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Ink Up for Gun Rights!- A reprint of my blog from August 2013
I’ve been noticing that there are some militant gun owners who’ve chosen to get tattoos of the Second Amendment. This curious trend made me want to research exactly what these people thought they were accomplishing by doing so. On it’s face, it appears that they believe that, having read one sentence out of The Constitution, their brilliant legal minds were instantly able to deduce that all one needs to know are these 27 simple words regarding gun rights. As is quite typical of those who perform these simplistic and reductive acts, they should have read juuuuust a little further along, since there’s quite a bit more to the story.
Second Amendment: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The “well-regulated militia” part is the subject of great debate, with some asserting that it limits the right to bear arms only to a militia. We will not address that issue here because it is, admittedly, vague. I will assume that this amendment gives everyone the same rights, militia or not.
The second part, which says that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed, is the part that appears to be quite black and white,(aka Tattoo-worthy) with some believing that it settles the argument about gun rights. That would be true until you remember that the Constitution is not limited to the Second Amendment. There’s a few other words in there as well…
Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This amendment quite simply states that if the Constitution does not address an issue, then the states may do so. It is often ignored by those who are biased toward the Second Amendment, since it doesn’t serve their purposes. What a shocker.I guess it also doesn’t look as good scrawled across one’s back on a drawing that looks like aged parchment.
So, by simply reading just one more of the Amendments, we should understand why any state can pass laws to modify the Constitution, within the limits of the Tenth Amendment.
Below you will find the language of the State Constitutions of 8 states, which do, in fact, modify the Second Amendment to make it mean something quite different. This list is not comprehensive, only a sampling of the states that have chosen to modify the right to bear arms in their respective states.
I picked out these specific states because there are many, like Michigan and Alaska, among others, which do not modify the Second Amendment at all. In those states, there is no infringement whatsoever on your right to bear arms. In the states I’ve list below, however,(some will surprise you), there are quite specific, legal limitations on your right to bear arms.
On a side note, if anyone doubts the veracity of what is printed below, I got it directly from the NRA’s web site at http://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-laws.aspx. We all know that the NRA would never lie, so we’ll use their data to make our point.
Florida: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and of the lawful authority of the state shall not be infringed, except that the manner of bearing arms may be regulated by law.” (This basically says you can, unless we say you can’t).
Georgia: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne.” (Same restrictions as Florida. Yes you can, unless we change our minds).
Kentucky: “All men are by nature, free and equal, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned: … 7) the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and of the state, subject to the power of the general assembly to enact laws to prevent persons from carrying concealed weapons.” (If they can regulate concealed weapons, they can regulate all weapons).
Missouri: “That the right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or when lawfully summoned in aid of the civil power, shall not be questioned; but this shall not justify the wearing of concealed weapons.” (Same as Kentucky).
Oklahoma: “The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power, when thereunto legally summoned, shall never be prohibited, but nothing herein contained shall prevent the legislature from regulating the carrying of weapons.” (The legislature can regulate, which is basically saying that the legislature can “infringe”).
Tennessee: That the citizens of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defense; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime.” (Once again, if that “regulation” lessens anyone’s right, then it is “infringement” and is apparently legal in Tennessee of all places).
Texas: “Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defense of himself or the State; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime” (Who would have thought that Texas can decide when you can or can’t “wear” your arms).
Utah: The individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the State as well as for other lawful purposes shall not be infringed; but nothing herein shall prevent the legislature from defining the lawful use of arms.” (Here they simply say that your rights will not be “infringed” but that the legislature gets to define just what “infringed” means).
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Interpret this as you will, but there is not a lot of road between “regulating” and “infringing”. You can debate this all you like, but the fact that some states limit your Second Amendment rights, and have for quite some time, proves, via statutory as well as case law, that they can.
For this reason, if you don’t want to look like an imbecile, it would be advisable that you know what you’re doing before you put ink to skin.
Unless looking like an imbecile is just how you roll…
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The weak can only protest and demonstrate. The powerful pass laws and buy bigger guns.
The horrific shooting of two cops in NYC last night will be addressed rapidly and powerfully, with the help of the wind-up-toy outrage machine of political punditry. Police chiefs will demand bigger guns, better vests and increased protection for their rank-and-file as a result of this dastardly act.
It is likely that many citizens will now buy more guns, (since that tends to be their reaction to virtually everything) not for the purpose of actually protecting themselves from some erstwhile threat, but rather because, in their heart of hearts, they like having lots of guns in case they see an excuse to kill one of these, err, ahh, thugs. (Wink, wink).
