Voices

Early on in the Zumbo incident, Tam typed these tremendously insightful words:

Ten years ago, had his statement survived the editorial process and made it into print, we would have seen a handful of cherry-picked letters on the "Letters to the Editor" page of Outdoor life, and things would have pretty much proceeded along at status quo ante. Not now. Not today.

Another case in point, a recent (unsigned, natch) op-ed in the Winston-Salem Journal attempting to rally anti-gunrights forces in the wake of the death of an officer by gunshot. I'll post the op-ed here in its entirety, and restrain myself from fisking it as it so richly deserves, because I have another point to make in this post:

Gun Glut

The Feb. 23 shooting death of Sgt. Howard Plouff of the Winston-Salem Police Department should make two things clear: There are too many handguns in circulation, and these weapons must be more tightly regulated.

We say "should" instead of "will," because many gun advocates will continue to trot out the same old argument - that handguns aren't the problem, people are.

That rings especially hollow after a good police officer and family man has just been shot to death.

No doubt, people would keep on killing under tighter handgun regulations, but the number of killings would almost certainly drop.

All indications are that Plouff's killer used a handgun, just as so many other killers have.

The guns are as readily available as they are easily concealable. The man police charged Tuesday with killing Plouff, Winston-Salem State University student Keith Antoine Carter, got five permits to own a handgun in the last year, and he got four of those permits in a single month, the Journal reported Thursday. Carter is, of course, presumed to be innocent unless proved guilty, but does any one person need that many handguns?

There were way too many handguns in civilian hands when Plouff was shot in the face trying to help control a large and panicked crowd outside the Red Rooster nightclub. He and other officers had responded to the club to help Forsyth County deputies who were working there off-duty.

The people who started fighting in the bar were definitely in the wrong, but the bouncer who fired a shot into the air in an apparent attempt to end the fighting may well have played a major role in aggravating the violence.

After police arrived, more shots were fired from the crowd.

Carter wasn't charged until a few days after the crime, but shortly after the shooting police seized eight handguns from the area - that's just the ones they were able to find - and charged three men with carrying a concealed weapon.

Those are misdemeanor charges. They should be felonies.

There should be tighter regulations limiting the number of handguns a person can buy in a single month. And there should be stricter law enforcement of existing regulations, especially to crack down on those ignorant enough to carry handguns into packed bars.

We're all for the Second Amendment, especially as it pertains to sporting arms, whether for uses such as target practice or hunting.

OK, I can't resist fisking this, the obligatory "sporting use" bone thrown to the generic gun owner to prove to them that they don't really intend to confiscate anything.

Go ahead. Pull my other leg.

But that does not mean that there should be no restrictions; most people, for example, have no good reason to own an assault rifle that is designed to kill a number of people quickly.

And this state, and this country, must face the fact that tighter regulations are needed on handguns - for Howard Plouff and all the other victims.

So, we have a cop killed by a guy who owns not one, not two, but at least five handguns that he's had for up to a year, that (in North Carolina) he's got to get a permit to purchase. He takes one of these guns someplace they're not allowed by law, and he shoots a cop. But somehow we're to believe that more laws would have prevented this heinous crime when the (anonymous) author proclaims that the cause of the problem is "too many handguns in circulation." Oh, and "assault rifles."

Where have I heard that before?

But, as Tam pointed out, ten years ago at most we'd have seen a few cherry-picked letters to the editor - in a week or six.

Not anymore! The Winston-Salem Journal has an online feedback function. There are four pages of (apparently unedited) responses. At my count the tally is 28 in support of the right to arms, three (weakly) in support of the editorial or in opposition to one of the other 28 comments. Samples:

It's truly sad that you are using the death of a valiant officer to advance an anti constitutional stance. If you read the Federalist Papers, you will see the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting or target shooting and everything to do defending liberty from tyranny. If you nibble away the rights of self defense who will guard you rights to print your opinion. - Smith357

Ban this, ban that. Do you know there is almost a total ban on civilian ownership of all guns in the UK? Have you read the latest from them? There is a gun crisis in the UK right now. Seems the criminals don't pay attention the the laws over there. They keep getting guns. Guess what, if you obey the law, you have no defense against them. If you did defend yourself, even with fists, you can be arrested and prosecuted for assaulting the criminal. That's what you want here obviously.... - Use your head

I am sick and tired of the news media jumping on every tragedy to try to take away more of the citizens rights. No amount of laws would have saved this fine officer.I knew him personally and at one time I was his supervisor at the PD. I feel you are doing him a disservice by trying to take away one of the the rights that he so proudly upheld in enforcing the constitution of the U.S. Your rights to a free press maybe next if you don't take care. - sick and tired

I noticed that there is no name associated with this article, so we must assume that this is the official stance of the Journal? As a local deputy, I would like to point out that it is already illegal to carry a firearm into a place that serves alcohol. More gun control laws do nothing but make more people criminals, and by definition, criminals break the law. Sorry, gun control laws do not control guns, they only serve to make more people criminals. - Disappointed Deputy

"We're all for the Second Amendment, especially as it pertains to sporting arms, whether for uses such as target practice or hunting." And I'm all for the 1st Ammendment, especially where it pertains to writing about sports and entertainment. Now, writing unapproved articles about politics or editorials, I think there should be some restrictions on what you can say to the masses, or at least some government oversight. - sss

Ahhhh, I feel so much better now. We're finding our voices, and using them.

I can't help but wonder what the Journal's editorial board is thinking about the feedback policy.

(There's also a link on the page directly to Technorati so you can see who else is commenting on it. Nobody's shown at this time, but I wonder if Technorati will pick up this piece?)

You Can Almost Taste His Eager Anticipation

Tim Blair posts today on the topic of "Peak Oil" - a subject near and dear to the heart of at least one of my regular readers. Tim quotes the New York Times (!) pooh-poohing the idea that oil production has peaked or will very soon:

"Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the world's reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before …

"'It's the fifth time to my count that we've gone through a period when it seemed the end of oil was near and people were talking about the exhaustion of resources,' said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, who cited similar concerns in the 1880s, after both world wars and in the 1970s. 'Back then we were going to fly off the oil mountain. Instead we had a boom and oil went to $10 instead of $100.'"

But, as Tim notes, "Incredibly, abundance denialists simply won’t accept the oil consensus."

Like this guy I found in the Tucson Weekly guest editorial slot for last week. You have to read this:

Expect the beginning of the end of Tucson as we know it to arrive next year

By GUY MCPHERSON

For a writer, there are few experiences more thrilling than words that generate action. I was therefore elated when the group Sustainable Tucson grew from my column about the impending Tucson apocalypse (Guest Commentary, April 27, 2006).

Lest you think low gas prices are cause for apathy, I'm calling for more action.

Considerable evidence indicates we passed the world oil peak near the end of 2005. Oil supply follows a bell-shaped curve, so we have been easing down for slightly more than a year.

Now that we've burned the inexpensive half of our planetary endowment of oil, we need to prepare ourselves to fall off the oil-supply cliff. This will occur in 2008. The economic, societal and political implications are profound, and discussion of them is curiously lacking from the mainstream media.

I thought these gloom-n-doomers had learned better than to pick dates - especially dates within their forseeable lifetimes - for the sky to come crashing down. After all, Paul Ehrlich predicted in 1968 that by the 70's or 80's hundreds of millions of people would inevitably starve to death because we simply wouldn't be able to grow or distribute enough food to feed them.

