Than separating kids at the border? It's bombing them, Laura Bush. News flash on that, by the way. Don't know if you were aware of that. You know, because your husband ordered an undeclared war against the nation and people of Iraq, a 'worst in the century' type of decision wasn't backed by any reasonable American national security objective. A war we're literally still paying for, because your husband couldn't see fit to balance a single budget during his eight years in office. A war whose veterans - loyal almost to a fault and courageous beyond anything demanded of a 'veteran' of the Texas Air National Guard - are still receiving care for their physical and psychological wounds. A war which destabilized an entire region and that made American troops targets of the Iranian theocratic regime's IEDs - a regime we couldn't attack because we already had our hands full, propping up a corrupt government in Iraq.
We should indeed hope that the kids being separated at the border are treated to better and more tender mercies than the more than 1,000 killed in the undeclared, unnecessary war in Iraq.
What's happening on the U.S. Southern Border is very bad, but rather than work to solve it, isn't it easier to post something online, complaining about a leader's regime you don't like?
See, I can do it too.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
The New Second Amendment
Given the mass killing and death caused by guns over the last several years, from the Pulse nightclub attack to the tragic deaths of 17 people in Parkland, Florida, I cannot help but begin to wonder if the Second Amendment is functioning in anything like the capacity which the Founders intended.
Part of the lost history of the Second Amendment is that states once had far more military power than the Federal government. States had militias and navies. A large part of the reason that the War of 1812 was not as great of a success for America as it could have been was that many state militias did not participate. The Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers, many of whom had contentious state governments to contend with, and the votes to enact the Constitution were far from unanimous. It was Thomas Jefferson who had promised a Bill of Rights, and when it was enacted just a few years after the Constitution itself, what we now think of as "gun rights" was literally very high on the list. Several states had "right to bear arms" clauses in their state constitutions, and my theory is that the states demanded that the Federal government abjure itself of the power to collect guns en masse and thereby horde so much power to itself. You could go all the way back to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 to look at the consequences (popular rebellion) of a state that won't defend its people or let them at least defend themselves.
However. The actual text of the Second Amendment has been nagging me lately. "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." Doesn't it seem like the part about a well regulated Militia that's necessary to the security of a free state comes first? Now I've heard the grammatarians pick this one apart and they tell me it's a subordinate clause, that the action part of the amendment is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms part." Really? Did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin really sit around going, "You know what? Let's put in a completely subordinate and irrelevant fluff clause into the Second Amendment, with no bearing on the understanding or interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms part of the Amendment. That's just how we will regulated Militia conduct ourselves regulated Militia going forward."
Not so much, right?
And then there's this other problem with the Second Amendment. There are places where it seems to be overly applied - like when psychotic teenagers purchase rapid-fire weapons. And there are places where it seems like the Federal government - if it really was protecting citizens against dumb state laws - would want to throw out the "well regulated Militia" part and protect a citizen's allegedly expressed right to own a gun. What about dangerous places across the country, where break-ins, assaults and other crimes are common - and yet in many of these places, gun regulations are so strict that people can't have firearms they need to protect themselves. Why don't the "it's a subordinate clause" Second Amendment firebrands step in and effectively stop local governments from denying people their rights? Nobody is arguing that every single man, woman, and near-adult person who's still legally a child but who could still bear a firearm is a candidate for the militia, let along the regular military. A terminally ill cancer patient could possibly have the strength to level a pistol and pull the trigger at a dangerous intruder, but no one is suggesting that such a person be recruited up as squad leader in the 101st Airborne.
And this exposes a paradox within the Second Amendment. The Founders started by writing about the need for a properly function militia - roughly, a bunch of more-or-less organized citizen-soldiers - being necessary to keep the security of a free state. But the Amendment then takes the very big leap of logic and - depending on how you want to weight your understanding of the words - grants the right to keep and bear arms to "the people."
And this is what's really staggering - and easy to miss - in the Second Amendment. "The people" could well mean everyone who is physically in the United States- and this is where Second Amendment absolutists get going - and by a plain-language reading of the text it would seem tough to prove them wrong. But this understanding of the Second Amendment is exactly what put deadly weapons in the hands of every mass shooter, murderer, terrorists, criminal, and insurrectionist in American history, since, apparently, the right to keep and bear arms, by the most literal reading, can't be infringed!
I think we can agree that's a little insane?
Again, did the Founding Fathers place the right to bear arms deeply within the context of citizen-soldiers and the security of a free state as pure and total fluff? The several Presidents who have signed gun control legislation and the temporarily responsible people in Congress who limited even free Americans' possession of machine guns and true automatic fire weapons like carbines - let alone heavier weaponry like rocket launchers and portable missiles - didn't seem to think so.
So why does Dylan Klebold get a HiPoint 995? Why does Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz get an AR-15?
The Founding Fathers would want us to figure this out - and even if they were demented lunatics who didn't, it would be incumbent on us to do so. The current morass of policies and procedures isn't working. We need a new and more relevant sense of what the right to bear arms in a free society means for the next few centuries - a sense that does not simply enable mass killings on one hand and hypocritically limit the ability of free people to defend themselves on the other. We must also protect rights of sporting people to wield guns responsibly when hunting, and the dream - however hackneyed and improbable - that if America were invaded by a hostile foreign power, we'd all rise up, Militia all, and with our crazed collection of hundreds of millions of individual firearms, give that invader hell on Earth. Finally, I give the argument that firearms protect us from government tyranny at least a little weight, and I think that the Federal government as devised needs that counterweight.
