I was delighted yesterday to see Glenn Reynolds linking to libertarian writer Radley Balko’s Reason article about the Cambridge kerfuffle (a.k.a. Gates-gate).
Balko shifts the focus away from race, which is really a sideshow in this particular case, to where it rightfully belongs: police abuse of power. And, while acknowledging that Gates seems to have acted boorishly, Balko criticizes Crowley for arresting him when, by all accounts, the only “crime” Gates committed is the non-crime of “contempt of cop.”
Balko also lambastes many conservatives for the “instinctively authoritarian tack” they have taken in response to this and other confrontations between cops and citizens. This is something that desperately needed to be said, and Balko says it well.
Excerpt:
[I]t now seems clear that Gates mistakenly presumed that Crowley had racially profiled him, and hurled a barrage of invective at Crowley in response. … [But] [t]he conversation we ought to be having in response to the July 16 incident and its heated aftermath isn’t about race, it’s about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government.
By any account of what happened—Gates’, Crowleys’, or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. “Contempt of cop,” as it’s sometimes called, isn’t a crime. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The “disorderly conduct” charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest.
He won’t be, of course. And that’s ultimately the scandal that will endure long after the political furor dies down. The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It’s taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights. …
If there’s a teachable moment to extract from Gates’ arrest, it’s that arrest powers should be limited to actual crimes. Instead, the emerging lesson seems to be that you should capitulate to police, all the time, right or wrong. That’s unfortunate, because there are plenty of instances where you shouldn’t.
Much more after the jump, including some well-deserved link love for Carlos Miller’s blog.
Balko continues:
The most obvious case where deference to authority can be counter-productive—both in practice and in principle—is when police attempt an unlawful search or seizure of your person and property. But there are plenty of other instances as well, particularly with the spread of information technology.
Photographing or videotaping police ought to be a protected form of expression under any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution. Yet at the website Photography Is Not a Crime, photographer Carlos Miller has tracked dozens of cases in which police have unlawfully demanded someone cease photographing on-duty cops. Typically, police demand photographers hand over their cameras, and those who refuse are often arrested. In some of the cases, the preserved video or photographs have vindicated a defendant, or revealed police misconduct. Miller started the site after he himself was wrongly arrested for photographing police officers in Miami. …
In the last few years we’ve seen numerous other incidents where cell phone videos and photographs, surveillance video, or handheld video cameras have both exposed police misconduct and shown officers to have falsified police reports. In most of these cases, the police at various points attempted to confiscate, alter, or destroy the photographic evidence.
And yet in most cases — particularly those cases where the only “misconduct” is the false arrest, the attempt to prevent photography, or the effort to confiscate, alter or destroy evidence — the police officers involved get only a slap on the wrist, if that. In this way, the blatant abuse of police power is explicitly tolerated by the system, and so it (obviously) continues.
And, as Balko points out, many conservatives are okay with this — indeed, they actively support it:
[M]any conservatives take the instinctively authoritarian tack represented here by Washington Post staff writer Neely Tucker:
One of the common-sense rules of life can be summed up this way: Don’t Mess With Cops.
It doesn’t matter if you are right, wrong, at home or on the street, or if you are white, black, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim or whatever. When an armed law enforcement officer tells you to cease and desist, the wise person (a) ceases and (b) desists.
The End.
Perhaps on an individual level, this is sound advice. As a general rule, you ought not provoke someone carrying a gun, whether your criticism is justified or not. As a broader sentiment, however, it shows a dangerous level of deference to the government agents in whom we entrust a massive amount of power. And it comes awfully close to writing a blank check for police misconduct. …
Still, sentiment like Tucker’s is common. Commenting on Gates’ arrest, National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg wrote that he counts himself among those who are “deferential to police,” and willing to “give cops the benefit of the doubt for a host of reasons.” That’s a common position among conservatives. At a Federalist Society luncheon a few years ago, Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson praised the Supreme Court for “putting more trust in our police officers” in recent rulings. Los Angeles Police Department officer Jack Dunphy (a pseudonym) oddly concluded at National Review Online that the lesson from the Gates/Crowley affair is that anyone who asserts his constitutional rights when confronted by a police officer risks getting shot.
This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.
Indeed. It’s a truly bizarre, intellectually incoherent position for “conservatives” to hold. And yet this authoritarian streak was widely on display in the last rounds of blog comments on this topic, and I have no doubt it will re-surface here.
