending there is such a thing (more on that later). Only by appealing to an absolute set of rules, even if man made, can the laws be enforced evenly. And only if the laws are enforced evenly will they be obeyed.

That Professor Segall does not understand that is horrible. That he teaches a policy driven Constitutional Law class is a shocking waste of the taxpayer's money. The charge that was leveled against Socrates can fairly be leveled against Professor Segall.*

*However, I do not advocate that he meet the same end. Rather, I hope for his conversion from the forces of incoherency over to the side of Truth, Justice and the American Way. With a lot less kryptonite.

Meta point on Heller

Two things that struck when I was re-reading the Supreme Court's opinion in Heller vs District of Columbia. First, All nine justices believe the right to bear arms is an individual right. Glen Reynolds noticed the same thing. Second, the majority held that the right to self defense must be effective and that it is a natural right that precedes and is made explicit by the Second Amendment.

Do any other countries recognize the right of their citizens to exist? I know the UK does not, but does anyone else?

Irony, defined

Check out this news story.

{H/T Instapundit}

Interesting Survey

The last election pretty much eliminated what remaining faith I had in public opinion polls, but Gallup has released the results of a survey they did on the Second Amendment. As usual, the wording of the questions is almost more interesting than the responses.

Self Defense

As a human right. Excellent article on the subject may be found here.

{Warning! Law Review}

Guns and Violence

I am a supporter of the US Constitution. I think it is a good set of laws and that we have managed adequately for the past two hundred or so years. I am much more fervent about the first ten Amendments and the thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments.

I think that they represent the best protection against government over reach in the world. My main beef with the Bush Administration, and also with Congress has been the erosion of our rights since 9/11. I do not think terrorism can best be fought by trying to make us more secure. Leaving aside how effective or ineffective the measures taken have been, the best way to fight terrorism is to be more free. Terrorism fights by spreading the perception of fear. Our responses so far have served to affirm that perception.

Which brings me to the Second Amendment. We saw another mass killing on a university campus this past week. The malefactor apparently had not been taking his medications and went off the rails. He legally purchased two firearms and went to the school to appease his demons. The school was a 'gun free' zone and while I am sure law enforcement responded quickly, it was not quick enough to save the lives of those who were shot. What happened was horrible. The responsibility lies with the young man who did the shooting. It lies entirely with him.

The gun control zealots are arguing that had guns been harder to obtain, fewer would have died. The gun rights advocates are arguing that had the school not been a 'gun free zone' fewer people would have died. I disagree with both.

I do not wish to scare anyone, but if I really wanted to kill, maim or injure hundreds or possibly thousands of people I could do it. I could do it without recourse to firearms and without violating any laws, other than murder. I could do it with a minimum of planning and expense. I could do it despite having no formal training in explosives. It is not that terribly hard to make bombs. And if one is not concerned with self-preservation, then murder and mayhem become much simpler. Israel has learned this, much to her sorrow. {No one should worry about this. I do not have any homicidal urges.}

My family has lost two men to 'gun violence', both in or near Charleston SC. My cousin Rob was murdered by some young men who ordered a pizza, arranged for him to deliver it to an abandoned home, and then slaughtered him for the money in his pocket. My cousin Tim killed himself in an empty condominium with a shot gun.

The responsibility for Rob's death does not lie the gun, the gun manufacturer or the gun dealer. It lies with the young men who murdered him. The responsibility for Tim's death does not lie with the shot gun, the shot gun manufacturer or the dealer who sold him the gun. It lies with Tim, and Tim alone.

Even assuming all guns had been gathered up and thrown into the ocean, both men would be dead. My cousin's murderers would have used knives or bats or some other weapon. Tim still would have killed himself. Guns have as much to do with both of their deaths as does their geographical location. That is to say, little or no relation.

So what deaths would eliminating guns prevent? Criminals are not deterred by making something illegal. In the UK, where violent crime has increased dramatically over the part two decades, gun control does not seem to be effective. Further, there is strong anecdotal evidence that the official statistics are being fudged in that regard so as to keep the public from realizing just how awful it is over there. Suicides, who constitute the bulk of gun related deaths in this country, likewise will not be deterred by any gun ban.

The answer turns out to be criminals, primarily burglars. The one crime that simply does not happen very often in the US, but is quite common in the UK is home invasion. In the US the criminal is faced with the likelihood that the occupied home has a gun or two. In the UK the criminal is faced with the certainty that they do not. In most of the states, the homeowner has an absolute right to defend their home with deadly force. The homeowner has no such right in the UK. Further, the home is where most people keep their firearms.

I target shoot. I keep firearms primarily for that activity. The ammunition I have, the sorts of firearms, and where they are kept are all shaped by that primary motivation. That such a firearm could be used to shoot at an intruder is an added benefit for me, but not the main reason I have them. My wife keeps her firearms because they were her brother's and she is sentimental. Other citizens keep them for hunting. But the average American household has at least one firearm for self defense.

The result is that while thieves may very well break into our homes and steal, they rarely do it while we are there.

So the question I will leave you with is: How can we eliminate or reduce lethal violence? And secondly, what other consequences flow from the changes you want made?

I have not been able to think of any solutions that would have saved the lives of the students in Illinois or either of my cousins.

Second Amendment

David Kopel is tracking all the amicus briefs filed in DC vs Heller.

