Timing Is Everything

 

There's a fresh new piece of anti-gun legislation being groomed for its prime-time appearance before a largely Democratic Congress.  It's called H.R.127 and it has all the elements of a gun-grabber's wet dream:

• universal background checks,
   
• psych evaluations on entire households,
   
• a ban on vast categories of heretofore-otherwise-lawful weapons,
   
• HUGE taxes and fees required for mere possession of what's left,
   
• mandatory periodic training,
   
• a publicly-accessible database of all gun owners (and their inventory?),
   
• and increases in the budget, authority, and power of the most corrupt of all corrupt federal bureaus and agencies, the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Totally unconstitutional, of course, but when has that ever stopped Congress?  Why is it unconstitutional, you ask?  Stop me if I get any of this wrong...

Rule #1 of 'jurisprudence' world-wide is that later law trumps earlier law.  A law passed today can be repealed by a law passed tomorrow.  That's so straight-forward it almost doesn't rate putting it down on paper.  Then

1. The fundamental axiom of the American System is that 'rights' are an endowment from God or Nature or some other metaphysical entity that is outside of and above government and, in fact, pre-exists government.
    
2. Governments do not have rights;  they have powers and authorities granted to them by we the people, from whom all such power originates ('the consent of the governed').
    
3. The vehicle for granting such powers and authorities is The U.S.Constitution.  The Constitution was ratified and came into force in 1789.
    
4. The Second Amendment, concerning the right of the people to keep and bear arms, was ratified in 1791, two years after the Constitution.
    
5. In 1934, and then again in 1968, Congress passed gun control laws, justifying them as part of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.
    
6. Both of these acts should be considered unconstitutional because the power to regulate interstate commerce was granted in Article I of the Constitution in 1789.  If those powers ever included authority over firearms and other weapons, that authority was revoked in 1791 with the passage of the Second Amendment.  Timing is everything when it comes to 'constitutionality'.
    
7. That 'fresh new piece of anti-gun legislation' being prepped in the House suffers from the same disability.

But the worst part of H.R.127 isn't that it's unconstitutional.  The worst part is that it will be impossible to comply with.  The monstrous cost of attempting to comply will price most poor or minority families out of the market or, alternatively, send millions of them to prison.  Clearly, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) either hasn't given this much thought or simply doesn't care that she has codified a brand new poll tax on many of her constituents.

The former marks her as more stupid than Maxine Watters;  the latter as more cruel than Bull Connor.

Keep up the evil work, Sheila.

 

My Favorite Piece of (Political) Poetry

 

That would, of course, be the gool ol' Declaration of Independence.  Thomas Jefferson is rightly honored for his masterful wordsmithing on the document that launched us down the path of nationhood.  Listen to the words, how they slip into the ears and then into the brain in such a way as to make us instinctively nod our heads in agreement:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Jefferson is saying "I know you think this is rash, but let us tell you why we think this is necessary" and then he starts laying out his case like a veteran prosecuting attorney:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This is the axiom of the American system:  we are all equal;  our rights come from God, not from the King or Parliament;  government exists for the primary purpose of seeing our rights are protected;  we create the government; it doesn't just magically appear;  when government screws up, it is up to us to decide that government has, in fact, screwed up,  and having made that determination, we get to choose how we shall change our government so that it actually fulfills its purpose.

When the Declaration was promulgated, this was outrageously bizarre to almost everyone involved in politics.  The people make decisions about their government?  Are you nuts?  What do ordinary people know about government?  Kings and Parliaments worldwide couldn't imagine where we had gotten such odd ideas.  (Actually, they could.  I'm just dramatizing.  John Locke's name was well known among the European intelligentsia, many of whom wished he had never been born.)

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

That is:  "We recognize that this sort of thing doesn't happen every day, and it shouldn't.  On the other hand, sometimes it becomes necessary."  He then begins an indictment of King George III, laying out the charges one-by-one.  I won't list them all, but there are a few that are worth pondering.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

Any student of American History will recognize echoes of these in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, ... solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States...  And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

They didn't really have to add that last part.  Everyone who inked their name below knew they were committing treason and that they were, indeed, pledging their lives.  Several of them, in fact, ended their lives and political careers destitute at the end of a British rope.

How many of us, I wonder, have the cojones they did?

 

Thoughts for Bill Of Rights Day, December 15th, 2013

 

Today, December 15th, is "Bill Of Rights Day", commemorating the date in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified.  Oddly, this commemorative day was first proclaimed on its 150th anniversary in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who, only second behind Abraham Lincoln, did the most to destroy the Bill of Rights.