It’s all quite reminiscent of my old post about the “three unique species of unfortunate comment-section creatures” who invariably surface whenever police misconduct is alleged:
* The “police can do no wrong” brigades. These folks are essentially authoritarians, though they don’t realize it. Significantly less common in the somewhat high-brow world of the blogosphere than at, say, water coolers or, better yet, construction sites (or, online, in places like AOL chatrooms and YouTube comments), they are the people who will always give police officers the benefit of the doubt, even when they clearly don’t deserve it, and will justify this position not with specific facts from the case in question, but with blanket assertions about how cops are “heroes” who “risk their lives” for all of us ungrateful bastards — including for know-it-all jerks like Scott Conover, who have the audacity to annoy America’s Heroes in the line of duty, which, if it isn’t a crime, it should be. People in this category do not recognize any civil-liberties concerns related to law enforcement as being remotely legitimate, because police are, again, heroes who would never dream of abusing their authority (of which they should have more, by the way), and anybody who thinks otherwise is a stinkin’ ACLU-loving, tin-foil-hat-wearing, commie pinko idiot. U-S-A! U-S-A! (People in this category, incidentally, generally feel the same way — but even more intensely — about the military.)
* The “police can do no right” brigades. These folks are significantly more common in the blogosphere than IRL; they are the idiots whose helpful contribution to discussions like this is to make statements like “stinking pig cops,” and/or to paint all police misbehavior as part and parcel of a vast conspiracy. Needless to say, they make the rest of us — those who seek to criticize the police only when the criticism is actually justified, and who otherwise respect and appreciate the hard work officers do — look bad. They also make us easy targets for Group #1, which sees anyone who criticizes the police as being in this group. People in this category are unable to distinguish between actual bad policing and the mere appearance or suggestion thereof, because they never give a “pig” the benefit of the doubt; indeed, they would never dream of doing so. The police are bad, bad, bad.
* The “well, yeah, but he was being a jerk” brigades. There is some overlap between Group #1 and this group, but not too much. Generally, members of this group are a whole different type of animal: instead of being credulous believers in the purity and righteousness of the police, these folks are the masters of judgmental snark with regard to the officers’ victims. It isn’t so much that they always give police the benefit of the doubt, as that they never give that benefit to those whose rights get trampled. They can always find some fault in the victim, and they regard this fault as the overriding issue that everyone else is overlooking. Without recognizing that they’re doing so, they pose an almost impossible standard on the victims of police misconduct: unless the citizen’s behavior was totally and completely above reproach throughout the entire incident (and, frankly, it’s awfully hard to avoid getting angry when an officer of the law is blatantly bullying you), the whole thing is really the citizen’s fault, according to the people in this group. The motivation of these folks is hard to divine, but their effect on the debate is clear: they make it far easier for the defenders of police misbehavior to turn the tables on their accusers, or at least obfuscate the issue by putting the victim on trial and spreading harmful memes about his or her behavior. To the extent that some of those memes may have some validity, the people in this group feel vindicated, failing to recognize that, in order for any of us to have rights, jerks must have rights too.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect there’s greater overlap between Group #1 and Group #3, particularly in the blogosphere, than I initially thought when I wrote that analysis. It may well be that the attitude embodied by Group #3 is, in significant part, just the more sophisticated, less Neanderthalic version of the attitude embodied by Group #1. Nobody who fancies himself smart and educated wants to be perceived as a credulous authoritarian — but “judgmental snark” is always acceptable on the Interwebs. And if the road to unquestioned police authority is paved with snark, well, all the better.
Your question is a bit of a strawman, but I will answer it anyway.
First of all, conservatives don’t hate government. Conservatives realize that government is neccessary to preserve our rights and lives. Conservatives are far from anarchists.
What conservatives hate is BIG government and the welfare state. We hate the government acting as our parent and sugar daddy.
The basic responsibility of government is to protect life and property. The people who fulfill this responsibility every day, risking their lives for us, are our police. Conservatives respect and support police because without them, our civilization is impossible.
I also reject the premise that we “blindly trust” the police. How about I turn that around on you?
Why is it that liberals love government, but blindly hate and distrust the police?
I would submit that the basic difference in the attitude concerning the police is related to a basic difference between the left and the right.
Conservatives and those on the right believe in social order and following the rules. They value the police in maintaining these.
