A Myth For Justifying Regulation

When trying to push unconstitutional gun control legislation, it's common for advocates to perpetuate a myth that just won't seem to go away:

“Even the first amendment is regulated! You can't falsely yell “fire” in a theater!”

First off, lets ignore the fact that the 2^nd Amendment is already the most heavily regulated right we have.

But yes, the 1^st Amendment is regulated, but not in the way these folks claim it is. The truth can be summarized as “you don't have the right to victimize others”. For example, you cannot use free speech to commit libel, defamation, or perjury. You can, however, yell fire in a theater and it not be a crime. For it to be a crime, you would have to incite chaos or a disturbance where people, property, or business are harmed.

The point is that there are no words, terms, phrases, etc. that are illegal. It's someone/something being victimized that is... That does not justify banning specific firearms or making it nearly impossible to exercise your right to own or carry one. To draw a comparison to 1^st Amendment regulation, it would only justify limiting you from shooting an innocent person (already illegal!). The act of simply owning or carrying a firearm (of any type) does not have any negative affect on anyone or anything. It would require specific actions to do so.

Do Something(TM) vs. #DoSomething vs F@#$ing Doing Something

There's political motivation behind a lot of the debate and strategy … but do some solutions really need to be political or have an agenda?

-Do Something(TM): This is a political tactic, and a Twins of Liberty brainchild that acknowledges the guns rights community has not been proactive and been caught off-guard by the anti-rights movement. The idea is that gun control measures are emotionally driven by sensationalism in liberal media that's backed by billionaire Bloomberg, and people act as sheep by being coaxed into temporarily wanting this restriction placed in their lives. One of their motivators is the idea that they're the only ones offering a solution to an ongoing problem... which is kind of true, because all the guns rights community has offered is angry dissent, rather than their own ideas. Do Something(TM)'s premise is to offer legitimate alternatives in order to expand discussion beyond gun control measures. Turning it into a discussion counters the passionate wave the gun control movement relies on, and acts as a delay tactic for measures that are intended to strip us of our rights. It's a win-win approach that prevents stupid laws AND supports credible solutions.

-#DoSomething: An agenda, not a movement. This is not about actual solutions, but taking advantage of an opportunity granted by the death of children to pursue a gun ban. They don't care about actually protecting schools and decreasing violence. A real movement would be proposing a hundred valid solutions, yet they're only pursing one flawed idea. In fact, here's a good example of them ridiculing a perfectly legitimate security practice because it doesn't fit the narrative they're trying to produce - Texas official blames school shooting on too many exits and entrances. They took the Lt. Governor of Texas out of context, and made him sound like a complete fool. Controlled access points into buildings that can be monitored and have random bag searches is a well established practice in nearly every major office or government building. The idea of armed security or teachers is also treated as a joke, as if somehow active self-defense is more ridiculous than lying in a fetal position kissing your ass goodbye when faced with a threat. The fact they'll try to discredit valid solutions is proof of what they really care about.

One of the things that has me beating my head into the wall is “How do they get away with blocking actual solutions, yet still rally people under a #DoSomething banner?” The fact is, the typical liberal is not the intellectual that they pretend to be. They're very shallow and concerned about an image, which has to do with the fact that its majority is a younger demographic (I was even one of them before shifting towards libertarian ideology as I matured). They have excellent marketing that sells an image of being the good guys... being the ones with the only solution, being the ones that care, and holding a moral high ground. Image trumps actual logic and reason.

-F@#$ing Doing Something: This is one of my frustrations... We have easy ways to fix this. We could stop sensationalizing these actions in order to prevent copy cats that want to be immortalized. We could put School Resource Officers in every school, or train teachers that are willing to be armed if funding is an issue. But what about solutions that fall completely within the control of our own households?

I can't ignore the fact that irresponsible gun owners contribute to the problem. We're all quick to criticize someone in a picture that isn't practicing trigger discipline, or muzzling their friends in a video... but we don't say anything to those folks in our lives who we know keep a loaded gun in their closet that's accessible to a child. I don't care how well trained you THINK your children are, they shouldn't be anywhere near a gun without direct supervision. It's negligence to not lock up your firearms. Does punching in a digital combination add a few seconds to your reaction time for home defense? Sure. But is it logical to introduce a new threat in order to counter another? The added reaction time is worth the elimination of this realistic consequence. It's a fact accidents and many mass shootings could have been prevented with parents using a gun safe that their children don't have access to. F@#$ing do something to ensure it's not your child shooting up a school.

It's different after Santa Fe...

... because the parameters are all wrong. Look around. There are ten dead and ten injured from an attack on a school. The attacker unsuccessfully planted bombs and copied other Columbine elements. Yet the royal wedding is at the top of the headlines. The usual suspects have seemingly nothing to say. Some people in the gun rights crowd are trying to make hay out of Esquire going full gun grab, but come on, they were blatanly pro-repeal years ago.

