Sloppy Seconds

A huge outcry (link not safe for sane people) was raised among the more extreme rightists in this country (i.e. any Republican) about Sonia Sotomayor's perceived dismissal of the "private ownership of guns

Ahem

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been called an "anti-gun radical" by some gun rights activists for joining an opinion this year that said the Second Amendment does not prevent state and local governments from restricting arms ownership.

But yesterday a panel of conservative luminaries on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reached the same conclusion. The unanimous ruling rejecting a challenge to Chicago's tough handgun law could complicate efforts to portray Sotomayor as a judicial activist trying to undermine the Supreme Court's landmark decision last year holding that the amendment protects the right to own a gun for self-defense.

The sticking point came on a case involving nunchuks in New York City. You may remember nunchuks as the weapon of choice for Bruce Lee: two sticks chained end to end that are very versatile for self-defense...or clocking the ever-living crap out of someone.

In that case, the defendant claimed that the SCOTUS decision in Heller v. District of Columbia, which was a minor landmark decision in that it affirmed, or more to the point, created (so much for lack of judicial activism) the absolute right of an individual to own firearms, implied that states and localities were forbidden from overriding the Second Amendment.

The Appeals Court (Second Circuit) on which Sotomayor sat decided, um, no. States and localities can override it at their pleasure, as many other precedents of the court had dictated. The distinction in Heller is that the District of Columbia is quasi-federal to begin with.

As you can imagine, the NRAites went ballistic...sorry...over this revelation! It was decided in committee that this was absolute proof that Obama was trying to take away their guns.

After the tin foil hats were cleaned and blocked...

Much ado about nothing, as it turns out. The case they cite that Sotomayor sat on, Maloney v. Cuomo, was specifically cited by the conservative Seventh Circuit Appeals Court yesterday in its decision.

As usual, conservatives cried their eyes out and went through boxes of tissues decrying the oppression of the white man.

Amazingly Laughable

I wonder sometimes if these folks even know how to tie their own shoelaces:

SMYRNA, Ga., Dec. 5 — In Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign to remove illegal guns from New York City’s streets, he sued 27 out-of-state gun dealerships last year over what he said were illegal sales. Most agreed to settle, while others chose to take their chances in court.

But here, in this town of 48,000 where Julia Roberts was born, the fight has become deeply personal. Jay Wallace, who owns Adventure Outdoors, one of the major gun distributors in the area and a defendant in one of the city’s lawsuits, is countersuing Mr. Bloomberg, alleging fraud, slander and libel. A well-known resident who has operated the business here for 31 years, Mr. Wallace has drummed up support with an online fund-raising campaign, a summertime rally that drew hundreds, and celebrity representation by a lawyer who is a former congressman, Bob Barr.

The Georgia courts have ruled that Mr. Wallace’s suit can proceed here, a decision Mr. Bloomberg’s lawyers have appealed in the hope of having it dismissed. Mr. Barr and his law partner, Ed Marger, said they expected some action on the matter within the next week.

(emphasis added) Well, now, Mr.. Wallace, those are some serious charges! I can't imagine, then, that they aren't true, that you didn't behave within the bounds of the law!

Um. Oops.

Mr. Bloomberg announced the first federal lawsuit, against 15 dealerships, with great fanfare and emotion at a City Hall news conference in May 2006, calling the gun shops “rogue dealers,” “the worst of the worst” and “a scourge on our society,” according to court filings. The second suit, against 12 dealerships, was announced last December. John Feinblatt, the city’s criminal justice coordinator — who is also named in Mr. Wallace’s libel suit — accused the dealerships of having “New Yorkers’ blood on their hands.”[...]

In a sting operation, the city sent teams of private investigators, usually a man and a woman, to five states. Posing as gun buyers, they went to stores whose guns had been linked to more than 500 crimes in New York City from 1994 to 2001.

Bloomberg administration officials said the investigators caught 27 dealerships allowing so-called straw purchases, in which one person submits to the required federal background check for a gun that is clearly to be used by someone else.

So, um, Jay...can I call you Jay?...what part of "not following Federal law and doing a thorough background check of the person actually buying the gun" has slandered you, son?

Jay, I don't have to say it. Let me have one of your customers say it: “You set up in business saying that you’re a responsible citizen, and part of being a responsible citizen is looking out for other citizens,” he said. “When you’re granted a license and the right to do business you have to take the good with the bad, so you have to take that responsibility to heart.”That means following the law. Period. Those laws are there to protect the innocent and punish the guilty and, guess what?, YOU'RE GUILTY! So sit down, shut up and write the nice mayor a check.