Liberals and those on the left (especially since the late 1960’s) usually reject the very idea of social order and often reject following the rules. Thus they see the police as the enemy because the police seek to maintain social order and enforce the rules.
The title of this post was deliberately provocative — sort of an Andrew Long-style title 🙂 — so I will acknowledge that it’s a strawman as stated.
I do think there is an intellectual inconsistency in conservatives’ tendency to mistrust government implicitly while trusting police implicitly. I understand your argument about the “basic responsibility of government,” but it doesn’t really address my point, because conservatives’ mistrust of government workers generally applies to those who fulfill both legitimate and (in the conservative view) illegitimate functions of government. For instance, surely conservatives acknowledge that the postal service — which is provided for in the Constitution itself — is also a totally legitimate, and fairly basic, government responsibility. Yet they constantly bash postal workers as examples of BAD BAD BAD government bureaucracy (“do you want the people who run the postal service running your health care?” blah blah blah). Now, I’m not saying whether this is right or wrong, but if the test for whether conservatives support a given subset of government workers is whether they see the role of those workers as being legitimate or essential to society’s functioning, surely the employees of this constitutionally mandated governmental entity would get a little more respect, irrespective of their failings, just as you show enormous respect for police, irrespective of their failings.
Generally, trying not to overgeneralize, I think the following is true: regardless of whether they approve of the global role fulfilled by a given subset of government workers, conservatives have a tendency to mistrust the individual workers themselves (“damn government bureaucrats!”) — except when those workers are police (or military). This strikes me as quite odd, given that cops (and soldiers) have more power, including firepower, and thus more ability to unjustly infringe our basic liberties — and, manifestly, cops exercise that ability on a fairly regular basis (though they, of course, also do lots of wonderful and crucial things… but you never mention that same point when it applies to other government workers, who are likewise a mixed bag, as are all humans). So that’s why I still think there is an intellectual inconsistency.
In any case, all of this doesn’t mean, as my title might suggest, that I think conservatives, by and large, fit into the “police can do no wrong” category (any more than liberals, by and large, fit into the “police can do no right” category). I don’t think that. I do think y’all tend to place a bit too much trust in them, and turn a blind eye to their failings, and to the obvious dangers those failings pose when they are tolerated or even encouraged, implicitly or explicitly.
Finally and most importantly, the belief that police should respect the law, and abide by it, and not blatantly infringe on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens, is most assuredly NOT an assault upon “the very idea of social order.” I don’t “reject following the rules.” I reject the notion that, in America, “the rules” include unquestioning obedience to authority figures wearing badges, even when those authority figures are giving you orders they have no legal right to give. Don’t you reject that notion, too? Don’t you agree that the Neely Tucker view quoted in this post is completely wrong-headed? And if not, why not?
Gahrie, why is it that conservatives only follow things half way?
“The basic responsibility of government is to protect life and property”
Yes, thats part of it, but I refer you to the Preamble of the Constitution:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Defense and liberty are definitely there, but there is that whole part about general welfare that you like to skip over. Its kinda like how the whole part about a well regulated militia gets ignored by the right wing as well.
Actually Brendan its far more than blindly trusting the police, they paradoxically also blindly trust the government, well on certain things at least. I wrote a blog post on this myself a while back,b ut the gist of it is this:
Conservatives wanted us to trust the government without question when it came to war. Those who questioned the presidents decisions and actions were accused of aiding the enemy and hating America. They wanted us to trust the government when it came to domestic surveilence. We were supposed to trust them when they said the records would ONLY be used for looking for terrorists (regardless of the legality of what they did). Yet when it comes to far more transparent processes like the health care push, and the bailout, suddenly big bad socialist government was trying to take away our freedoms. In the face of ACTUAL threats to freedom like the Patriot Act and the warrantless wiretapping we were supposed to keep our mouths shut, but in areas where our freedoms weren’t being infringed upon? Rise up people, rise up!
” Yet they constantly bash postal workers as examples of BAD BAD BAD government bureaucracy (”do you want the people who run the postal service running your health care?” blah blah blah).”
I love this argument, considering that the USPS is entirely self-funding, actually subsidizes the federal government (not the other way around) by providing free mail services to members of congress etc. Is one of the most efficient organizations you can find, the sheer volume of mail processed and delivered succesfully vs. the occasional (yet unfortunate) loss of mail is really quite impressive. Beyond that the post office, as I have pointed out before is the PERFECT example of how government can offer an option and it won’t turn into a state-run monopoly, as you can choose among multiple carriers for delievering packages.
