2012 – Page 169 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The Ronulution

With the Iowa Caucuses well underway, I feel it’s time to weigh in a bit on the 2012 GOP primary race. I am mostly despondent, a state of which I am quite familiar with when it comes to GOP politics. But, but, RON PAUL!!! How could I possibly be despondent?

Sorry, never liked the guy. I don’t think he’s a good libertarian standard bearer. I share Ilya Somin’s view that Gary Johnson would have been a better candidate, from an ideological perspective. I share Professor Somin’s disdain for the now infamous Ron Paul Newsletters. Probably the best account that covers the topic of Ron Paul’s craptacular candidacy can be found over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

Clayton Cramer notes:

There is not even a pragmatic argument for refusing to condemn white supremacists–we are not talking about a significant fraction of American voters, even in the Deep South. For every white supremacist that might sit out the election if Ron Paul condemned their views, there would likely be a dozen voters who are charmed by Ron Paul’s blunt speaking and in love with his foreign policy approach who would be more inclined to vote for him. My guess is that Ron Paul is not as hostile to those offensive ideas as he pretends.

That disturbs me as well. Roger Simon thinks Paul’s actions border on blatant racism. I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far, but I’ve never gotten excited about Paul. Like many politicos, he strikes me as any other panderer, and he’s certainly not been above bringing in the pork for his district to stay elected. That certainly isn’t a mortal sin, in my view, being a politician, but a lot of folks seem to be convinced that he isn’t your ordinary politician. I am less convinced.

Paul needs to answer for the material in the newsletters. If it were me, I’d disown them all. I wouldn’t want that kind of support. But Paul has not done that. That tells me he’s not really any different than other politicians, and you don’t get to claim you’re my savior when that’s the case. So count me out as a fan of Ron Paul. I’m not going to endorse Mitt, by any means, at this stage in the game, but I’m not liking my alternatives.

Are These People Stupid?

You really have to wonder with some people. While the man who went on a rampage, killing some of his friends, then fled, and killed a park ranger, decided to save the taxpayers the cost of a trial, you still have people making dim witted statements as if the National Park rule allowing guns has anything to do with this:

Sunday’s fatal shooting of a Park Service ranger Margaret Anderson could have been prevented, said Bill Wade, a former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park, just outside Washington, D.C., who started his career as a professional ranger at Mount Rainier.

“The many congressmen and senators that voted for the legislation that allowed loaded weapons to be brought into the parks ought to be feeling pretty bad right now,” said Wade, whose term as chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees ended Dec. 31.

Didn’t this guy end up shooting the ranger in question when he tried to run a road block? Is Bill Wade so thick in the head that he actually thinks this guys as going to notice a “No guns allowed in the park” sign and turn around, or turn his gun over to the cops rather than shooting them?

This has nothing to do with the law that allows people to carry guns in a National Park, subject to state laws. This incident would have happened just as readily had the previous rule been in place. I don’ think this is a debatable point, and anyone who tries is either being deliberately deceitful, or is a cosmic fool.Â I will leave it to the reader to decide which is the case in regards to Bill Wade. Neither of the possibilities are commendable.

Protecting Technology

The Second Amendment is a bit unique among our constitutional rights. In order to protect some rights, our Constitution places obligations on the government, as is the case in Fifth Amendment, which requires to government to indict via grand jury, and the Sixth Amendment, which requires the government to provide “a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” The rest of the Amendments generally forbid the government from doing things, like infringing on speech, quartering troops, or inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. The Second is not different in this regard, but I’ve heard some of our opponents in the gun control movement try to argue the Second Amendment has to be a unique case because it protects dangerous objects, and no other amendment protects objects. In that context, I find this recent law review by Eugene Volokh interesting, in regards to what constitutes “the press.”

But other judges and scholarsâ€”including the Citizens United majority and Justice Brennanâ€”have argued that the â€œfreedom . . . of the pressâ€ does not protect the press-as-industry, but rather protects everyoneâ€™s use of the printing press (and its modern equivalents) as a technology. People or organizations who occasionally rent the technology, for instance by buying newspaper space, broadcast time, or the services of a printing company, are just as protected as newspaper publishers or broadcasters.

Professor Volokh’s review takes a look at early case law, and demonstrates that protection of the press as a technology is the predominant one in American jurisprudence. It is actually surprising how much the early media resembled what’s grown organically from the Internet.

But it shows that the Second Amendment is hardly unique among rights in protecting the right to own an object. Implicit in freedom of the press is the right to own one, or the modern equivalent, which would be a computer, and an Internet connection. Computers and Internet connections can certainly be subject to heinous abuses, such as distribution of child pornography. One could even imagine it possible to kill many people by hacking into the right public works systems and disrupting them.

Yet, in most cases, the Government is quite limited in how it can restrict access to the press. Could the government ban child molesters from owning a computer? From an Internet connection? Actually, this is an active issue, currently. But far from being an extreme point of view, it’s completely justifiable to question whether the government can require a license for owning a firearm, when it can do no such thing for a printing press or a computer. Could the government even subject computer buyers, or Internet subscribers, to an instant background check? That’s probably of dubious constitutionality. So why is it to radical to suggest guns be treated in the same manner? It is only radical because our opponents, who are extremists, say it is. But in the realm of constitutional law, it’s a legitimate question.