After Parkland you couldn't go anywhere without hearing about it. Social media was full of people tripping over themselves to support confiscation afterwards.

This is the best evidence I've seen yet that:

• Gun grabbers don't cares about dead children unless the story is politcally convenient
• The media is required to make people care about the gun grabbing cause
• People are sheep with generally no opinions outside of those handed down from above
• Smoke screens work, doesn't matter what form they come in

Got any more of them royals to marry off?

The bar for labeling one's self a firearm "expert" is stunningly low

Fake firearms experts lurk in many forums and newspaper editorial sections. Here's one in the form of a likely unemployable liberal arts graduate at the time* former US Army Reserve Intel analyst. Mr. Diamond feels his unimpeachable credentials provide great sway to his opinion. Unfortunately, his opinion is that the dictatorial (and often completely asinine) rules imposed on military personnel are proof US firearms laws are not restrictive enough for civilians.

I am sure his shooting resume is quite impressive. After all, the annual** break from shuffling papers at a desk can't be his only firearms experience. Right? He seems pretty confident!

In a way, the number of fake firearms experts is a good thing. This is a sign that firearms are still ubiquitous enough that it's normal for many people to be exposed to them. A small percentage of those people will convince themselves this exposure makes them an expert. A small percentage of those fakes will write absurd articles for media editorial sections.

I just wish they'd shut up already.

* Yes, this is super snarky. Sorry, everyone I knew from my time as an officer candidate (see, I am an "expert" too!) that ended up in Intel had unemployable degrees in the civilian world. Imperfect sample size, but my blog.

** I am not sure what it is for the Army, only the Navy.

It's Time for Something(TM)

I believed in the power of doing something(TM) long before the inagural post to this blog. Given another mass shooting at a school, it's once again an opportune time to push something that won't hurt our constitutional rights as fast as we possibly can. What to do?

It's obvious this time. SRO's work. An SRO got the job done in Dixon, IL a few days ago. SROs have done the job in the past. There are plenty of reasons to believe an SRO or another good guy with a gun will successfully get the job done in the future.

I am ready to get behind a school security spending bill. I hardly care what's in it as long as it doesn't compromise our rights. It does need to provide cover to prevent the serious attempt at a gun grab that's mere hours away. Federal funding for SROs is a possibility.

There are about 98,271 schools in the United States. Assuming it costs about $100,000 a year to pay, equip, train, etc. an average law enforcement officer, we could place an officer in every school for about $9.8 billion. That's about 1.5% of the DoD budget proposed for 2019 earlier this year. Certainly Democrats can get behind spending a mere 1.5% of the DoD's budget to create 98,271 strong union jobs to protect the children?

If they poison it with a gun grab or refuse to play ball, there is plenty there to make hay with.

Not willing to go that far? Fine, provide a smaller pool of funding for security spending as districts see fit. I am cool with that too.

Remember, after Parkland the House GOP refused to consider new gun control proposals because they already passed FixNICS. Friends, that's a successful smoke screen! We can do that again without eroding gun rights.

The Court of Public Opinion

On May 10^th, 2018 Emm poised the question “Which amendment would die after the second?”. He cited the 5^th amendment, however I'd propose this one is already effectively diminished. As one of our most valuable rights due process establishes the requirement of being innocent until proven guilty, but the close-minded mob that has entrenched itself in the internet and social media has almost effectively negated this. An accusation backed by a wall of text or a series of posts is all that's needed for a conviction. No evidence, no trial, no objective process for confirming guilt. We collectively read a story that appears to have merit and credibility, and attack with torches and pitchforks until a life is ruined. Is there evidence that has been properly and lawfully gathered, then systematically processed and reviewed by attorneys and judges qualified to do so? No one cares. They read what they want to without a sense of skepticism, and predetermine the outcome of ending careers, destroying families, and imprisoning the population based on beliefs that are void of facts! Worse yet, those in the judicial system cave to this peer pressure in order to preserve their own careers. It has become a repeat of 1950's McCarthyism, but without any clear opposition to end the practice.

Why is that? I believe it's like Roman gladiatorial combat. It's not about justice, but instead people enjoying bloodshed as a sick form of entertainment. We don't care about real justice, we just enjoy others experiencing misery that's worse than our own. This small minded mentality ignores that YOU could be the next man in the arena.

Is our Constitution Outdated?