The name "Bill of Rights" is itself something of a misnomer.  The Bill of Rights grants us no rights;  they merely codify and protect pre-existing rights:  "Congress shall make no law...", "...shall not be infringed", "...shall not be violated".  They are all prohibitions on actions the government might attempt.  The BoR simply says "thou shalt not".

Note, also, something else about those "rights" (actually, "those prohibitions"):  nowhere do any of them say "citizen", as in "the right of citizens shall not...".  The government is being told "don't do this to anybody", presumably even if they're French...  or Iraqi, even.  Given some of our Supreme Court's recent decisions relating to Guantanamo Bay, it appears those "learned justices" haven't actually read the thing they claim the authority to interpret.  (Not exactly a surprise, I know.)

It's said, and probably 'truthfully', that you can only have rights you are willing to demand.  When the police officer asks "Do you mind if I look around your car?" most of us, knowing our own innocence, respond "Sure, why not?"  If the police officer didn't need to ask, he wouldn't have.  This is your clue to decline the search (others by extension).

It is also said, absolutely truthfully, that you can only have those rights you're willing to let anyone exercise.  As soon as you say "I believe in the right to (here fill in a sample right), but..." you've lost it.  If you admit to circumstances where a right can be foreshortened, you've just burned the right down to the ground.  "IBITR of free speech but... you can't shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater."  Oops.  What do you shout when the theater is on fire?  "Free popcorn!" doesn't have quite the sense of urgency called for here.  The prohibition on causing panic in the theater is actually a prohibition on lying.  You can speak the truth freely;  you can't slander.  You can keep and bear arms;  you can't murder.  You have the right to do things you should; you never had a right to do things you shouldn't.  More precisely, you don't have any rights to harm others.  Seems somewhat "Golden Rule-ish", no?  Don't do things you wouldn't want others doing to you.  Makes sense to me.

 

In line with that and with yesterday's commemoration still firmly in mind, today is also "Guns Save Lives Day".

Some background:  back oh... twenty-five years or so ago, someone did a survey to find out how often honest, peaceable folk saved themselves from victimhood because they had a gun.  It wasn't a very rigorous study, so when the figure "2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGU) per year" was announced, everyone snickered.  Ridiculous!

The Clinton-era Justice Department did their own study, this one a little more rigidly controlled.  Their number was 800,000 DGU.

Even this number was too unbelevably high for some people, so a(n anti-gun) Harvard researcher by the name of Hemmenway did his own study, eliminating every instance that might be even-a-little-bit suspect.  Hemmenway eliminated every case where it wasn't certain that a life in danger had been saved.  Hemmenway's number was 80,000 DGU, and even Hemmenway wasn't happy.  When he compared his own pared-to-the-bone number against the 30,000 annual unlawful gun deaths (40% of which are suicides), even he had to admit that it was likely — verging on 'extremely likely' — that guns in the hands of law-abiding folk prevented more deaths than guns in the hands of criminals took — by a factor of 2.7 .

If you're not so anti-gun that you're willing to accept the anti-gun Clinton-era DOJ estimate, then for every person criminally killed each year, 27 violent crimes are prevented, in almost every case without a shot being fired:  "Get lost.  I have a gun and I'll use it."  Problem solved.  2,291 times a day.

The implications of this are important.  Some organizations (Moms Demand Action, Committee to Stop Gun Violence, etc.) would like to see us all disarmed, claiming that this would solve our national crime problem.  That DOJ study, and to a lesser extent the Hemmenway survey, say otherwise.  They say our national crime problem would be horrendous without all those guns in the hands of good people.  What sort of moron would want that?  What sort of evil ghoul would want that?  Not you, certainly.

Happy Bill-Of-Rights Day.  Guns Save Lives.

 

User Manual vs Requirements

 

In the IT world, we have a process.  When a user comes to us with a problem, we collect their requirements (what's wrong, how do they see it being 'fixed', how they wish to initiate the solution if it isn't something that has to happen all the time, etc.).  Armed with the requirements, we create a 'specification' or 'spec', then build and test the solution according to the spec, and lastly we create a user manual to instruct the user(s) how to operate the solution.  Sometimes the user manual precedes the spec, especially if the problem can be solved just with user education.

'Quality' we define as 'conformance to requirements'.  A quality solution to the users' problem(s) is that it matches very closely (ideally, 'exactly') to the requirements they set out in the requirements document.