But we need a new Second Amendment.
Look. The Founders were geniuses. If nothing else, it's hard to write that well. The Second Amendment has protected many lives from criminals, factored into the thoughts of at least one invader, and fostered a culture of national defense, responsible gun ownership, and self-defense that few other nations on Earth have.
I think the first changes, though, that need to happen is that it be clear that not just "the people" have a right to bear arms. I think it needs to be clarified to "law abiding-citizens, of sound mind." I think its crucial to properly fund the large establishment we have going to do background checks on gun purchases. And I think that our communities should be more tightly knit - yes, like in the olden days.
That's all I've got.
Part of the lost history of the Second Amendment is that states once had far more military power than the Federal government. States had militias and navies. A large part of the reason that the War of 1812 was not as great of a success for America as it could have been was that many state militias did not participate. The Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers, many of whom had contentious state governments to contend with, and the votes to enact the Constitution were far from unanimous. It was Thomas Jefferson who had promised a Bill of Rights, and when it was enacted just a few years after the Constitution itself, what we now think of as "gun rights" was literally very high on the list. Several states had "right to bear arms" clauses in their state constitutions, and my theory is that the states demanded that the Federal government abjure itself of the power to collect guns en masse and thereby horde so much power to itself. You could go all the way back to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 to look at the consequences (popular rebellion) of a state that won't defend its people or let them at least defend themselves.
However. The actual text of the Second Amendment has been nagging me lately. "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." Doesn't it seem like the part about a well regulated Militia that's necessary to the security of a free state comes first? Now I've heard the grammatarians pick this one apart and they tell me it's a subordinate clause, that the action part of the amendment is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms part." Really? Did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin really sit around going, "You know what? Let's put in a completely subordinate and irrelevant fluff clause into the Second Amendment, with no bearing on the understanding or interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms part of the Amendment. That's just how we will regulated Militia conduct ourselves regulated Militia going forward."
Not so much, right?
And then there's this other problem with the Second Amendment. There are places where it seems to be overly applied - like when psychotic teenagers purchase rapid-fire weapons. And there are places where it seems like the Federal government - if it really was protecting citizens against dumb state laws - would want to throw out the "well regulated Militia" part and protect a citizen's allegedly expressed right to own a gun. What about dangerous places across the country, where break-ins, assaults and other crimes are common - and yet in many of these places, gun regulations are so strict that people can't have firearms they need to protect themselves. Why don't the "it's a subordinate clause" Second Amendment firebrands step in and effectively stop local governments from denying people their rights? Nobody is arguing that every single man, woman, and near-adult person who's still legally a child but who could still bear a firearm is a candidate for the militia, let along the regular military. A terminally ill cancer patient could possibly have the strength to level a pistol and pull the trigger at a dangerous intruder, but no one is suggesting that such a person be recruited up as squad leader in the 101st Airborne.
And this exposes a paradox within the Second Amendment. The Founders started by writing about the need for a properly function militia - roughly, a bunch of more-or-less organized citizen-soldiers - being necessary to keep the security of a free state. But the Amendment then takes the very big leap of logic and - depending on how you want to weight your understanding of the words - grants the right to keep and bear arms to "the people."
And this is what's really staggering - and easy to miss - in the Second Amendment. "The people" could well mean everyone who is physically in the United States- and this is where Second Amendment absolutists get going - and by a plain-language reading of the text it would seem tough to prove them wrong. But this understanding of the Second Amendment is exactly what put deadly weapons in the hands of every mass shooter, murderer, terrorists, criminal, and insurrectionist in American history, since, apparently, the right to keep and bear arms, by the most literal reading, can't be infringed!
I think we can agree that's a little insane?
Again, did the Founding Fathers place the right to bear arms deeply within the context of citizen-soldiers and the security of a free state as pure and total fluff? The several Presidents who have signed gun control legislation and the temporarily responsible people in Congress who limited even free Americans' possession of machine guns and true automatic fire weapons like carbines - let alone heavier weaponry like rocket launchers and portable missiles - didn't seem to think so.
So why does Dylan Klebold get a HiPoint 995? Why does Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz get an AR-15?
The Founding Fathers would want us to figure this out - and even if they were demented lunatics who didn't, it would be incumbent on us to do so. The current morass of policies and procedures isn't working. We need a new and more relevant sense of what the right to bear arms in a free society means for the next few centuries - a sense that does not simply enable mass killings on one hand and hypocritically limit the ability of free people to defend themselves on the other. We must also protect rights of sporting people to wield guns responsibly when hunting, and the dream - however hackneyed and improbable - that if America were invaded by a hostile foreign power, we'd all rise up, Militia all, and with our crazed collection of hundreds of millions of individual firearms, give that invader hell on Earth. Finally, I give the argument that firearms protect us from government tyranny at least a little weight, and I think that the Federal government as devised needs that counterweight.
But we need a new Second Amendment.
Look. The Founders were geniuses. If nothing else, it's hard to write that well. The Second Amendment has protected many lives from criminals, factored into the thoughts of at least one invader, and fostered a culture of national defense, responsible gun ownership, and self-defense that few other nations on Earth have.
I think the first changes, though, that need to happen is that it be clear that not just "the people" have a right to bear arms. I think it needs to be clarified to "law abiding-citizens, of sound mind." I think its crucial to properly fund the large establishment we have going to do background checks on gun purchases. And I think that our communities should be more tightly knit - yes, like in the olden days.
That's all I've got.