First of all I agree with the Neely Tucker view quoted. When dealing with the police you should not mess with them, and in fact be deferential.
HOWEVER
If the police have violated the law or even been rude in dealing with you, you should take steps to address this AFTER THE FACT. By all means complain to the proper authorities, and if the offense was egregious enough, file a lawsuit.
Citizens have every bit as much of a responsibility to behave properly in their interaction with the police as police have a duty to behave properly when interacting with the public.
I reject your proposition that conservatives bash postal workers. As far as I know, we have never called them names (pigs etc) or attempted to interfere with them while they were doing their jobs, as the left commonly does the police. Now if you want to change that to bashing the postal service, then I whole-heartedly agree. The point is, it’s not the people doing the work, it is the system they are working in. We don’t even deny that the postal service is a legitemate function of government, just that it is inefficent, poorly run, and costs too much, especially when compared to their competition in the private sector. It should also be noted that the cost of postal service is constantly increasing (they are talking about raising the price of a stamp to 50c) with no improvement in the quanity (in fact these is discussion of getting rid of Saturday delivery) or quality of service.
Just for the record:
From our nation’s founding, up until 1958, a letter cost no more than 3c to mail. In the 50 years since then, it has gone up to 44c. It’s gone from 34c to 44c just since 2001.
Do you really doubt we’d see a similar record for government run health insurance?
David K.
I have come to the conslusion that you have never taken a course on the Constitution or Constitutional law, since almost every time you talk about it you demonstrate a complete ignorance of it.
When the Constitution talks about the “general welfare” it has NOTHING to do with the modern welfare state.
Our Founding Fathers would be aghast as the scope and reach of the modern welfare state.
So, gahrie, if a police officer asks me to delete my photos — a blatantly illegal request that no officer ever, under any conceivable circumstance, has any right to make, but one that’s made frequently in encounters between police and photographers — I should comply, and then file a complaint and possibly a lawsuit?
Or if a police officer demands, without a warrant, to search something he has no right to search, I should hand it over, then complain/sue later?
Or if a police officer asks me information I am not required to reveal, because he has no probable cause to ask, I should just spill the beans, then seek redress at a later date?
Bullshit.
Once my photos are deleted, they are (potentially) gone forever; if so, no complaint or lawsuit can bring them back. Likewise, once I have been forced to consent to an illegal search, or required to reveal information I did not wish to reveal and should not have been required to reveal, the genie’s out of the bottle and cannot be put back in.
The exclusionary rule MIGHT help me, if I’m charged with a crime (though there are a gazillion exceptions), but ironically, it cannot help me if I’m a law-abiding citizen, since in that case I have nothing to fear from the “evidence” anyway — yet my rights have still been violated by the illegal search and seizure, and various people may have learned things I did not wish them to learn, and that they had no right to learn, and that they cannot un-learn. A complaint or lawsuit cannot undo the violation of my rights.
And besides, the system is manifestly stacked against citizens winning such after-the-fact fights, unless the violation is incredibly blatant with severe consequences. If it’s just a run-of-the-mill “you shouldn’t have deleted my photos,” the citizen will generally win a phyrric victory at best. The cop might get a slap on the wrist, at most. Time and again this happens.
I do not want to live in your America, gahrie. It is an authoritarian state. Views like yours terrify me. Please move to Iran or China or someplace, and let me get on with living in a constitutional republic, where citizens have meaningful rights.
P.S. That you would presume to lecture anyone — ANYONE — on constitutional law, after agreeing that citizens should always do whatever cops tell them to do, no matter what, would be laughable if it weren’t so scary.
You are the problem, gahrie.
Brendan:
I have no fear of the police. I think it’s sad you do.
Go back to Neely’s quote that I agreed with. It said nothing about searches, seizures or deleting pictures. Those are yet more strawmen. It said..when an officer asks you to cease and desist, a smart person ceases and desists. Gates’ problem wasn’t that he was angry or even that he was insulting. It was that he was in public, causing a disturbance, and he refused to cease and desist his behavior when asked. If he had remained in his house (or simply stopped when repeatedly warned) and filed a complaint with the police commission and the mayor, he never would have been arrested and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
If you believe an officer is asking you to do something you don’t have to do, don’t do it. Just don’t become insulting and cause a scene and be prepared to deal with the consequences.
