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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Friday, October 31, 2003
Interacting With Gun Control Supporters I received the following email from a gun control advocate in Ohio: Hi Clayton: I found your Web log after reading an excerpt from it on the Ohioans for Concealed Carry Web site. Interesting reading.My response: My experience is that most gun control advocates (as I used to be, 20+ years ago) don't fully understand the issues involved, for the same reason that I didn't: they haven't researched the subject, but have relied on the impressions gathered from reading newspapers and popular magazines. At first glance, a lot of the measures that you talk about seem to make perfect sense--but that's because you are applying very middle class values to a problem that is largely not middle class. Violent criminals in America are very atypical; they are disproportionately minors coming from severely dysfunctional homes; disproportionately mentally ill people who have been deinstitutionalized; people who are intoxicated, and for whom intoxication is a way of life; and adults with long felony conviction histories behind them. The values that you and I share are completely irrelevant to the vast majority of murderers. There are adults with no criminal history, no mental illness history, and not part of the intoxication culture, who commit murder with a gun, but they are pretty exceptional. The news media emphasize these relatively rare cases for the same reason that "man bites dog" gets news coverage--because they are so unusual and so shocking. Even the "crime of passion" cases seldom fit into the "nice normal guy who just snapped" category; they almost always involve people who are long-known to the police, often with long histories of antisocial behavior. One study of accidental gunshot victims in Vermont some years ago found that these people were also very disproportionately involved in DUIs and motor vehicle accidents. If you want to make America a safer place, your energy is best spent on the relatively small number of people who are in these high risk groups, instead of the Brady Campaign's focus on general strategies of gun control that primarily impact the law-abiding. Open carry is a deterrent that protects the person who is carrying openly; concealed carry is a general deterrent. It creates uncertainty in the minds of criminals as to who is armed, and who is not. My daughter is 19 years old. She is away at college at the University of Idaho. If open carry were the only choice, a criminal would look at here and know that she can't defend herself. (She's about 5'4", and no match for any adult man.) But there's no way to look at her and know that she is 19. She could be as old as 25--and therefore, she could be carrying a gun concealed. I rather prefer that a rapist have to wonder if she is one of the 4% of Idahoans with a permit to carry a pistol. Ditto for my wife. She has a concealed carry permit, but doesn't carry often. (We have effectively no gun control here in Idaho, although I would be the first to agree that this is only one small part of why our violent crime rates are so low.) It makes both of us feel a bit more secure knowing that any predator with half a brain knows that she might be armed--and attacking her would likely be the last criminal attack he made. Do these laws make us safer? Dr. John Lott thinks so, but I will be the first to admit that I don't know enough to meaningfully evaluate whether he has done this right or not. I can tell you that the Tennessee Law Review paper by Dave Kopel and myself demonstrates that non-discretionary concealed weapon permit laws don't cause any obvious increase in murder rates. You can read it here. You say, "We are not working to restrict access to legally sold firearms." So is this a new policy? The Brady Campaign was originally founded for the stated purpose of prohibiting handgun ownership except by police, military, security guards, and a few licensed gun collectors. I've looked up the quote myself in New Yorker magazine from 1976. Nelson "Pete" Shields was very direct that the purpose of registration was a step towards that goal. "We are not trying to take firearms away from law abiding Americans, we are working to pass laws that provide for greater safety for all citizens." Is this a new policy in the last year or two? Quite a number of Californians were required to turn in legally purchased SKS rifles three years ago--and what was especially galling was that those that had registered them in good faith received no compensation, while those who had not registered them (believing that they weren't required to, because of how badly the law was written) did receive compensation. Of course, the entire California assault weapons ban is an attempt to take firearms away from law-abiding adults. California's Assault Weapons Control Act made sale of an AR-15 rifle into a more serious crime (minimum four years in prison) than forcible rape (minimum sentence only three years in prison). I have never been arrested. I do not drink or use other intoxicants. I own my home. I have been married 23 1/2 years. Yet there was no lawful way for me to purchase a target rifle like a Colt AR-15 in California. After the AWCA took effect in 1989, the only permits that were available to purchase an "assault weapon" were for movie studios--so they could make movies glorifying