Gun Rights in America

Today's installment is in response to Sunny, who made her post in response to a comment I made on another post of hers.  Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense, but hopefully my thoughts on the Second Amendment will.  Strap in, because I hope this will be a nuanced discussion.  It certainly won't be short.

First and foremost, let's talk about the amendment itself.  Here's the exact phrasing: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  From a legal standpoint, the phrase shall not be infringed is a strict limit.  It means the government is not allowed to violate the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  Period.  End of story.  The term shall not legally translates to a command that allows no discretion.

Now, let's explore why this right exists.  As stated above, the reason this right exists is because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.  The definition of a militia is a military force that's made up of ordinary citizens, as opposed to full-time soldiers.  The historical purpose of the militia was to protect towns and states, and the authority to activate the militia rested with the government.  It is logical to infer that, based on the text of the amendment, militia members were expected to provide their own weapons if called into service.

Let's expound on this concept a bit further.  When the Bill of Rights was written and ratified, the US had a small standing army, but military strategy relied very heavily on state militias.  Over time, the militia evolved into what we would call our current National Guard.  The Guard's weapons are now provided by the government, not the private citizen.  Additionally, private militias are expressly outlawed in all 50 states.  Based on all of this information, the "why" of the second amendment no longer exists.  However, shall not be infringed remains.  The reason is gone, but the right continues.

There are people who say the right to bear arms exists to protect us from what could be the tyranny of our own state or federal government.  That argument has merit, because the concept is brought up in the Federalist Papers.  However, I respectfully disagree with that perspective, based on the wording of the amendment, because again, the authority to call up or disband the militia rests with the government.

Before I continue, I would like to clarify that I am not anti gun.  I own multiple handguns, rifles and shotguns.  Shooting guns is fun.  Hunting is fun, and personally, I believe that knowing how to live off the land is a valuable skill.  I won't say "You can take my guns from my cold, dead hands," but that statement is reasonably close to my perspective.

With my personal preference out of the way, let's wade into the messy concept of gun control.  At the root of the entire debate is the idea of personal rights.  Virtually every gun owner I've ever met falls back to this argument... it's my right. Yes, that's true.  However, no right is absolute.  Your rights end where mine begin. I am not allowed to knowingly spread malicious lies about someone with the intent of harming their reputation or livelihood.  Freedom of religion does not allow for human sacrifice.  The government has a well-established history of outlawing or heavily regulating products or activities that are likely to cause harm.  Lawn darts were banned in the 80s.  You need to be 21 or older to legally smoke or consume alcohol.  You must pass a test to legally drive a vehicle.  Your guns, in fact, can be taken away in few specific circumstances.  The ONLY reason this debate exists is because this right was written on a piece of paper over 225 years ago.  In short, we are having the wrong discussion.

We should not be arguing about whether or not gun ownership is a right.  That's a silly argument.  Of course it's a right.  It's written in ink.  The real question is whether or not gun ownership should be a right.  And this is where I'm open to discussion.

I fully agree that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are responsible, and I fully agree that responsible owners should be allowed to keep their firearms.  Hunters should be allowed to hunt.  People living in the country should be able to defend themselves from predators.  Target shooters should be allowed to plink away to their hearts' delight.  As it stands today, ordinary citizens should be allowed to carry guns for self protection and home defense.  The real issue is that gun rights advocates and gun control advocates are not having the same conversation; they're focused on different problems.

Shooting a gun in the middle of nowhere is far less likely to have an unintended consequence than firing that same weapon in the middle of a highly populated area.  I could stand in a field in Bumfuk, MT, spin in a circle and pull the trigger on my Glock to my heart's content and the most likely outcome is that the rounds land harmlessly in the dirt a few yards away.  I might hit a cow.  If I did the same thing in Times Square, the most likely outcome is that I directly hit several people, and the resulting stampede would kill or injure even more.  If I shoot at someone invading my country homestead and I miss, I need to patch holes in my wall.  If I miss the intruder invading my apartment in downtown Chicago, it's reasonably likely that I hit a neighbor.  And again, my rights end where yours begin.

Saying that we have gun laws does not address the root problem, which is gun violence.  Mandatory waiting periods may mitigate the problem of a jealous husband shooting his cheating wife and that louse of a guy she's sleeping with, but it does nothing to deter the radical who wants to shoot an elected official, or the bullied kid who mistakenly believes that killing his classmates will somehow solve his problems.  Sentencing a political assassin to death doesn't bring anyone back.  Charging a mass shooter with multiple counts of murder is closing the barn door after the horses ran off.