Although the killing of cops is certainly horrible, it is not worse than the killing of innocent, unarmed kids in the streets. In some ways, it’s not even equal.
Cops become cops voluntarily. They are highly trained and given expensive weaponry. They also get a decent paycheck. To suggest, as is often heard, that their sole purpose is to protect us, is a bit of an exaggeration. Cops become cops because they want to have the state-sanctioned power that comes with it. Where else, other than in a war zone, can you be issued tactical training, a badge and uniform, and lots and lots of weaponry with which to do your job? In what other profession can you simply order a citizen to do something at your discretion, and have the legal right to detain them, and in some cases, injure them if they refuse, as was done to Eric Garner with the choke-hold in NYC? Anyone who believes that this is not an important fringe benefit of being a cop is naïve at best and delusional at worst. If your only desire is to help people, you can just as easily become an EMT. Cops become cops for lots of other, rarely named reasons. One of them is power. That power comes with a price.
Cops know, from the day they leave the academy, that they will be targeted by certain people. This is why they are issued substantial weaponry and self-defense training. Unarmed black kids walking home from a high-school dance are not afforded the same protection. There is no institutionalized system of training innocent black kids to protect themselves from racist cops.
When someone walks up to a cop in a car and kills him, that person is demonstrating the lowest level of humanity there can be-the killing of innocents. But that is not worse than when a cop kills a kid-as some would have us believe. The life of a policeman or woman is not more valuable than a black teenager walking home with a bag of Skittles. They are equally valuable.
It is the situation in Ferguson and other places that will cause the militant crazies to come out and start killing cops. But how different is this than when the trailer-park commandos came out to defend Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay taxes on the government land he uses for free. Sure, no one got killed during that stand-off, but that is only because the US Marshals backed down in order to avoid bloodshed. These low-rent mouth-breathing gun lovers were openly threatening to kill government law enforcement officers over something that they believed in, AND NOT A SINGLE ONE WAS ARRESTED! How different are they from the maniacs who will now come out of the woodwork to kill cops in NYC over what they believe in? What’s the difference, other than the skin color of those with their fingers on the trigger?
The difference is that those protesting nationally are protesting the killing of innocent kids. The idiots on Cliven Bundy’s ranch were protesting the use of land to graze cattle. Does anyone sense a bit of a valuation problem here? To many in this country it is justified to use violence or the threat of violence to defend some ill-understood constitutional freedom. But when it comes to protesting the killing innocent black kids, well, for some reason that just doesn’t rise to the same level, does it?
Those who do kill cops will justify their actions by citing all the innocents who are killed by cops, all those who are sent to the electric chair for crimes they didn’t commit and the humiliation via stop and frisk laws suffered by an oppressed group of people. That is not a justifiable excuse, but it is the excuse that they will use. And it is the killing of so many young black kids that is triggering it.
When an innocent person is killed by a cop, or a cop wannabe, the justification machine will come out in full force and display irrelevant facts, such as the fact that Travon Martin had smoked pot or that Michael Brown may have stolen a pack of cigars from a convenience store. They will also cite witnesses who testify in front of grand juries about Michael Brown’s stance when approaching the cop, only to have the prosecutor in the case admit that this particular witness was not even in the area when the shooting happened.
Those in charge will use this information to justify the actions of and exonerate the cops or other white citizens who killed these primarily black kids. But there is no quid pro quo. The families of these kids, as well as others, who live in their neighborhoods and are scared to walk around at night for fear of violence from cops, have no recourse other than to protest in the streets and, for this as well, they are vilified. Hate them because they’re black, and hate them more for protesting the fact that you hate them because they’re black.
The people who are killed by errant cops have no police union presidents to defend them. They can’t demand bigger guns or better bullet-proof vests to help protect them from the cops. Cops, on the other hand, have all these things available to them, and will use them. That’s for sure.
Amend the Ten Commandments
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The Zimmerman jury did the right thing. They took the case as presented and made a decision. Based on the information in the trial, I’m not sure if I wouldn’t have felt compelled to decide the same way. This was a hard case to prove, and the defense won. Finito…
The sadness, to me, is the fact that those who carry bibles in one hand and guns in the other, who fear their own shadows and see boogy-men and terrorists around every corner, don’t understand the damage being done to our morality.