violence. The Brady Campaign played a major part in writing that law. In New Jersey, which has had a vigorous gun licensing program since the 1960s, the Brady Campaign pushed for an assault weapon ban that required all existing licensed owners to dispose of those guns, render them inoperable, or take them out of state. In New York City, which has had mandatory registration of all long guns since 1967, Mayor Dinkins got an assault weapon ban passed--and then used the registration lists to inform all the residents of New York City that they had to dispose of or remove those guns from the city, or face criminal prosecution. Mayor Feinstein, speaking about the federal ban on new manufacture and import of assault weapons in 1994, told CBS that if she could have gotten a complete ban, "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them in," she would have. The Brady Campaign is "trying to take firearms away from law abiding Americans...." You may have been told differently, but that doesn't make it true. "Namely, renewing and strengthening the Assault Weapons Ban, which needs to better define weapons that have no business in private hands;" The most restrictive decisions of the courts in the 19th century--and the cases that used to be cited by gun control advocates, 20 years ago, such as Aymette v. State (Tenn. 1840)--held that the only weapons that were constitutionally protected were those appropriate to military use. You can see images of a number of these decisions at http://www.claytoncramer.com/primary.html#RKBADecisions, and Aymette specifically at http://www.claytoncramer.com/primary/rkbadecisions/Aymette1840.pdf. Back when the Brady Campaign was Handgun Control, Inc., they used to carefully quote these decisions because they seemed to offer a way to ban handguns without banning long guns. Now these decisions--which are actually atypical of American jurisprudence on this subject--tend to get ignored, or quoted in different ways. One of the reasons that I became an activist about gun rights was because of the assault weapon ban. At least handguns represent a real problem. There's a serious criminal misuse problem with handguns, and there always has been. It's typical for half the murders in the U.S. to be with handguns. But assault weapons? You are talking about fractions of 1% of all murders. All rifles combined are typically 3% of U.S. murders, and those assault weapons that are classed as rifles are a tiny fraction of that. The one category of rifle that is actually widely used for murder--the .22LR semiautomatic rifles that are cheap and common--are typically exempted from assault weapon bans. The assault weapon ban is about the least justified ban that I can imagine. It's part of why I regard the Brady Campaign (although not necessarily you) as cynical and dishonest. Of course, when the first Congressionally mandated study of the federal assault weapon ban came in, the results were unsurprising: "As shown in exhibit 1, about half the banned makes and models were rifles, which are hard to conceal for criminal use…. Further, the banned guns are used in only a small fraction of gun crimes; even before the ban, most of them rarely turned up in law enforcement agencies' requests to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to trace the sales histories of guns recovered in criminal investigations." [Jeffrey A. Roth and Christopher S. Koper, "Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96," NCJ 173405, (Washington: National Institute of Justice, 1999), 2.] A more detailed article about this study can be found at http://www.claytoncramer.com/Impacts.htm. "making the NICS system more accurately reflective of criminal records in our country; removing loopholes that make it easy for criminals and those who could not pass a background check to get guns;" You won't get any argument from me about improving NICS, or a background check system. Background checks probably make a small difference in preventing some mentally ill people from getting guns, and discouraging the less motivated criminals from getting guns. They may actually discourage some criminals enough that they don't acquire guns. But that's not necessarily a discouragement from murder. I lived in a county where the DA prosecuted a murder for hire committed with a crossbow. California's background check system might have been the factor, but big deal--the victim was still dead. If you want to get a mandatory background check system for private sales on a nationwide basis, you can probably get it. But that involves some compromises that Brady Campaign won't make: 1. Acknowledge that there is a constitutional right of law-abiding adults to own guns. They haven't ever been willing to do so. What makes this especially silly is that until the 20th century, there was no dispute about this. The only disputes were whether handguns and Bowie knives were protected; if the 2nd Amendment limited only the federal government's authority to control guns (most courts held this), or limited the state government's authority as well (a minority viewpoint, but still a respectable number of state supreme courts have held that the 2nd Amendment limits state law as well); did the right of the people include the right of blacks to own guns (with more than a few state supreme courts insisting that it did not). 2. Make the system instant background check. The 3 day waiting period proposal was blatantly an attempt to shut down gun shows. 