The Politics of Guns and the Second Amendment

     So every time a major shoot occurs, the subject of gun control always comes up. The problem with this whole issue is that it is always made with the mindset that if only we tightened up the restrictions of firearms, it would stop the criminals from getting them. There's also the argument that people should not be allowed to own "military-grade" firearms. As a generally very pro-gun person, here are the problems I see with these types of arguments.

     One of the biggest pieces of mis-information going through the media reports regarding the Colorado shooting were that James Holmes was armed with an "AR-15 assault rifle." The problem is that the AR-15 is not an assault rifle. Another thing people say is that "military assault rifles need restrictions, people shouldn't just be allowed to go out and buy them."

This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions about firearms, that assault rifles are readily available to civilians. They aren't. The problem is that too many don't know just what an assault rifle is.

Simplified, an assault rifle is a rifle with automatic fire capability that fires rounds from magazines. It is thus classified as a machine gun (a gun that fires rifle rounds automatically---a sub-machine gun fires pistol rounds automatically), and is not protected by the Second Amendment. The word "arms" in the Second Amendment does not cover machine guns. M-16s and AK-47s that have automatic fire capability are assault rifles. Yes, you can buy them, but doing so involves the following:

1) 6 - 9 month waiting period
2) Background check
3) Fingerprinting
4) A bunch of paperwork and approvals
5) About $10K to $20K

Owning them is a privilege. Now, the AR-15 (one of the weapons Holmes had) is the civilian variant of the M-16. It looks the same, but mechanically it is not. It has no automatic fire capability. It is a semi-automatic rifle that fires rounds out of a magazine. For comparison, numerous hunting rifles are also semi-automatic and fire rounds out of a magazine. In fact, there's now even a lot of crossover between the two as there are AR-15s meant for hunting now and hunting rifles that are based off of military platforms. In fact, hunters have been adopting military rifles to use for hunting since World War II. Some weapons are used for multiple purposes, hunting, police, military, sport shooting, home defense, etc...The AR-15 is thus not an assault rifle. It's just a semi-automatic rifle that fires rounds from a magazine. Yes, it may "look" military or menacing, but that means nothing.

Here is a Browning BAR (semi-automatic hunting rifle that uses magazines):

Here is an AR15 (semi-automatic rifle that uses magazines):

Now the AR-15 may "look" menacing or "military" but it mechanically at its core is no different than the Browning BAR. There isn't something that magically makes the AR-15 more dangerous then the Browning BAR. IN FACT, the standard AR-15 is too weak to even be used for hunting, as the rounds are too small. The hunting variants use a larger-caliber round. Which means many a "civilian" hunting rifle are actually more powerful and can do more damage than a regular AR-15 (as it takes a more powerful weapon to take down a large animal than a human). And the one shown in the picture above isn't even a full rifle, it's what's called a carbine, which is a shortened version of the rifle that can fire the same rounds, but at a slower velocity and less range.

Here is the AR-15 Predator hunting rifle:

Now here is version of the Remington 870, a pump-action shotgun that Holmes also had:

Looks like a "civilian" gun. Now here's another version of the same gun:

All the same weapon, but some models look "civilian" while others look "military." Again, how the weapon "looks" doesn't tell what kind of weapon it is. Remington 870s are used for everything, hunting, home defense, sport shooting, military, law enforcement, etc...

Regarding the word "arms" in the Second Amendment, they are defined as the following:

"Weapons commonly owned by ordinary law abiding citizens that they would be expected to muster to militia conscription with."

     In the event of such a thing, you'd expect to see people showing up with AR-15s, various other semi-automatic rifles, shot guns, pistols, and so forth. All of this is important because had Holmes gone in with a fully-automatic weapon, say an M-16 with a 100 round drum, and cries for gun control were occuring, the ridiculousness is that such weapons are already heavily regulated. Regulating people's ability to buy weapons such as the AR-15 thus wouldn't do anything to address the issue of criminals acquiring assault rifles.