It is time for an amendment, not to the Constitution, but to the Ten Commandments. I propose amending the Sixth Commandment to read:
“Thou shalt not kill. (Unless you are in fear of bodily injury, even if that fear is the result of your own actions. The only requirement is that you are scared of getting beaten up, even if you started it. Then its OK to kill)”.
At least then we’ll all know where we stand…
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Bill, George and standing your ground
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The real issue surrounding the Trayvon Martin case has been obfuscated by those who are convinced that this trial erupted out of something other than what it really did. Many are blaming that catch-all villain, “the media” for what some believe to be a routine murder (yes, we apparently have those) having been brought to national attention. Their memories and/or ability to think logically are apparently lacking.
This episode did not start with some local reporters looking for a news story with a racial tinge. This was not some black racist organization’s attempt at “’stirring the pot” once again with a made-up race-card event.
The reason this story is in the news is the fact that the chief of police in Sanford Florida, a city well-known for its racial intolerance, elected to let a shooter go free, and hoped no one would notice.
George Zimmerman, after being detained and questioned following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, was released, with no charges against him. Bill Lee, the Sanford police chief at the time, says that he did so due to a lack of evidence against George Zimmerman. Apparently a dead body and a smoking Kel Tec 9 is not enough evidence to arrest someone in Sanford, Florida.
Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, found out his son was dead when he went to the police department to file a missing person’s report. When he asked for the details of the event, he was informed that no charges have been filed against the shooter. His protests and demand to see the mayor went unanswered. He was told that the police chief made his decision based on his understanding of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
Tracy Martin and his ex-wife, Sabrina Fulton, hired a Tallahassee attorney, Ben Crump, who then proceeded to file complaints with the state Attorney General’s office, contact the media and set up on online petition to have Zimmerman arrested and brought to trial. Al Sharpton and other black leaders converged on Sanford, protesting and demanding only two things-arrest and trial. Nothing more.
To those of you who think that this is simply a “black thing”, of no real importance other than to those who use race as a weapon, you must realize that this media storm was caused by one event: A mother and father learning that their child had been gunned down, and the local police deciding, with no trial, that the shooter could just go home and forget the entire thing. It is Tracy Martin’s and Sabrina Fulton’s love for their teenaged son, and their refusal to accept his death with no explanation that is causing this firestorm, as it should have.
Whether George Zimmerman acted within his rights that night will be decided by a jury, again, as it should. Whatever their decision is, we will have to accept it, irrespective of whether or not we agree. But that’s all Trayvon’s parents wanted. It was their unwillingness to go away quietly that made it happen.
No matter what the outcome, every parent should be inspired by the willingness of Tracy Martin and Sabrina Fulton to invert every aspect of their lives to ensure that their boy gets justice. They have missed months of work, their income has dropped to near zero, and they have lived with death threats for over a year, to say nothing of having to relive the pain of the loss of their son by listening to a recording of his last seconds on earth, over and over.
Now, some will say that George Zimmerman’s life has not been a picnic either, and they’d be right. The difference is that George Zimmerman made a series of decisions that night for which he must answer. It was his actions that set this entire opera in motion.
Add to this the fact that Bill Lee admitted on the witness stand yesterday, in a teary-eyed confession, that George Zimmerman was HIS BEST FRIEND! The chief of police in the town where this occurred, the one who released George Zimmerman with no charges, cried over the fact that his friend was on trial for murder, yet apparently had no tears for the dead kid…
And some of you have the nerve to suggest that is was stirred up by attention getting news hounds?
Trayvon’s parents pulled no triggers. They attended no police training classes. They did not appoint themselves as neighborhood watch patrol. They didn’t study Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws in a college law enforcement course (Zimmerman got an A in that class.) They, and their son, had no control over what was to transpire that rainy night in February of 2012.
They were simply sitting at home watching TV when their son was taken from them, and they had the nerve to demand to know why.
I can only hope that my parents would have done the same for me.
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Hero, traitor, meaningless self-aggrandizer
This week’s epic political scandal seems to have been born by Edward Snowden, the Booz-Allen employee who allegedly released secret information that our government was conducting erstwhile surveillance of US citizens. Some claim he is a hero, in the vein of a Julian Assange or a Bradley Manning. Others compare him to Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame. In some circles, he is a traitor and should get 20 years-in the electric chair. Or worse.
Snowden is neither hero nor heretic. He is nothing more than a publicity-seeking would-be political martyr, revealing what he surreptitiously stole before fleeing to, and get this, China, in protest of government surveillance of its citizens. Yup, he went to China to protest that.