Uh, Paul? It's 2007. No mass famine.

Of course, Mr. McPherson is just a little ahead of the latest curve, since there are a bunch of people running around with their hair on fire, shouting that "we have ten years to save the planet!"

Hey! If McPherson is right, "Peak Oil" will shut down entire economies of every nation around the world! And in 2008!

Whoopee! We're all saved!

Well, not all of us:

A series of recessions triggered by the high price of gasoline will be followed, within a decade, by a depression that will make the Great Depression seem like the good old days.

We will not recover from this depression before runaway greenhouse effects doom our species to extinction.

Apparently not any of us...

At the very least, we can expect oil prices to exceed $400 per barrel within a decade. At those oil prices, you can kiss goodbye the days of happy motoring, the use of fossil fuels to deliver water and air conditioning to Tucson, and the U.S. dollar.

Mr. McPherson, I'll make a bet with you. If by 2018 oil is $400 a barrel, I'll pay you $1,000. But if it's under $150, you owe me $100,000. Deal?

In light of this knowledge, and the cheerful demeanor with which I pass it along, people often ask my advice as they plan for life without fossil fuels. (All energy sources are derivatives of oil, so expensive oil signals the end of our ability to extract and deliver coal, natural gas and uranium, and seriously impedes our ability to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels.)

"In light of this knowledge" - the guy's Cassandra! But pay attention to the rest of this:

In an attempt to further the much-needed discussion about the looming post-carbon era, I offer the following Tucson-centric perspective.

This country's ever-expanding economy since World War II, coupled with a profound sense of denial, suggests that relatively few people are prepared for the post-carbon era. As a result, you can expect increasing civil unrest in the decade ahead. The rule of law is likely to give way to anarchy. Local heroes are desperately needed.

Do not expect corporations or elected officials to bail us out. Rather, the collapse of the economy will render them meaningless. The federal government, and then the state government, will join Wal-Mart in simply fading away from your life. We will need plenty of local heroes to step into the breach. If you are honest, compassionate and interested in serving others, this city needs you.

In the very near future, you can expect to see a much smaller population than currently resides in Tucson. If you are committed to remaining in Tucson--and if you don't own a horse, you won't have much choice in five years or so--your task is a daunting one. You will have to secure your water supply by harvesting water. You will need enough water to grow your own food, too: $400 oil spells the end of Safeway and Trader Joe's, and disruptions in the delivery of food, water and electricity to the Old Pueblo will begin next year. Bombing Iran will exacerbate these problems, but I'd rather not think about that.

As an enlightened citizen, you'll be forced to live in two worlds. You'll work and play in your "normal" life, saving money for a rainy day and supporting those you love. But in the back of your mind, you'll know about the new world ahead, and you'll be planning to be part of a smaller community that lives close to the earth. You'll be learning how to harvest rainwater, grow your own food and live with far fewer resources.

As you plan for your own personal post-carbon future, please advocate for the city's nascent efforts in sustainability. Implore city leaders to prepare for the days, less than a decade from now, when we have no fuel for private automobiles, no food-delivery system for the 3,000-mile Caesar salad on which we have come to depend and no water pumped across the desert to feed our insatiable desires.

This guy is looking forward to the End Times - something I thought only Fundamentalist Christians got accused of. I think he's watched the "Mad Max" movies too many times. "Local heroes"? Does he have a leather suit, a knee brace, and a sawed-off in his closet?

I wonder if he's stockpiled any arms and ammo?

Nah, probably not. He'll be depending on other people to be the "local heroes." His kind always do.

Now, the worst part of this whole thing?

Guy McPherson is a professor of natural resources at the University of Arizona and author of many books, including Killing the Natives: Has the American Dream Become a Nightmare? and Letters to a Young Academic.

The only people who can consistently function outside reality are the insane in asylums and tenured professors in theirs. It would be funny if only this guy wasn't teaching our kids.

How did we grow a generation of people in which such a large percentage hate their own civilization? Can anyone answer that?

Edited to add:

Commenter "M. Smith in Phoenix, AZ" inquired:

Please tell me you saw the OTHER "Guest Commentary" that he wrote in April of last year? If not, scroll to the bottom of the Tucson Weekly page and his other article is the last link. The money paragraphs are 2, 3 and 10.

This guy needs to be dragged out into the desert and left to fend for himself, just to see how in touch he really is with his local eco-system.

I hadn't, but at his urging I read the piece in question.

My comment in reply:

I see he's moved up his timetable.

And I notice that he's still living in Tucson.

I guess tenure is more important to him than surviving "The Greatest Depression."

Or he really doesn't believe his own bullshit.

Three guesses as to what my take on that is, and the first two don't count.

Apology Accepted, Mr. Zumbo

May I call you Jim?

The High Road has a copy of the letter Jim Zumbo sent to Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. I'm going to reproduce it here (without permission.)

February 28, 2007

Mr. Alan Gottlieb, Chairman
Citizens Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 N.E. Tenth Place
Bellevue, WA 98005

Dear Alan:

They say that hindsight is always 20-20. In my case, hindsight has been a hard teacher, like the father teaching the son a lesson about life in the wood shed.

I was wrong when I recently suggested that wildlife agencies should ban semiautomatic firearms I erroneously called “assault rifles” for hunting. I insulted legions of my fellow gun owners in the process by calling them “terrorist rifles.” I can never apologize enough for having worn blinders when I should have been wearing bifocals.

But unlike those who would destroy the Second Amendment right to own a firearm – any firearm – I have learned from my embarrassing mistake. My error should not be used, as it has been in recent days by our common enemies, in an effort to dangerously erode our right to keep and bear arms.

I would hope instead to use this spotlight to address my hunting fraternity, many of whom shared my erroneous position. I am a hunter and like many others I had the wrong picture in mind. I associated these firearms with military action, and saw not hunting as I have known it, not the killing of a varmint, but the elimination of the entire colony. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I know from whence it comes. This ridiculous image, formed in the blink of an eye, exerts an unconscious effect on all decisions that follow. In seeking to protect our hunting rights by guarding how we are seen in the public eye, I lost sight of the larger picture; missed the forest for the trees.

My own lack of experience was no excuse for ignoring the fact that millions of Americans – people who would share a campfire or the shelter of their tent, and who have hurt nobody – own, hunt with and competitively shoot or collect the kinds of firearms I so easily dismissed.

I recently took a “crash course” on these firearms with Ted Nugent, to learn more about them and to educate myself. In the process, I learned about the very real threat that faces all American gun owners.

I’ve studied up on legislation now in Congress that would renew and dangerously expand a ban on many types of firearms. The bill, HR 1022 sponsored by New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, is written so broadly that it would outlaw numerous firearms and accessories, including a folding stock for a Ruger rifle. I understand that some of the language could ultimately take away my timeworn and cherished hunting rifles and shotguns as well as those of all American hunters.

The extremist supporters of HR 1022 don’t want to stop criminals. They want to invent new ones out of people like you and me with the simple stroke of a pen. They will do anything they can to make it impossible for more and more American citizens to legally own any firearm.

Realizing that what I wrote catered to this insidious attack on fellow gun owners has, one might say, “awakened a sleeping giant within me, and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

I made a mistake. But those who would use my remarks to further their despicable political agenda have made a bigger one. I hope to become their worst nightmare. I admit I was wrong. They insist they are right.

