Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Daily Kos, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society, Travel
Go ahead: what if this were you, or your four-year old kid?
Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn’t allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?
* * *
Mid-morning on March 19, his parents wheeled his stroller to the TSA security point, a couple of hours before their Southwest Airlines flight was to depart.
The boy’s father broke down the stroller and put it on the conveyor belt as Leona Thomas walked Ryan through the metal detector.
The alarm went off.
The screener told them to take off the boy’s braces.
The Thomases were dumbfounded. “I told them he can’t walk without them on his own,” Bob Thomas said.
“He said, ‘He’ll need to take them off.’ “
You know the rest of the story, no doubt. The screener insisted that the boy’s braces come off (in violation of the TSA’s own guidelines), and the kid walk through the metal detector. Debate ensues, and eventually the boy hobbles through the detector. Parents are ticked off, make a bit of a scene. A supervisor was called, who just walked away when told that the boy’s parents wanted to file a complaint. There’s a bit more of a scene. The local police (this was at the Philadelphia airport) show up, and here’s where things change from the usual story line in these cases. The local police find out the father was a cop, and things get smoothed over enough that the family was allowed to go on with their flight.
But put yourself in that picture, instead. What would have happened to you? What would have happened had things deteriorated to the point where the local cops were called?
Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten annoyed and insisted that the TSA screeners and then the supervisor treat your child with a little bit of consideration and in accord with their own regulations. And maybe you shouldn’t have threatened to file a complaint. But according to everything else that everyone saw, you did nothing more than this.
Again: what would have happened to you?
If you were *very* lucky, and if you were *very* chagrined when the local police showed up, you would only have been taken to a small room somewhere nearby and hassled, probably missing your flight. Unlucky, or stand your ground, and you likely would wind up being held in jail for at least a few hours to ‘teach you a lesson’, perhaps with some actual charges filed against you. It happens all the time.
Policeman Bob Thomas got cut a little slack. He’s a cop, and I don’t really begrudge him that. And he called a local columnist, who has done a couple of stories on the Philadelphia airport’s TSA nightmares. This prompted the local TSA spokesperson to confirm that the whole incident was poorly handled, TSA rules were not followed, and she said that Thomas had received an apology last week from TSA’s security director at the airport, Bob Ellis. She said that Ellis provided Thomas with the name of the agency’s customer service representative, should he have a problem in the future.
Good. I’m glad that this got the attention of the press.
But imagine if it were you.
Jim Downey
(Via BB. Cross posted to dKos.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, Government, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism
As if the introduction of full-body scanners after some nut set his nuts on fire wasn’t enough – now security officials have decided to play a game of “hide the Semtex” and wound up losing a lump of it in a passenger’s baggage on an international flight. A lump big enough to down a jetliner. And then they didn’t bother to tell anyone for three days.
No, I am not making this up:
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — A failed airport security test ended up with a Slovak man unwittingly carrying hidden explosives in his luggage on a flight to Dublin, Slovak officials admitted Wednesday — a mistake that enraged Irish authorities and shocked aviation experts worldwide.
While the Slovaks blamed the incident on ”a silly and unprofessional mistake,” Irish officials and security experts said it was foolish for the Slovaks to hide actual bomb parts in the luggage of innocent passengers under any circumstances.
The passenger himself was detained by Irish police for several hours before being let go without charge Tuesday.
The Irish were also angry that it took the Slovaks three days to tell them about the Saturday mistake and that the pilot of the airplane decided to fly to Dublin anyway even after being told that an explosive was in his aircraft’s checked luggage.
Can you imagine being the poor bastard who unwittingly was the mule for this little exercise? That’d be my luck:
Ding dong.
“Honey, there are some gentlemen here from the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security who want a word with you . . . ”
Jeez.
Anyway, now that this delightful stunt has happened, I expect that we’ll all have to stop taking any luggage whatsoever, for fear that some security official somewhere will forget where he left his “bomb components”.
Hey, makes as much sense, and would do about as much good, as the full-body scanners we’ll all soon have to go through.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism, Violence
Look, not to be too explicit about this, but the use of full body scanners won’t make a damned bit of difference to someone who wants to smuggle a bomb or bomb components onto a plane (or anywhere else.) Because there are these things called body cavities, where people have actually been known to insert and hide stuff.