As to my knowledge of the Constitution, can you point to a single instance in which I have been factually wrong?
Most recently I have asserted two things about the Constitution:
1) The Constitution was orginally designed to enumerate the powers of the government, and the government could only do what the Constitution allowed. However, because the Bill of Rights was passed, instead we now have a system in which the government can do anything the Constitution does not expressly prohibit.
2) Neither of the two times that the phrase “general welfare” is used in the Constitution refers to, or mandates, the modern welfare state.
Are these correct or not?
Lets see, welfare state, wellfare state, I’m fairly certain the only person here who brought that up was you gahrie. Unless you go with an overly broad generalization that offering a paid health care alternative makes us a welfare state, however that doesn’t really fit the definition of welfare you are trying to use. However, the idea that an affordable health care option and preventing economic collapse aren’t in line with keeping the over all nation happy and healthy in both the physical and fiscal sense is rather odd wouldn’t you say? I think the founding fathers would be glad we were able to offer that as an option.
On the other hand I think they’d be appauled at the types of tyranical power you support, the general hate spewed by the leaders of your party, and the rampant embrace of a gun culture that leads to more gun deaths per capita in the U.S. than in any other industrialized nation. Yeah I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have added the seconded ammendment if they could see what people like you have done to twist it in support of such behavior.
You think its sad that people are wary of police abusing their power? Despite the fact that it happens? Despite the fact that you or I or Brendan are far more likely to be the victim of that than we ever are of a terrorist attack?
I respect the police and I respect what a difficult job they have. I have friends who are in law enforcement. By and large its a profession filled with good people. However its obvious from this and other instances that there are those who can and will abuse their power. Its understandable to some degree, power corrupts. But you would have us submit to whatever abuse of power we find ourselves in and protest only after the fact, despite as Brendan has pointed out, that those abuses are blatantly wrong and its our civic duty NOT to submit to abuse of power.
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to guarantee the right to own a weapon so that the people could rise up in rebellion against a tyrannical government and protect the rest of their rights. It was not an accident that it was the second amendment. The Founding Fathers would believe in a far stronger right to own a weapon than exists today.
Have you compared the levels of violence in states with concealed carry laws with violence in states with strong gun control lately?
Gahrie, re-reading Neely Tucker’s quote, you are correct: it only applies to situations where an officer is making a request that you STOP doing something — it would not apply to affirmative requests to DO something, like the ones I posited above. My mistake. And I am very glad to hear you say, “If you believe an officer is asking you to do something you don’t have to do, don’t do it.”
Having said that… I’m not sure the distinction between affirmative and negative requests is as dispositive as you think. An officer can very easily violate your rights by asking you NOT to do something. And Tucker says you should comply with such a request.
Contrary to your strawman, Tucker’s quote does NOT apply only to situations where what the officer is asking an individual to “cease and desist” being “insulting” and causing a “disturbance.” That’s an easy situation. Certainly a person should comply with such a request (even though arrest is inappropriate), just as a person should comply with any request from anyone, including a non-police officer, to stop being insulting and making a scene. Being insulting and making a scene is dumb and inappropriate (though not illegal, except in rare circumstances). Like I said, that’s an easy case. But Tucker’s quote isn’t so limited. It applies to hard cases, too.
Tucker says that “[w]hen an armed law enforcement officer tells you to cease and desist, the wise person (a) ceases and (b) desists.” He doesn’t specify WHAT you’re being asked to cease and desist. It could be anything. And he clearly said, “it doesn’t matter if you are right, wrong, at home or on the street,” etc.
So… what if the officer’s request that you STOP doing something — that you “cease and desist” — is equally violative of your rights as the affirmative requests I posited?
For instance, okay, I concede that Tucker’s quote wouldn’t directly apply to a request to delete photos. But it WOULD apply to request to stop taking photos in the first place. Including taking photos in a public place — of an incident on a public street, say. If a police officer tells me to “cease and desist” taking such photos, should I comply?
(This has happened to me, by the way. I did not comply. On the other hand, I didn’t create a confrontation, either. I moved to a slightly different location and continued taking photos.)