Comes the day someone is looking at the code/program and scratches their head in wonderment ('what the heck were they thinking?'), one can always go back to the spec or the user requirements to find out what was originally intended.  As regards the user requirements document, there are two rules:

1. The user requirements are presumed to be definitive;
2. If the user requirements appear to be incorrect, refer to rule #1

The U.S. government is constructed somewhat along these lines, it turns out.  Our user manual, the instructions for use, are called 'The Constitution of the United States'.  The requirements document is called 'The Declaration of Independence'.  Whenever you suspect something is not working correctly, you can always refer back to the user requirements document to find out what was originally intended.  Sometimes when you do that you get a shock when you realize somebody reallyreally messed up.

The Declaration of Independence is structured into phases.  In the first phase, Jefferson and his colleagues wax philosophical about the nature of man and the nature of government and how the two interact.  It then goes on to list all the ways King George III's government fails to meet their expectations (fails at being a quality government).  It continues on with a catalogue of the ways the colonists have tried to remedy 'the problem' and ends by announcing that they see no other path than to upend the entire apple cart.

The most eloquent segment, pure political poetry when you come right down to it, is the front section where they lay out what a quality government looks like, feels like, smells like:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,  that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,  That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (emphasis mine)

Fairly radical requirements:  our government (according to our founding document) exists for no reason other than to secure our rights.  It's not there to protect us or to make sure we have a good education or decent dental care or a nourishing breakfast.  Its one-and-only function is to make sure our rights are protected.  When we discover our government doing things to minimize our rights (like the USA PATRIOT Act or indefinite detentions or feeling us up at the airport) we have the right to abolish that government — and we probably would if we weren't such sheep.  In fact, the requirements document goes on to say that abolition is actually our duty.

So, what shall we do with a government that actually spends our own money to prevent us traveling freely, and prevents us visiting National Parks which (presumably) we have already paid for and which are (presumably) our property?

Baaaaaaaa!

Humbug!

 

Thoughts on the Declaration of Independence

 

It's just past the 4th of July and I'm meditating on one of the most significant documents in our culture:  the Declaration of Independence.  The Declaration was not simply an astounding piece of prose, it was a breath-taking attack on everything that was then contained in the word 'government'.

At the time of the Declaration there was virtually no place on earth one could go to be FREE.  Except for 'the wilderness' the world was controlled by kings and emperors;  everyone else was 'a subject'.  In England, the Magna Carta provided something by way of protection for the common man against the king, but not much.  Your life was pretty much not your own to do with as you pleased.  Yes, of course, there were political philosophers of the liberal persuasion (John Locke among others) who held that man was not simply capable of self-government but entitled to it, owing allegiance to no one.  They, however, weren't in charge of things; the kings and emperors were.

So the sentiments in the Declaration truly were 'revolutionary', espousing some very out-of-the-mainstream ideas.  Our Founding Fathers wanted to start a fire and they did.  Consider:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident:  That all men are created equal;  that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;  that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;  that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;  that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..."

This is political arson:  the sole function of government is to secure the rights held by common men as their heritage from God  (or Nature or whatever externality doesn't offend your sensibilities);  these rights can't be taken away by any earthly power.  The king is employed by the people who consent to his governance!  When the government stops performing its function the people have the right to dump it.  In fact, it's a duty:  "...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government...".

The practical problem is:  how does one 'dump' a government the size of ours?  That's not a rhetorical question;  it needs an answer.  You can't simply vote the rascals out because the rascals count the votes.  Think:  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad;  the Iranians are just now discovering that it's a bad idea to leave control of the elections in the hands of the incumbents.

The revolutionaries knew how to dump a government;  they were just too gentlemanly to say it in blunt terms, possibly reasoning that if people couldn't figure it out for themselves it was probably too late anyway.  Besides, there was the example of the Revolutionary War itself.  You dump a government, in the extreme, by taking up arms.  You overthrow the government by force.  (Where is that House Un-American Activities Committee when you really need them?)

That, in effect, is what the Second Amendment is all about.  Why is the right of the people to keep and bear arms not to be infringed?  In the end it is so that we, the people, may overthrow the government we created...  by force when/if we need to.  That we can resort to force if things get really bad may be the reason we have not yet had to resort to force.  If we allow ourselves to be disarmed...  'for the children' or any other reason...  that option disappears and if things then get really bad, the only option left will be to 'grin and bear it'.

Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in his dissent in Silveira v Lockyer (2003):

"The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do.  But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late.  The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.  However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

The Constitution is the User's Manual for our government.  The specification document is the Declaration of Independence.  If something in the Constitution is unclear or hard to interpret, you go back to the 'spec' to find out what was intended.  When you start to fully appreciate the incendiary nature of our founding document, it gives you a funny feeling...  it gives me a funny feeling like looking over the edge of a very deep canyon.  Yeah, you know what I mean.