The Dutch have already announced that henceforth all passengers heading to the US will have to go through such scanners. Yesterday on All Things Considered I listened to professional fear-monger and former Bush Administration Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff claim that full body scanners are the solution, but that the evil ACLU had thwarted their use:
Mr. CHERTOFF: Well, a couple of years ago we began the process of testing them to see, first of all, if they worked and second, if they could be deployed without unduely restricting the flow of traffic. And the good news is that we were able to demonstrate that they were successful. We could use them without slowing up traffic and we could also protect privacy.
The difficulty is the ACLU and other similar organizations began a very aggressive campaign to limit or prevent the use of these machines and it culminated frankly last year in a vote by the House of Representatives to be very sharply restricted of the use of these machines. So, although we have acquired these machines, they are not as widely deployed as they should be.
Yeah, as reported this morning on NPR, there are concerns about the scanners being “intrusive”:
But lawmakers have been among those reluctant to deploy the machines. In June, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to restrict their use. The vote was big — 310-118 — and bipartisan. Members of both parties said they were concerned that the pictures were too intrusive and questioned their effectiveness.
That’s what also worries privacy groups, which have mounted a major campaign against the machines, now being tested at 19 U-S airports. They say there’s no guarantee the pictures won’t be misused.
“There’s nothing to prevent images from being retained even when they say they won’t be retained,” says Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group at the forefront of the campaign.
But above and beyond the privacy concerns, is the simple fact that just scanning what is on the outside of someone’s body, or in their carry-on, or in their luggage, is insufficient. Because you can insert sufficient explosive into your rectum to do serious damage. In fact, it’s already been done on at least one occasion this year:
On the evening of Aug. 28, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister — and the man in charge of the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts — was receiving members of the public in connection with the celebration of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. As part of the Ramadan celebration, it is customary for members of the Saudi royal family to hold public gatherings where citizens can seek to settle disputes or offer Ramadan greetings.
One of the highlights of the Friday gathering was supposed to be the prince’s meeting with Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a Saudi man who was a wanted militant from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Asiri had allegedly renounced terrorism and had requested to meet the prince in order to repent and then be accepted into the kingdom’s amnesty program.
* * *
But the al-Asiri case ended very differently from the al-Awfi case. Unlike al-Awfi, al-Asiri was not a genuine repentant — he was a human Trojan horse. After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
I’ve joked about this as the TSA’s “Grab your ankles, please” moment – but as a matter of simple fact, unless we actually go to full body-cavity searches, we cannot prevent this technique from being used in the future. Anything short of that is nothing more than a minor annoyance for terrorists, and an intrusion into the privacy of all other individuals who fly. Do we *really* want to take that step?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, Government, Humor, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism
the makers of Depends:
In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed new restrictions on travelers that could lengthen lines at airports and limit the ability of international passengers to move about an airplane.
The government was vague about the steps it was taking, saying that it wanted the security experience to be “unpredictable” and that passengers would not find the same measures at every airport — a prospect that may upset airlines and travelers alike.
But several airlines released detailed information about the restrictions, saying that passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps. It was not clear how often the rule would affect domestic flights.
That’s from today’s NYT’s article. Here’s what’s on the TSA site:
The Department of Homeland Security immediately put additional screening measures into place- for all domestic and international flights- to ensure the continued safety of the traveling public. We are also working closely with federal, state and local law enforcement on additional security measures, as well as our international partners on enhanced security at airports and on flights.
The American people should continue their planned holiday travel and, as always, be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior or activity to law enforcement officials.
Passengers flying from international locations to U.S. destinations may notice additional security measures in place. These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere.
And here’s this from a tech news site:
Multiple sources, among them Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing, have also been told that no electronics are allowed on international flights. None. So you can’t even play video games to distract yourself from how badly you have to pee.
Jeez. As I noted back in September, Bruce Schneier has already talked about an ‘underwear bomb’:
For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: “Just be glad that he wasn’t the underwear bomber.” Now, sadly, we have an example of one.