Enclosed, you will find a check that is intended to be used to fight and defeat HR 1022. I also hope it inspires other gun owners to “do as I do, not as I say.”

I’m putting my money where my mouth should have been, and where my heart and soul have always been. I know the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting and never has been. My blunder was in thinking that by working to protect precious hunting rights I was doing enough. I promise it will never happen again.

I don’t know what lies over the horizon for me. I am not ready for the rocking chair.

I’m going to devote every ounce of my energy to this battle. I will remind my fellow hunters that we are first, gun owners. Whether we like it or not, our former apathy and prejudices may place that which we love, hunting, in jeopardy. I will educate fellow outdoorsmen who mistakenly think like I talked, even if I have to visit every hunting camp and climb into every duck blind and deer stand in this country to get it done. I was wrong, and I’m going to make it right.


Sincerely,
Jim Zumbo

And another post that cinched the deal for me:

I want to confess something.

I'm a gun owner. In fact, I probably own more than most. I pride myself on the quality of my firearms and my skills using them. I spend every weekend, rain or shine, at the range. Defensive pistol, shotgun games, hunting, long range rifle, gun skool...you name it and I do it.

While I'm an NRA member, I don't do activism. I don't write letters. I don't contribute money. I don't call my congressman...in fact, I don't even know how all that stuff works.

I just want to be left alone with my hobby. I don't worry about what bills are proposed. I don't keep track of what's going on. Hell, I barely vote.

I don't tell people what to do and I don't expect to be told what to do. I just want to shoot.

I've been following this Zumbo mess since the beginning. I haven't commented on it because I felt that everything that needed saying was already said. I also didn't want to be quick to judge. Initially, I was mad just like everyone else. I'm a fairly forgiving person though, and I thought that if anyone could help him, it would be Ted.

Reading this letter, it's obvious that Zumbo's eyes have been opened. I forgive the guy. While what he did was blatantly wrong, I believe he has come around. I would share a campfire with him.

I can also appreciate people that act rather than talk. My donation to CCRKBA has been sent in.

Ed

This guy has over 1,100 posts on THR, but was in no way an activist. Regardless of what the Brady Bunch et al. does with this incident, the net result will be positive for the gun-rights side, I believe.

Darkness: The New Enlightenment.

James Lileks writes another spot-on essay. His Newhouse column for today, Another Empty Symbolic Gesture is eminently quotable, but I'll give you just a little bit, and a visual aid:

There's also a curious form of self-loathing involved in the lights-off movement, a revolutionary's hatred of the old order's glories. Once the bright lights of a city stood as a sign of civilization, a candle that cast out the night and brought the boon of Prometheus to every humble shack; now darkness is a sign of enlightenment. The sensitive soul who feels the planet's ceaseless shrieks in all his various chakras is supposed to feel relief when the lights go off, as if darkness is aloe on a burn.

Why, look at those satellite photos of North Korea at night. State control of energy usage, no industry, no cars, no messy pointless "freedom'' to hurt our one and only Mother. Seen from above, it's utterly dark.

They're years ahead of the rest of us.

Go. Read.

Edited to add:

I can't explain exactly why, but I was perusing movie critic Roger Ebert's web page and found his list of "Four Star Movies from 2006". Among his list? An Inconvenient Truth. Interest piqued, I read the review. The last line is the kicker:

I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth." I went around the house turning off the lights.

I think Billy Beck's use of the term "Endarkenment" has taken on a whole new and literal meaning.

Dred Scott and Legislating from the Bench.

The Legal Times blog notes that today is the 150th anniversary of the most-highly-reviled Dred Scott decision - the "match that ignited the civil war." I left a comment there, which I immediately regretted - to wit:

Chief Justice Taney reached a deplorable conclusion, but he did it based on a flawless understanding of the law as it stood, and of the meaning and intent of the Bill of Rights. The Justice wrote that blacks - free or slave - could not be citizens because:

"For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State."

He was right - they would. Faced with decades of precedent, regardless of his personal opinion (and that of six other Justices) he didn't have a lot of choice (though he far overstepped what was legally necessary.)

But upon passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments after a bloody war over just who was and wasn't a citizen, the Supreme Court saw to it that those privileges and immunities remained restricted from blacks, and later, anyone else the majority felt necessary.

Say what you will about the decision, Chief Justice Taney declined to "legislate from the Bench" in 1857. Chief Justice Waite in 1875 took it upon himself to do that in U.S. v Cruikshank.

(Added emphasis - the LTB doesn't allow HTML).

That's what I wrote, but it is not precisely the case. Taney did indeed "legislate from the bench" - just not in a direction modern America would support, nor many of his contemporaries. As I did manage to note, the Chief Justice far overstepped what was legally necessary - or justifiable. And I should have noted that excess more explicitly in my comment. Mea culpa.

Taney was a product of his era, and, I believe it has been well proven, a great supporter of the institution of slavery at least in the latter part of his life. Given this, his decision was not surprising. But the point of my comment wasn't that Taney went too far - that's a given - it was that the main portion of the decision, the conclusion that blacks could not be given the "privileges and immunities of citizens," was pre-ordained by stare decisis. That to find any other way on that point would also have been to "legislate from the bench."

And here I'd like to argue once again that this is the purpose of having a Supreme Court. As I noted in Game Over, Man. Game Over, our legal system is constrained by the philosophy of stare decisis. As Mike from the now apparently defunct Feces Flinging Monkey put it:

(T)he future of our freedom ultimately rests with the court's willingness to periodically reexamine the law. Lawmakers, and law enforcers, will always push the limits, and they will always win occasional gains. If the court is unwilling to revisit these issues over time and correct the damage done, then it's "game over" no matter what we do. This makes it a little easier for me to accept changes in the law where the cost is low and the benefits are significant. If I can't count on an occasional review, then the game is already lost.

But we hardly ever get that review - "periodic" or otherwise. In my piece But it has to be a heap, now, I quoted Webster's definition of stare decisis:

(A) doctrine or policy of following rules or principles laid down in previous judicial decisions unless they contravene the ordinary principles of justice

And I quoted extensively from Julian Fisher's Reason Online essay A Heap of Precedents: Slippery slopes, stare decisis, and popular opinion. Sanchez makes essentially the same argument:

There's a famous philosophical puzzle, originally attributed to Eubulides of Miletus, known as the sorites paradox or heaps problem. It goes like this: Two or three grains of sand obviously don't constitute a "heap" of sand. And it seems absurd to suppose that adding a single grain of sand could turn something that wasn't a heap into a heap. But apply that logic repeatedly as you add one grain after another, and you're pushed to the equally absurd conclusion that 100,000 grains aren't a heap either. (Alternatively, you can run the logic in the other direction and prove that three grains of sand are a heap.)

It's not a terribly deep puzzle, of course: It simply illustrates that some of our everyday concepts, like that of a heap, are vague or fuzzy, not susceptible to such precise definition. Try to define such concepts in too much detail and absurdity results.

