Filed under: 2nd Amendment, ACLU, Bruce Schneier, Constitution, General Musings, Government, Guns, Politics, Society, Terrorism
I notice that I’ve been writing a fair amount on civil liberties and the encroachment on them by the government thanks to the “War on Terror”. I’m not really that obsessed with this stuff, but I just keep stumbling across things which should make anyone concerned.
The latest is an item I saw on Yahoo! this morning, from the AP:
AP: Firefighters help in war on terror
WASHINGTON – Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as American icons and infringing on people’s privacy.
Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel don’t need warrants to access hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, putting them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.
You know, at first glance this doesn’t seem that unreasonable, and I’m sure that is what the government is counting on as the word of it spreads to the public. Sure, if some firemen happen to stumble across a big pile of bombs in the basement of someone’s apartment, it would be reasonable for them to report it. What’s the big deal?
Well, think a little more about it, and see what else is in the news report:
When going to private residences, for example, they are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress.
Be alert for someone who is hostile? Uncooperative? Expressing hate or discontent?
That is dangerously close to thought-policing. If the simple act of expressing discontent (or being perceived as doing so) with the government or any of its agents is enough to get you reported to Homeland Security (which is what the firefighters are being trained to do), then we have slipped past simple awareness to making judgement calls as to what is appropriate political behaviour.
And think about how this might be received: do you seriously want any community or individuals who *might* be at-odds with the political leadership of the state, local, or federal government to be reluctant to report a fire, for fear that some literature they have sitting on a desk could be perceived as necessitating a call to Homeland Security? Isn’t that a good way for a fire to get hold, perhaps destroying whole apartment blocks or close-together urban neighborhoods?
Or put another way, would you want your neighbor, who maybe does a little pot on the weekends, to be afraid to call 9-11 for you when you’re having a heart attack, because he fears that the EMS team might notice that he’s a little red-eyed when they show up? Or have your roommate, who likes to go target shooting and is set up to do his own reloading, not want to call when you think you’ve accidentally swallowed some poison, since the EMS team might see his guns and gunpowder?
This undermines our trust in the neutral agency of our emergency-response personnel, and so makes us all less safe in the long run. The government has the authority to serve us when in need, not spy on us when it wants. If they want to conduct police actions, they should have to meet the necessary legal requirements to do so, and not try to pull some end-around trick like this.
*Sigh* A reminder that I need to renew my ACLU membership.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
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Added: Bruce Schneier reminded me of this post of his touching on the same topic earlier this month. Definitely read it.
JD.
A friend and I got to talking earlier this year about the lack of solid data available on ballistic performance of different common handgun calibers in terms of different barrel lengths and popular ammunition. If you poke around on any of the forums dedicated to discussion of guns, you’ll quickly discover that a lot of people have opinions on the matter, but there is precious little real solid information out there. Even the gun manufacturers and ammo makers only have little bits of information, and none of it is uniform or organized in such a way as to allow anyone to compare apples and apples.
Well, from that discussion emerged an idea: conduct the necessary tests ourselves, compile all the data, then make it freely available to all on a dedicated website. Sounds like one of those great ideas which no one will ever get around to doing, because of the time and expense involved, right?
Except that I now have sitting here at home a custom designed and built testing platform consisting of a single-shot pistol and 11 different caliber barrels which will mount into the receiver. Think Thompson/Center Encore pistol in stainless steel with 11 different barrels, all 18″ long – each one to be fired using a variety of different ammo, then cut down 1″ and fired again, using the same ammo, and that process repeated until you get down to a 1″ barrel. Each firing will be documented using two chronographs, and we’ll standardize conditions as much as possible so we get reliable data.
Oh, I don’t have just the test platform and barrels. I also have the ammo. Enough for three rounds of each type at each increment for each caliber.
Now, the shooting and collecting of data still has to be done. And once all the data is collected this fall, we’ll need to construct a website and put it all online (with pictures documenting the process). There’s still a lot of work to be done. But a big first step has been made, and we’re financially committed to this project in a very big way.