Time to invest, I tell ya. The demand for Depends is going to go up. They’re not just for grandma anymore.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Failure, Government, Guns, Humor, Press, YouTube
Well, maybe there is a use for Twitter, after all. Seems that in the middle of the big snowstorm smacking the East Coast, some folks in DC decided to organize a good ol’ fashioned snowball fight. You know, show up, informal sides, throw snowballs at one another. Some 150 – 200 people joined in. And everyone was having just too much fun.
Until some idiot in a Hummer drives through the intersection where this party is going on, and his vehicle gets smacked by a few snowballs. Said idiot jumps out of said Hummer, and draws a gun.
WTF?
Seriously, that’s what happened. There were plenty of witnesses, plenty of pictures, plenty of video. Here’s a good one, where you can clearly see the gun in his left hand:
Nice, eh?
And here’s the *really* good part: the guy in question is a D.C. police detective, tentatively identified as Detective Baylor. But don’t take my word for it, here he is himself:
Rest assured, the DC police administration are on the case:
D.C. police have said they are investigating the incident. Assistant Chief Pete Newsham, who leads the department’s investigative services bureau, has said the detective in question “was armed but never pulls his weapon.” Photos and videos posted online appear to contradict that, though none show the detective pointing his gun at anyone.
* * *
According to Newsham, the detective approached the group of snowball fighters and had “some kind of interaction” with them. He said the detective holstered a cellphone, and someone from the crowd called to report a man with a gun.
“I think what probably happens is somebody probably saw his gun and called the police,” Newsham said.
OK, there are many things wrong with this . . . First, the behaviour of those who threw snowballs at the Hummer, but that’s a pretty mild transgression. Then there’s Detective Baylor’s behaviour is jumping out of his vehicle – again, a fairly mild transgression, and an understandable one for most people. But then the idiot pulled his weapon. Because people were throwing snowballs?? Are you fucking kidding me???
He’s frankly lucky that he didn’t get shot when uniformed officers showed up on the scene, after someone did call in a “man with a gun”. Kudos to the reporting officers for keeping their heads about them, in dealing with Baylor and with the crowd.
But what may even be worse was the knee-jerk reaction of Assistant Chief Newsham in dismissing the reports that one of his detectives behaved in a manner which is completely unacceptable. Supporting your officers is one thing – making statements to the press blankly denying that what happened, happened, is extremely unwise. Detective Baylor may need some anger management classes, or to be moved to a nice desk job or something. Newsham needs to lose some rank or even his job.
Why? Well, because he has just betrayed the public, and even the officers in his department. You deny reality (or jump in prematurely) like this and you show that you cannot be trusted to appropriately investigate any charges against your officers. Do that, and the public will respond appropriately by not providing you their faith and cooperation. Furthermore, and this is the thing that really pisses me off, they won’t trust your officers, either, and not give them their help and cooperation. And cops need all the help they can get.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights, Failure, Guns, Humor, Marketing, Music, RKBA, Society, Survival, Violence
When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong,
give a little whistle!
Taking the old song lyrics to heart, if inverting the intent a bit, police in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park have come up with a cunning plan to thwart crime:
Oak Park crime: Police pass out whistles to help residents fight back
Jump in burglaries and robberies prompts giveaway
Thousands of Oak Park residents are being equipped with a simple device to help fight crime in the village.
Police are passing out whistles that they are urging citizens to blow if they are victims of or witnesses to a crime.
Officers distributed hundreds of the shiny whistles at two stations along the CTA’s Green Line in Oak Park on Friday and will be passing out more Wednesday along the Blue Line. Giveaways elsewhere are expected to take place in the weeks ahead.
“We think they are going to go quick,” said Oak Park Police Cmdr. Keenan Williams.
The village conducted a similar program in the 1980s, and Police Chief Rick Tanksley earlier this year suggested bringing it back after statistics showed that burglaries and robberies were on the rise.
I’m sure that criminals will now flee Oak Park, in the face of this devastating new crime-fighting tool. I mean, they might actually have their hearing damaged, should a brave citizen use their police-issued whistle. And based on previous experience, and the complete eradication of crime in Oak Park following the last time this tactic was used . . .