The problem is, concepts like "interstate commerce," "public use," "unreasonable search," and "cruel and unusual" are similarly fuzzy. And stare decisis, the principle that cases are to be decided by reference to previous rulings, means that the Court's interpretation of those rulings looks an awful lot like a process of adding one grain at a time without ever arriving at an unconstitutional heap—an instance of what law professor Eugene Volokh has called an "attitude altering slippery slope." Jurisprudence is all about distinguishing cases, explaining why some legal principle applies in situation A, but not in apparently similar situation B. But if the grains are fine enough—the differences from case to case sufficiently subtle—plausible distinctions become harder to find.

Sanchez concludes his piece:

Stare decisis is an important guarantor of stability in legal rules: By insisting on like treatment of like cases, it provides people with a more detailed sense of when they're engaged in constitutionally protected conduct than the stripped-down language of the Constitution alone ever could. But legal rules, to be legitimate, should also reflect a shared public understanding. That's not to say the polls must vindicate each particular court ruling. But when stability begins to undermine the public's sense that they understand the most fundamental rules by which they're governed, it's a sign that jurists need to be willing to step back and see the heap.

I concluded Game Over, Man thus:

Mike Spenis said "the future of our freedom ultimately rests with the court's willingness to periodically reexamine the law," but the evidence is plain that the courts will not do that. They will use obviously flawed precedent so long as it "comports especially well with our notions of good social policy." And even if it doesn't, the courts will often bow, as Kozinski does here, to precedent they abhor. We depend upon the honor and intellectual honesty of the judges who make up the Justice system, yet it seems that those who are truly honest and honorable are outnumbered by those who are "willing to bury language that is incontrovertibly there." The honest and honorable ones abide, under the rule of law, by precedent that is otherwise insupportable. The middling honest ones, the ones Justice Brandeis labled as "men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding" "build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text." And those decisions stand, without review, periodic or otherwise, to serve as the next step down the road to Hell.

So "legislating from the bench" has its place, but what is that place?

Sanchez says it's "when stability begins to undermine the public's sense that they understand the most fundamental rules by which they're governed." Mike says it's when enough damage has been done by the forces that constantly push the limits of what's legal. In other words, it's a judgement call. Like it or not, that power has been placed in the hands of nine un-elected judges.

No one (today) objects to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision overturning decades of "separate but equal" precedent, but that was clearly "legislating from the bench." Great howls of outrage and peals of glee resulted from Roe v. Wade, but that too was "legislating from the bench" as defined as violating stare decisis.

So when is "legislating from the bench" valid, and when not?

I would argue that two conditions must be met. First, it can and should only be done by the Supreme Court. To bestow that power on lower courts invites, if not anarchy, then disrespect for law by the citizenry. Second, any decision that violates stare decisis must be done in order to broaden individual rights and freedoms - the "privileges and immunities" of citizens - that have been improperly restricted by decades of grain-upon-grain infringement.

Someone has to have the power to say "That's a heap," and knock it down.

In Dred Scott the court was in a position to say that nearly a hundred years of law was wrong, because it denied "the privileges and immunities" of citizens to free blacks, but it did not. Instead the decision (like slavery itself) "contravene(d) the ordinary principles of justice." Brown v Board of Education restored some of those principles. Roe established a set of rules that I think straddled the dichotomy between the rights of women and the rights of the fetus, but the Doe v Bolton decision - handed down at the same time and almost never mentioned - destroyed those rules, and contravened the principles of justice.

The problem is, this method is messy. Stare decisis is neat and simple. Good decisions do get made, but even good decisions can have bad unintended consequences. It's a positive feedback loop in which a little garbage in creates ever greater garbage out. There is no established mechanism for "periodically reexamining the law," and that is a major flaw in the system.

Dred Scott was an understandable decision given the era and the then "shared public understanding" - but the end result was war. Had the Supreme Court of that time been made up of radicals and overturned slavery that decision would have almost definitely also resulted in war. Was there some middle ground that would have satisfied both sides? In my opinion, no. But if you are going to make a decision upon which the rights of citizens depends, I'd prefer it if the Supreme Court of the land decided in favor of expanding those rights, rather than restricting them even further. We depend on those nine un-elected judges to protect our liberty against infringement by ever-encroaching government power.

How do you think they're doing?

I Finally Got a Safe.

I've had a cheap-assed Stack-On gun cabinet for a while, but my collection overflowed its capacity even before my father-in-law sent his guns over here. So, for my birthday (using some of our non-interest-bearing 2006 payroll savings plan) I went out tonight and bought a gun safe. It's this one, the TG33F model, only I bought it from Sportsman's Warehouse so it carries a "Yukon Gold" nameplate, and it's black. I was going to get the smaller version, but my wife said "Get the bigger one. You'll fill it up eventually."

I love my wife.

Now I just have to figure out how to get a 675lb. safe from the store to the house, and then into the house.

I'm Sorry the Lesson Cost You So Much, Mr. Zumbo

(Via Uncle)

Jim Zumbo has written an epistle concerning the Second Amendment and his fateful post. I think he really does get it now. As he said,

If I ever, in my wildest dreams, thought the words I had written would bring the validity of the Second Amendment into question, I assure you I never would have touched my fingers to the keypad.

"(G)ame departments should ban them from the praries(sic) and woods"? I believe you, but dude, how tired were you?

I'm glad you understand. Now, would you please take some time and explain it - using small words - to the "many who understood and agreed with (your) original intent"? Because they obviously don't get it.

If New Jersey can legally proclaim a 17-shot Marlin Model 60 to be an "assault firearm," a "highly dangerous offensive weapon," then anything can be - and hunters and benchresters and clay shooters and the rest had better all figure that out.

Sorry, Been Out of Town.

On business. With no internet access. And now I've got to catch up around the house, and load some ammo for a range trip in a week or so. Plus I've got to catch up on my reading. Did we slavering hoarde of gun-nuts hound another innocent old man out of a job at the behest of the eeeeevil NRA yet? No one sent me any marching orders, and I'm feeling left out.

Another Case Study in Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Dan of Jackalope Pursuivant doesn't post much, but he does tell some interesting stories of his service in the National Park Service. Read his tale of an outspoken Lefty park visitor. He tells it well.

Historical Revisionism

(Or: Down the Memory Hole?)

I've been making the rounds of the internet, using Technorati and other tools to see what people on the other side are saying on about the Zumbo incident. Where comments are allowed, I've been putting in my 2¢. Well, I hit on a doozy. I left a comment. It started an exchange. But today that web page's spam filter decided that I was a spammer and wouldn't let me post. And this afternoon, my initial comment has vanished from the page!

Good thing I archived it, because I'm going to reproduce it here for posterity.

An American expat living in Korea runs a blog called The One With Aldacron. Apparently he's a "bright" - one of the more militant versions of Athiest (big "A"), and, of course, a Lefty.

And, of course, an expert on firearms and the Constitution. His post, Moron of the Week #4 I will leave to you to read (unless, of course, he revises or pulls it, whereupon I'll post a copy of it here), but hie thee yon and read it, then come back for the comment that mysteriously disappeared (but that he responds to in his first comment.)

Done? Good! Here's what I said:

“It’s utterly insane to hunt prairie dogs, or any animal, with a weapon made for war.”

Do you have any idea how ignorant that statement is? Every single bolt-action rifle is based on a design specifically made for war.

The “assault rifles” used to hunt prairie dogs and other varmints are as far-removed from the military version of the M16 as a Remington 700 is from a ‘98 Mauser - though I imagine you’ll still find a lot of modified ‘98 Mausers in the deer woods each season.