I’m excited about this project, and just wanted to share a bit about what I’ve got cooking in my non-writing, non-caregiving, non-bookbinding world. More bits and pieces about it will probably show up here from time to time, as things progress, and then all of this will be archived on the website for the data when all is said and done.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Depression, General Musings, Government, Guns, Iraq, RKBA, Society, Violence, Writing stuff
I’m adapting this from a comment I made during a discussion on UTI, now that I’ve had a chance to digest things a bit. It is a follow up to this post of last Tuesday.
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When a tragedy like this (well, any violence directed against innocents is a tragedy, really) occurs, people naturally want to look for ways to curtail the threat in the future. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.
In 1994 something like 800,000 Hutus were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide, and almost all of that was done with machetes. Almost 200 people were killed yesterday in Iraq, by someone using car bombs. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 with fertilizer and deisel fuel on this day a dozen years ago.
Guns do kill – something like 12,000 homicides and an additional 6,000 accidents/suicides each year here in the US. My father was one of those people in 1969, and my step-brother a little more than a decade ago. You never really get over that kind of personal tragedy, as I mention here.
But cars also kill. About 30,000 Americans a year, if memory serves. And about 18 months after my dad was killed, my mom was one of those people. But because it wasn’t an act of violence, it is somehow easier to accept that. Which is curious, because we do seem to accept that level of death in our country (and others) relatively easily.
People are violent. It is part of who we are. Now in the UK guns are almost completely outlawed – yet gun violence is once again becoming a problem in some areas. In an effort to control the results of violent behaviour, the UK is now increasingly becoming a nanny-state, outlawing the carrying of pointed knives, limiting their sale even for home use, forcing pubs to shift from glass bottles and drinking vessels to plastic ones because the others were being used to bash and cut others in pub brawls…you get the idea.
As I mention in that blog post cited above, I hate the facile arguments on both sides: that getting rid of all guns would solve the problem; and that if only someone with a legal CCW had been there they could have stopped Cho earlier. The best you can say is that it is possible that stricter gun control (even to extending to effective bans) *might* have stopped Cho from being able to murder so many so easily…or that someone legally armed on campus *might* have been able to stop Cho once he started shooting. No, there is a lot of slop there on both sides – no one knows the answer to ‘what if?’
For me it comes down to a couple of different deciding factors. We have over 200 million guns in this country, something like 80 million handguns. So, getting rid of them isn’t a practical answer for at least a generation. And prohibiting them will basically mean that you are telling criminals that they can count on law-abiding citzens being disarmed. Which means you either accept the increased power advantage of criminals, or you move towards an increasingly police-heavy state, with all of the implications that carries.
Further, the 2nd Amendment was put there for a reason: to control the worst instincts of wanna-be tyrants. The founders understood that humans being what we are, you needed to control the worst instincts of those who would rule rather than govern. They built checks & balances into the Constitution between the different branches of government – but knew that the real check and balance had to go further – had to go all the way down to the individual citizen. In preserving the right to keep and bear arms, they made sure that there was a final option available to curb dictatorship. Granted, my pistols and rifles will not stand up in a full-fledged firefight to modern military weapons – but that isn’t the point. You only have to look at Iraq to see the effectiveness of small arms and improvised explosives to see what a population can do in resisting a military force. That alone changes the calculus of anyone – foreign or domestic – who thinks that they would like to impose their will on the American public by arms.
Lastly, having the *option* of carrying a concealed weapon legally means that you have more possible courses of action open to you when things go south. No, I would not claim that I would have been able to draw my weapon and stop Cho before he killed anyone. That’s just macho posturing. But I carry a 9mm pistol – the same calibre weapon he used to kill most of the 32 he murdered. I *might* have had a chance, if everything had gone just right. Maybe only a small chance – but that would have been more of a chance than the poor bastards who didn’t have that option open to them had.
Yeah, there are no easy or simple answers. I am willing to consider possible solutions – but we have to consider the entire issue completely and make a rational decision, not one based on the immediate emotions following such a horror.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 