3. Have the government pay for it. Who benefits from this system? The gun owner? No. The society as a whole benefits from it, if anyone does. 4. Keep no long-term registration records. Registration records are, according to Nelson Shields, a first step towards confiscation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Haynes v. U.S. (1968) that convicted felons may not be punished for failing to register a gun; only those of us who may lawfully own a gun may be punished for failing to register. (See http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.haynes.html for an article my wife and I wrote about this bizarre decision.) This means that gun registration is primarily of value for gun control law violations by those who can lawfully possess them--and of nearly zero value for finding gun control violations by those who can't lawfully possess them. For these reasons, while mandatory registration is probably not contrary to the Second Amendment, it is certainly dangerous, and no long-term record of who owns which guns will ever be acceptable. "and designing firearms that make it difficult for children to shoot unintentionally." If there was a big problem with children accidentally shooting each other with guns, this might make some sense. But that's not the problem. Gun accidents kill a pretty small number of kids each year. In 1997, there were 21 accidental handgun deaths for children up through age 14. Even the 15-19 year olds only add other 34 accidental handgun deaths. Visit http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/mortabs/gmwki.htm, and use ICD 922.0 for this category. Here's an article that I wrote about the subject a while back: http://www.claytoncramer.com/TriggerLocks.htm. And here's a flyer that I put together for the 2000 elections that gun rights groups distributed in many parts of California: http://www.rkba.org/research/cramer/FourFacts.pdf. The big problem for children isn't accidental gun deaths; it's being beaten to death; it's drowning in bathtubs and pools; it's motor vehicle accidents. These causes of death far outstrip gun accidents. Labels: gun rights Closure, But Still Very Depressing It's an Associated Press story: Seattle — The man suspected of being the Green River Killer has agreed to plead guilty next week to the murders of 48 women in a deal that would spare him from execution, a source told The Associated Press on Thursday.What makes someone do something like this? We really need to know--in the hopes of preventing another monster like this from being created. You're Goin' Down, Clown! It's almost surrealist. VIRGINIA BEACH — A woman in a clown costume and multicolored, curly wig robbed a Bank of America Thursday morning. Justice O'Connor's Remarks Just Get More and More Bizarre See my latest updates on this blog entry about Justice O'Connor's desire to let international law be more of an influence, and the Constitution less. Her claims get more and more bizarre. When someone strikes down a homosexual sodomy law, while talking about the similiarities between our system and Arab justice (where no judge would have the nerve to strike down a law against homosexuality), my mind just reels. Another Story With Which to Irritate The Ignorant Interesting news story to irritate your friends who think it's still 1965 (or 1865) in the South: WASHINGTON - A strong economy and vastly improved race relations are luring record numbers of black Americans to the South, a region that many deserted early in the 20th century. Justice Janice Brown & Lochner As you may be aware, President Bush has again demonstrated his reactionary and racist nature, by nominating a black woman to the DC Court of Appeals--California Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown. David Bernstein over at the Volokh Conspiracy makes some good points how this absurd Washington Post editorial complaining because Justice Brown has said some good things about the Lochner decision: Yet liberty of contract cases were only one application of substantive due process, and not necessarily the most important one. In an era before modern First Amendment and Equal Protection jurisprudence, the Court increasingly invoked substantive due process to protect the rights of racial and religious minorities. The Court invalidated on Lochnerian grounds laws requiring housing segregation, laws banning private schools, laws that placed special regulatory burdens on women, and other laws that violated civil rights and civil liberties. Many modern decisions championed by liberals, including last term's Lawrence v. Texas, are direct descendants of these cases.And that's the rub. This week in Constitutional History, we've been discussing Lochner and another case where a state law came up for review: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Now, there's a bit to be embarrassed about in Lochner. I agree with Professor Bernstein that the working hours regulation that the New York State law imposed was well within the normal definition of the state's police powers, even though the effect was probably to benefit established bakeries and their unionized bakers, to the detriment of the smaller bakeries that employed more recent, and un-unionized immigrants. It is not, however, the Supreme Court's job to second-guess legislative bodies unless there is a clear violation of the Constitution. Stupidity is part of the cost of democracy. Mencken's