I’ve been following the commentary on this story around the blogosphere and the one constant is the staggering ignorance of the people opining on a topic they know absolutely nothing about - but who still feel completely justified in inflicting that ignorance on the general population.

“Typical American Ignorance”? I suggest you look in a mirror.

Now, if you’d care to discuss the actual meaning of the Constitution, drop me a note. You might have a lot to learn that will surprise the hell out of you.

Go read the rest of the thread. I had to change my email address for the spam filter to accept my last comment. It may well be my last there. It needn't be yours.

Edited to add: Dammit! He erased another comment that I didn't archive. I guess I was making too much sense.

I Understand Entirely...

Wedges and False Flags

See David Hardy's very important post on the ongoing fallout from the Zumbo incident, Falling for false flag operations.

This is something that all of us must combat.

Did You Hear That Gore Won an Oscar?.

I recorded his acceptance speech:

Better Late than Never

Via Joe Huffman, a London Sunday Herald op-ed that I found quite surprising. I'm going to copy the whole thing here for archival purposes without comment. (Yes, I know. Unusual for me.)

Dunblane made us all think about gun control … so what went wrong?
By Ian Bell

ALMOST 11 years now. Kids grow up, life changes, leaves rot on the branch, and all memories decay. Stuff happens. Almost 11 years ago, on the morning after, I told myself that I had sworn off the vampire habit. You know the sort of thing. Something vast and terrible and inexplicable happens. The journalist dusts down his purple prose and sets out, consciously and deliberately, to feel everyone's pain. Inexcusable, really.

For example: they gave me a prize for Dunblane. To this day, I have never understood why I am the only person I know who finds the fact unsettling. WH Auden, born a century ago last week, said famously that poetry makes nothing happen. He should have tried journalism.

Facts: In mid-March of 1996 Thomas Hamilton, 43, warped, morally crippled, dead in his soul, certainly disgusting, the suicide-in-waiting who should have done us all a favour in the privacy of his own nightmare, went into the precincts of Dunblane primary, and into the gym class, with all his precious sex-toy handguns.

He killed 16 infants, then their teacher, then himself. He accomplished all this with four weapons, in three short minutes. Lots of official things - never adequately explained, for my money - had gone wrong before the event. Somehow that ceased to be the point. Half the world was staggered, but Scotland went into a state of near-clinical shock. The human ability even to begin to pretend to comprehend was defeated.

All over the country, people did irrational things, knowing them to be irrational. They turned up at schools, 100 miles from the scene, just to convince themselves that their own infants were safe. They called home from work, or called people at work, simply to prove that sanity still prevailed. Many could not face the idea of the working day. Strangers in the street, caught unawares by the news, were in tears. If you happen to be too young to remember, trust this: I'm not making it up.

Explanation and analysis, journalism's default responses, were worse than pointless. Those rituals, too, seemed insulting. Joining the world's media on the streets of Dunblane to ask people "how they felt" was worse than ghoulish: I refused that request. To their credit, nobody pressed the point. There was still the usual column to be written, however.

In fact, over the days and weeks that followed, there was more than one. I allowed myself two simple, possibly simplistic, strategies. First, I was not ever going to attempt to "explain" Hamilton: the bereaved deserved better. Secondly, in my small way, I was going to take on anyone who failed to support the banning of handguns.

There was a lot of American comment, predictably, and much of it abusive. The clichés appeared as if by return of post. "Guns don't kill people," they wrote. "People kill people." So why - this struck me almost as the definition of self-evident - did Thomas Hamilton feel a need for four of the damnable things?

Then the Duke of Edinburgh, and the field sports people, and the target shooters entered the fray. The royal consort, with his usual sensitivity, expressed the view that things were getting out of hand, and that a more considered response was required. I can clobber royals in my sleep.

The most troubling questions came, instead, from those who answered my simplicities with one of their own. They didn't oppose a ban, as such. They merely wanted to know why I was so sure that legislation would work.

That seemed obvious. It even seemed faintly stupid to think otherwise. No guns, no gun-killings. Remove the threat: wasn't that one of the jobs of government?

Sceptics were more subtle than I allowed. What they meant was that it is easy to impose laws on the law-abiding. Criminals, by definition, don't take much interest in well-meaning legislation. If they chose to arm themselves while the rest of society was, in effect, disarming, outraged newspaper commentators and their quick fixes might merely make matters worse.

I'm still not convinced, or not entirely. A rueful young man in Los Angeles told me once that his city boasted more cars than people, and more guns than cars. "Current population?" he added. "Eleven million, give or take." To him, the notion of a country patrolled by unarmed police officers was a kind of fantastic dream. To him, equally, the fact that nice kids could lay hands on the family pistol - bought for "self-defence" - and die while simply messing around in the back yard was not an example to be envied, or copied.

"You know what guns do?" he asked. "They go off. You know what guns are for? To kill. That's their purpose. Only the rhetoric is harmless."

Back then, I believed every word. America had, and has, too many of the instruments that Thomas Hamilton found so alluring. Yet almost 11 years on, what do I read, and what do I say?

I read of three London teenagers murdered in the space of 11 days. I read of firearms "incidents" spreading like an epidemic across our cities. I read of Tony Blair holding a Downing Street summit on a crisis that seems - call me naive - a greater threat to many communities than any terrorism.

What I say then becomes obvious: my idea didn't work. In fact, I begin to thread certain fears together, like links in a chain. Here's one: if even London teenagers can provide themselves with the means to kill 15-year-old Billy Cox in his bedroom, guns have become commonplace, so commonplace that every would-be terrorist worth his salt must be armed to the teeth. Bans have failed utterly.

That's a nightmare for another day, however. We can worry about what might happen after we think of what is actually happening.

David Cameron's Tories argue the issue is societal, a problem of parenting and family breakdown. John Reid, home secretary, speaks of people "working together" for a gun-free world while he hints at new laws. Menzies Campbell, of the Liberals, says we need more and more effective policing.

Each of these opinions may have some value. I'd like to think so. Yet why do they sound like the words of men who have only the faintest idea of what life might be like in Harlesden or Moss Side? It is entirely proper to talk of youths who have become detached from society. You may, however, need to qualify the statement with a question: who is detached from whom?

A weapons fetish escalates for a fairly obvious reason. Many things may have changed since my working-class youth, but I am certain that one piece of logic persists. If he is armed, you had better be armed too. Knives become swords, swords become pistols. Status, respect and "security" follow. If you live. Having a father in the household, or access to a youth club, or hopes of a decent education can seem minor, by comparison, on a dark Saturday night.

Saying so solves nothing, obviously. Perhaps journalists, far less politicians, should make that confession now and then. We could all demand a better world - preferably by tomorrow lunchtime - but always bear our fallibility in mind. It goes back to the question I refused to attempt almost 11 years ago. If I could not explain Thomas Hamilton any more than I can explain the killers of Billy Cox, perhaps I have nothing useful to say about anyone's desire to kill.

I can guess, for all that, that there is something unreasonable, even bizarre, about declaring a youth crisis if teenagers are simply as we have made them. It's Tony Blair's fault, if you like. It's my doing, if you prefer. It's schools, or a lack of discipline, or insufficient policing, or new sets of laws, or just society.