The right to bear arms has not always been absolute. Congress banned the sale of some semi-automatic firearms in 1994, and the ban lasted for ten years.  That ban was never contested; congress allowed the ban to expire.  Even during the old west era, towns had laws prohibiting firearms in city limits.  I understand that many responsible gun owners worry that any attempt at gun control will lead to the eventual loss of their toy.  It's a valid fear.  It's also a slippery slope argument, which is a logical fallacy.

By the same token, I understand how the family of a mass shooting victim would want to completely outlaw all guns.  It's a natural reaction.  And the gun lobby is totally unhelpful when they offer the too-often-repeated "pray for the victims" platitude.  Funk dat!  Prayers don't bring people back from the dead.  Prayers don't stop the next homicidal nut job from shooting up another night club, theater or synagogue.  Neither does outlawing all guns.

I personally believe that gun rights should be a state issue.  Low population states such as Wyoming have problems that are wildly different from states like California, which contains multiple metropolises.  It's unreasonable to expect a one-size-fits-all solution for such a complex problem.

I can get behind storage requirements, such as mandating gun safes or locks.  I fully support the idea of a firearms safety course requirement, which would prevent Joe Schmo from buying a gun and carrying it, but never learning how to safely fire it.

I'd like to close by saying that I don't believe things will change much during my lifetime.  Constitutional rights rightfully have a high bar for change.  I also don't believe that any attempts to ban firearms nationwide will be successful, because gun culture is too ingrained in our identity.  But I do believe it's worthwhile to ask ourselves if gun ownership should be a constitutional right at the national level.  And I do believe that delegating gun legislation to the state level is a reasonable compromise.

It's Quiet in Iran Right Now

I wonder if POTUS would start dropping bombs again if we started talking about Epstein again.

Too cynical? 

Reveling in Ennui

Unlike most people, I aspire to boredom, and today is a day where I'm succeeding.  On most days, I have a laundry list of things I want or need to do, and I'm usually short of the necessary time to do it all.  This state of mind is so ingrained that when I really have nothing important to do, I tend to get a little anxious, either worrying that I missed something or fearing what pseudo-emergency is going to crop up next.  I've spent a lot of effort over the past couple of years trying to unlearn that anxiety and just allow myself to be bored.  In my case, the secret was a career pivot.

I've spent the majority of my life working in the IT industry.  I started out on workstations, and over time built an expansive expertise that includes servers, networking, cloud, and security.  The IT industry has been a great field for me.  I appreciate that there's always more to learn.  I love designing and building things.  Solving problems brings me pleasure.  I enjoy being a resident expert and feeling needed.  The downside is that I've been expected to be available essentially 24/7.

My current job is IT security compliance.  What this means in plain English is that I recommend and implement well-established best practices and make sure that we actually follow them.  It's not a particularly exciting field.  Sometimes it's downright mind numbing.  But there's no such thing as a compliance emergency.  I can take a day off, knowing that nobody will call to ask me why my compliance can't send email, and nobody is going to call me at midnight to say that my compliance is down and the company is at a standstill as a result.  In fact, the primary reason my job exists is to meet regulatory requirements.  Yep, my entire industry was effectively legislated into existence.  Compliance is a way to prove that a given business is doing what's legally required, such as keeping health records private, and reducing the likelihood of getting hacked.  But I'm digressing.

My point is that I like boredom.  It gives my mind a chance to wander, and my body a chance to rest and recharge.  I've spent enough of my life on edge or chasing adrenaline.  I welcome the sedate life and I'm happy that I'm reveling in ennui today.

Happy Coincidences

When I returned to blogging toward the end of last year, the original purpose was to find a place where I could share my political thoughts, without enraging my Facebook friends, without all of the vitriol of social media, with a method of protecting my anonymity, and in a place were I could expound on the reasoning behind my views with no restrictions on what I say or how I say it.  I kind of envisioned myself as a political essayist without an audience.

It was a wonderful coincidence that Sunny happened to dust off her blog at almost exactly the same time, because I quickly found myself dropping by to see what she had to say, which quite frequently inspired me to write about stuff outside of the political realm.  As a result, I'm no longer a single subject writer and I've unintentionally freed myself to write more frequently.  I kind of feel like this little blog has turned into an online version of a pen pal relationship between Sunny and me.  The major difference is that our letters aren't necessarily directly written to each other, and anyone in the world can read our correspondences.