characterization of democracy as jackals leading jackasses is quite accurate. I'll take my chances with the jackasses (who can sometimes be reasoned with) rather than the elite jackals (of whom unelected judges are among the better examples). What is really embarrassing to the left about Lochner is that Justice Harlan's dissent in Lochner runs directly contrary to his dissent in Plessy. In Lochner, Justice Harlan says: If such reasons exist that ought to be the end of this case, for the state is not amenable to the judiciary, in respect of its legislative enactments, unless such enactments are plainly, palpably, beyond all question, inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States. We are not to presume that the state of New York has acted in bad faith. Nor can we assume that its legislature acted without due deliberation, or that it did not determine this question upon the fullest attainable information and for the common good. We cannot say that the state has acted without reason, nor ought we to proceed upon the theory that its action is a mere sham.Yet in Plessy, Justice Harlan's dissent isn't prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to Louisiana's interference in free markets: It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.If liberals are going to keep pushing for the idea that the government should strike down all state laws that aren't absolutely necessary for public health and safety (as was their argument in Lawrence), then they need to be consistent about it, and strike down large numbers of other laws as well--and stop whining about Lochner. Striking down New York State's maximum hours law was no more activist or irrational than striking down the Texas sodomy law. Thursday, October 30, 2003
The New McCarthyism John Derbyshire has an article about one of his lifelong ambitions finally being realized: his ideas are too dangerous to be allowed on a college campus: One of my lesser ambitions was fulfilled this month: I have been banned from the campus of a U.S. college on the strength of my opinions. The college in question, though perfectly respectable, is not very big or important, but I am flattered nonetheless.This doesn't surprise me. I was invited to a gun rights conference last year as a speaker, and some of my opinions about homosexuality from the early 1990s (stated quite strongly, perhaps even more strongly than I might state them today) caused some potential attendees to try and pressure the organizers to disinvite me. The organizers of the conference realized that this was silly; I was being invited to speak about the Bellesiles scandal, not homosexuality. (Yes, go back and re-read that--a gun rights conference--such a center of progressive leftist thinking.) There is a new McCarthyism going on in America. If you state opinions that offend homosexuals, you are in danger of being blacklisted. There are homosexuals who can tolerate differences of opinion--but the homosexuals that matter--those that run America's universities--are remarkably intolerant of differing opinions. You will shut up, and pretend to be happy about shutting up, or there will be consequences. Justice O'Connor Rewrites Article VI Of The Constitution THis had better be a false report, or it's time to talk about impeachment: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicts that the U.S. Supreme Court will increasingly base its decisions on international law rather than the U.S. Constitution, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.So, did someone repeal this section of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, and neglected to tell everyone? This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.Okay, I understand that treaties ratified by the Senate are binding law, but that's not what O'Connor is saying. She's saying that that international law will take precedence over the U.S. Constitution. This isn't even a point that requires a lot of analysis: the Constitution says that it is the supreme law of the land. If Justice O'Connor and friends want to sit on the European Court of Human Rights, that's fine, but she's sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court--and the Constitution says that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land--not what's trendy in France this week. UPDATE: I just went out for a walk, while waiting for someone to answer some questions about an obscure socket error message, and the more I thought about this, the more upset I became. Now, I know our Constitution isn't perfect. I don't suffer from any delusions about how it came about, or its flaws. Ditto for our judiciary; as the syllabus for my Constitutional History class at Boise State points out: Your respect for the majesty and integrity of the Supreme Court is probably going to be injured by this course.But neither is our system chopped liver, either. There is certainly nothing about our system that suffers by comparison with the resplendent glory of French courts in the Dreyfus Affair, the "People's Courts" of Nazi Germany, Soviet-era show trials, or Saddam Hussein's lapdog judges ordering amputation of tongues for speaking ill of their glorious leader. Justice O'Connor better be able to demonstrate that she has been grossly misquoted, or I am going to be writing a letter to my Congressman asking for an investigation as to whether this stated intent of violating her oath of office qualifies as something other than