     People such as Senator Dianne Feinstein who talk about how people shouldn't be allowed to buy "military-grade assault weapons" just do not understand what they're talking about. As said, there is nothing about an AR-15 that makes it some special deadly military weapon that can kill far and above other rifles. She is going by the appearance of it. She said people shouldn't be allowed to buy weapons meant for "close-quarters combat," weapons meant to kill people. Well first off, a rifle is a rifle, hunting rifle or military platform. In the hands of a skilled person, it's not going to matter much. Two, there isn't some special difference between humans and animals. Biologically, humans are animals. A high-functioning animal, but still an animal, and quite a savage one in its raw state (we invented civilization so as to be able to live peacefully and even within those, violence occurs). A rifle meant for hunting is going to kill a human just as it will kill animals. Not all rifles designed for military use can kill large animals (regular AR-15s are bad for this), but when adopted to use larger rounds, they can, and a regular AR-15 is fine if you need to shoot small animals.

     In addition, does Senator Feinstein think hunting rifles are only meant for shooting at long-range? Does this make hand guns, meant for close-range, "military-grade assault weapons?" Weapons meant for close-range fighting are not more dangerous than ones meant for long-range shooting. Sub-machine guns like the Uzi and MP5 (which fire pistol rounds) are meant for close-range fighting, but you would not do infantry work or go hunting anything big with one of those. They are used when you need a really small weapon where distance and caliber aren't that important. SWAT teams sometimes use MP5s for example. 

     Something that should also be remembered is that the Second Amendment isn't about hunting. It is so that citizens can form militias when required, protect themselves, and in extreme cases, resist a tyrannical government. During the times the Second Amendment was written in, citizens were expected to own literal military arms. The difference of course is that then military arms were muskets and at most cannon, today military arms are everything from battle tanks to attack helicopters to nuclear weapons and so forth. But by this, one could probably make the argument that fully-automatic assault rifles are protected by the Second Amendment, even though legally right now it has been determined that they are not.

      If you buy more then two firearms at once, I believe that such a purchase must be reported to the government by the seller (so if you buy four AR-15s in one purchase, the government will learn about it).

Some other things to consider:

1) The 1997 North Hollywood shootout, where two guys clad in body armor and assault rifles were fighting the police. This during the Assault Weapons Ban, in one of the most anti-gun cities, in the most anti-gun state in America. A lot of good the laws did in stopping those guys.

2) A year ago to this week, a man killed 78 people in Norway, a country with very strict gun laws.

3) Tear gas is not legal for civilians, but Holmes still somehow acquired it.

Gun Crime in the United States
     So for the claims made by people such as myself who say that gun control laws mostly result in the disarming of the law-abiding citizens, why is it that the United States has such high levels of gun violence? The simple answer is certain socio-economic factors:

1) Inner-city crime. Most gun-violence in the United States occurs in the major metropolitan areas (ironically the areas with strict gun control), and of those, mostly in the inner-city areas. The inner-city areas tend to be populated by poor black people where gang violence is very common. This is due to a long-list of things ranging from social engineering policies that created bad incentives for poor women to give birth to children without a father, to the problem of drugs being prevalent in these areas, which not only leads to many men impregnating women and then not sticking around to help father the child, but also outright warfare over the drug trade.

2) Unlike some of the European nations which are relatively uniform race and culture-wise, the United States is a huge salad-bowl of races, ethnicities, cultures, languages, religions, etc...many of which do not like one another. This leads to more violence and makes the country more complex to govern then say Sweden. An example for example could be the outright race war that has been occurring between blacks and Hispanics in certain major cities in California.

3) America overall, for other reasons, has tended to have higher rates of crime and violence than other nations. For example, even back when England had gun laws akin to what the United States had, violence was still less in England (which today has more restrictive gun laws). It would be wrong to say that guns drive violence, as the Swiss own outright assault rifles in large numbers, and the Israelis also have a large ownership of guns, yet both of these nations experience low levels of gun violence.

Gun violence is not so much "gun" violence as it is violence due to racial and ethnic hatreds, drug warfare, and so forth in which guns just happen to be used. Such violence would occur regardless. Humans have been slaughtering one another for thousands of years without guns, so lack of guns is not going to stop anything. And this is making the HUGE assumption that one could actually eliminate the black market for guns. Drugs are already illegal, but they are prevalent. Alcohol was once outlawed, but it was prevalent. Drunk driving is illegal right now, but yet thousands of people get killed by drunk drivers every year. When a wolf slaughters sheep, further disarming the sheep is not the answer.

Prayers Out to the Folks in Colorado

Prayers out to the folks in Colorado who lost loved ones and/or were wounded from the shootings that took place.

President Obama is Wrong

     So as anyone who has been following the news lately will know, President Obama recently made statements talking about how the government contributes to economic growth through infrastructure and how it is wrong for business owners to insinuate that they themselves are the ones who've built their businesses up.

     However, in my opinion, he took it way too far when he said, literally, that if you have a business, "you didn't build that." Here are my arguments on this:

1) Technically, yes, government could be said to contribute to economic growth via infrastructure development, funding of research and development, and so forth. But I don't think anyone really argues this point except for hardcore far-right libertarians (who would have been the types against say the Interstate Highway System as being too socialist). It is a complete strawman to use this as an argument in favor of higher taxes the way he is. They are two completely separate issues, especially considering that we have no direct way of knowing what the government would even spend the additional tax money on.

     If we were a country with virtually no infrastructure, then you could make an argument perhaps for some higher taxes for a revenue-starved government under the argument that the money spent on infrastructure would eventually be paid off from all of the economic growth and investment that would result from the infrastructure. But we are not such a country right now. Regarding upgrading our existing infrastructure, well this is a president who blew almost $1 trillion dollars in the name of stimulus and didn't focus it on infrastructure upgrades when he had ample opportunity to.

2) Who is he to talk about what it takes to build and run a business? This is a man who has never so much as run a 7/11. Businesses do not just arise out of nowhere. Even those businesses that utilized the research and development that was funded by the government to create new products and services, well the actual creation of those products and services was done by the businesspeople themselves, not the government.

3) He points out that the Internet was "created" by the government. Well a few things on this. Yes, it was started by the government, via DARPA (at the time ARPA, Advanced Research Projects Agency, itself created by the space program), in order to have a wya to keep the national communications infrastructure from going down in the event of a nuclear strike. But much of the development of the Internet today was created and developed further by private companies. Furthermore, it wasn't really "the government" in the way he thinks of it, but the defense department, which he is seeking to cut in funding right now.

4) Much of our modern technology is attributable to infrastructure and research and development from the space program and defense. Well if that's the case, then by Obama's standards, shouldn't we gun up the defense budget and the space program even further? Why cut them? He is arguing for raising taxes to bring the government more money on the idea that it is the government that drives economic growth, but then he is cutting the two major areas of government that legitimately have helped drive economic growth.

5) A great point (attributable to Greg Gutfeld on the Fox News show "The Five") I thought is that claiming that the existence of infrastructure means the government deserves some credit for the creation and growth of businesses would be like claiming that the government is also responsible for any murders conducted by criminals who have used the roads and bridges to drive around and kill people.

Irony

So I find it rather ironic that two days after my post in which I point out that scientists have yet to find the "God particle" if you will, scientists announce they believe they have found said particle, the Higgs boson.

The Arrogance of Scientists

     So during a panel at the SETIcon II conference in Santa Clara, California recently, the physicists there got into a debate about whether or not a god or divine power was needed to have created the Big Bang. The answer from most of them was "No." Some said for example that the Big Bang could just have occurred as a result of the laws of physics being there. Which of course then prompts the question, "What created the laws of physics?"

     Now the thing that gets me with this entire discussion is, does it not occur to these physicists that maybe this is a question that is literally beyond the ability of humans to answer right now? There is a saying that goes, "Show me someone that has all the answers and I'll show you someone that hasn't asked all the questions." I think that aptly applies with this fundamental question. In truth, BOTH answers I find rather ridiculous personally, which really just means that humans are not capable of answering this question.