Fire the Big Guns!

Our beloved Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks on hate speech have attracted the attention of some big name commentators. Eugene Volokh discusses them at length, Jules Crittenden gets snarky and +Rowan gets a mention from Professor Heh.

My Three Issues

Years ago I read an essay that argued that every voter ought to isolate the three issues that they feel to be most important and then determine which candidate best fits those issues. The idea of limiting yourself to three issues is that it forces you to prioritize which ones matter the most.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are mine. They all rank about equally for me.

First is the preservation of our rights as established by the US Constitution. Some people favour the First Amendment, some the Second, but I love them all. Any candidate that I support will have to show a working knowledge of the Bill of Rights and some level of commitment to not test their limits.

Second is the elimination or at least radical reduction of earmarks. There is a climate of corruption in Washington these days and neither party and none of the candidates really want to address it. The reason for that apathy is simple. To battle earmarks, they have to fight their colleagues. The logic of Washington is equally simple, the people loathe earmarks and the politicians love them. Currently the politicans are winning on this issue.

Third is space exploration. I am one of those nutty guys who loves science fiction and watched star wars a couple of zillion times. But I also think that of all the things the federal government can do, opening up space for exploration and settlement is the most worthwhile. It would give us back the frontier. We haven't had one for a while and I think we are paying the price for it in the malaise that is affecting the varied worldwide cultures. Thats the metaphysical reason.

The other is that the challenges that are before us currently have no simple solution. For example, if we commit to helping the homeless then we rapidly find that an awful lot of the homeless do not wish to be helped. They are homeless for a reason, be it insanity, drug abuse or alcoholism. And there are no simple solutions to those problems.

If we commit to fight global warming, then we are committing to damning future generations to poverty. Good luck with that one. That's the real reason why no country has actually done anything about global warming.

Space exploration is different. For one thing, if we export our polluting industries to space, there's a really big incinerator down the gravity well from us. Also solar energy, which is generally not practical inside the atmosphere, becomes the optimal energy source in the vacuum of space.

Space exploration and settlement will not be cheap. There are significant technical problems. But the problems that remain are just that, technical. They are solvable.

Those are my three issues. What are yours?

Why I am Glad I Am Not Dutch

Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament is set to show an 'anti-Muslim' film. The money quote is "It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn't mean the right to offend," said Maxime Verhagen, the Foreign Minister.

I do not like our government especially much. But part of freedom of speech is, and should be, the expectation that you will be offended. The right not to be offended is the right to muzzle those who disagree with you. Ingsoc is alive and well in the Netherlands.

H/T Jammie Wearing Fool

Huckahasbeen

I'm angry enough to violate one of my personal policies against mocking someone's name. I didn't like him before, but now there is no way I would ever vote for the man. No way.

I understand what he is trying to say. I agree it would be nifty if we all lived by the Golden Rule. But we don't. And I can't help but think that what he means by God's law is not what I mean by God's law. One thinks immediately of Prohibition and blue laws when Baptist preachers start talking about God's law. I'm all for faith informed voting decisions, but being able to buy liquor at a liquor store has more to do with palliating congregations than following Scripture. And if you think you can legislate people into loving God and loving their neighbour, then your brain is broke.

Effective Propaganda

The very best propaganda is the truth. Here's some truth about the 2nd Amendment.

H/t Laurel Zimmer via Instapundit

One Righteous Man

Maybe because it is Sunday, but this story reminds me of Genesis 18:16-33. Read the whole thing and scroll down. I am so thankful I am not a Canadian.

If you do not understand the importance of freedom of expression, then let me know. I will be happy to enlighten you.

The Tale of Two Attorney Generals

In Virginia, the State Attorney General has a filed a brief in favour of the constitutionality of Virginia's Division Statute. This helps the break away parishes and hurts, somewhat, the Diocese of Virginia and 815.

Not all that terribly far away, the U S Solicitor General has filed a brief in favour of the Washington DC ordinance banning handguns, saying that the trial court used the wrong standard in evaluating the constitutionality of the same.

How are they related? Well this post finally allows me to use 'guns' and 'episcopal church' tags for the same post.

:)

Proud to be an American

Every time something like this happens, I thank my lucky stars I live in a country where the concept of freedom of speech has meaning. If Canada does not reform its rules against hate speech then Canada will deserve everything that happens to it as a consequence.

Proud To Be An American

Yet another, "go us" post.

Macleans, Canada's equivalent to Time or Newsweek is being sued for "Hate Speech". Have I mentioned recently how really fond I am of the First Amendment?

Advocates of restricting freedom of expression always maintain that it's only the ugly bits they want to eliminate. Be that as it may, there are two profound effects of that sort of thing. The first is a chilling effect of political expression on whatever subject is deemed to be ugly. Which is what is going on in Canada.

And the second is that the bigots aren't eliminated, they go underground. I much prefer to know what people really think, without regard to code words and such. In the war between honesty and manners, give me honesty every time. Every bigot who goes underground is one that can not have his or her beliefs held up to the light, examined and confronted. How can you even attempt to change someone's views unless you know what they truly believe.

Will Hillary Step Up

and demand new restrictions on the sale of duct tape?

Sometimes

I'm proud to be an American. A really nifty First Amendment opinion is here.

Hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy