Dave Hardy takes a look at Arizona law, which makes it quite difficult to get someone committed involuntarily. I don’t think it should be easy; there needs to be due process to deprive someone of life, liberty or property under our system, but Arizona looks to make it nearly impossible.
Author: Sebastian
Two Ways This Affects Us
I think I am probably on safe ground arguing we can likely muster the political power necessary to kill any new gun control laws in Congress as a result of the Arizona tragedy. But I do think this will affect us in two fairly important ways:
- You can bet this has put guns front and center in the minds of the federal judiciary, and not in a good way. At best I would classify most federal judges as luke warm to the idea of gun rights, and probably more realistically the average would be mild hostility to the idea. This isn’t going to help us, going forward in the courts, that one of their own was shot by a nut.
- It probably just got harder to pass constitutional carry in more states. No politician is going to want a law he voted for under the microscope the next time some whack job goes off the deep end with a gun. It makes absolutely no different that those laws will do nothing to stop someone intent on murder, or that police will have zero ability to detect and stop preemptively. What matters is politicians don’t like feeling embarrassed in public.
Those are the two main effects this will have, as I see it. This hasn’t made the pendulum turn, I don’t think, but it has taken some of the wind out of our sails. Our opponents can probably obtain some sense of satisfaction that this has likely managed to slow our agenda. I guess the real question is, is that worth the lives of five people from their point of view?
I would encourage everyone to be on guard and communicating with lawmakers. If the pendulum doesn’t swing on this incident, it is only because we made it so.
Most Say Stricter Gun Laws Won’t Help
Despite Saturday’s tragedy, opposition to gun control is at a new high. Thirty-six percent (36%) say the United States needs stricter gun control laws, but 56% don’t share that belief and oppose stronger anti-gun laws. Previously, opposition to more gun control has ranged from a high of 51% in July of last year to a low of 37% in April 2007 following the killings at Virginia Tech.
We win. They lose.
Not so Fast
North Carolinians Against Gun Violence is trying to convince people that their laws would have stopped the Tucson Shooter. I’d be willing to bet money they would have issued. He could keep himself together long enough to plan, and acquire weapons. While North Carolina law enforcement do have discretion, my understanding is if you’re legally qualified to own a gun they will issue. This guy had nothing in his record that would have disqualified him.
Levy Throws Magazine Rights Under the Bus
Robert Levy, on the board of the Cato Institute, has said he sees no reason a magazine ban shouldn’t be constitutional. I appreciate what he did with funding Heller, but he’s not a gun guy, and should leave this stuff to organizations who have been doing this a while. To me it’s unacceptable from a libertarian standpoint to suggest liberty can be limited in this way, while the state is given an exemption to whatever ban might be proposed. It’s also hard to argue that greater than 10 round magazines, which are a common part of ordinary police equipment, and are equally popular among civilians, do not pass the “common use” test posited in Heller.
Tepid Applause?
Considering this is a Burbank California audience, I’m surprised Maher didn’t get a roar from the crowd, instead of sparse applause he had to encourage to try to not have his statement be pathetic:
It’s hard to imagine that even a few years ago this would have gotten such a tepid response. People tend to naturally want to get behind someone trying to pull them along with the crowd. You’d almost think Maher had made a vaguely inappropriate ethnic joke.
Our opponents have seriously overplayed their hand. We’re winning.
Dissolution of Community
Wretchard the Cat notes in the comments at the Belmont Club:
But back when society was more village-like, for want of a better term, people minded each other more. They knew when you were sick, physically or mentally, and other stuff besides. Nowadays that is less true. One of the prices that may have to be paid for privacy and the dissolution of community is that when you go nuts you are on your own. You face a cliff function with no gradient. One moment everybody’s humoring you. The next moment the SWAT team’s there.
It’s definitely less true. Growing up I knew all the neighbors. We even had neighbors over for dinner, to chat, and would go over there to play. I knew, for instance, about the neighbor next door who’s son had come down with mental illness, probably schizophrenia, though I never heard a diagnosis on that count. He was not a paranoid, I don’t think, and not a problem in the neighborhood. He struggled with it for several years until, unable to take it anymore, he blew a hole in his chest with his dad’s 12 gauge. Needless to say he did not survive.
I was also aware of the mental illness of another neighbor, who through drugs and alcohol, ended up getting hauled off by the police after shooting at Japanese planes he was certain were circling overhead. Somehow back then they managed to pull an armed man out of his attic without the use of a SWAT team too. The police knew of him before the incident, and were trying to convince the realtors that managed that house to evict the family, so they’d become someone else’s problem. Despite the availability of prosecuting him for buying guns illegally, to the best of my knowledge, that never happened. He did not talk to neighbors, except to remind them that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, just in case they weren’t aware, but the neighborhood certainly talked about him.
Today I barely know my neighbors. I know their names, but I don’t know their business, and they don’t know mine. Even as little as 20 years ago we knew our neighbor’s business, because everybody talked to each other. I’m not sure what happened, or what’s been happening, but I am as much a part of the phenomena as anyone else. It’s not like I’ve made an effort to get to know neighbors. Perhaps we put, for some reason, less value on the idea of neighborhood as we used to, at least beyond good school districts and stable housing values. Does moving next to someone mean you should be friends with them? What made that idea go away?
Bob Brady’s Free Speech Killing Bill
Summary of Pete King’s 1000 Yard Exclusion Rule
Very little says more about what’s wrong with our political class that the proposal by Rep. King to ban guns within 1000 feet of important government officials. Prof. Reynolds summarizes the stupidity of this idea.
Protecting America …
… from the horrors of chocolate. Thank god for those heros at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. What would we do without them?