Think about it:

We have this MASSIVE, gigantic, super-enormous universe that is SO enormous that we can barely comprehend it. I mean just to go from one end of our galaxy to the other side, at the speed of light, takes at least a hundred thousand years (maybe two hundred thousand). So going at 186,282 miles-per-second, you'd cross the galaxy in a hundred or so thousand years (and that's assuming humans could reach that speed, which technically no physical object can). Of course, there are billions (yes billions) of other galaxies out there, some of them much larger than our own galaxy. Our own galaxy has at least hundreds of billions of stars in it. "Nearby" Andromeda galaxy has an estimated two trillion stars in it. And the galaxies themselves are millions of light-years apart.

Then we have those oddities called black holes, which are singularities. We have the force known as gravity, which we can understand in a quantitative sense, but not necessarilly a qualitative sense. At the sub-atomic level, things also get really, really weird as far as how nature works. Scientists keep searching for a "smallest" particle, and have thus far discovered thousands of tiny particles, but no one has found a tiniest particle yet. We also have the electromagnetic force, which somehow causes a positive force and a negative force to attract one another (again, understood quantitatively, but not really qualitatively, as no one can really picture just "what" that force is that pulls a positive and negative together, they just do).

And we have other aspects of the universe that we do not understand, such as "dark matter." The galaxies, one might think, are held together by the gravity of their stars. For example, that the gravity of our own Sun is intertwined with the gravity of the other stars in our galaxy. And then our own galaxy, as a whole, has gravity, which causes some smaller galaxies to orbit it. But as it turns out, that gravity isn't enough. If all you account for is the gravity of the individual stars in a galaxy, then the galaxy in any computer simulation flies apart. The stars are just too far apart. So the question is then, "What holds the stars in a galaxy together?" Scientists really have no clue, so they call it "dark matter," which they believe is a form of matter that we simply cannot detect at the moment. It's either that or our theory of gravity is actually wrong.

Well I am going way off-track, but I mean the universe is so complex and magnificent in scope, that it sounds rather ridiculous to just say that there was no creator involved in it. All of this can't just have "come about" on its own. There has to have been SOMETHING that created it all, right? But this becomes a very problematic argument, because then one is obliged to ask, "Who created the creator?" Now religious people will just say, "God doesn't need a creator! He's God." Well that may satisfy religious people, but to me it makes no sense. You can't say that the universe is so complex that it needs a creator, but then reason that the creator themself did not also need a creator. Of course, then who created the creator? And who created the creator of the creator, who in turn created the universe?

If you reason that the (obviously) very magnificent creator of the universe did not itself need a creator, well then technically you could just reason that the universe itself did not need any creator. I mean why should the universe have needed a creator but the creator itself not need its own creator as well?

     So what we really are seeing here is the limitation of human brain power. Logically, it doesn't make much sense to say that the universe had no creator, but it also doesn't make much sense to say that it did have a creator. So the true answer is actually beyond the reasoning capability of humanity. I was once talking about this with a guy who said that he thought this line of reasoning, that the ability to answer such a question is beyond the capability of the human brain, was a cop-out. But in thinking more about it since then, I think he had it completely backwards. Realizing that this question is not answerable with the current human reasoning is not a cop-out, it's just an acknowledgement of the limitations of human reasoning.

     In my opinion, the true cop-out arguments are that the universe just somehow magically appeared out of nowhere, the laws of physics, the matter, everything, it just all somehow magically appeared. That's a cop-out. It does away with answering the hard question of how did everything begin. But the alternative, that a divine power created everything, is also a cop-out. Because then, as said, you must ask who created the divine power. And if you reason that the divine power doesn't need a creator, well then neither did the universe itself, thus eliminating the requirement for a divine power and returning us to square one.