If I complied and stopped taking pictures, simply because the officer (illegally) asked me to, I could, of course, file a complaint or lawsuit “after the fact,” as you say. But even if my complaint or lawsuit went anywhere (and as I’ve mentioned, the system is badly stacked against such citizen complaints), I wouldn’t get back the opportunity to take those photos. So if the officer’s request was legally invalid (as such requests almost always are), my rights have been violated, and I have no recourse. My only possible recourse is to refuse, in the first place, to obey the invalid order. Would you agree that this, too, is an example where unquestioning adherence to a police officer is inappropriate? Or do you still think Tucker is right?
Meanwhile, I am mystified by your statement, “I have no fear of the police.” You are a crazy person if that is literally true. You have no fear of human beings with guns, cloaked with legal authority? Why the hell not? All human beings are fallible, and power corrupts. Police are not immune to these immutable facts of human nature — far from it. I freely acknowledge that probably 99% of cops have their hearts in the right place, and most follow the law. But to have “no fear” of them trampling your rights? In spite of the abundant evidence that innocent people have their rights trampled, in ways big and small, by police officers ALL THE TIME?? That’s not a point of pride, gahrie, that’s a sign of complete and utter denial of reality.
P.S. I don’t necessarily take issue with any specific constitutional arguments that you have made. However, to the extent that you believe citizens should automatically adhere to any and all “cease and desist” requests by police officers, regardless of whether those requests are even arguably* legal, that belief exposes a fatal flaw in your understanding of citizens’ basic constitutional rights, irrespective of any other correct arguments you may have made about other Con Law issues. The principle that citizens should do whatever cops say is fundamentally inconsistent with the free society that our constitution guarantees us.
*I say “arguably legal” because I am not suggesting that citizens “play lawyer” in confrontations with cops — if it’s a close question whether a request is legal, you should probably obey it, in most instances. However, a request like “don’t take pictures of that public street” or “don’t ask questions, just shut up and do whatever I say” is not even arguably legal. In no possible universe can such a request be valid. (Well — perhaps in an emergency situation, with fast-moving events where people’s safety is at risk, the second request might be okay. But only very rarely. And the first one, never.) And yet Neely Tucker would have us obey such “cease and desist” orders anyway, even when we’re 100% certain they are illegal. That is an authoritarian, and frankly un-American mindset. There’s no other way to describe it.
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to guarantee the right to own a weapon so that the people could rise up in rebellion against a tyrannical government and protect the rest of their rights. It was not an accident that it was the second amendment. The Founding Fathers would believe in a far stronger right to own a weapon than exists today.
Are you completely unfamiliar with history or do you just ignore the parts you don’t like? A revolutionary war era musket was pretty innacurate and an expert could fire about 6 rounds per minute. With todays handguns you have increased deadly force, increased accuracy over distance, and you can fire off six rounds as fast as your twitchy finger can pull it. So no, I don’t think the founding fathers would have supported the same type of gun ownership because the circumstances and reasons for doing so are completely different. Not only was a gun more vital to ones livlihood back then, it was also necessary when fighting off an invading foreign power, who incidentally had the same level of weaponry. Today we have a military to do that, and a military with vastly superior arms. Unless you are advocating for civillian ownership of military level fire arms, which is, um, insane.
Have you compared the levels of violence in states with concealed carry laws with violence in states with strong gun control lately?
Whats your point? The numbers are still dramatically higher than in any other country because you don’t have to live in a state to buy a gun there. State to state comparisons are pointless because its a national problem. Until we have NATIONAL gun control laws in place the problems will continue. Innocents will continue to die because the NRA is too arrogant and stupid to allow for reasonable levels of gun control that would help prevent that all while allowing citizens who are law abiding to continue to own certain types of guns, as is true in our neighbor to the north, Canada. I’m not advocating for a complete gun ban, ala Japan (although that would be safer). Of course at the same time the right wingers like you want me to accept the ability of more people to own deadly fire arms, they want me to give up my constitutionally gaurenteed freedoms to protect me from the nebulous threat of terrorism. Its illogical and hypocritical to defend only one part of the constitution while ignoring another.
David K:
1) Again you didn’t read my post, or simply ignored parts of it. The purpose of the Second Amendment was not to protect hunters, or sportsmen, or even provide a militia. (The whole regulated militia part is not controlling, and no court has ever said it was…..most Con Law experts on the Left are now even willing to concede the point that the right to own a gun is an individual one, not a collective one) The primary purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect the ability of the people to rise in rebellion against the government. They did and would support a right to own military grade weapons, which is currently illegal. I myself see no point in allowing private ownership of military grade weapons because a rebellion could not succeed if opposed by the army anyway.
2) Private citizens in Switerland are required by law to own military grade weapons in their home. Yet the level of violence is quite low. Violence in states with concealed carry laws has dropped. The level of violence in the United Kingdom since they practically outlawed gun ownership in the 1980’s has gone through the roof. The simple fact is, criminals are much more likely to attack you if they know you are unarmed, then they are if there is a significant chance you can protect yourself.
Guns are tools, not magic items. Guns don’t make people violent. Guns don’t kill people, people do. If you are killed with a knife, baseball bat or even beaten to death, you are still just as dead as if a gun was used.
If you are concerned by the amount of violence in America, by all means address it. Personally I would start with the violence in popular media and video games.
3)”Of course at the same time the right wingers like you want me to accept the ability of more people to own deadly fire arms, they want me to give up my constitutionally gaurenteed freedoms to protect me from the nebulous threat of terrorism”
Which Constitutionally protected freedom(s) do rightwingers want to take from you?
Guns are designed for the sole purpose of killing. Deaths by gun per capita in the US is staggeringly high and we have the most permisive laws of any industrialized nation. That harder it is to own a gun in a country correlates directly with the decrease in liklihood of being killed by one. And now you say the founding fathers would think it ok for citizens to own assault rifles, missle launchers, tanks, etc.? Wow you really are out of touch.
As for freedoms, how about unreasonable search and seizure, freedom of speech, due process, right to a speedy trial, etc.
1) Show mw one instance where the “rightwing” wants to take away your protection from unreasonable search or seizure. Spare me a diatribe, provide a cite.
2) Show me where a rightwinger wants to limit your right to free speech. In fact it is the left who promotes the idea of politically correct speech and speech codes, sadly quite often on college campuses.
3) Show me a case where a rightwinger has advocated the denial of an American CITIZEN’s right to due process or a speedy trial? cite please.
“That harder it is to own a gun in a country correlates directly with the decrease in liklihood of being killed by one”
I dispute this, but admit I currently have no citations to back myself up. I will do a little research.
As far as the second amendment goes, I’m all for it. I think everyone should own a gun.
I also think that our army should stop being an all volunteer force, and that we make our defense dependent on being a militia again. (In the way the Founding Fathers thought of the word). Thus, the US would need to mobilize in order to fight wars. Stuff like Iraq would be much harder to pull off, because you/your kids might be drafted.
Have I made both gahrie and David mad yet? 😉
Also, although the post office has done well in the past, David, you can’t use the argument that it is right now making money for the government. It is not. In fact, USPS is removing a lot of the blue mailboxes because they want to cut back on the cost of emptying them. Also, that’s why we hear about the postal service taking a full weekend – again, they are in the red, and are thinking about ways to cut costs – and one way to do so is to work a 5 day week instead of a 6 day week.
Yes, I’m a weird accuracy stickler. 😉 Plus, I just have weird political beliefs. But I think that arming the population with the understanding that the reason you were doing it was that they might have to go to war someday would produce a much less interventionist country, which is fine with me!
Plus, if the Second Amendment does need to be repealed (an argument I am glad to listen to), there is a process for that. It is called amending the constitution. I am not in favor of using gun control laws to circumvent that, because the constitution guarantees a right to bear arms. If you can’t repeal the amendment, then tough – them’s the rules the US operates by.
Again, I dislike attempts to get around what the constitution means because it is hard to change it. Of course it is! That’s the point of amendments – but we live in a democracy that is governed by the rule of law. Ignoring that is madness, and will erode the rule of law until it means nothing – and then we will be much easier prey for potential dictators.
How do you think the Roman Republic gave way to rule by Emperors? Because for 150-200 years, the people had been trained to ignore the rule of law. Politicians started running for offices they weren’t allowed to because they were needed by the people. Running for an office within 10 years after you last held it was illegal – but the Romans started doing it, and did other similar things because the system was “broken”. And it was. But that was no excuse to break it down further – and thus, you got more and more people flaunting the rules until you could get to the point where one man could flaunt the rules and control the whole system without being elected. Stuff like that could happen here if we are not careful, and thus, we need to not just ignore the constitution because it is convenient to do so. Again, we live in a modern age where guns are bad? Repeal the Second Amendment. You have to do a lot of work and convincing, but that’s democracy for you. The Bill of Rights isn’t sacred – we could repeal any of it we want (although the only thing I would stand for is the Second Amendment. The others are too important for the rule of law in this country, and shouldn’t be repealed.).
