Tag Archives: regulation

Rifles and the 2nd Amendment

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday editorial, AR-15 Rifles and the Constitution, is centered on the potential for the Supreme Court to take up the question of whether AR-15s, and semi-automatic rifles in general, are protected by the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution. My commentary here is centered on Judge Harvie Wilkinson III, who wrote the 4th Circuit’s en banc opinion upholding a Maryland law that bans the sale and possession of “assault weapons.” He wrote that such rifles

fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.

He’s both factually wrong on this, and he, like activist judges before and alongside him, distort the 2nd Amendment’s protections to reinterpret that Amendment to say what he wants it to say rather than what it actually says. Here’s the actual text of the 2nd Amendment:

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.

Wilkinson’s factual error: AR-15s and the like are not at all military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations. They were developed around the same time as the Army’s then-new M-16, but the latter was designed for full automatic use, whereas the AR-15s of the industry were designed explicitly for civilian use in civilian environments and are wholly incapable of (full) automatic operation. They require a brand new, subsequent, trigger pull in order to fire a second round—it’s a new trigger pull for each individual round that’s fired. The only automation in the sequence is the same as with any other semi-automatic firearm (pistols, for instance): it automatically chambers the next round.

Now for Wilkinson’s cynical redefinition reinterpretation of what the Amendment says. The amendment says in so many words—and in only those words—the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There is not a syllable in that bar, not the veriest minim of a pen stroke, that gives the government any authority at all to say what our needs are in our keeping and bearing Arms. Wilkinson’s writing is nothing more than a power grab for government and an attempt to amend our Constitution from the bench by an activist judge.

But Wilkinson wasn’t done.

Compared to a handgun, the AR-15 is heavier, longer, harder to maneuver in tight quarters, less readily accessible in an emergency, and more difficult to operate with one hand[.]

This is wholly irrelevant and only cynically offered in his effort to rewrite our 2nd Amendment from his august bench. To repeat: Wilkinson, nor any other judge, has any authority to tell us what our needs are and to presume to limit us to those judge-manufactured needs.

On the other hand, Wilkinson’s entire argument in that last is an argument for legal keeping and bearing Uzis and machine pistols: those weapons are most assuredly lighter, shorter, easer to maneuver in tight quarters, more readily accessible in an emergency, and easier to operate with one hand than those judge-hated rifles.

This is an appellate decision that badly needs reversal by the Supreme Court and a stern admonition by that Court for judges who persist in entertaining such quibbles and outright distortions of our Constitution.

RFK, Jr, and Vaccines

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Robert F Kennedy, Jr, the HHS Secretary nominee, has a strong reputation as an anti-vaccine…person. That reputation may or may not be justified; he is skeptical of them. Related to that, his reputation for opposing to GLP-1 drugs also may or may not be justified. However, taking the particular case of those GLP-1 drugs, Kennedy’s actual position is obscured by this bit of journalist editorial foolishness:

[H]e thinks Americans should eat healthier and exercise to lose weight. That’s fine as far as it goes. But neither exercise nor dietary changes will cure diabetes, and hormonal changes make it difficult for severely obese patients to lose weight without medical interventions.

Both diet and exercise are Critical Items for the health of all of us, and particularly so for diabetics. These won’t cure diabetes? I’m aware of no one who claims they do. There is, though, a rapidly growing anecdotal body of evidence that changes in diet—particularly regarding carbohydrate intake in general and grains more specifically—do in fact beneficially alter individuals’ hormonal environment and mitigate, sometimes eliminate, the effects of diabetes. Those especially morbidly obese may well still need drugs, potentially of the GLP-1 variety, after having improved their diet and exercise regimens.

Or reducing/eliminating carbs, including grains, may not have any general population effect. Government bureaucrats with medical degrees need to get out of the way of science and let the research proceed to confirmation or refutation.

Is diabetes curable by diet and exercise? Probably not, but the metabolic health outcomes cannot be ignored by serious medically-oriented scientists. On the other hand, journalist editorial writings, especially when done completely absent any presentation of data supporting editors’ claims, can be ignored. And yes, that includes editors’ skepticism regarding political nominees whose positions might differ from the editors’.