(Commence thoughtful pause)
Snowden, having recently made that all too common passage from deserved obscurity to partial notoriety, isn’t the problem. He serves as a mere symptom of something we’d rather not face.
The problem is the presumption, driven by years of common-law based interpretations of the Constitution, that we have a right to privacy. In reality, however, nuh-uh. We don’t.
Any Constitutional lawyer can tell you that there is no affirmative right to privacy anywhere in the Constitution. This “right” is based, firstly, on the 9th amendment, which effectually says that just because a right isn’t actually listed in the Constitution does not mean that it doesn’t exist. This is known in legal circles as the Penumbra, or a body of rights held to be guaranteed by implication in a civil constitution. It also stems from Olmstead v US in 1928, in which Justice Brandeis argued that the Framers of the Constitution had created a framework for the greatest right of all: “the right to be left alone.” These sentiments are also found in the 3rd amendment, which guarantees against soldiers being quartered in your home against your will, and the 4th, which protects you from illegal search and seizure of persons, papers, houses and effects.
Irrespective how you read it, this ostensible right to privacy was not baked into the Constitutional cake, even though the Framers certainly understood the word and its implications. The word privacy does not exist in the document. It was left out as a specific article or amendment because, in my estimation, the Framers wanted to leave our privacy open for interpretation by the government. And so they did.
And so, as of today, here is the state of your right to privacy:
Facial recognition technology rivals the accuracy of fingerprints in its ability to distinguish one person from another. DNA can pinpoint not only your genetic identity, but that of your ancestors. Google knows everything you’ve searched for in the last 10 years, Amazon knows what you bought, and Apple knows where you’ve been and whom you’ve spoken to. All of this information is in the same form, stored in the same format-a series of ones and zeros, stored on electronic media. It can be mined, interpreted and acted upon by whoever has the juice to do so. That “juice” can be legal authority or financial heft. And they don’t even need to ask our permission, since we’ll never know that it’s been done.
Yes folks, it’s time to get over it. Whatever privacy you believe that you are currently in possession of is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood government, and it can be retrieved, in full, at the drop of a pressure cooker bomb.
This truth has special significance since Americans decided en mass, soon after 9/11, that their government was supposed to know what every terrorist was thinking, everywhere in the world, all the time, lest we lose any more of those really expensive buildings. Well folks, since terrorists don’t usually identify themselves for us, we have to mine what everyone is doing in order to separate the good guys and the bad. If you don’t know what you should be listening to, you must listen to everything and then sort it out later.
Anyone with a computer can search to see how so many faulted Barack Obama for the Boston Bombing, claiming that he was failing in his role as über protector of the weak. They also complained, quite loudly, about leaks regarding the Bin Laden killing and intelligence we had received about North Korea’s nuclear program.
Just last summer, near billionaire, Congressman and accused arsonist (he settled with the insurance company) Darrell Issa was threatening the Whitehouse with even more investigations into their supposed failures in not stopping leaks to the media of secret information. The Fox “news” reporter, James Rosen, was attempting to interview high level informants who feed us information from North Korea, putting the lives of these informants, as well as American military personnel, at risk, simply to further his career. Yet it is these same people who do Casablanca-esque Captain Renault impersonations when they hear that our government is investigating news personnel to find the sources of those leaks.
We expect our government to keep us safe from those who would harm us, yet god forbid if they also happen to find out anything about the rest of us. We expect the government to know who the “terrorists” are, as distinguished from the rest of us, yet no one has found a way to distinguish them from us. Remember Timothy McVeigh? Well friends, no one is born a terrorist-that tends to happen later in life. And you can’t tell who is becoming one unless you listen to everyone, not just those with funny last names.
As long as we remain terrified of our neighbors, immigrants and anyone who subscribes to a different religion than we, you can forget about privacy. You don’t have any, and you’ll have less tomorrow. Edward Snowden simply told us what we should have already known, if only we had been paying attention.
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Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
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Do What I Say, Not What I Do
Watergate started with an illegal break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters by people working for Richard Nixon and ended up being covered up by President Nixon. This was an actual, illegal act, for which people went to jail. These are indisputable facts as admitted to by Nixon, not during his administration, but years later in an interview with David Frost.
This is falsely being compared to the current Associated Press and Benghazi scandal because certain political groups are desperate to find some way to negate their shame over Watergate. There is absolutely no similarity between them.