. . . wait, what’s that? You mean crime wasn’t eliminated in Oak Park by the whistles last time? Huh. Maybe that would explain why this brilliant program hasn’t been put into effect in cities around the country.
Then why do it? Well, here’s another small bit from the Tribune article:
The village had about 3,000 whistles delivered at a cost of about 50 cents each, he said. The cost was paid by Community Bank, whose logo is on the side of each whistle.
I mean, I hate to be cynical or anything, especially this time of year, but it sure seems like nothing but an advertising gimmick to me. One backed by the boys in blue. I wonder who in the city government got what kind of special favor for that little trick?
Now, in all honesty, I do actually carry a whistle with me. No kidding. But when it comes to wanting a defense against crime, I’d prefer one of my concealed-carry pistols.
Except, of course, that that isn’t allowed in Illinois. Hmm.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
18 months ago, prompted in part by a couple of incidents in my neck of the woods, I wrote the following:
The police use of Tasers is just simply out of control in this country. Seriously. My dad was a cop, and a lot of my family’s friends growing up were cops. They’ve got a tough job. I know that the use of Tasers have protected the lives of officers. But this is insane. It is no longer just the odd asshole who happens to make the Greatest Hits of Police Abuse on YouTube. It has now become commonplace for the police to grab their Taser anytime someone doesn’t immediately do what they’re told. Time to get rid of the things, nationwide.
Well, one of the incidents has now been settled:
City pays off man injured in Taser use
The man injured after falling 15 feet from a highway overpass when police shocked him with two Tasers has reached a cash settlement with the city of Columbia.The city Finance Department agreed last month to pay $300,000 to 46-year-old Phillip McDuffy to settle a claim he made out of court. About $66,450 of that settlement will go to the Family Support Payment Center to cover back child support that McDuffy owes.
***
City Finance Director Lori Fleming said that avoiding a potentially lengthy and expensive jury trial merited the outlay of taxpayer dollars.
“We obviously believe it is in the best interest of the city in the long run,” Fleming said.
Another incident, which happened in a nearby town and resulted in the death of a young man who was tased multiple times in front of his home (and family) after being pulled over for speeding, was settled earlier this year for $2.4 million.
Pain, suffering, loss of a family member – none of these can really be compensated with a cash settlement. Let alone the damage done to our civil liberties. But beyond that, in simple terms of whether Tasers are cost effective additions to police work: do you have any idea how many cops $2.7 million would fund for a year here in rural Missouri? That’s a lot more manpower on the street, now lost.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to my blog.)
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Government, NPR, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Science, Society, tech
And the march of progress continues:
‘Insecurity Cameras’ To Track All Of Town’s Traffic
A little town in California has a big and controversial idea: It wants to install security cameras on roads leading into town so that it can screen and record every license plate that comes inside city limits. The plan could effectively turn Tiburon into perhaps the nation’s first public gated community.
* * *
“Tiburon is unusual because there are only two roads going in and out of the town,” says Mayor Alice Fredericks.
It’s quite easy, she says, to keep track of every car along those two roads. Last week, the Town Council decided to spend $200,000 to place six security cameras at strategic points along the road. For now, the plan is to make sure none of the cars coming into town are stolen. Crime statistics are low in Tiburon, but in a small town, Fredericks says, even a few crimes make an impact.
* * *
Police run license-plate checks all the time, says Jennifer King, an expert in technology and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Tiburon’s plan is to just run many plate checks. The problem, she says, is that once the equipment is installed, safeguards to protect privacy can change. For instance, the license plate information is supposed to be purged after eight hours, but what if a crime occurs and suddenly that information becomes more important?
“They may start today by keeping it eight hours, but I’ll almost bet you that what they’ll find is that somebody will come back and go, ‘If only we had the data from those cameras,'” she says. “We call it ‘scope creep’ in the technology world. That scope can really crawl, really grow very quickly.”
Nah, that’d never happen, would it? I mean, the police would never seek to use the collected data in an inappropriate or unethical fashion, would they?
Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims
Police officers are now routinely arresting people in order to add their DNA sample to the national police database, an inquiry will allege tomorrow.
The review of the national DNA database by the government’s human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.