I have no real problem with guns, to be completely honest here. I think guns in an urban setting are idiotic, but as someone who knows what rural America can be like, calling a cop and waiting a half hour before a patrol car shows up, I understand the need for guns out in the sticks.

So I don't stand fore-square against guns, just so we're clear. I don't think most Americans need them, however, and the fact that there are nearly as many Americans as guns is a noxious one to me. I don't think guns deter crime anymore than a good strong lock does. And I don't think arming the citizenry is going to do even one bit of good, since it merely encourages people to actually go out and use those guns.

After all, if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail to you.

All that said, the underlying problem here is one of greed and discompassion for one's fellow man. If you don't care who the gun gets used on, you shouldn't be in the business of selling them. Period. End of story.

So, Mr. Wallace, close up your shop. There's ample evidence beyond this sting operation that your store is about as selective as a vending machine.

Balance Of Power

Sometimes, events happen that make you think there truly is some plan, be it divine or Bilderbergian, to the world. Disparate seeds of information that innocuously land nearly simultaneously, and you know that they came from the same fruit.

And sometimes, randomness prevails, and we struggle to form some basis of rationality out of it.

Ultimately, both of these scenarios collapse to a unifying theory of the world: control. There's an almost fracticality to our lives: the world sets limits to our achievements, and we set limits to a small part of the world's achievements. I can't fly on my own, but I can clear a forest and build a house.

In both instances, however, there's illusion at work. I can fly, if I get an assist from technology. Gravity still exerts influence, but it no longer controls me in this regard so long as I can keep my airplane up.

Likewise, I have to mow my lawn and weed & clear brush often, or my house will eventually be reclaimed by the forest. Not in my lifetime, of course, but the world operates on time scales that you and I cannot begin to imagine.

This is the ultimate fantasy for an intellectual being like a human, however, that there are controlling forces at work in some respect that have power over the entire world. We seek order where there is chaos, and we find it, because that chaos holds still for an infinitesimal moment on its scale, but for an entire lifetime or life of a civilization on ours. We build cities on multiple fractures in the earth's crust, complacent in the knowledge that it "can never happen here".

But it has. And it will. We just haven't witnessed it. Moreover, there's little we can do to prevent it. This is how life is: it is aggressive, violent to the point of catastrophic. The world responds in kind. Eventually, random events occur that prove the theory of evolution, and a dominant species falls and a subordinate species arises.

God blessed us with short attention spans (and cursed me with a slightly longer one). A man is arrogant enough to believe that history began twenty minutes before he was born, and then he learns (one hopes) about people, civilizations, and societies that preceded him. Man as a whole is arrogant enough to believe that history started twenty minutes before the first man-ape swung down out of the trees (or Adam was created, if you believe that). Man as a whole, including most major religions, arrogantly believes we have some special purpose on this planet, that God or nature put us here for a reason.

The most arrogant belief Man has is that God put him in charge of the entire planet. God may have the werewithal to control the planet (omniscience and omnipotence are advantageous here), but he did not invest Man with that power, and nor has he given us the keys to attaining it.

Yet, we act as if we had them already.

All this is a prelude to my thoughts on the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday. Many have called for better control of guns. Many others still have said "if only guns were more widely available".

Both positions are wrong, of course, in the context of what I wrote above. There is no reason to believe that if the entire college campus was armed, that there wouldn't be 32 students dead this morning. Likewise, there's no reason to believe that, if every gun in Virginia was taken away Sunday, those kids wouldn't be dead anyway.

None. Any presumption otherwise is flawed by the fact that this played out the way it played out, but in a different world based on the additional rule that either side wants to impose on this scenario, it would have played out differently. If the entire campus was armed, for example, who's to say this gunman wouldn't simply have gathered a posse of friends and together, 32 people die? Similarly, in a world where guns were banned from campus...well, a bomb in a crowded gymnasium could easily kill 32 people. Same outcome, different initial conditions.

It's the illusion of control, and the obvious lack of it, that has people grasping for explanations to support their viewpoints.

A gun is the illusion of control. There's a great line in the movie Grand Canyon:

Simon: Look, I don't know nothing about you, you don't know nothing about me. I don't know if you're stupid, or some kind of genius. All I know is that I need to get out of here, and you got the gun. So I'm asking you for the second time, let me go my way here.

