Category Archives: culture

A Thought on Gun Rights

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The city of Lowell, MA, and its police chief have one. It’s dead wrong, too. The city’s new law, pushed by its Police Superintendent, William Taylor,

requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write “an essay” and pay upwards of $1,100 for training.

Aside from the outlandish cost being just another means of denying licenses to American citizens (training required in Texas, for instance, costs around $300), there’s this, from police department spokesman, Captain Timothy Crowley:

If you want a license to carry a firearm unrestricted wherever you want and whenever you want, the superintendent is just looking for some documentation as to why. That is not unreasonable to most people.

Yes, it is unreasonable to most people. It’s also wholly and cynically unconstitutional. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says on the matter:

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.

Notice that. There’s nothing in there that says, “Shall not be infringed unless Government disapproves the man’s reason.” There’s nothing in there that even grants Government a right to ask, much less to know, a citizen’s reason to keep and bear his Arms. Just for clarity’s sake, too, the Supreme Court has ruled that this is entirely an individual right, and not a collective one.

No. The only legitimate way to require licenses to keep and bear is, after training, on a will issue basis.

Full stop.

An Opportunity

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…in the hands of competent authority.

ISIS fighters who fled to the terror group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square, sources told FoxNews.com, in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city from government forces.

Several residents of Mosul recounted the grisly story for stateside relatives, describing the deadly reception black clad jihadists got when they made it to Mosul….

Notice that. These were guys who’d either rejected the martyrdom of dying in place or who had recognized a lost position and departed in order to resume the fight in another place and time.

Here’s the opportunity: guys like this aren’t going to be allowed, in Tacitus’ words, to “fight and run away, To turn and fight another day.” No, they’ll die, anyway, a grisly death of the sort reserved for the enemies of the Daesh. So: make it easy for them to surrender rather than retreat.

Of course, that would require their Arab or Kurdish captors, of whatever sect of Islam, to treat them with some semblance of humanity. But that’s another opportunity, this time for Arabs and Kurds, of whatever sect of Islam, themselves.

A Definition of Terrorism

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The Global Terrorism Database has one (and scroll to Data Collection and the Definition of Terrorism):

the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.

Notice that: no killings necessary to be an act of terrorism. No destruction necessary to be an act of terrorism. No definition of what constitutes violence. In the end, only the threat of…something…is necessary to be an act of terror.

Leave it to the Left (the GTD is an arm of the University of Maryland) to invent a version of terrorism that could include microaggressions, triggers, and on and on—all acts of “fear,” “coercion,” “intimidation” in the hearts of precious snowflakes and others terrified of disagreement or uncomfortable truths.

It’s true that the GTD picked up this definition from a predecessor; however, GTD has made no effort to tighten the definition at all. It’s only made its database searchable with criteria that let the searcher make up whatever definition of terrorism suits his narrative.

Microaggressions as terrorism. Triggers as terrorism. Hurt feelings as terrorism.

Hmm….

No Self Importance Here

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…by a prominent Left personage.

Even those of us on the left feel the wrath of the leftier-than-thou brigade from time to time. I don’t generally have a hard time avoiding objectionable language myself because (a) I’m liberal, (b) I’m good with words, and (c) I write rather than talk, which gives me time to get my act together. But even at that, sometimes I cross an invisible line and get trounced for it.

But for someone without my advantages, I can easily see how it might feel almost impossible to express an unpopular opinion without tying yourself in knots. And let’s be honest: we liberals do tend to yell racism a little more often than we should. And we do tend to suggest that anyone who likes guns or Jesus is a rube. And the whole “privilege” thing sure does get tiresome sometimes. And we do get a little pedantic in our insistence that no conversation about anything is complete unless it specifically acknowledges the special problems of marginalized groups. It can be pretty suffocating at times.

Well. That’s real white of him. Read the whole thing to see just how white, though.

A Constitutional Proposal

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a constitutional convention, looking to revive support for an existing movement that seeks a constitutional convention. Abbott also offered a number of Amendments of his own that he’d like to see proposed at such a convention.

  • Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs in one state
  • Require Congress to balance its budget.
  • Prohibit administrative agencies from creating law
  • Prohibit administrative agencies from pre-empting state law
  • Allow a two-thirds majority of the states of override a Supreme Court decision
  • Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law
  • Restore balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution
  • Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds
  • Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a federal law regulation.

But no constitution, whether our existing one (favored by me, with a single Amendment concerning term quasi-limits), our existing one as amended by Abbott’s proposals, or any other constitution, has no value whatsoever in the hands of a government whose men and women ignore it at convenience.

Abbott himself tacitly noted this, but he seems to have missed the meaning of his own remark.

The Supreme Court is a co-conspirator in abandoning the Constitution. Instead of applying laws as written, it embarrassingly strains to rewrite laws like Obamacare.

Before it’s useful to discuss modifications to our Constitution, it’s necessary to replace in toto the men and women of our government with men and women who understand and will respect rule of law and the supremacy—especially over their own actions—of our Constitution.

Once our Constitution has been restored to its proper place, then we can set about assessing where, if anywhere, it might profitably be amended. Not until.