If that last word still means anything, however, then we are all, in fact, culpable. Who turned Thomas Hamilton into a beast? God isn't talking. That leaves the rest of us. I cling, nevertheless, to one near-instinctive conclusion from 11 years ago. Guns breed guns. When they enter a society they multiply like a pestilence.

Let's concede that all the bans have failed. That doesn't mean we should also fail to ask a practical question. Britain has become a security state in recent years. Nobody strolls unmolested through customs these days. There are terrorist suspects, so they say, at every turn. So why, precisely, are handguns still getting into this country?

OK, one comment: Why are they getting into the country? Simple economics. Suppy and Demand. Same reason illicit drugs are getting in.

He doesn't quite get it, but at least he's finally asking the right questions.

And Now for Your Amusement: Deer Roping!

Stolen Taken from the Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries, & Parks message board, via Deer Camp Blog:

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that since they congregated at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away) that it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, who had seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes my deer showed up. 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it. It took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope with some dignity. A deer, no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I originally imagined. The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.

At that point I had lost my taste for corn fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death. I managed to get it lined up to back in between my truck and the feeder, a little trap I had set beforehand. Kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head.almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that when an animal like a horse strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond I devised a different strategy. I screamed like woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and three times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now when a deer paws at you and knocks you down it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was the co-op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking likeheaven. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling "what happened"

I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear. Not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer." I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there.

I asked him to call somebody to come get me. I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did.

Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could. I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking theheaven out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something. EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the co-op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider, a "city folk", I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering "there is the ding-butt that tried to rope the deer."

Now that's funny right there. I don't care who you are!

Petzal Logic

I don't know how accurate this is, but it's the closest I've seen to date to the whole Field & Stream piece by David E. Petzal from 1994. Taken from a comment at Petzal's last most recent blog post - read it and weep:

Field & Stream (West ed.), June 1994 v99 n2 p26(2)
Reveille. (gun control laws) David E. Petzal.
THE BUGLE CALL KNOWN AS REVEILLE IS A CHEERFUL, energetic tune that, when I was in the Army, few soldiers actually got to hear. The real reveille was something quite different; it consisted of the NCOIC (noncommissioned officer in charge) snapping on the overhead lights at 4:30 A.M. and slamming a sawed-off broom handle around the inside of a garbage can. That is about the least cheerful experience that you can have, but it wakes you up for fair, and brings you face to face with reality.
Real-world reveille came for gun owners this February in the form of a single sentence buried deep in the 1994 Federal Budget. On page 201 of that document, under the heading "Passing Effective Crime Control Legislation," there is this sentence: "The administration also supports a ban on semiautomatic firearms; limitations on access to handguns by juveniles; and the creation of a crime control fund to pay for eligible crime control initiatives."
The key phrase, the one that turns on the overhead lights and crashes the broom handle around in the GI can, is "a ban on semi-automatic firearms." Not "assault weapons," but semi-automatic firearms. All of them. It is simple English, and there is nothing else it can mean. It means all semi-autos.
It also means that the NRA has been right all along when it warned us that an "assault weapon" bill was only one of a series of steps in a much more ambitious plan to outlaw many types of firearms. If you would like to dismiss the NRA's warning as paranoid and hysterical, you must ignore the fact that the White House has put us on notice: All semi-autos are going to go if the Clinton Administration has its way.
In January, President Clinton included the following in his State of the Union Address to Congress:
"Hunters must always be free to hunt. Law-abiding adults should always be free to own guns and protect their homes. I respect that part of our culture. I grew up in it. . . . But I want to ask the sportsmen and others to join us in this campaign to stop gun violence. I say to you: I know you didn't create this problem, but we need your help to solve it. There is no sporting purpose on earth that should stop the United States Congress from banning assault weapons that out-gun police and cut down children."
Will the real Clinton policy please stand up? Before Congress and the United States, the President said he wants to get rid of assault weapons. In the Federal Budget, it's semi-automatic firearms. Which is the real agenda?
There are a couple of possibilities. One is that some overreaching functionary was confused by the terms "semi-automatic firearm" and "assault weapon" and assumed they were interchangeable. This is given support by Barry Toiv, a spokesman for the Office of Management and the Budget, who was quoted as follows in the March 14th edition of The Washington Times: "The language in the budget is a mistake. It made its way through without being fixed."

A more likely scenario is somewhat simpler. The Administration wants to ban semi-automatic firearms, judged the political climate to be favorable, and decided to put its intent on the public record, albeit not in a forthright manner.

Let us now consider the legislation submitted to Congress by Senator Diane Feinstein (D/CA). Amendment No. 1152 would, if ratified, be applied to the Omnibus Crime Bill (which was passed late in 1993 by the Senate), and appears to be the type of "reasonable" gun bill that "reasonable" gun owners should support. Amendment 1152 would ban, by name, a number of firearms (or duplicates of same) such as the Colt AR-15, MAC-10 and NRC-11, Galu, Uzi, Street Sweeper, and others of this ilk [e.g., the FN-FAL]. It would also ban guns by description; i.e., firearms that incorporate folding or telescoping stocks, flash suppressors, threaded muzzles, bayonet lugs, grenade launchers, and "conspicuous" pistol grips.
Also included are semi-auto shotguns with magazines that hold more than five rounds, and any large-capacity magazines (tubular magazines for .22 rimfires exempted), which means those that hold more than ten rounds.
The Feinstein Amendment would, upon passage, allow the present owners of proscribed guns to keep them, provided that they obtained and maintained Form 4473s documenting their ownership. However, no new guns of the types described could be bought, sold, or owned by civilians.
The Amendment contains a sunset clause, meaning that it expires after ten years. It also contains a lengthy list of firearms that are exempt. These guns include bolt, pump, and lever-actions, and many semi-automatic rifles and shotguns of the sporting variety.
If you are a gun owner who is looking for the middle ground, it is very hard to argue against legislation such as this. Senator Feinstein, it seems, has made every effort to prescribe "assault weapons" and protect "legitimate firearms."
So what's wrong with supporting--or at least not opposing--this amendment? Perhaps nothing--except that the reveille sounded by the 1994 Federal Budget warns us we can't think of Amendment 1152 as a final step. Anti-gunners see it as an interim measure, paving the way for much wider prohibitions. Sarah Brady, Senator Metzenbaum, and others, have been quite honest about what they have in mind. The Feinstein Amendment is, in their view, just one in a series of steps to outlaw other types of firearms. The next step, without doubt, is handguns. In the lengthy list of "legitimate" guns protected by Amendment 1152, not one handgun is mentioned.
There's more. President Clinton, in a lengthy interview in the December 9, 1993 issue of Rolling Stone was asked by national editor William Greider:
"Is it conceivable that the country. . . could entertain the possibility of banning handguns? Is that a cockamamie idea in your mind? Or is that in the future?"
President Clinton answered: "I don't think the American people are there right now [emphasis mine]. But with more than 200 million guns in circulation, we've got so much more to do on this issue before we reach that. I don't think that's an option now [emphasis mine]. But there are certain kinds of guns that can be banned and a lot of other reasonable regulations that can be imposed. The American people's attitudes are going to be shaped by whether things get better or worse."
You are at liberty to interpret this any way you wish. My interpretation is: "We haven't got the votes for a handgun ban right now. In the future, if I think the votes are there, well go for it."
Judging by the letters we get at Field & Stream, and the people I talk to within the firearms industry, there are many of us who would like to rid the United States of assault weapons. It is true that these weapons account for only a miniscule percentage of armed crime, but the crimes they are used in tend to be horrific.
The classic example of this is the schoolyard massacre in Stockton, California, in 1989, when a deranged man named Patrick Purdy used an AK-47 clone to kill five children and wound twenty-nine others [in fact, most were shot with Purdy's 15-shot, 9mm handgun]. The fact that Purdy was at liberty with a gun of any kind was due to a catastrophic failure of the California justice system, but the question we have to ask is, if Purdy had not had a thirty-shot semi-automatic rifle that was designed for the express purpose of taking human life, would the carnage have been so great?
Much is made about the difficulty involved in defining an "assault weapon." However, firearms such as the AK-47, AKM, Uzi, Street Sweeper, and others [like the FN-FAL] have two things in common: They are designed for killing people, and they enable a person who is unskilled in the use of firearms to do an extraordinary amount of damage in practically no time at all.
Assault weapons are designed to be produced quickly and cheaply, and in huge numbers. They are designed to operate under conditions that would destroy civilian small arms. They are designed to put out a high volume of fire with a high degree of controllability. It is these characteristics that prevent assault weapons from being us as anything but what they are. (The AR-15/M-16, and the M1A in modified form, are highly accurate, and have a legitimate place in organized target competition.) You can remove the flash suppressors and the bayonet lugs; you can change the shape of the stocks; you can sell "sporting" ammunition for them; but they remain guns for killing people.
Gun owners--all gun owners--pay a heavy price for having to defend the availability of these weapons. The American public--and the gun-owning public; especially the gun-owning public--would be better off without the hardcore military arms, which puts the average sportsman in a real dilemma. We have received a wake-up call that clearly warns us that gun ownership is under siege. On the other hand, the public at large has been sent another kind of reveille: that guns are the root of most present-day evil, and the NRA is somehow to blame for the guns.
MOST AMERICANS HAVE LITTLE FAITH IN THE promises that politicians make, and with reason. Most gun owners are uneasy about making concessions of any kind, and with reason. But it may be time to consider shifting from an absolute opposition to any ban on any guns to an effort to get lawmakers to include a guarantee that will safeguard our handguns, and other arms--something not subject to the whims of the BATF or the Secretary of the Treasury or Sarah Brady. If the Feinstein Amendment included a list of "protected" handguns, and did away with its prohibition on magazines that hold more than ten shots, that would be something for us to think about. If Senator Fienstein is willing to meet gun owners halfway, we should think about her amendment very hard indeed.
For at some point we must face the fact that an Uzi or an AKM or an Ak-47 should no more be generally available than a Claymore mine or a block of C4 explosive. It is time for these guns to be limited to people with Treasury Department licenses, just as with fully automatic arms. I doubt if anyone would suffer much without assault weapons. Surely, we will suffer with them.