Down the Wikihole: The Photoplayer

After seeing a video on YouTube from a Facebook friend, I started doing some research into something called a Photoplayer. Apparently this is a one man orchestra that is a relic of the silent film era. This lead to looking at examples of this on YouTube, but the one that was the best was the one I saw on Facebook:

Looks like quite a lot of work, and also looks like a fun instrument to play. Apparently the instrument can be played live as well, without the use of a piano roll.

The NRA App

I’ve been bugging folks at NRA that they need to do apps for iOS and Android apps for a while now. Looks like they’ve gotten around to producing one. Essentially it acts as a portal to NRA News, ILA alerts, and a lot of NRA’s social media efforts. As a just out of the gate app, I’d give a B-. Some things I’d change:

Make a version that is iPad/Tablet enabled.
Allow live viewing of NRA News, though it may do that. I’ll have to see when the show rolls around. But judging from what I see now, it does not have such a feature.
Donate/Join/Vote/Contact should happen either in app, or go to highly mobile optimized sites. It looks fine from my iPad, but from my iPhone it’s not something that could be done easily.
It should be using iOS push to get critical time sensitive information out to members. Members have to approve this on their devices.
The “Near Me” feature is a good thing to have, and probably the best feature of the App, but the information provided is very raw. It needs a bit more refinement. For instance, when I search on clubs and associations, I get a lot of police clubs. Those aren’t relevant to me. Some of the information seems to be incomplete, such as local Friends of the NRA events, and I don’t see a complete list of matches in the area.
Rep Finder should also be under “Take Action”

In short, I think this is a good start, but it could be a lot better. In general, I feel the app could be better organized. It makes some assumptions that you understand how NRA is structured. For instance, the uninitiated aren’t going to know what “ILA Alerts” are, and that the NRA Blog is only run by a subset of NRA, and is generally non-political.

I’d think a lot bigger on an app than just to act as a portal for various efforts NRA is already doing. It’s essentially a portal, but I don’t really feel it’s engaging.

Love for the XD

I’m interested in the pollÂ linked over at Extrano’s Alley, askingÂ which gun Emily Miller, a Washington Times reporter who jumped through all the flaming hoops to get a gun in DC, should buy. One thing I can say for sure is that on the Internet, there a lot of fans of theÂ Hrvatski Samokres 2000, more widely known as the Springfield XD.

I’ve never really caught the XD fever. I’ve never seen what the advantage to an XD was over a Glock, except for being a little bit cheaper. When I’ve tried XDs, they feel pretty much the same, in terms of grip, as the Glock. They look like a Glock. And they have certainly borrowed some design features from the Glock.

But the Glock is much more widely issued both by major police departments and the militaries of several NATO members. This means parts are widely available, and the design has been proved by people who are hard on guns.

So what’s behind the XD love? Why would someone choose and XD over a Glock? Why would someone choose an XD over a Smith & Wesson M&P, which is seeing widespread adoption by major police departments?

Free Meredith Graves

By now you’ve all heard the story of the woman from Tennessee who made the unfortunate mistake of believing that New York City was part of America. I am late to this story, largely because I wanted to gauge the reaction, and think about how to use this story for the greater good. There’s now a Facebook group dedicated to freeing Meredith Graves. Amazingly, some New York politicians are speaking of changing the law:

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat whose district includes the 9/11 Memorial, wants to hold hearings on how New York City’s stringent gun laws are being enforced. Silver wants to find out if changes to the law need to be made.

We already have a proposed change to this law, and Mayor Mike is fighting it every step of the way. Perhaps a solution is to tell Hizzoner to withdraw his snout from other people’s business, and back off opposition to HR822. This problem will be easily remedied with HR822.

I think this woman is an excellent poster child for what’s wrong with how we’re treating a constitutional right in this country. We should rally behind her. It puts our opponents in the awkward position of having to explain how justice and public good are served by throwing a felony charge at a woman who is no threat to society. Their reaction will expose them for the extremists that they indeed are. Let us lead them there.

UPDATE: Over at NRO’s The Corner, Robert VerBruggen thinks this is a states rights issue. States rights is generally code word for states being able to flout their obligations under the 14th amendment not to “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.” So I strongly disagree. This is a federal issue and Congress is within its Section 5 powers to protect the exercise of this right from state and local interference.

UPDATE: Bloomberg libeled her by suggesting she had cocaine. According to Graves she had a crushed up aspirin in her purse she took for migraines. People like Bloomberg really shouldn’t be trusted to wield the power the voters have given them.

Even The British Papers are Noticing

A story about record gun sales, in the UK’s Daily Telegraph. The Brady folks are sticking with their story that gun ownership is really in decline. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, folks.

Shooting in Near Mount Rainer Kills Ranger

I’m sure our opponents are going to make hay out of this, but this guy isn’t looking to me like he’s the type that’s going to give a crap whether guns are allowed in National Parks or not. The ranger shot was a mother of two.