RE: Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com
Topic: Miscellaneous
5:07 pm EDT, Jul 2, 2008
flynn23 wrote: I think that it's perfectly acceptable to own weapons in your home for sport, protection, or collection. Although I do have serious reservations about the TYPES of weapons owned. You can collect WW2 rifles or even historic machine guns, but there's no reason why someone should have an operational M2 or an AK47, both of which I know of several people who possess.
I've been meaning to get back to this thread. Its been interesting. I want to interject some thoughts.
1. I think the second amendment consists of a purpose and a means to achieve that purpose.
2. I think the means is a near total ban on federal firearms laws. The 14th amendment extends this ban to the states. Certain exceptions such as the case of felons or in certain locations are probably allowable given an over-riding government interest, but I don't think a ban on certain types of weapons is possible and I'm not sure I buy U.S. v. Miller. You can obviously use a sawed off shotgun in a war. Actual wars in the world today involving actual militias are actually fought with all kinds of fucked up weapons. Actual militias have things like RPGs. I think the second amendment cannot achieve its stated purpose if it allows for the federal regulations on the ownership of RPGs.
3. Self defense in the home is not the purpose, nor is hunting, nor is collecting. But the ownership of weapons for those purposes is a given considering the means employed by this amendment. Similarly, the purpose of the first amendment was not to protect porn videos from federal bans, but it does so anyway, due to the means employed (nearly total prohibition on regulation of speech.)
4. The purpose was to protect the right of the people to form armed militia groups capable of challenging the power of any other contemporary armed force. The original federalist structure of the U.S. Government may have put states in the position of regulating such militia, but the 14th amendment set that power aside.
5. Militia of the sort envisioned by the Constitution are not obsolete from a technical standpoint. Generally, we refer to them as terrorist organizations. The closest modern equivalents are Sunni and Shia insurgent groups in Iraq, and Hezbollah. I think thats really what the founders were thinking. In fact, I recall Nanochick making a very insightful analogy between the founding of this Republic and the present bloodshed in Iraq. Looking at the situation there is the closest thing you can get to understanding the context that the Constitution was written in. I doubt very seriously that you'll see any party to any settlement in Iraq agreeing to lay down their arms. The 2nd amendment is an agreement that the federal government of the US would not disarm the militia. Its the same kind of thing.
6. Almost no one in the US today is comfortable with the idea that armed terrorist organizations can rightfully exist here. The actual purpos... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]
I found this to be a particularly pleasing metafilter post. I recently moved across the street from some train tracks in Atlanta. I'm sure there is an argument that it sets an upper bound for the value of the place, but I love watching the trains go by. They are a connection to the history of this city and of technology. Far more interesting than many views that I could have had. I'm quoting a post from the thread:
When I was 20 I bought an old house in Atlanta that backed up to the railroad yard. My Dad laughed at me when he saw the excitement in my eyes looking at those tracks. He said that made the property worth so much less. I thought of the tracks as a bonus. Sitting on my hill, watching a train pull through was fun, but what really got me was the sound.
It was a symphony of cacophony. Some of the sounds repeated, as each car hit the same bump between track sections, ca-chunk-ca-chunk, ca-chunk-ca-chunk, while the soaring solos of squeaky wheels panned in stereo as they screeched by. The grind and clang of loose metal parts slowly complained out an odd measure.
I wanted to record that, to share the experience, to let other people know about the secret symphony. But I realized that you literally had to be there; that the tall golden grass and the painted cars and the heaving rails were all part of the experience.
Sentencing Law and Policy: Extended examination of ugliness of acquitted conduct enhancement
Topic: Miscellaneous
10:49 am EDT, Jul 1, 2008
I typically plonk the Washington Times but this seems like pretty good reporting.
Federal prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts to send Ball to prison for 40 years, basing their request partly on charges that were never filed or conduct the jury either rejected outright or was never asked to consider.
Known as acquitted and uncharged conduct sentencing, the practice is raising a sharp question among legal scholars: Should federal judges dole out tougher sentences based on accusations that jurors rejected or never heard during trial?
I would support a Constitutional Amendment barring this practice.
Georgia Supreme Court considers proportionality in sex offender case
Topic: Miscellaneous
9:32 am EDT, Jul 1, 2008
More evidence that sex offender hysteria motivates corrupt legislators to produce policy that is fucking stupid.