Gangbanger: I'm gonna grant you that favor, and I'm gonna expect you to remember it if we ever meet again. But tell me this, are you asking me as a sign of respect, or are you asking because I've got the gun?

Simon: Man, the world ain't supposed to work like this. I mean, maybe you don't know that yet. I'm supposed to be able to do my job without having to ask you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything is supposed to be different than it is.

Gangbanger: So what's your answer?

Simon: You ain't got the gun, we ain't having this conversation.

Gangbanger: That's what I thought, no gun, no respect. That's why I always got the gun.

And yet, that gangbanger has no control, because he can just as easily lose the gun as get it, and even having it, there are bigger guns out there just waiting to be trained on him. And bigger guns on them, and so on up the scale. Eventually, you reach the biggest gun, but so? That gun, too, can be lost.

Or Simon could decide, "You know what? Fuck it, I got a job to do, you want to shoot me, shoot me." Now the gun isn't control. If anything, it's just randomized the situation (if this had been a real life situation, of course. In the movies, Simon likely would get shot to advance the plot).

Essentially, tho, I suspect this is what was going through the gunman's head yesterday: he felt in control, and yet his actions tell us he was desperately out of control, to the point where he shot himself dead (at least that's the current version of events).

Likewise, our attempts to make sense of a senseless act are an illusion of control. None of us will ever know what went on in the gunman's head, so none of us will ever fully understand this horror. What demons lurked there? What pain, real or perceived, had he suffered?

We'll try to understand, because we must, because all the gun control in the world or for that matter, all the guns in the world, will not prevent a tragedy like this from happening again. We probably ought to replace the Second Amendment with a Second Suggestion, for all the good those legal guns have done and will do for this country.

Life is aggressive and violent, and will find a way to destroy what it has to destroy in order to create new life. And man is life, just as life is man. The difference is, in life itself, chaos creates a rearranged order.

Only man can destroy for the perverse pleasure of destroying. And we're armed to do it on mass scales

Virginia Tech
guns
violence

Why Rednecks Are Morons

Gun control is a touchy subject in America. While there is a case to be made for gun control in some parts of the country, there is a case to be made for gun ownership in other parts. I see both sides of this issue, since I have residences both in the most populated part of the nation, as well as in an area that could charitably be called "sparsely populated."

It takes a state trooper about 45 minutes to respond to a call in that area (I know, I've had to do it). In the city, I can count on a cop within a few minutes, usually.

Part of living in the city is understanding that, in dense populations, crime is more rampant, and guns are far more dangerous. Most big city police departments stand four-square behind gun control laws, and in the city, I sure do as well.

New York City has taken this one step further: knowing how hard it is to obtain a handgun in the city (or New York State, for that matter), it has taken the initiative to find out where the illegal guns used in crimes come from and to shut down the flow. Case in point:

The Republican mayor has sued 27 out-of-state gun dealers, alleging they sold firearms illegally to undercover private investigators conducting a sting operation for New York. City officials say the dealers have supplied hundreds of weapons used in New York City crimes. The lawsuits, which name dealers in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia, ask the court to require monitoring of the shops' sales.

Private investigators attempted "straw purchases" at about 45 dealers, in which one person fills out the legal forms and makes the purchase for someone else. The practice, prohibited by federal law, is typically used by those who can't own firearms, such as convicted felons.

Nine shops agreed to settle the case, and stop these phantom sales. Two shops were forced out of business by the legal bills they were running up.

However, some moron decided to fight back:

Through March 31, customers who spend $100 at either of Bob Moates' stores or Old Dominion Guns and Tackle in Danville are eligible to win a handgun or a rifle at an April 19 drawing. Among those ineligible to win, as per official rules: "Mayor Bloomberg and his immediate family members." Van Cleave said he came up with the idea to boost sales: The stores have paid thousands in legal fees.

In other words, not only are they operating illegally, according to Federal law, but they want to flout authority and flaunt their "independence" by mocking the law, and mocking Mayor Bloomberg. Rather than obey the law, and abide by the agreed-upon identification requirements, they'd prefer to see dead New Yorkers (and presumably, other Americans).

Sad, isn't it? Yet, I can almost guarantee you they'd be the first to appeal for Federal assistance should their own neighborhoods be threatened by some bizarre force of nature or man, say the military opening up a post, and exercising eminent domain to seize their gun shops.

Not, you know, that I'm suggesting a course of action for my two Senators and my Congresscritter. Far be it from me to suggest a demonstration of capitalism in action....

gun control