(All bold is my emphasis.) Petzal's comment in that post:

As has been pointed out by those of you with long memories, I wrote a piece 13 years ago about the then-looming assault rifle ban. The story was unpopular with a lot of people, but nowhere in it did I endorse the ban, as some are claiming. I note that none of you have seen fit to haul up the many, many times I’ve said critical things about Senators Clinton, Schumer, Feinstein, and of course our beloved former President Bubba. But then it seems that most of you who are visiting here don't read this blog, or Field & Stream, or what I've written to defend the Second Amendment over the years.

Here’s some other relevant information: When I wrote it, black guns were not nearly as important a part of shooting as they are now.

My response:

"When I wrote it, black guns were not nearly as important a part of shooting as they are now."
Yet, had the gun-rights community backed down on the "evil black rifle" topic an inch, if they had, in fact, taken your advice and not paid the "heavy price for having to defend the availability of these weapons," they would not be as popular as they are today. They would not be the dog, rather than the tail. And your M1A would most probably be banned as well, with your evil "long-range sniper rifles" next up on the agenda.
How can a "gun guy" not get this?
We cannot be divided on this topic. The right to arms is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot birds or clay pigeons. It is the right TO ARMS. Defend THAT, and you get to keep your particular sport. Deny it, and risk losing all.
The Black Rifle people understand that. The Fudds for some reason don't.

No, Mr. Petzal, you didn't "endorse the ban" - you advocated "compromise" after explaining that we couldn't trust the gun ban crowd because they wanted everything. Frightened that you might lose your "sporting" semi-automatics, you were willing to give them half in the self-admittedly futile attempt to gain "a guarantee that will safeguard our handguns, and other arms". After all, you can't hunt with an "assault rifle," right?

Thank you Petzal Chamberlain for your attempt to secure "peace in our time."

But now, since we were not willing to "compromise" - and made that fact plain - the "Assault Weapons Ban" that your attitude helped pass has sunsetted and "black guns" are a far more important part of shooting world and the firearms industry than hunting rifles. And, subsequently, you've changed your words - but the tune remains the same.

Again I will quote master phrase-smith Tamara K:

Your attempt to throw me out of the sleigh, hoping that the wolves would be satisfied with my AR and would leave your precious bambi-zapper alone, is the most craven act of contemptible cowardice I've seen in a while.

Get over your stubbornness, and get your head out of your posterior.

Defend them ALL. Or LOSE them all, one little chunk at a time.

Even Neville supported Winston Churchill once reality was made obvious to him.

"More proof that anger makes you stupid."

That's the seventh comment on David E. Petzal's "last thing I’m going to say in this space about the Zumbo matter." My comment is #2.

I Love Being Right

As I noted in the first line of That Didn't Take Long,

I'm unfamiliar with the MySpace page ostensibly run for or by the Brady Campaign, but they glommed on to Jim Zumbo's article almost as rapidly as the gun community did.

I also noted in comments here and other places, that the author of that site seemed a little too stereotypical. In fact, at a post at Snowflakes in Hell I commented:

I’m not convinced that that MySpace page really is affiliated with the Brady Campaign. I can’t help but wonder if it’s run by someone trying to make the Brady Campaign look worse than it already does.

Later in that same post a Brady representative commented:

I can confirm that these statements were made by an impostor. I’m a spokesman for the Brady Campaign, and I know that none of us were involved in those postings. That’s not our statement, and it’s not our position.
Sebastian, you should have access to the email address I logged with WordPress, so you can verify that I am who I claim to be.

So the question remains: Is the MySpace poster serious, or is he just trying to make the Brady Bunch look bad?
The sad part is, it's impossible to tell, really. Good job, Sebastian!

Something Everyone Should Read

Michael S. Brown's Sept. 2000 essay, The Radicalization of America's Gun Culture. Excerpt:

Since the National Firearms Act was signed into law in 1934, the number of gun control laws at all levels of government have multiplied exponentially. So has the overall crime rate, which some argue is a direct result of gun control laws that discourage self-defense.

Although none of these laws reduced crime, each new law creates another way that a well intentioned gun owner can inadvertently end up in prison or ruined by legal costs. Some have been killed in raids by government agents. Much like laws passed to promote the failed war on drugs, each new gun law gives the police additional powers that threaten basic constitutional rights.

America's lawful gun owners are painfully aware of these facts. Since gun laws don't reduce crime, they wonder, what is the real purpose? This question has led to numerous theories that attempt to explain why the "ruling elite", which includes the media and many politicians, would want to eliminate civilian gun ownership in America. American gun owners feel as if they are being slowly crushed. One writer recently described this decades-long campaign as a slow motion hate crime.