Wow, that got long. Anyways, that’s my weird two cents.
gahrie, easy
1) Warrantless wiretaps, quite a bit of the patriot act including library records
2) All the right wingers who claimed that those who criticized Bush in a time of war were traitors and should at best shut up and at worst be put in jail?
3) Bush claimed he had the unilateral power to declare someone an enemy combatant, after which he had allready demonstrated that they were to be held without trial, without access to lawyers, without knowledge of what they would be charged with, and of course tortured.
b. minich
1) The USPS may be having a hard time financially due to the advent of e-mail and the struggling economy, but it is still self-funding, and the mechanism itself remains effecient.
2) I have stated here and elsewhere on multiple times, although you may not have seen it, that in order for truly effective gun control legislation to be in place we need to modify/repeal the second ammendment.
Frankly I’m amazed at people who think MORE guns would make everyone safer. There is no evidence whatsoever that that would be the case, in fact it is quite the opposite. The claim that criminals would hesitate if they knew that the person they were going after would/might be armed falls apart because unlike the movies or tv, the shooter doesn’t give a long drown out speech or announce his intentions, he just starts shooting. Just the other month an armed security gaurd here in Washington was shot to death. He had a gun, he was trained to use a gun, but the situation he found himself in made that completely irrelavent, by the time it was known that the other person had a gun, he was allready dead.
” The USPS may be having a hard time financially due to the advent of e-mail and the struggling economy, but it is still self-funding, and the mechanism itself remains effecient.”
That’s why the cost of a stamp has gone from 34c in 2001 to 44c today,(that’s approx a 30% increase) and is about to go to 50c (which will be a 50% increase since 2001) while delivery service is going to be reduced to five days from 6, ( a 17% reduction in service) right?
I’m with Gahrie on this dispute. Seems like this argument is reducible to: Do you believe the Constitution basically protects your right to say or do (almost) anything? Or is it designed to protect us from each other, cops included?
The difference is exemplified in the classic “Yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater’ example. Even the “First Amendment uber alles” crowd agrees you can’t do that. But can you yell ‘Fire’ in a crowded Cambridge neighborhood? Is the answer yes if the cop was arguably rude, or manipulative, or perhaps made a mistake in identifying your house?
David and Brendan seem to argue yes, I’m with Gahrie that the answer is no. Indeed Brendan invoked Iran as the likely outcome of Gahrie’s view, but respectfully I suggest that Iran is more the outcome of Brendan’s view: when a subset of citizens are not subject to statute because of “context”, that’s where the road to Iranian theocracy begins. Indeed, Ahmadinejad is the “elected” President of Iran today because of the Ayatollah’s interpretation of Islamic “context” as it relates to free elections.
Or on a practical level, is there any reader who, if they were a neighbor of Gates, wouldn’t tell their kid to be extra careful in the future about throwing a baseball in the guy’s garden? Or their teenage son driver to be careful about splashing muddy water near Gates’ feet while he walks by?
No one has yet suggested that flipping out on the street is not an example of disorderly conduct. Perhaps Crowley made a mistake in not clarifying it was Gates’ house. But that doesn’t mean policemen don’t perform a critical function – protecting us from each other – even if they sometimes make mistakes of attribution, such as who lives where.
That’s why the cost of a stamp has gone from 34c in 2001 to 44c today,(that’s approx a 30% increase) and is about to go to 50c (which will be a 50% increase since 2001) while delivery service is going to be reduced to five days from 6, ( a 17% reduction in service) right?
Um, yes, thats exactly what I’m saying. Every person in the US gets free mail delivery, only the sender has to pay and for first class thats going to cost you 50c. 50c for someone to take that letter and send it anywhere in the country. Thats pretty damn efficient and impressive if you ask me. I’d love to see private industry do it for less. And rather than start taking tax funding they are considering options such as 5 delivery days a week rather than 6. For the love of all thats holy, how is it that a right winger like you can be pissed off about that, its EXACTLY what you want, government operating within its means!