What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 7

Amendment Six: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”

The sixth amendment, clearly and pretty thoroughly, sets forth the entire basis for our criminal justice system.  It logically follows the part of the fifth that guarantees no citizen will be brought up on charges without solid evidence to back them up by outlining what happens when the case is found to have merit.  These are the guidelines that the founding fathers meant to be our legal compass in all matters of jurisprudence.

First, we’re guaranteed the right to a speedy trial.  The founding fathers were clever guys.  They realized, right off, that there was a huge end-run around the whole bit in the fifth about not being incarcerated long-term without a conviction.  You just arrest someone and take fifteen to life to get around to seeing if there’s any real crime there. 

The problem that they didn’t foresee is that we’re very, very fond of putting laws on the books and horrible at taking them off.  Whether it’s because we’re too willing to hold on to tradition or, much more likely, politicians, like the rest of us, don’t want to seem like idiots when a decision they’ve made turns out to be total crap, this tendency to keep things on the book after their efficacy has run its course has led to endless email forwards and a justice system so backed up that its considered a speedy trial to get a court date the same year you were arrested.

The second bit is that you get a public trial.  Back then, it was meant to assure that the proceedings went down without a hitch or any misconduct on the part of those running it.  It made perfect sense.  Nowadays, though, when the misery of others has become our greatest joy, watching the court system in action has become a spectacle and, it could be argued, one which does more harm than good.  A fair middle ground would be to keep it truly as they intended.  Allow the courtroom to be open to the public, but not the media.  That way, you don’t end up with mistrials because the jury saw a newspaper or television show where their favorite celebrity provided their opinion for them.

Speaking of juries, the right to a trial by jury was one of the absolute most important to the founding fathers, and early Americans, in general.  It was actually one of the biggest reasons we went to war with England to begin with, when they decided to start taking those who broke importing laws (see smugglers, rampant in the colonies) to Nova Scotia for private trials.  Wanting none of that, and rightly so, they laid out that you get a trial in the area where the crime was committed, unless extreme circumstances warrant otherwise, with your guilt or innocence decided by the average citizen.  I will forego any assumptions regarding the qualification of the average American these days to make an informed decision.

Next up, you have to be informed, right off, of the crime of which you’re being accused.  I realize this seems like a no-brainer, but think back once again to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay.  The Patriot Act suspended this by saying you could be held indefinitely on suspected terrorist activities.  That’s it.  No specific charges.  Imagine sitting in your house, writing a blog entry, and having men with guns burst in and arrest you without telling you why.  How horrifying would that be?  That’s what it was like during the colonial period, before these rights were laid out, as many a revolutionary discovered.

When you are brought to trial, with an empaneled jury, you have the right to face your accuser.  This one has been one of the big, deep controversies of our justice system almost since its inception.  While it’s necessary, in order to prevent that whole fabrication of evidence thing (I heard it from a little bird that you have a freezer in your basement where you do unspeakable things to cats, what say you?), it’s created a real problem with the system.

Volunteering for a sexual assault agency, one of the hard truths you learn about trials for those brought up on rape charges is that the victim, because of this tenet right here, has to go into the courtroom to testify, looking into the eyes of the person who hurt them so gravely again.  While it’s liberating for some, it’s incredibly traumatic for others.  What’s worse, while we guarantee this right to the accused, the victim is allowed little or no support in the courtroom while it’s going on.  Something’s obviously not right there.

That being said, as the defendant, you’re allowed witnesses to support your statement.  Again, you being allowed to put up a cogent defense would seem like a gimme, but it wasn’t always the case.  Old trials, even those with a jury, as they were at the time in Britain, were often just a parade of evidence against the accused until the jury had heard enough.  This made sure that couldn’t happen.

Finally, in order to make sure that you don’t need a juris doctorate to make sure your own case is running as it should be, they added that you would have a lawyer, even if you couldn’t afford to pay for your own.  Defense attorneys, despite their reputations, are actually incredibly necessary to keeping the court system honest, though one could argue that they’re part of the problem, too.  I just won’t, because that’s a whole other article, right there.

So the fifth and sixth amendments guarantee you the right to keep your mouth shut about what you’ve done, the right to legal counsel to guide you through the process, the right to a speedy trial…any of this sounding familiar?  It should, as you’ve heard it a thousand times on any procedural show.  The Miranda Rights were created in 1966 to make sure that everyone, even the most backwater, out-of-touch person, would be aware of the rights laid out here.  The Supreme Court decided, and rightly so, that they were that important, and reasonably so.