     Thus both arguments are rather ridiculous I think. Saying that the question isn't answerable isn't a cop-out, it's just acknowledging that we aren't capable of answering it right now. I think some scientists over-estimate the capability of the human brain. In comparison to all the other animals on the Earth, the human brain is the most developed. But who says that it couldn't be more developed? Just because we can't understand something doesn't mean it won't be understandable if we get more brainpower. For all we know, our trying to answer this question is like a chimpanzee trying to understand calculus or nuclear physics. No matter how smart the chimpanzee, it won't happen, because they lack the requisite brainpower.

     Let the human brain evolve up another level, to the point that modern homo sapiens are the equivalent of chimpanzees in comparison to what this next level of evolved brain would be. We might find a lot of these questions and physics issues become a lot more understandable. It thus amazes me though that these physicists don't recognize this. No one can answer with a resounding "Yes" or "No" about whether there was a divine creator regarding the universe.

     For all we know, what we think of as "the universe" may not even be the true universe, as our Big Bang might just be the inside of a black hole in some other "universe" somewhere (as the Big Bang was a singularity and a black hole is a singularity, so do black holes create Big Bangs on some other side?).

To read an article on these physicists, go here: LINK

Leftist Elites and Totalitarianism

     You know, one thing I cannot get over is how so many on the Left seem to admire the "China model" of economy. You read talk about China's "benevolent dictatorship" and how it is headed by a group of "enlightened" people (Thomas Friedman there). But I mean, seriously? Many of these people are the same kinds who RAILED against the policies of the Bush administration as being too oppressive. Well the Bush administration, love it or hate it, was no equivalent of the Chinese Communist Party. If anyone questions that, try criticizing the Chinese Communist Party from within China the way people criticized the Bush administration.

     These people remind me of the types who would sit from the comfort and freedom of a Western democratic country and romanticize about the (supposed) greatness of the Soviet Union or Castro's Cuba or even Mao's China. But yet, few of these types would ever go and actually live in such a country. Now we see the same with these admirers (almost all on the left-wing end of the political spectrum) of the so-called China model. Oh, they will sing the praises of authoritarian government so long as it is doing the things they like and want to be done, and usually so long as it is in a different country.

     But it probably isn't very difficult to describe how these same China-model admiring elites would respond if say a Republican administration took control of the government and decided to implement its own brand of authoritarian rule. As I've pointed out, it's generally thought that economic freedom cannot exist without political freedom, although this isn't known for sure (and transitioning from an authoritarian government to a liberal democracy can take some time). For example, if China's economy is allowed to become freer (which the government isn't allowing at the moment), will it eventually lead to China becoming a liberal democracy? There's a joke that in the late 19th century, Germany began adopting the principles of liberal democracy and market capitalism, and within only sixty years, West Germany was a vibrant market capitalist economic system and liberal democracy. Of course, as everyone knows, there was a whole bunch of other very bad stuff that happened in between! Similarly, with China, it could take a few decades to get to liberal democracy, and in the intervening space, some nasty things could occur. So anyways, what if some form of "right-wing" authoritarian govenrment decided to take over in America, where it would seek to maintain an authoritarian government while at the same time maintaining a strong market economy. I'd be willing to bet that these same elites would blow a fuse.

     Many people would rightly blow a fuse over something like that (myself included), BUT, I can never get over how so many who railed against the Bush administration and would rail against any kind of right-wing authoritarian government in the United States, actually show admiration for the actual authoritarian government of China, all because that government is able to do the things by force that the Left want to do to America. Many among the so-called Progressives it seems only admire liberal democracy when it counters right-wing ideas. However, whenever liberal democracy prevents them from being able to push through a whole bunch of big government schemes and proposals they have, well then you get people like Thomas Friedman saying, "Why can't we be China for a day?" And the real kicker here is that a lot of the things that he thinks would be great for America if only we could force them through, would actually be terrible for America at the moment (i.e. high-speed rail, alternative energy, etc...) (in which I say thank goodness we are a democratic system).

     One final thing, but in pointing out that so many of the China admirers are on the political left, I am not saying that all people on the Left admire China's system (many disdain their lack of democracy), but just that of those that do, they all seem to be on the Left. I don't know of any limited-government right-wing free-market oriented people who admire the Chinese system.