Certainly depends on who you ask... If you were talking to a left-leaning hipster, they'd probably tell you it's 250 year old trash written by a group of slave owning racists and misogynists. They'd tell you the times and technology have moved beyond what the document can be interpreted and adapted to, and get annoyed how people hide behind it in order to stonewall their perception of “progress”. Conversely, if you were talking to a right-leaning Budweiser King, they'd probably tell you it's second in perfection to the almighty Christian Bible and should be treated as unquestionable gospel. They'd tell you it's not only worth fighting and dying for, but it should be forcefully spread to every corner of the globe...

I believe there's truth somewhere in the middle. Not one blinded with patriotism that's indoctrinated with dangerous nationalism, or one that has a statist obsession with achieving Utopian dreams through expansive government and tyrannical legislated “perfection”.

The constitution is an imperfect document, written by flawed men whom had a unique perspective of having to risk everything for what they were about to create. Intended to secure liberty for the people who wrote it, it has evolved over time with amendments that have both improved and weakened it. These changes have made it more inclusive to every one of our citizens (15^th and 19^th amendments), yet also has a history of changes that are regressive for individual liberty (16^th and 18^th amendments). The fundamentals, however, were carefully crafted with an acknowledgment of government being something that's necessary yet inherently evil. This framework defined limitations, checks and balances, and the role it's expected to play. It also ensured specific rights and protection for the people in order to place further checks on our government (2^nd, 5^th and 14^th amendments)

One thing we'll have to accept though, is that it's impossible to make it perfect. We live in a very diverse and opinionated society that'll never fully agree on what perfection really is. For example, my view of perfection would involve a document that specifies the exact roles of government and limits them to a very narrow list of functions they're allowed to perform. Its function should be no more than ensuring its citizens right to live a life free and unmolested of harmful or oppressive actions. However, I'm enough of a realist to know that what I just wrote would give an aneurysm to someone who would measure success in the number of new laws created each year. My point being that not allowing one specific agenda to completely overrule the other is a compromise. The alternative would be an Ochlocracy (tyranny by the majority) where we force others to live in our ideal world.

Should we accept it as good enough? I believe we've found a balance that more or less works for our specific culture. It's not impossible to correct major discrepancies or injustices, but adds layers of difficulty to enacting ridiculous sacred cows. The layers of difficulty tend to be the major frustration for those ridiculing the constitution as outdated, but there's a simple argument for why difficulty is important. As the power of government changes hands frequently, you won't always have your side as the majority. It's what prevented George W. Bush from ultimately banning gay marriage, or Barack H. Obama from defining healthcare as a rigid collective obligation, or more recently stonewalled left-wing activists from removing one of our most significant rights. The major con to this system is the never ending political drama, as no one side can ever be a clear winner and controversial issues are never fully put to rest. My view may be seen as complacent... but we have a comment section below, and I challenge you to suggest any major changes to our constitution that would improve our system of government without alienating those outside your ideology.

Prefatory clauses are hard

But, but, well regulated militia! If only there were documents from the time period of the founding that were not so maddenly "confusing"!

Here is a copy of the Pennsylvania constitution from the same time period: http://www.duq.edu/assets/Documents/law/pa-constitution/_pdf/constitutions/1790/const-1970-pa-archives-vol10.pdf. Note Article IX Section 21:

That the general, great and essential principles of liberty and free government may be reconized and unalterably establed, WE DECLARE,

(snip 20 sections)

Section 21. That the right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the state shall not be questioned.

Clear enough.

Note that this was ratified in an "ethnically and religiously diverse" state: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pennsylvania-ratifies-the-constitution.

Which amendment would die after the second?

My guess is the fifth. Short-sighted tyrants don't care about: (1) rights they don't exercise and (2) rights they don't think they'll benefit from. Know many short-sighted tyrants that think they could be accused of an infamous crime?

The Constitution and Monotonicity

Whenever people observe that the constitution is a living document my head goes straight to a useful engineering condition: monotonicity.

Monotonicity refers to a condition whereby a function can vary by increasing or decreasing but not both. A monotonically increasing function's output always grows or stays the same, it never decreases. The opposite is true of a monotonically decreasing function. Monotonicity is useful, for example, in computer science because it helps us establish guarantees about how an algorithm behaves (e.g. when describing an algorithm's efficiency).

I'd prefer it if the constitution were a living document where variances in rights are monotonically increasing. You can add rights or you can tweak wording, but you cannot decrease the sum total of rights (call this total liberty). Want to take rights away? Go play in traffic.

A complication: What if slavery were a constitutional right? Perhaps we can agree that the sum total of "rights", however we quantify it, increases by ending slavery. When it comes to the second amendment, what about the "right" to live? I don't consider this a right. No one can guarantee the positive (that you get to live), only the negative. A "right" that cannot come with some degree of a positive guarantee is worthless.

Worthless, like any right in a "living document" that can change without resistance and for better or worse at the will of short-sighted tyrants.