the "good behaviour" the Constitution requires of judges. UPDATE 2: This is beginning to look like the Washington Times report didn't quite get this right. Here's the original story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. What she says isn't quite impeachable, but it's close: For decades, O'Connor said, U.S. courts declined to consider international law when reaching important decisions.UPDATE 3: This story just gets more and more bizarre. Here's some more coverage of what Justice O'Connor had to say: On Tuesday night, O'Connor argued that international decisions could be persuasive authority in American courts. She added that at a time when 30 percent of the U.S. gross national product is internationally derived, "No institution of government can afford to ignore the rest of the world."Wait a minute! Are there any Arab countries where homosexuality is lawful? Are there any where judges would strike down such laws, as O'Connor helped to do in Lawrence. If focusing on our "similiarities" with the Arab world is Justice O'Connor's goal, she better get off that bench in a hurry, and back home. That Radical Reinterpretation of the Koran I had mentioned Luxenberg's Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache a few months back; I see from reading Cranky Professor that there have been a couple of quite negative reviews of it as well. I haven't had time to read them yet; it's been very busy teaching two classes and working full-time. (I'll try not to do that again.) I'm out of my area of history on this, so I'm just expressing an intelligent layman's understanding. Here's one of the critical reviews. The review is written in an impenetrable, very academic style--although perhaps this is because English does not appear to be the reviewer's native tongue. I suppose that my biggest concern is that the reviewer seems to think that Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran is circularly reasoned, but this review fail to acknowledge that at least part of Luxenberg's argument is based on the lack of a written Arabic at the time the Koran's text is first written. The second critical review by François de Blois disputes Luxenberg's arguments by asserting that Luxenberg really doesn't know the languages in question as well as he claims to know them, and doesn't believe the claims about who Luxenberg really is: The NYT article goes on to state that 'Christoph Luxeuberg is a pseudonym', to compare him with Salman Rushdie, Naguib Mahfouz and Suliman Bashear and to talk about 'threatened violence as well as the widespread reluctance on United States college campuses to criticize other cultures'. I am not sure what precisely the author means with 'in Germany'. According to my information, 'Christoph Luxenberg' is not a German but a Lebanese Christian. It is thus not a question of some intrepid philologist, pouring over dusty books in obscure languages somewhere in the provinces of Germany and then having to publish his results under a pseudonym so as to avoid the death threats of rabid Muslim extremists, in short an ivory-tower Rushdie. Let us not exaggerate the state of academic freedom in what we still like to call our Western democracies. No European or North American scholar of linguistics, even of Arabic linguistics, needs to conceal his (or her) identity, nor does he (or she) really have any right to do so. These matters must be discussed in public. In the Near East things are, of course, very different.True or false? I don't know. I do know that this claim that no "scholar of lingustics, even of Arabic linguistics, needs to conceal his (or her) identity" is nonsense. Luxenberg's claims are dramatic, and represent a profound threat to Islamic identity. If Luxenberg is correct, all of Islam is based on a post-Mohammed rewriting of a Syriac Christian book into the Koran, a tool of Arab nationalism. This would not only destroy the credibility of Islam as a separate religion, but it would also demolish Arabic claims to any position of special prominence in the Islamic world. By comparison, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie is over something quite trivial in nature. I don't know if Luxenberg is right or wrong about this. The second of these critical reviews, if correct, would be a pretty devastating criticism. I do know that there are powerful, cynical, and wealthy forces in the Arab world who have strong reason to spend money to discredit Luxenberg's thesis. This doesn't make Luxenberg wrong; it does mean that not every criticism of his work is necessarily as simple as it seems. Unfortunately, I don't know enougha about Semitic languages to know whether François de Blois is right or not. Wednesday, October 29, 2003
