08.01.08
Posted in Current Events, Economics, Philosophy, Politics at 12:08 am by madcap
I was listening to Wednesday’s Talk of the Nation podcast episode, and they had on Bob Barr as a guest. Why not? He’s a retired Congressman, he’s probably got nothing better to do with his time. Wait, he’s running for President on the Libertarian Party ticket? Well… like I said, he’s probably got nothing better to do with his time.
There were a couple of parts of the show that caused me to laugh aloud.., well alright snicker, but I was on the bus at the time.
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06.26.08
Posted in Philosophy, Politics at 10:22 pm by madcap
The Supreme Court today ruled the District of Columbia gun ban unconstitutional, unambiguously embracing an ‘individual right’ interpretation of the 2nd Amendment after decades (centuries, actually) of ambiguous decisions on the matter.
Those of you who have only read my recent posts on politics might assume that I’m anti-gun and disheartened by this development. In fact, I’ve long believed that a (limited) right to own and use guns should be an individual right. When trying to divine the ‘original intent’ of the authors of the Constitution there is evidence to support both sides of the argument (one thing we must remember is that there was more than one framer of the Constitution and they didn’t all have one mind). I choose to believe that the individual right interpretation is better.
Many gun control advocates accurately portray their motivations as trying to reduce gun violence. I say “accurately” because I believe that their motivations are in fact to reduce gun violence (right-wingers’ allusions to Nazi Germany notwithstanding). One commentator at RealClearPolitics succinctly expresses this viewpoint:
In his intemperate dissent in the court’s recent Guantanamo decision, Scalia said the defense of constitutional rights embodied in that ruling meant it “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” That consideration apparently does not apply to a law whose precise purpose was to reduce the number of murders in the District of Columbia.
E. J. Dionne - Originalism Goes Out the Window
First of all, it’s important to know that DC’s gun ban was the strictest ban in the nation. Handguns were banned outright, while long guns (rifles and shotguns) could be kept in the home only unloaded with a trigger lock (and perhaps, I’ve heard, partially disassembled). This implies that any firearm legally stored in DC (aside from those owned prior to when the 1976 ban went into effect) was useless for the purposes of security.
For the record, I disagreed with Scalia’s dissent in the Guantanamo decision, and in general I think he’s a douche. However, notice Dionne’s operative word here… “a law whose precise purpose was to reduce the number of murders…” Is purpose enough to justify a complete ban on firearms, though?
I’ve never been in DC longer than it takes to change flights (a couple hours in my case), but my understanding is that, despite the aforementioned total ban on handguns and practically total ban on other firearms, gun violence is still quite a problem in DC. A lot of this, no doubt, has to do with easy access to guns in the surrounding states such as Virginia. Nevertheless, this is a perfect example of what gun rights advocates are talking about when they argue that “if you make gun ownership criminal, the only people to own guns will be criminals”. Strangely, it seems the gun-wielding criminals in DC have decided not to adhere to the gun law there.
To Dionne’s point, I looked up some statistics on DC’s murder rate. Here is a chart I drew up based on data from here:
This graph shows the number of murders over time in DC per 100,000 inhabitants. The DC gun ban just overturned started in 1976. The murder rate in DC certainly seems to have decreased since its heyday in the 90s, but if anything can be concluded about the effect of the gun ban, it must be that it had little if any effect at all. The murder rate shot up astronomically and dropped down slightly less precipitously all while the same ban was in effect.
In fact, this is pretty much the conclusion at which ‘gun policy expert’ Jens Ludwig arrives in this Talk of the Nation show from last week.
I don’t intend to delve into a lengthy constitutional discussion on the matter… if you want that, go read the 160 page Supreme Court opinion. My question- if strict gun bans like those in DC have little impact on the murder rate, and if there is at least some reason to believe that the Constitution protects a right of individuals to possess (and bear, as necessary) firearms, why maintain such a strong position against private gun ownership? Do the likes of E. J. Dione really have to believe that DC v. Heller was decided solely on the partisan politics of Antonin Scalia in order to make sense out of the ruling?
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04.06.08
Posted in Culture, Current Events, Philosophy, Politics, Rants at 10:49 pm by madcap
Hillary Clinton’s campaign says the candidate will stop telling the story of an uninsured pregnant woman who lost the baby and died after being denied medical care, following a hospital raising questions over its accuracy.
CNN Political Ticker - Clinton drops hospital story from stump speech
Yeah, every politician does it. But since I don’t like Hillary very much, I figured I’d highlight this unsurprising faux pas from her.
These sorts of stump stories that politicians like to tell, and I’m under no delusion that my preferred candidate Barack doesn’t do the same, are dangerous, especially when they’re not true. There’s a perception around our society that “truth” is separate from facts, and that even if a story, which is presented as an historically accurate portrayal, turns out to be false, it may still represent some ahistorical truth.
Fictional stories can represent truth. However, fictional stories ought to be presented as fictional. Clinton didn’t tell this story about health care because it presented some abstract metaphorical truth, she presented it as an historical example of the failing of health care. In some of the comments made on that CNN article, you’ll notice how some commentators suggest ‘this story may not be true, but there’s lot of stories like it that are true.’ Oh yeah? Well if that’s so, then why doesn’t Clinton tell those stories? If our health care is so bad in this country that pregnant women are getting turned away from emergency care left and right, then her campaign should have no problem finding some stories that do have a little more facts behind them. Then she wouldn’t be in the embarrassing position of having to answer for another flagrant exaggeration of the truth.
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03.31.08
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, Religion at 12:25 am by madcap
If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.
Richard Dawkins, God vs. Science - TIME
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03.29.08
Posted in Culture, Deep Thoughts, Humor, Philosophy, Rants, Religion at 7:54 pm by madcap
I was on my home from snowboarding today (thanks to the timely arrival of a snowstorm in the Cascades) thinking of writing this entry. When I got home and turned my TV on, I found an uncanny coincidence between my planned topic and what was currently playing on the ‘History’ Channel (square quotes meant to indicate that the content of the show was not very historical).
Last night, I dreamt that I was with my family and some strange woman showed up to portend events. We were able to see certain symbols which the woman seemed able to decipher, as well as point us to other signs. Among these, she showed me a mirror in which my nose appeared broken, and then in the next moment, my neck seemed to be as well. In my dream, knowing I was planning on going snowboarding today, I wondered if that was meant to predict some calamitous injury to myself.
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