* * *
The crime and security bill published last week by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, proposes to keep DNA profiles of people arrested but not convicted of any offence on the database for six years. This follows a landmark European court judgment last December, ruling illegal the current blanket policy of indefinite retention of DNA profiles whether or not the person has been convicted of an offence.
It adds that parliament never formally debated the establishment of the DNA database. Its evolution involved a “function creep” from being used to confirm police suspicions to identifying suspects. This resulted in the addition of more and more profiles without being clearly matched by an improvement in convictions.
Gods, what are people thinking? In my own hometown there is once again an effort to put “security cameras” in place in our downtown area, a subject I have written about previously. Last spring our City Council decided to put a stop to it, but proponents have gathered enough signatures to now have the matter put on the ballot for a special election next year. It’s like the damned “red light cameras” which cost more than they’re worth, do not lead to improved safety at intersections, and just decrease everyone’s privacy.
But hey, they make people feel good, right? And all that matters is good security theatre, not actual security. Don’t scare the sheep, or they’ll panic and run.
Jim Downey
PS: since I’ve been told that sometimes I need to be less subtle, let me be bloody obvious – I chose the title intentionally. Yes, I think that religion and the perceived need for security theatre come from the same source: that reassurance that someone else is watching over you to make sure you are safe. What else is the Abrahamic God but a paranormal surveillance system?
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Civil Rights, Constitution, Guns, RKBA
Cross posted from the BBTI blog.
More “it’s all about ME ME ME !!!” . . .
Had a nice interview with Doc Wesson on the Gun Nation Podcast, runs about 45 minutes in the first section of a great two-part show. We talk about a lot of different aspects of the Ballistics By The Inch project, and related topics. The whole show is definitely worth listening to, but the bit with me starts at about the 15:00 mark in part one, if you want to skip over that bit.
No, seriously, if you get a chance, put The Gun Nation into your queue of good things to listen to. In the interview I give some hints about future tests we want to conduct, and Doc manages to tease out of me some of my own conclusions about carry ammo I haven’t previously discussed.
Jim Downey
RKBA? Commonly used, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.*
This is a personal story of my journey from being raised with guns, experiencing the personal effects of gun violence, and coming around to the belief that a ‘personal right’ interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is a good liberal/progressive value.
I offer it to my fellow progressives for perspective, and apologize for the length.
OK, first thing. I was born and raised in the Midwest. My dad was a cop, and a hunter, so I grew up with guns. I knew how to safely handle and shoot guns before I could ride a bicycle, and I owned my own guns by the time I was 8. So part of my familiarity with guns is just cultural – everyone I knew had guns in their homes, and it was just no big deal.
But I’ll be honest here: I don’t much remember my childhood. Because when I was 11, my dad was killed. And the shock of that (and my mother’s accidental death 18 months later) just sorta wiped away my memories of childhood.
My adolescence was predictably rocky, but thanks to the love of family and good friends, I got through it. My younger sister and I went to live with relatives, who did what they could to give us stability. But when you have lost one parent to violence, and another to accident, before your teen years, it leaves a hole in your life. And to this day, middle-aged man that I am, I am sickened at the thought of violence as it is so casually represented in popular culture, and as it exists in reality far too often.
Still, I went away to college at the usual time, reasonably well adjusted. While at college – Grinnell College, a proud bastion of liberalism – I continued my intellectual and political growth. I learned to let go of the last vestiges of homophobia and racism I had grown up with. I came to better understand the roots of crime, and of violence, and see that many of the policies of the Reagan era were at best counter-productive. My inclinations towards progressivism solidified, bolstered not just by education but also by life experience. I came to loathe the rhetoric coming from the Right, and to look upon all they said and did with deep suspicion.
This included the rhetoric coming from the NRA, which had turned strongly into being allies with the GOP. Through graduate school and work in the 1980s I didn’t have much time for hunting, though I still did do so occasionally, out of the belief that if I was going to be a carnivore I should confront the reality that another living being had died so that I could eat meat. But I just couldn’t understand why the NRA, which was just a safety organization while I was growing up, had gone so far off the deep end politically. Then – insanity of insanities – the push to legalize concealed-carry laws at the state level started.