"Persistent Carnivorative State" I am always afraid to quote Scrappleface--and sometimes to link to them--because their satire is so devilishly clever that I fear that some people won't recognize it as satire. This "news item," however, about the really disturbing Terri Schiavo case, is just good to pass over. Make sure you go and read it. Children! Behave Yourselves! I found a link to this Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger on How Appealling!, concerning the mature and responsible members of the Misssissippi Supreme Court: Chief Justice Ed Pittman, who wants Justice Chuck McRae suspended from the bench for alleged threats and name-calling, told another colleague McRae could "kiss my butt," according to documents.Hmmm. It sounds like the Arkansas Supreme Court in the 19th century. Irony Overload Eugene Volokh blogs about how a conservative student newspaper at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island published articles that said, among other things, that accused "militant homosexuals" of trying to squelch free speech by pushing for hate-crime legislation.And the reaction of the university's president? Denunciation, and a new policy. Meanwhile, [Provost] Kavanagh met with the five leaders of the College Republicans on Friday and told them that their funding would be restored as long as they allow their adviser to review their work before publication.It reminds me of an incident during the Sandinista rule of Nicaragua. One of the opposition newspapers ran an article about censorship--and was promptly prohibited from publication. One of the Sandinistas explained that the newspaper had lied, by claiming that there was censorship. "This was a lie, and we had no choice but to shut them down." Interesting Work in Solar Cycle & Its Effect on Global Climate Lots of scientists are apparently working on understanding how changes in solar output alter Earth's climate: A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist, in collaboration with an international team of colleagues, has reported that noticeable changes in the sub-polar climate and ecosystems appear to be linked to variations in the sun’s intensity during the past 12,000 years.Here's some more news about the relationship between climate, beryllium-10 production, and climate change. Some of the work suggests that recent changes in solar activity have been quite dramatic. This article suggests that while the authors of a study of beryllium-10 changes still think that global warming is at least partly the result of man's activities, they do point out that: a succession of short cycles (such as those experienced in the past 100 years) leads to a stronger solar magnetic field and therefore to reduced cosmic radiation. The peak of the “Small Ice Age” in the second half of the 17th century would also fit in with this theory, as there were almost no sunspots between 1645 and 1715. The solar magnetic field was therefore weaker, whilst cosmic radiation – and therefore cloud coverage – was correspondingly stronger. Labels: global warming Tornado Fighters I can't quite decide if this site is serious, satire, or scam. Whichever it is, it's cheeky and entertaining. He's looking for donations to get him started in the business of blowing up tornadoes: Hi, I'm Brad Mason the creator of Tornado Fighters. The advancements made in tornado detection has put the ball in mans court as far as the next step in tornado defense. The stopping of the tornado and its dastardly evil. Following, I'll try to convince you to protect your lives and property from the tornado. I've been promoting tornado destruction for three years now. People have said they saw something on Discovery Channel or somewhere about stopping the tornado but I haven't seen it. The powers at hand (government NOAA, NWS) are dragging their feet as far as stopping the tornado. All I can see is we have to save ourselves. The Destructive Effects of Pornography (Naomi Wolfe's Essay) Naomi Wolfe expresses her concerns about how the ubiquity of pornography in our culture has damaged healthy relationships between men and women. It's an impressionistic, not terribly well-organized essay, but this response to it leaves me even less impressed (although some of the comments on that page there are pretty effective in suggesting that Wolfe isn't out to lunch on this). Warning: both Wolfe's essay and the response I link to are fairly explicit. Wolfe's essay is less blunt than I would like about the core problem: pornography raises expectations of perfect bodies, of casual, almost anonymous sex being spectacular, and most important of all, decoupling sex from emotion. Guys have always done this, although in my generation, at least among the guys that I knew, this was recognized as an poor substitute for the ideal. For girls, this was much less acceptable. It appears, from what I learn from talking to a younger generation, this notion that sex and love were an ideal worth waiting for has been abandoned. (Waiting for marriage, which has for generations been an ideal that many young people aimed for, but didn't accomplish, seems to have been completely abandoned.) "Friends, with benefits" is a widely used phrase among my daughter's generation to refer to people with whom one has sex for mutual pleasure, but with no deep emotional attachment, and no expectation of it. There were people in my generation who operated at this superficial of a level (it was the Disco Generation), but they were adults. This very casual attitude about sex seems to worked its way down to the 12-14 year old range, with obvious destructive effects for problems of pregnancy and STDs, as well as less obvious destructive effects, such as difficulties in forming adult long-term relationships. Admittedly, where we lived in Sonoma County, California, the inability of most adults maintain long-term relationships presented some additional difficulties for teenagers. This is not a good thing for a society. Tuesday, October 28, 2003
I Sometimes Wonder If I Just Don't Enjoy Amateur Astronomy Enough Especially when I see an ad like this one: am selling my DarkStar 22" f/4.5 Dobsonian telescope. She sets up with absolutely no tools or ladders whatsoever in less than 15 minutes. (Although you will need a ladder for viewing at zenith, as she is 8 foot high at the eyepiece!) Unlike other big dobs, she nests together for just one easy trip from the truck to the field. She comes with high resolution digital setting circles and hardware (bring your own computer), 6' wheel barrel handles, 10" tires, black rip-stop shroud, and a Telrad finder. Pegasus primary and secondary. $6000 US dollars, if using paypal, add the customary 3%. Scope is located halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor Michigan. Labels: telescopes Jury Rules Self-Defense A pastor went into his church in April because an alarm went off in the middle of the night. Once there, he confronted two burglars. He shot and killed them. By his own description, he panicked, and acknowledged that he might have misread their movement towards him as an attack, when they were actually headed for an exit. It was one of those split second decisions that you hope you never have to make. He was prosecuted. The news is that he was found innocent on all charges: Speaking by phone Monday evening, Mielke said he was glad it's all over. He said he's sad that two people lost their lives in the situation, but he still feels he would have been killed if he had not pulled the trigger that morning.Well, yes I guess they were disappointed. It's hard for me to be very sympathetic when two adults commit a felony, and get killed. Even if they were not a threat to Mielke, and were just running towards him to get out an exit, the burden was on them for committing a felony under conditions where a reasonable person could misinterpret their actions as a threat. This situation isn't something to be thrilled about, but neither is it an argument for gun control. It is an argument against burglary. It is also an argument against going into an unoccupied building yourself, instead of calling the police to do it for you. Whatever was lost in that church was, I'm sure, less expensive than hiring an attorney to defend Pastor Mielke. Insurance Paperwork Sure Is Annoying... Stories like this one, however, are a reminder that it is somewhat unavoidable--and this would even be true if the government took over everything: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A federal grand jury has indicted a Los Angeles podiatrist on fraud charges for billing Medicare for procedures on patients that turned out to have no feet or to have been dead. Uh Oh! Someone Else Says That President Bush Is a Liar! I'm sure that leftists everywhere will be overjoyed to have a guy who thinks Jews run the world on their side. THE President of the United States lied.I find myself wondering how much longer it is going to be before the American left starts wearing swastika armbands. Monday, October 27, 2003
Don't Do This Very sad article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. A couple of kids think it's fun to ring someone's doorbell at 12:30 at night, then running off. Stupid. The person inside did something way more stupid. He opened the door and shot and killed one of the teenagers, claiming that he thought they were burglars. If you are afraid for your safety, keep the door closed. Call the police. If you have reason to be afraid, wait until they have forced the door or the window before opening fire. If the "burglars" don't force the door, they aren't a threat to you. Nuisance, sure, but it's a much bigger nuisance to go through indictment and trial for, at least, manslaughter. I can't see, from the coverage so far, that this tax accountant has even a ghost of a chance of being found innocent. Stupidity and being a teenager just go together. Some stupid teenagers grow up to be stupid adults; most grow out of it. Give them a chance to grow out of it. Wisconsin Concealed Weapon Permit Law Passes State Senate The Wisconsin State Senate passed a non-discretionary concealed weapon permit bill on Friday--by 24-8 margin. The Assembly is expected to pass it in November. What's interesting is how fair the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's news coverage of this is: The Senate voted 24-8 for the change, which would make Wisconsin the 46th state to let citizens carry concealed weapons - weapons that senators insisted would be used by trained residents to protect their lives, families and property and stop crimes in progress.At least the paper isn't pretending that this is a startling innovation, unlike some of the newspapers in Missouri, that covered passage of such a law as though no other state had tried this. You Wisconsin residents might want to contact your representatives in the Assembly, and let them know you want this bill passed. You certainly want to let your governor know this as well, because he has already promised to veto it when it gets to his desk. Sunday, October 26, 2003