I also feel like blogging is almost an anachronistic endeavor, which I think is part of the draw.  Nobody writes letters anymore, but this is damned close.  By the same token, it seems that nobody blogs anymore, but that can't quite be true, otherwise blog platforms would have disappeared.  I also suspect that pen pals have become a rare thing as well, but I feel like I have one in Sunny.  I'm happy that we've stumbled across one another again.

Setback

I mentioned in a recent post that I had found an old pair of my combat boots and that I'm refurbishing them.  I've experienced a couple of minor setbacks.  One of the cracks isn't filling in as well as I'd like.  No worries, I'm moving forward and accepting that one.  The other one is that, after sanding some areas down to bare leather, the shoe polish alone was not enough to blacken the leather.  After about ten coats of polish, I've decided that I'm going to re-strip the boots and dye the leather.

To reiterate, I'm not worried about this.  The boots are old and were in very poor repair when I started this project, and I have no timeline.  This is about learning stuff.  I'm reasonably confident that my finished product will meet my expectations.  Either way though, feel free to wish me luck.

Employer-Sponsored vs. Government-Sponsored Insurance

I am not sure if I've said it before, but I support socialized medicine in the US.  My rationale is twofold... first, I believe that we would reduce costs significantly if we removed insurance companies from the equation, (IE, getting rid of the profit motive,) and second, if we socialized medicine, everyone would have access to basic health care, which would realistically reduce costs further, because we could catch problems earlier and mitigate, rather than waiting until it's an emergency.

A while back, Bernie Sanders proposed legislation that would incentivize employers such as Wal-Mart, who have a huge number of employees who make wages low enough to be qualified for medicatd, to increase wages.  The idea behind the legislation is that medicaid acts as a pseudo subsidy for these companies by shifting medical costs from that company to the federal government.  The incentive to raise wages would be that the government would fine the employer for having too many employees that are eligible for Medicaid.  I thought it was a great idea, but this article managed to change my mind.

The premise of the article is that Sanders's idea effectively serves to keep insurance with employers, which has the unintended outcome of reducing the power of labor, which is a perspective I had not previously considered, and one that makes me even further in favor of socialized medicine.  Allow me to illustrate my point.

Let's say that I'm working a job and get laid off.  Under the current system, I essentially lose my insurance when I lose that job.  (Yes, I can keep insurance through COBRA, but the costs are prohibitively expensive, and it's still only for a limited time.  And yes, I can directly purchase private insurance, but again, it's not cost effective.)  As a result, I am significantly more likely to accept the first job offer I get, even if it's at a far lower wage, just so I have insurance.  If the government were to provide for basic needs, such as food assistance and health insurance, I'm in a position to hold out a bit longer until I find a job that pays me what I'm worth.

Those opposed to socialized medicine say that welfare is a disincentive to work.  For years, they've held out the welfare queen as the example.  I will concede these people exist.  However, study after study after study demonstrates this is the rare exception, not the rule.  And realistically, those who would exploit the system will find a way to do so, no matter what system is in place.

Another objection is that the government would create "death panels" to determine who lives and who dies if socialized medicine were to come into play.  In response to that, I say we already have death panels; they're known as insurance companies.  In fact, they're death panels twice over.  The first hurdle you need to jump is getting a job that provides insurance.  No job essentially means no insurance, and no insurance means no healthcare.  Second off, insurance companies are known to deny lifesaving treatment.

I get that not everyone shares my perspective.  I do, however, believe that most people agree our current system is broken.  There have been tons of ideas floated and tested in order to fix our broken system, but nothing seems to work.  Logic would dictate that eventually one would admit it's worth trying something completely different.  It makes even more sense when you see other countries with socialized medicine that provides the same level of healthcare (or better,) to more people, at the same cost (or less.)

I'd really love to know what Sunny has to say on this, since she spent time in a country with socialized medicine.  I'm always open to learning more. 

Sore

Last Thursday I played flag football for my weekly PT session with the Marine Poolees.  It was a fun departure from the usual running and calisthenics, and everyone enjoyed it.  I've got to admit that I'm sore, though.  I used parts of my body that apparently have been long neglected.  My hip flexors and IT band are both quite sore.  What really surprised me most, however, is how sore my feet are.  The day after PT, the tops of my feet hurt as if people had been stepping on them all day.  Since then, the bottoms of my feet have been stiff, like sore muscle stiff, when I first get out of bed.  Those first few steps hurt!

For the record though, I'd absolutely do it again.