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The Speaker

“The world is being torn apart by nothing more than fear.”
            Those were the first words I ever heard him say.  I’ll never forget that day.  It was on my grandparents’ old TV, from my bedroom in the rundown little trailer park where I grew up.  I was supposed to be doing homework, but I was really just drifting off into one fantasy world or another, staring at the pages of my algebra book.  I was home alone, so I had the news on in the background because I was scared of the silence and the old set only caught the one channel.  I was only twelve years old, so I didn’t know what it was I was afraid I’d here were it too quiet, but, like he said, fear is an irrational thing.
            He wasn’t much to look at.  He as a small guy, not too thin, but you could tell he never played sports or anything.  And he was younger than you’d have thought, once he started talking.  His hair was a little unkempt and just a couple of shades too dark to be called mousy.  The one thing about him that stood out, though, was his eyes.  It wasn’t that they were a strange color or anything.  They were just that blue that looks like new denim.  But there was something in them that, when he spoke, held you there, almost like if you stared long enough or hard enough, you could see through them to a world that wasn’t as messed up as the one he was talking about.
            His voice didn’t stand out much either.  He wasn’t what you’d have called a born public speaker.  He wasn’t a Kennedy, or even a Reagan.  It wasn’t a deep, resonating voice, which would have looked funny coming out of him anyway.  There was nothing special about it.  It wouldn’t have been one you could’ve picked out in a crowded restaurant.  But somehow the gravity of the things he said carried in that voice, in the sometimes halting way he said things, not with the calculated pauses of a politician, but the genuine loss of someone aware that he was trying to find a way to put words to something bigger than himself.
            They asked people in my grandparents’ generation where they were when Kennedy was shot.  In my parents’, it was where they were when the towers fell.  Looking back now, to what seems like so long ago, I think that, should there ever be a question that defines our generation, it’ll be where we were the first time we heard him.  I was twelve, in the back bedroom of my mom’s old trailer, and I’ll never forget those words.

            “The world is being torn apart by nothing more than fear.  Lots of people will tell you that fear isn’t as pressing a problem in the world as hate, or anger, or pride.  But those are all just symptoms of the greater ill.  We hate because we don’t understand, which scares us.  Sometimes, it’s because we do understand, and that understanding places what we fear too close to us.  Anger, righteous or not, is only the fear that something will happen again, that something we loved will be lost again and that we will be left alone.  And pride…Pride is the most insidious of them.  Pride is the simple fear that we might be wrong, that we may face judgment in the eyes of other who have no right to pass it.  It is the fear that what we believe to be true will be made false and that we will have to start over again down a path which can never be finished.
            “Fear is irrational.  It drives us, in any of its forms, like almost nothing else can.  It clouds our minds.  Nothing can exist in its presence.  It devours like a fierce flame, burning away things like reason, mercy, empathy, and understanding, all of which are the keys to its undoing.  We very often embrace it for that very reason, because it allows us to keep from feeling sadness, guilt, or pain, but forget that it also eats away at joy, love, and peace.  We wield the flame, lashing out with it, unaware that, when it fades, as it must, those dark things will still be there, compounded further by the atrocities of our actions.”
            “Think about how often, every day, you are faced with the choice to give in to fear and choose to willingly.  People rally in their homes against the oppression of things like churches, governments, and a corporate culture which grows fat on the suffering of those it claims to feed.  But when they walk out into the streets, their voices are quiet.  They watch as their rights are eroded away, as those around them are subjugated, mumbling that it isn’t their problem and pray that it never, and this is the greatest tool of those who would seek to oppress, falls on them to become the ones who must stand up for what is right.”

            Those words reached out to me through that tinny speaker and held my heart tight long after they faded.  It felt like I was too young, too small too understand them.  It wasn’t until years later that I would realize that my age had nothing to do with it.  He was right.  Fear was how we were being kept in check.  Those in power, those truly in power, made every one of us feel the way I did that night, as I lay in the dark hours later, still dwelling on the things I’d heard.  The message was simple enough for a child to understand because it had to be.  We were all children, then, and it wasn’t until we were forced to face that fact that we could start to change it. Read more!

What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 6

Amendment Five: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Almost everyone who’s ever seen a courtroom drama is aware of the protection this one grants from self-incrimination.  But the fifth amendment, the largest in The Bill of Rights, encompasses all sorts of things and probably should have been broken into multiple amendments, but if that had been the case, there wouldn’t have been an even ten and Franklin was all about the round numbers.  So we’re left pulling it apart, as no piece of it is any less relevant, even today, than the others.