Very Interesting Report About What Worked and What Didn't in Iraq I don't know if this is real or not. It certainly sounds real. The title says Field Report Marine Corps Systems Liason Team Central IraqMuch of it is written in jargon that probably makes perfect sense to a Marine, and includes a wide range of equipment that worked, and didn't work. There's a lot of equipment that individual Marine units and individual Marines purchased on the commercial market because they were better than what Uncle Sam provided them. In many cases, the report suggests that the government buy stuff as good as individual Marines were buying for themselves: Drop Holsters and “phone dummy chords” ~ Many Marines purchased these items from their own personal funds. Drop holsters (such as the kind purchased through the company, “Special Operations Equipment”) cost approximately $65. Marines would like to see these holsters issued with their pistols. Also, Marines fashioned pistol lanyards from phone chords. These lanyards retract and thus are much less cumbersome or likely to get caught than the current lanyard. Marines would like to see this type of lanyard fielded.Contrary to some claims being made about the inadequacy of 5.56mm for combat, the Marines seem to have been reasonably happy with it: 5.56mm vs. 7.62 Lethality ~ 5.56mm “definitely answered the mail” and “as long as the shots were in the head or chest they went down” were typical quotes from several Marines; many who were previously very skeptical of 5.56mm ammunition. Most of the interviewed Marines who reported targets not going down and/or could still fight were referencing non-lethal shots to the extremities. There were reports of targets receiving shots in the vitals and not going down. These stories need not be described, but are of the rare superhuman occurrences that defy logic and caliber of round. Some Marines did ask about getting the heaver-grained 5.56mm rounds, up to 77 grain if possible.There were a lot of criticisms of the M9 pistol magazines (those are the Beretta 92, for us civilians) not working reliably: M9 Pistol Magazines ~ The magazines are not working properly.Some weapons system problems seem to be specific to the dust and sand: Weapon Take-Down Pins ~ Many weapons, M16 and M249 in particular, were having problems with takedown pins breaking and/or falling completely out of the weapons. Marines held weapons together with duct tape and/or zip ties. The problem seems to be that sand would get into the spaces around the pins, grinding down the metal.For those not familiar with the M16, there are two pins that hold the upper and lower receivers together; they have a springloaded ball bearing on the end that keeps them from falling out of the gun. It sounds like sand abrasion over time has enlarged the holes. There's nothing quite as embarrassing as getting ready to shoot at the enemy, and suddenly realizing that your M16 has disassembled itself. The report is full of great successes, however, so don't think it's just a gripe session: M16A4 with associated combat optic (ACOG 4x), the West Coast’s SAM Rifle ~ All interviewed were extremely pleased with the performance and felt it “answered the mail” for the role of the Squad Advanced Marksman (SAM). All said the fixed 4-power ACOG sight that was included was the perfect solution. It gave them the ability to identify targets at distance, under poor conditions, and maintained ability to quickly acquire the target in the close in (MOUT/room clearing) environment. As above, many “stacked” it with the AN/PVS-14 to get a true night capability. No Marines present in interviews knew of any situation where the shooter could shoot the gun to its full capability or outshoot it. Interviewees included STA platoon leadership and members who are school trained MOS 8541 Snipers. They saw no need for the accuracy and expense involved in the version being built for the “East Coast” SAM Rifle by Precision Weapons Section (PWS), WTBN, Quantico. The standard M16A4 with issued optic more than satisfied their requirements.Here's another report that contains some interesting, if grotesque, tidbits: XM107: The Barrett 50 cal Sniper Rifle may have been the most useful piece of equipment for the urban fight – especially for our light fighter. The XM107 was used to engage both vehicular and personnel targets out to 1400 meters. Soldiers not only appreciated the range and accuracy but also the target effect. Leaders and scouts viewed the effect of the 50 cal round as a combat multiplier due to the psychological impact on other combatants that viewed the destruction of the target.War is hell. Live with it, or turn into a pacifist."My spotter positively identified a target at 1400 meters carrying an RPG on a water tower. I engaged the target. The top half of the torso fell forward out of the tower and the lower portion remained in the tower.” 325th PIR SnipeThere were other personal anecdotes of one round destroying two targets and another of the target “disintegrating.” I Really Want To Know Why This Happened A shocking news story from New Jersey: A couple whose adopted teenage sons weighed less than 50 pounds have been arrested on charges of starving four boys they adopted through the state Division of Youth and Family Services, New Jersey's troubled child welfare agency.There were government agencies that should have seen this: The state Department of Human Services suspended five employees, including caseworkers, a manager, and supervisors, pending the outcome of the investigation, said Micah Rasmussen, a spokesman for Gov. James E. McGreevey.Why did they starve these boys? The article contains something that might suggest a motivation: The Jacksons adopted the boys through DYFS and were receiving a stipend from the state, which peaked at about $28,000 a year before the oldest child turned 18 last year, according to Camden County Prosecutor's Office.I would hope that simple greed wasn't driving this--but that's the first item to assume. |