I thought it was nuts. Particularly with my personal experience of losing my father to gun violence, I did not see why these people wanted to push more guns into more hands as a matter of public policy. Who on earth wanted that? Why, the streets would run with blood. Sure, I owned firearms, and knew how to use them safely, and so did most everyone else I knew – but this was just asking for trouble.
A year or so after Florida had implemented concealed-carry I had to attend a meeting in Fort Myers. I had been in close contact with a number of the attendees, all people I respected for their intelligence and thoughtfulness. After the meeting was over, we were sitting around talking, and the discussion somehow turned to guns and Florida’s experience with adopting “shall issue” concealed carry.
To my surprise, a number of the locals said that they thought the law was great. Several had obtained their permits. Further, since we were in a private residence, they were comfortable in showing how they carried their firearms. I, and a couple of the other people from out of state who were there, were rather stunned by the whole thing. I mean, it was just weird that I had been in meetings all day with people who were carrying guns.
This made a huge impression on me. And I started thinking through the matter, discussing it over time with others. And I watched to see how things played out over time in Florida, waiting for an upsurge in violence because of these people carrying weapons. But that didn’t happen. And I slowly came to the conclusion that I had made a classic mistake of considering myself to be “unusual” in my respect for safely handling firearms – when I knew to the contrary that most everyone I knew who owned firearms treated them with the same consideration that I did.
And I continued to think this matter through, to the point where I wrote an essay on the matter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1993, a companion piece to another essay of mine they had published. Here’s the beginning:
Recently, I had a column here concerning the radical NRA leadership, and the danger that their attitude of ‘anything goes’ with weapons and ammunition poses to police, federal agents, and the average American. So it may come as a bit of a surprise that I favor legislative efforts to allow most people to carry a concealed firearm.
I do not see a contradiction here. What the NRA leadership is doing to demonize and discredit law enforcement makes us all less safe. Having more law-abiding citizens trained in the safe handling of firearms, and duly licensed to carry those firearm for self defense, would make us more safe. Sure, the ideal solution would be to rid society of all firearms, or at least all handguns. But that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, with a huge number of firearms already in private hands. Certainly, the criminals aren’t going to give up their weapons. And a crime-fearing public doesn’t want to relinquish their guns, though they rarely carry them in violation of current law.
A concealed-carry law would change the calculus of crime in a very fundamental way.
You can see the whole thing here.
OK, so that was 16 years ago. Since then, Missouri (where I live) and another 36 states have implemented “shall issue” concealed-carry legislation, meaning that if someone meets the criteria set out in law (some mixture of training and background-investigation), then the state has a duty to grant them a license to carry a concealed weapon. Another ten states have some form of “may issue” legislation. Millions of Americans have gotten these permits, and the wave of shootings I initially expected still hasn’t happened.
So what? Why does a lack of violence support the RKBA? There also isn’t solid data to support that it has stopped crime – just anecdotal stories. Why should a self-proclaimed “progressive” support people carrying guns?
Well, I take a pragmatic approach, combined with a philosophical one. On the one hand, concealed-carry does not seem to have caused any problems, so there is no major reason to impinge on the Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms. And, in keeping with how I see the other rights outlined in the Bill of Rights, I see the 2nd Amendment to be a personal right, not a “state’s right”. It has always struck me as odd that the conservatives see all the Rights to be “state’s rights” except the 2nd, and liberals have approached this the other way around.
Good, pragmatic progressive that I am, I want to see government serve the needs of people, while not limiting our freedoms unless there is a clear case to be made that it can do so in a productive fashion which outweighs the loss. My dad was a cop, and I have known cops all my life. And almost every cop I have ever known will tell you that their job is to protect *society*, and the unfortunate truth is that all too often that means catching a crook after they have done something – not before. Meaning after someone has been robbed, or assaulted, or killed.
The RKBA – or a gun – will not protect you from being a victim of crime. At best it may give you a chance to defend yourself or a loved one. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs more education and training on the matter. But I would rather have some chance – and the choice to take it – than no chance at all.
Jim Downey
(Written for and posted to Daily Kos, where I’m sure there will be an interesting discussion.)
Communion Of Dreams 