The Iran Contra scandal started with the illegal sale of arms to our ostensible enemy, Iran, with the proceeds being used to illegally fund a war that the Congress had refused the President permission to fund, in Nicaragua. (The word Contra is what the rebels who we were supporting called themselves). Ronald Reagan, after repeatedly denying any knowledge, finally, under intense pressure, went on TV and still denied knowledge of it, but said that he takes “full responsibility for it”, yet never defined what “full responsibility” actually meant, since he never fired anyone, yet others under him went to jail. Years later, when asked about his role in this scandal, Vice President George HW Bush said he had been “out of the loop”. These facts are undisputed.
After the attacks on 9/11, George W Bush commented on more than one occasion that “no one could have foreseen the 9/11 attacks coming”, yet he was informed that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack the US from the air only 1 month before. He has never, to this day, accepted any responsibility for it. These facts are widely known and remain undisputed.
This is not even being mentioned by those feigning such outrage over Benghazi, since they don’t want anyone to notice the similarities with 9/11 and the fact that their outrage right after 9/11 was conspicuous by its absence.
In 2004, the IRS audited the NAACP after they had made some disparaging remarks about the George Bush record on race.
“We have received information that during your 2004 convention in Philadelphia, your organization distributed statements in opposition of George W. Bush for the office of presidency,” the IRS wrote in an audit notice that the group released to the media at the time. Even the Bush administration never disputed these facts.
This is NOT being compared to the current IRS scandal because these same political interests are hoping that you don’t know it happened. There are lots of similarities between the two, yet no Republicans have chosen to discuss it. None of them are saying that “This is the worse IRS scandal since the one under the Republican’s watch in 2004”, since it was not widely publicized and they’d prefer that it wasn’t.
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans after spending days in the Gulf of Mexico, heading right for that town. FEMA, the agency which exists solely for the purpose of defending us from natural disasters, (and has years of experience doing do) even with all this notice, failed miserably, causing the unnecessary death of hundreds of people of New Orleans.
This was compared to the Gulf Oil spill, which came without any warning and for which there was no government agency in place to deal with it, since it had never happened before, because certain political groups are desperate to find some way to negate their shame over Katrina. They were desperate to call it “Obama’s Katrina” simply because it happened in the same area of the country. They failed to realize that by calling it “Obama’s Katrina”, they were admitting what they had always denied, that Katrina was in fact a dismal Presidential failure, otherwise there’d be no reason to use the reference.
Republican Mark Sanford cheated on his wife, lied to his constituency about where he was when he went missing for 5 days, got caught, resigned from office in disgrace, yet was just elected a Congressman in his same home state of North Carolina. All is apparently forgiven, Republican Mark.
Democrat Anthony Weiner sends pictures of his covered penis to some women, was forced to resign and likely will never win in his current attempt to be Mayor of NY. No one wants anything to do with Democrat Anthony.
Republican David Vitter, Congressman from Louisiana, got caught with prostitutes, yet got re-elected to his seat just a year later. Hey, boys will be boys, right Republican Dave?
Democrat Eliot Spitzer does the same and is forced to resign from office. Democrat Eliot now works in TV News.
The only true, high level scandal that Republicans have been able to cobble together about Democrats after 1973 was Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal. That’s right, all they have been able to hang their respective hats on is when a Democrat lied about cheating on his wife, and they tried to hang him for it…and failed.
When a Democrat makes the slightest error, the Republicans always resurrect THEIR repeated scandals, illegal activities and bald-faced lies and try to say, “Hey, this is much, much, much worse than when we did it”, and yet, in all this time, they still haven’t found one that actually is.
The pattern here should be obvious. Republicans do the exact things of which they accuse Democrats, only more often and with more vigor, yet rely on the ignorance and forgetfulness of their constituency when they claim outrage over what Democrats do.
And their constituency never disappoints…
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Our Murderers are Better Than Your Murderers
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My father, an illegal immigrant from Greece, jumped ship from the Greek Merchant Marine sometime in the 1940s when that ship was docked in New York. He had grown up in a poor village, with no father, and a mother who could barely provide for him. He had apparently joined the Greek Merchant Marine as a way to escape the grinding poverty of his youth, and he wasn’t going to give up a free ride to America.
According to family lore, after entering in New York, he made his way to Chicago, where he gambled, drank and tom-catted around until, running out of money, he came back to New York. There he met my mother, became a citizen, raised a family of three boys, owned a small business for 40 years or so and passed away in the mid-1980s.