Frustration has been building in the gun culture for thirty years and has been accelerating with the faster pace of anti-gun attacks and the dramatic improvement in communications. Stories of outrageous persecution by government agencies now circulate like wildfire via the internet. Anti-gun bills introduced in any legislature are instantly made known to millions. Gun owners know the major players in the anti-gun lobby as well as they know the villains in their favorite movies.

Read the whole thing. It is quite relevant to the current situation.

The Wedge Goes In Deeper

Without further ado, Field & Stream's David "The Gun Nut" E. Petzal's take on the Jim Zumbo fiasco:

In case you just emerged from a coma and have not heard, the shooting world is agog over a blog posted by Jim Zumbo, former contributing editor at Outdoor Life, over the weekend of February 17. In it, Jim stated that any semiauto rifle with an AR or AK prefix was a terrorist rifle, had no place in hunting, and should be outlawed for that purpose. Then, courtesy of the Internet and all its blogs and chatrooms, the roof fell in.

The speed with which Zumbomania spread, the number of comments it drew, and the rabid nature of same were a revelation. Overnight, this thing became as big as Janet Jackson's clothing failure or - dare I say it? - Britney Spears' shaved head. Jim Zumbo is now as employable as the Unabomber, and Sarah Brady will no doubt adopt his comments to her own gun-control purposes.

For which you will now make excuses. That speed frightened you, didn't it?

For the last several days I've been visiting all manner of blogs and chatrooms, which has reminded me of when I used to deliver used clothing to the local mental hospital. I've tried to make some sense of it all, but because the waters are still full of blood and body parts continue to rain from the sky, I haven't come up with any Great Truths. Lacking that, here are some Lesser Truths.

What Jim said was ill-considered. He's entitled to his beliefs, but when a writer of his stature comes out against black guns, it sure as hell does not help our cause.

Understatement #1. What he said was not only ill-considered, it was (to many of us) inexcusable. Which is what you're railing against here.

Even so, Jim made an immediate apology. He did not equivocate, or qualify, or make excuses. He acted like a gentleman and said he was wrong, and he was sorry. Apparently this is not enough anymore. We now live in the era of one strike and you're out.

Uh, no. As both I and Tom Gresham have noted (among myriad others lost in the cacophony of outrage), Jim's initial apology missed the point. And so have you.

To quote myself:

How about this, Jim? How about we educate the public (and other Elmer Fudds like you) about semi-automatic rifles? And how about you break your damned fingers for ever typing the word "BAN" in relationship to firearms you goddamned gun-bigot?

And Gresham:

Jim basically committed career suicide. In short, he wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life web site that he had just learned (while on a hunt) that some people use AR-15 rifles for hunting. He offered his thought that this was a bad image for hunters. Okay, that's his opinion. But, he went even further, calling for game departments to ban the use of these rifles for hunting. After crossing the line and calling for a banning of those guns for hunting, he firmly planted his foot on a land mine and called AR-15s "terrorist rifles." The explosion from that misstep was heard throughout the firearms industry.

His apology didn't address the points. He said "I'm sorry!" and "I'm a patriot!" but every apology so far has been of the order of "I didn't know so many people hunted with them!" As I said in my last piece:

The opinion I am left with is one that many, many people on many boards and in many comments have left - Zumbo just doesn't get it.

Gresham got it. Why haven't you?

For 40 years, Jim has been a spokesman and ambassador of good will for hunting. Through his tireless efforts as a teacher and lecturer on hunting and hunting skills, he has done more for the sport than any 250 of the yahoos who called for his blood.

Ever hear the expression "One 'Oh Shit!' cancels all 'Atta boy's!'"? That was a huge "Oh Shit!" And while I'm as interested in the preservation of the sport of hunting as the next guy, it seems that preservation of the right to keep and bear arms is a prerequisite, no? Unless you plan on hunting exclusively with a bow. Or a sharp, pointy stick.

Jim has paid dearly for what he said. He has lost his blog and his association with Remington. Cabela's has suspended its sponsorship of his TV show; and Outdoor Life has accepted his offer to sever ties. To all the chatroom heroes who made him unemployable, I have a word of warning: You've been swinging a two-edged sword. A United States in which someone can be ruined for voicing an unpopular opinion is a dangerous place. Today it was Jim's turn. Tomorrow it may be yours.

BZZZZT! I'm sorry, Dave, but that's the wrong answer! Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from its consequences. I could say something stupid tomorrow that might lose me my job. Therefore it's encumbent on me to control what I say. That's what's called a "market force," and it's not "censorship." Censorship is when the GOVERNMENT tells you what you can and can't say - at the point of a gun.

How long have you been a journalist again?

If Sarah Brady is smart - and she is very smart - she will comb through the same blogs and chatrooms I've been reading, excerpt some of the most vicious and foul-mouthed entries, print them up, and distribute them to Congress.

Wait, wait... Jim Zumbo should be allowed to say anything he wants without fear of consequence, but we hoi polloi, the non-gunwriters, the un-anointed, are required to shut up and take it because the consequences of our speech could be grave? Sorry, but the words of the "former contributing editor at Outdoor Life" - one of the "most well-respected outdoor writers" will carry far more weight with Congress than the rantings of we little people - and you know that. They already think we should be disarmed. Zumbo just told them that they're right. Frankly, I hope Ms. Brady does what you suggest. Congresscritters understand that we vote, and they know what one issue we vote on.

Then it will be interesting to see how the men and women who wrote that stuff enjoy seeing their efforts being put to use by every anti-gunner in America.

Sorry, David, but that falls totally flat.

Yes, a lot of people went overboard, but as I've commented several times, it's the end result of what Dr. Michael S. Brown once referred to as a "decades-long slow-motion hate crime" - the hatred of guns and gun owners by those outside our culture. It's wearing, and I'm not surprised that the patience of so many is wearing so obviously thin. Having someone inside that culture stab us in the back resulted in this outpouring of vitriol and invective. But try re-reading some of those forums and blogs. A lot of us had a lot to say about it that you obviously missed.

"ChrisH" wrote in a comment to Petzal's post:

First, Jim wrote what I'm sure a lot of folks think.

I'm sure they do. That's what's got to change. If the different factions of the shooting world don't figure that out, and soon, we might very well go the way of the British.

UPDATE, 2/23: David Codrea (and a lot of the commenters on Petzal's post) notes that David Petzal was a supporter of "advocat(ed) compromise" on the 1994 Clinton AWB:

Gun owners -- all gun owners -- pay a heavy price for having to defend the availability of these weapons," writes Petzal. "The American public -- and the gun-owning public; especially the gun-owning public -- would be better off without the hardcore military arms, which puts the average sportsman in a real dilemma" Petzal concludes by advocating compromise, something that Knox and other members of his regime say they will never accept.

This was when Field & Stream quite publicly separated itself from the National Rifle Association.

I can't say this any better than Tam did a couple of days ago when this whole thing first blew up:

Your attempt to throw me out of the sleigh, hoping that the wolves would be satisfied with my AR and would leave your precious bambi-zapper alone, is the most craven act of contemptible cowardice I've seen in a while.

That goes double for you, Mr. Petzal. "Gun Nut," my ass. RTWT (both pieces) if you haven't already.