On Healthcare Again

     So I am wondering now how our nation will fare in the wake of this ruling. Was Roberts a genius or did he fold to political pressures in fearing that if he completely struck down the mandate, that the Court was be assailed as hyper-partisan and so forth? Many conservatives are saying that the Court has now given the government a brand-new power to be able to coerce us to do as they please via the power of taxation and thus their striking down the ability to control anything and everything via the Commerce Clause is essentially worthless.

     Now I am no legal scholar, but this argument confuses me some. For example, many say that the purpose of a tax is to raise revenue, not penalize, and thus the mandate cannot be a tax, that it's a flimsy argument Roberts engaged in. For example, a traffic ticket is not a tax, it's a penalty. One example used by Roberts was the government using taxation to affect behavior such as putting a tax on gasoline, which conservatives have countered is activity you voluntarily engage in, not inactivity. The right also point out that a tax has to originate in the House, which the mandate did not, and thus technically, the mandate cannot be a tax (although this is disputed: LINK The thing is though, the "mandate," from what I understand of the bill, does function as a tax. The administration may have sworn up and down that it is not a tax (they argued it "was" a tax before the Court, now that it has been upheld as a tax, they are again saying it's not a tax, talk about politics!), and the bill itself I think claimed it wasn't a tax, but it:

1) Exists to raise revenue to fund the PPACA ("Patient Protection Affordable Care Act")

2) Is enforced by the IRS

So the only thing that seems to keep it possibly from being a tax as far as I can tell are that it is a tax on inactivity, meant to compel people into engaging in activity, not a tax on activity people voluntarily engage in. However, the thing is, as mentioned in my previous post on the mandate, the hospital system is required to treat people regardless of whether they have health insurance or not, and this is a law that most Americans want to remain in place. The only way to be able to make such a system sustainable is to have a special tax. The way I see it, one could have a tax which you either pay or that you can be exempted from so long as you purchase your own health insurance. This is part of what the PPACA does.

     The thing is, as a tax in this sense, it isn't solely a tax meant to control people's behavior. For example, it isn't the government saying, "Use Energy Star appliances or else pay a tax," it's the government saying, "We provide this service that you, the population, want to remain in place, so therefore to be able to pay for said service, we are going to levy a tax on you, and if you don't want to pay this tax, you can be exempted from it if you choose to purchase your own health insurance."

     While the ability of the government to use taxation as a means to control people is very bad, I think that the government in the end might have a lot of trouble implementing any such policy. The Court struck down the idea that the Commerce Clause allows the government to regulate inactivity, so now any such attempts by the government will have to be framed as a tax. The Democratic party and the Left in general may be partying right now over the PPACA being able to remain law, but, in the longer term, this could be a real roadblock to any attempts to seriously expand the power of the federal government. Any attempt to impose a tax to regulate inactivity or coerce people will give the political opposition a lot of ammunition to use (we see that from how this current administration has sworn that the mandate is not a tax and still is swearing such). I don't know if the government could try to implement such taxes by calling them a "penalty" or whatnot, or if they now would all have to be called a tax, but I hope that their having to be a tax will be sufficient to keep the government from seeking to expand federal power by excessive amounts.


     I must say that I do wish the Court had just out-and-out struck the whole thing down. It would have simplified things by getting rid of the bill outright. And I do not agree with those on the Left that were hoping that it would be struck down so as to make way for full-on single-payer healthcare, as I do not think the Democrats would have been able to get that implemented. As for those that would accuse the Court of having ruled in a blatantly partisan manner, I'd say let them. Their arguments I think would have been incredibly flimsy as it is difficult to argue that the Commerce Clause allows the government to actually mandate that people purchase something, that it allows them to regulate inactivity. I think many conservatives could have pointed out and explained quite clearly that the Court had ruled in a non-partisan manner had such a ruling occurred, and it would be the four dissenting justices, who ruled (even in the ruling that did happen) that the Commerce Clause does allow the government to do such things, that were ruling in a partisan manner.