Oh, did I mention that my father hated immigrants?
He once saw some news footage of the Vietnamese boat people who escaped from the aftermath of the Vietnam War in small boats, landing on our shores in California. His comments included suggesting that we had enough immigrants here and that we don’t need any more.
In 1980, I was working for a car dealership in NJ which employed a man who had come to the United States in the manner described above (from Vietnam), and had gone through the work of attaining citizenship. His name was Nguyen Van Tram.
On the day after he finally took his oath of citizenship, we had a party for him at work, to help him celebrate his new identity as a American. On the TV in the break-room was film of the Mariel Boat Lift, where hundreds of Cubans were escaping their island for the same reason that the Vietnamese had left their country-an oppressive government and lack of basic freedom and opportunity.
Nguyen Van Tram, himself a desperate immigrant fewer than 6 years before, looked at the TV and, in the thickest of Vietnamese accents, proclaimed, “We gotta nuf immagrint awredy. We don need no mo’”.
For a nation that prides itself on being a melting pot, we, even those of us who are recent immigrants, for some reason all learn to hate immigrants.
A perfect example of this is the fact that many have been calling on the government to send the surviving Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Chechen immigrant who is responsible for the death of 3 people, including one child, to Guantanamo, labeling him an “enemy combatant”, and not entitled to hear his Miranda warnings. By the way, he became an American citizen in September of 2012.
Yet, for some reason, Timothy McVeigh, the confessed bomber of the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995 in which he killed 168 people, including many children, was arrested, tried, found guilty, and put to death by our existing criminal justice system with no complaints about military tribunals and the like.
James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, who killed 12 people in a movie theater, is somehow similarly expected to be tried in American courts, with no one screaming for him to be sent to Guantanamo as an enemy combatant.
We, as a people, are so enamored of ourselves; our specialness, our exceptionalism, our roles as chosen people, that we even place our mass murders, as long as they were born here, above mass murders from other countries!
Walt Kelly, who wrote the “Pogo” comic strip in the 1970s said it best in the strip from Earth Day in 1971, referring to the damage that we were doing to the earth, but it applies here as well. Pogo, looking at the havoc we have wreaked said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
I have no problem with patriotism, but when it extends to killers, I think it’s time to rewind and decide if all objectivity has left the room.
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The Right to Bear Hand Grenades
The gun issue has been obfuscated by the amateurish reading of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. For those who like to quote things that they have never actually read, here it is, in its entirety:
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”.
Please note, very carefully, that no-where in this Amendment does it use the word “citizen”. It uses only the word “people”. All you strict Constitutionalists please take note. The Framers certainly knew the difference between people and citizens, and purposely chose one word over the other. There is no citizenship test for gun ownership.
I’m not going to argue about the whole “militia” thing, because the wording is so vague that I won’t presume to know what the Framers meant when they wrote it. I am willing to accept that this amendment does in fact say that the government can’t “infringe” on the right of the people to bear arms. I have no problem conceding that that’s what the founding fathers intended when they wrote it.
The problem is that for those who like to quote this simple passage, the concept of judicial review seems to escape their thinking process.
In this same Constitution, the Supreme Court, as well as lower courts, has been given the power to interpret all law. In Article Three, Section 1, (Yes, there are parts to the Constitution that are not amendments) the founding fathers decided:
“The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish”.
In Section 2 of the same Article:
“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority”.
What this means, very simply, is that the authority of the Supreme Court and lesser courts to interpret laws came BEFORE the amendments, which would, in my mind, make that authority even more substantial and fundamental. It was one of the first things that the founding fathers decided was necessary in order to establish the country they were trying to form.
What is particularly distressing about all this is, first of all, gun proponents, when citing the Constitution (usually attempting to use it as some ersatz weapon of patriotism), seem to forget that, if applied simply as written, without the interpretation of the courts, the Constitution does not limit ANYONE from having any kinds of weapons. Strict reading of the Second Amendment does not limit what types of arms, or what types of people can own and use them.
So, for all the NewsMax Constitutional scholars out there, strict reading of the Second Amendment says that a convicted felon, released from prison yesterday on an armed robbery charge, can walk into a gun store today and order a dozen hand grenades. Or an AR 15. Or a rocket launcher. Or any other item that comes under the heading of “arms”, which are conspicuously undefined in the Constitution.