Drilling and Restrictions

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President-elect Donald Trump (R) wants to greatly relieve, if not eliminate, Federal restrictions on oil and natural gas producers so they can “drill, drill, drill.” Lots of folks, including shortsightedly, lots of major (and not so major) oil and gas producer executives think that’s a bad idea.

But some donors grimace when they hear Trump promise that under his watch, crude-oil producers would open the floodgates. He has also promised to cut Americans’ energy costs by 50% or more.
Oil backers’ skepticism stems from the fact that Wall Street has successfully pressured chronically indebted frackers to stop burning through cash, and return it to shareholders via buybacks and dividends instead of reinvesting it to frack more wells.
“Our stocks will be absolutely crushed if we start growing our production the way Trump is talking about it,” said Bryan Sheffield, a Texas oilman who contributed more than $1 million to Trump’s latest campaign.

That argument is a bit of a non sequitur, and so it presents no reason to not remove the restrictions. The removal wouldn’t force the oil and gas producers to drill with abandon or to increase drilling or to drill at all. It would, however, let the producers adjust their drilling from sound business reasons rather than be confined to Government’s political reasons for any adjustment.

Wasted, Slow, and Toothless

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The European Union is moving, in its glacially stately pace, toward addressing another vestige of slavery: the use of forced labor in production.

The Council of the EU on Tuesday approved a regulation that would forbid throughout the bloc’s 27 member states the sale of goods made with forced labor either within Europe or outside it.

That’s broader than the US’ ban on forced labor, which is primarily targeted at the People’s Republic of China’s use of Uighur forced labor. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the Council then wasted the effort.

The Council said the regulation will be applied three years and a day after it is published in the European Union’s official register.

There’s no reason for that much delay; it needn’t take that long to adjust supply chains, even by the bureaucrats of European businesses. Eighteen months to two years from enactment is all that’s really needed.

Then,

Investigations into forced labor within the bloc will be led by national governments, whose decisions will be binding on all EU members, the council said.

That’s the toothless part. A national government (Slovakia? Hungary? Germany?) that decides a region’s forced labor matter really isn’t by its own standards would bar all the other 26 member nations from objecting to that region’s use of forced labor as defined by any of those other member nations.

Chopping Blocks for DOGE

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There are several such in the form of overlapping and shared responsibilities across a variety Executive Branch Departments and Agencies.

Three that come to mind are anti-trust enforcement, which is shared between DoJ and FTC, among others; environmental concerns, which are shared among EPA, Interior, Energy, and DoJ among others; and energy development/production, which is shared among Interior, Energy, and EPA, among others.

There are many more.

What DOGE needs to recommend and what President Donald Trump (R) and Congress (because much of this must be done statutorily) need to do is designate one Department/Agency in each of those areas as the Responsible Department/Agency, remove all responsibility, including the Civil Service positions and authority to consult “outside experts” from the other entities, and return the associated personnel to the private sector (no reallocating them to other areas of the Federal government). This both streamlines government and reduces its size by eliminating the jobs altogether.

With regard to DoJ in particular, that Department’s role in any of this should be limited to bringing cases to court; those personnel are enforcers of existing law, not definers of what the law is or should be (though, in the latter case, they certainly can recommend to Congress).

Another target rich environment for DOGE is entirely within the Pentagon. Defense systems development and acquisition is entirely too byzantine, and that labyrinth contributes in large part to the excessive amount of time—years—it takes the Pentagon to develop a system from an initial idea and to the excessive amount of time—more years—to acquire the systems in operationally useful numbers, once a decision to acquire is made. Those interminable delays also vastly increase the costs of both development and acquisition. Here, too, the Responsible Office needs to be designated, and the number of bureaucrats required to sign off (and the number permitted to sign off) need to be reduced, with the others (particularly the erstwhile required signers) returned to the private sector.

The Pentagon moves need especially to be centered on reducing the civilian workforce and on increasing the role and the responsibility of the Combatant, Transportation, and Materiel Commands, with the Combatant commanders being the sole definers of their requirements and numbers, Transportation and Materiel being the definers of the requirements and numbers needed to satisfy the Combatants’ requirements.

The moves and cuts need to be draconian, too; half measures will only perpetuate the current waste and opportunities for waste.