The facts are pretty darned sad. Barely more than a child himself at 19, Bradshaw was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Fine. That’s punishable. I’d prefer it had been kept out of the criminal justice system (see here for more) but its punishable. He gets 5 years.
After he gets out he gives an invalid address. For that, too, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to time served. When released he moves in with his sister but can’t live there because Georgia’s draconian sex offender law won’t let him live within 1,000 feet of a recreation center!
He moves in with an aunt but can’t stay there because the home is within 1,000 feet of the First Baptist Church! Growing desperate, he finds a family friend but this time inadvertently transposes the street address!
Now the cops move in. Bradshaw is arrested because he hadn’t moved into the friend’s single-wide trailer within the legally required 72 hours — and lied and said he did! His mandatory sentence for this infraction is life in prison.
A Georgia lawyer in this thread says that many of these people end up being homeless because they cannot find a place to live that complies with the law, and then they end up getting arrested for being homeless.
Fortunately we have elected representatives who are capable of forming logical thoughts:
Sen. President pro tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said the law is clear.
"I wish it hadn't happened, but there are consequences for people's actions," said Johnson, a chief sponsor of the offender law. "What would have happened if he had given the wrong address and had lived in a place and was harming a child next door? The law is trying to protect children. Justice has to be blind to motive."
1. Eric Johnson recommended these particular consequences. He has to defend why they are appropriate, and not refer to them as if they are beyond his control! 2. This person is not a pedophile. 3. This is not an attempt to protect children. Strict statutory rape laws are designed to attack teenagers for having sex out of wedlock. In this case coupled with a hysteria driven over broad sex offender registration rule intended as marketing fodder for political campaigns. 4. No, justice does not have to be blind to motive! There is a difference between malice murder and involuntary manslaughter. If you don't understand that you shouldn't be writing laws.
Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com
Topic: Miscellaneous
8:18 am EDT, Jun 28, 2008
The legal ruling that the District's citizens can keep loaded handguns in their homes doesn't mean that they should.
Just nine of those shootings were legally justifiable homicides or acts of self-defense; guns kept in homes were also involved in 12 accidental deaths, 41 criminal homicides and a shocking 333 suicides.
In Atlanta, a city where approximately a third of households contain guns, a study of 197 home-invasion crimes revealed only three instances (1.5 percent) in which the inhabitants resisted with a gun. Intruders got to the homeowner's gun twice as often as the homeowner did.
I know a lot of people who explain their gun ownership based on the theory that they are going to defend themselves from some sort of home invasion. I think of this a bit like I think of Ralphie Parker's dreams of fending off Black Bart with his BB gun. In general, your home is not going to be invaded while you are there, and you are not going to defend yourself this way if it does happen. Shooting can be a fun hobby, but you're not John Wayne.
The eXile, the Moscow-based alternative paper founded by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi — and which has been home these past few years to occasional TAC contributor Gary Brecher, the War Nerd — has been shut down by Russian authorities.
I like this ad campagin, particularly shot 5. BTW I'm pretty sure this was posted here as blog spam, but I like it anyway, so I'm rerecommending it. If the responsible user gets out of control they'll be plonked.
Rickrolling is a prank and Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video.
Balkinization: What the Dems DID save in the FISA capitulation
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:24 pm EDT, Jun 20, 2008
Interesting point from the thread:
Nancy Pelosi did remove one joker from the deck, quite pointedly: the PAA's Orwellian definition of "electronic surveillance" to exclude the electronic surveillance it authorized. (No, this is not a typo.)
This created a hole so vast that it appeared that even the PAA's lame procedures were not mandatory for the new surveillance but only an option that could be bypassed.
Back in March, in rebuffing the attempted ram-through of the Senate bill, Pelosi denounced the subterfuge in the strongest terms, calling it "very important" to notice and to keep out of the next FISA amendment. She even put the point on parity with exclusivity. (It is her third and final point at 6:10:
.
The current bill is free of this piece of hucksterism. I was pleased to see the House get on top of the issue, call it out explicitly, and stay focused on its expungement.
Looking at the new bill, I come away with two lessons. It is never a waste of time to call out a travesty; and if it's not one thing, it's another.