For those of you who are saying that I’m taking this argument to the level of ridiculousness for simple rhetorical purposes, I submit the following from Find Law, which is a web site for legal pros, published on April 11th, 2013.
“A New Orleans judge ruled last Thursday that a law forbidding felons from owning firearms infringes their rights to keep and bear arms”.
And so it begins, (commencing eye-rolling incredulity). Click here for the article
A judge in Louisiana is fanning the flames of these self-described Constitutionalists by giving them exactly what they have been demanding. He is using the Constitution, not as a living document, but as a dead piece of parchment, written in a time when “arms” constituted flint lock rifles, knives, swords and spears, and using it as prevailing, contemporary law 240 years later, when we have “arms” that can fire a 50 caliber bullet over a mile, at hundreds of rounds per minute, not to mention the aforementioned hand grenades and rocket launchers. He is similarly using this document to enable any murderer, robber, terrorist or child molester to have one.
To repeat. As of now, a Louisiana judge, interpreting the Constitution as it was written, without applying any of the judicial wisdom we’ve acquired in 240 years as a Republic, has advised anyone, citizen or not, felon or not, terrorist or not, anarchist or not that they may buy and use whatever weapons they can find, with no interference from the government of Louisiana, based on his reading of the US Constitution.
It is, according to this judge, their right to bear whatever arms they choose, irrespective of whom they are or what their intentions might be.
Even if they just feel like taking out a few six-year-olds on some bright, sunny morning.
After all, it’s right there in the Constitution-all you have to do is read it.
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Corporations, speech, boulders, streams.
Money, my friends, is, in fact, speech. Corporations are, in fact, persons. I know that this stance is not one that is considered populist, or popular, but I can’t get away from the fact that it is, whether we like it or not. And I can prove it to you.
If I am of a particular political persuasion, (and I am), then the first amendment protects my right to freedom of speech. To wit: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”
So, assuming that the above is accurate, (and it is), then you certainly wouldn’t try to stop me from printing a small, hand-printed newsletter (or an internationally distributed newspaper) in which I express my political opinion, including a preference for a candidate, would you?
If that newspaper became successful enough that, for financial reasons, I decided to incorporate, (as most newspapers have) then my right to continue to “speak” would not have changed. (If you disagree, you need to take issue with every single newspaper and news organization in the country, including the NY Times, Fox, CBS, etc.). The editorial page is my canvas and I can say whatever I want to say, and then depend on thousands of people to read it.
Keep in mind; we’re not talking about freedom of the press here. That is a different issue. We’re talking about whether a person loses his right to free speech just because he controls a wealthy corporation. He does not.
Now, let’s say I take my enormous wealth and buy some airtime on CBS. I pay $10 million for a ten-minute spot where I can expound on the virtues of my candidate while exposing that the opposition’s guy is an atheist, vegetarian, gay pornographer who kicks puppies and hates America. So far, there is nothing in the First Amendment that stops me, is there?
For those who like to ridicule the issue of a corporation having the same first amendment rights as a person, one must only understand that the people who make up that corporation do not give up their rights just because of their ostensible size and power, any more than 10,000 football fans give up their right to scream at the top of their lungs in favor of a team just because there are 10,000 of them. Because you are bigger, louder and more powerful and, yes, wealthier than me, does not mean you have to subordinate your rights to mine.
If I pool my money and buy a billboard that favors a candidate, or 50 billboards that say the same thing, you have no right to stop me just because you can’t afford a billboard. That’s not my problem nor does it limit my rights.
Yes my friends; money is speech. Corporations (within the framework of certain rights) are in-fact persons.
But, all is not lost my dear readers. As Meg Whitman, who spent $100 million of her own money to lose the California governor’s race, Sheldon Adelson, who spent about the same amount trying to defeat Barak Obama, and Karl Rove’s Super PAC, American Crossroads, who spent $90 million primarily failing to turn the Senate into a Republican majority will tell you, big, expensive speech isn’t necessarily more powerful speech.
The most powerful speech is pervasive, persuasive, and appeals to our sensibilities. And it usually comes from sources that have no monetary or other personal stake in the outcome. It comes from those of us who take the time to make a case which is embedded with logic, welcoming of scrutiny, and able to stand on its own, irrespective of those who try to suppress it with mere heft.
There is something called the Irresistible Force paradox, where an immovable object is faced by an irresistible force. The paradox lies in the question of which will prevail. Yet it is assumed to be a paradox only by those who don’t reason it out.
The immovable object may not want to move, and it is assumed that it must be moved in order for the irresistible force to win the contest. But that is small minded. Imagine an enormous bolder blocking a tiny stream. The water in the stream can’t move the boulder, but it is irresistible, hence, relentless, so it simply builds up enough water to go around the boulder.
The immovable objects are the bloated, self-assured big money interests which try to dominate politics. They can stay right where they are and remain immovable. The irresistible force is logic, ideas, and courage, and we can go in any direction we like.
And we will…
Drone Strikes and the Fourteenth Amendment
Recent obfuscations regarding so-called “drone” strikes on American citizens in other countries has caused me to break with my preference to not include anything remotely resembling political commentary in this blog. But I’m not completely abandoning that preference, since this will address the legal rather than the political justification for these actions.
We have those on one end claiming that the Constitution, via the Fourteen Amendment, requires that citizens of the United States receive what is referred to as “due process”. Some are referring to this as Judicial Review, which is typically used to describe when the Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress. This was first determined to be the right of the Supreme Court in a ruling by Chief Justice John Marshall as a result of Marbury vs Madison in 1803. It has nothing to do with due process rights afforded to individuals.
Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment is quoted here:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
I separated the two sentences which comprise this section in an effort to ensure that they are read as written; two separate sentences. The first sentence simply establishes the basis of citizenship and is pretty straightforward.
The second sentence, distinct from the first, describes what is referred to as the due process clause, explaining, quite specifically, that no state can abridge the rights of citizens, deprive any person life, liberty or property without this so-called due process, nor deny anyone within its jurisdiction equal protection.
Many are using this section of the Fourteenth Amendment to deny the President or the military the right to kill US citizens who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda or other quasi-military groups which have proclaimed a desire to kill Americans. They are using the premise that if these people are in fact citizens, they are somehow protected from being targeted without the judge, jury and other protections that the due process clause warrants.
But…the due process clause refers not to citizens, only to persons. It does not say that it is permissible to deny due process to non-citizens, protecting only citizens from deprivation of life, liberty and property. This right is specifically extended to all persons. Rest assured that the framers of the Constitution certainly knew, understood, and agonized over every single word in this document, so anyone who suggests that they had somehow intended this only for citizens needs to spend a little time reading the Federalist Papers to understand that every word used was the exact word intended. It covers not just citizens, but all persons.
So, since the due process clause, and its execution, has nothing to do with citizenship, the fact that these American members of Al Qaeda are citizens of the US is irrelevant and of no consequence. Citizens, according to the Constitution, have no more rights than non-citizens when it comes to due process.
If we, as a sovereign nation, claim the right to kill people in the name of protecting our country, (A.K.A. engaging in warfare), then citizenship is not something that we need to consider-ever.
This is not to say that so-called drone strikes are by necessity good or bad. Those are moral issues with which I will not contend in this format, but the premise that being an American somehow gives one immunity from being treated like an enemy when one proclaims his status as an enemy is non-sensical. If the military and its hierarchy determine that an individual hiding in a village in Yemen is a threat to us as a nation, then that hierarchy is morally bound to ensure that its judgment is sound and that we are not killing innocents by mistake. That obligation never ends, and we should judge the job those leaders do in that vein. If it turns out that they are killing the wrong people, they should be subject to the normal channels of investigation and potential penalties. That is not the issue here.
But to use this fraudulent argument that Americans are so special, regardless where we are or whether we’re aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at an American Blackhawk helicopter, that the military needs to hold a hearing in front of a judge to determine if our Fourteenth Amendment rights are being upheld is, on its face, imbecilic.
If a guy, even an American citizen, holds up a convenience store with a loaded .38, a cop is justified in shooting him to protect life and property without the benefit of due process. But according to these arguments, if that same guy is a member of a terrorist cell with designs on blowing up a US Navy vessel, these same rules somehow don’t apply. Yes, I certainly understand the distinction and legal separation between law enforcement and the military, just as I assume the reader understands the difference between an aircraft carrier and a 7-Eleven.
I am, generally, not a big fan of killing for any reason. But if we can legally justify killing criminals to prevent them from committing heinous acts, then the fact that the criminal is on foreign soil should not change the equation.
As long as nations justify institutionalized killing, (and they do), then the decision to commit that act of killing should be based on the actions of those targeted to be killed, not merely their citizenship.
Gerald (Jerry) Zezas 