It begins by stating that no person shall ever be tried for a crime without first being indicted by a Grand Jury, except in the case of military tribunals, as soldiers fulfilling their duties were, by necessity, held to a different standard during times of war.  This was important, given that the idea was to create a nation of relative equals, which is to say with no ruling class, so that no one would be able to be brought up on charges without sufficient evidence that a crime was committed.  That way, those in power couldn’t just have their political enemies, say, hanged in the streets for no reason other than because they didn’t like what they had to say.

Moreover, it established the controversial notion of double jeopardy.  The idea was that the prosecution only got one shot to prove that a person was guilty.  If they didn’t meet their burden of proof, the defendant got off scott-free and couldn’t be brought up on the same charges.  Back in those days, that was fine, but as technology advanced and we discovered things like fingerprints and DNA which could, even decades after an acquittal, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the guilt of someone who had gotten off before said technology was available, we found ourselves constricted by an inability to nail the bastard.

On the other hand, it did, and does, serve a very valuable purpose.  It was included just behind the right to protection from false prosecution because it prevented those in power from taking shot after shot at someone who opposed them on the grounds of a piece of new evidence that just happened to show up and fill the neat little hole which the prosecution couldn’t fill before, wasting the time and money of all involved, including the court system itself. 

It has become such an issue amongst the judicial circuit that there’s currently debate over whether or not to amend the clause to include extraordinary evidentiary findings after an acquittal has been handed down.  This is another case where the founding fathers couldn’t have seen the science coming, but where we need to let go of the word in order for the spirit to continue.

The third clause is the one everyone knows.  You can’t be forced, through any means, to testify against yourself.  Why is this necessary?  Again, it goes back to the British in the colonial era being total jackasses.  If a political dissident was brought forth for a charge of which they were actually innocent, they could be coerced, through threats or actual violence, into admitting that they’d done it.  It happened.  Often enough that the founding fathers felt the need to protect us from it.  It’s why a statement attained through any sort of coercion is inadmissible.  Over the years, that protection has become even more stringent by putting into place a number of more specific guidelines for law enforcement to follow, as they were smart enough, in the past, to realize that violence wasn’t the only way to get someone to break.  They could also deprive them of sleep, food, water, bathroom breaks and all the other things that can cause someone to eventually lose the ability to think clearly. 

The second part of that clause is the one that protects us from being punished, having our assets frozen or being imprisoned indefinitely without due process.  This is what’s caused the huge controversy over Guantanamo Bay.  Those arrested under the provisions of The Patriot Act, many of whom without sufficient evidence to warrant a real trial, were denied, some for nearly a decade, their right to due process.  Instead, we just stuck them in prison to wait for a trial that may never come. 

While we’re doing things to make that right now, it shows how important the right to due process is, even for the bad guys, because, as the founding fathers knew and so many of us seem to forget, who the bad guys are is incredibly subjective.  While we see the founders of our nation as heroes, a lot of the world saw them as disloyal insurgents.  It’s all about perspective and the founding fathers understood that very clearly, having been on the wrong end of it.

Finally, the last clause, which seems only sort of relevant to the rest, stated that the government couldn’t just come and seize your land without giving you due compensation, thus creating the concept we now know as eminent domain.  So if the government decides that it wants to build a highway through your house, they can’t just kick you off your land.  Instead, they have to pay you fair market value as determined by a set of guidelines.  Unfortunately, the estimates for what something’s worth according to eminent domain is about as fair as the blue book value of your car, which drops thousands the moment you drive it off the lot. 

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A Thought: On the Repeal of CA's Prop 8

It's the unfortunate nature of humanity en masse that it is rarely without personal bias that would infringe upon the rights of others. It is the fortunate nature of our country's government that provisions were put in place to compensate for it.

But it goes against the will of the majority? 

The problem with that thought process, though, is that the government represents ALL the people. There was a time when the majority was against the repeal of slavery, the suffrage of women and ethnic minorities or, perhaps most relevant, t...he legality of interracial marriage. Because the majority of the science backs the fact that homosexuality is a hardwired genetic predisposition, same as heterosexuality, exclusion of gay couples from marriage is the same as excluding any other person based upon something over which they have no control, such as race, heritage or socio-economic background.

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What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 5

Amendment Four: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The fourth amendment is the first of a set of amendments which establish the basic rights and practices of the American legal system.  It basically states that, in order to maintain civil liberties, a warrant based on a solid chain of evidence must be granted by a judge before any law-enforcement body is able to begin a search for proof of a crime.

If the third amendment was a good example of how the founding fathers' worries could be somewhat short-sighted, the fourth is the perfect representation of the opposite.  It establishes, very clearly, a set of basic rights regarding search and seizure procedures that are as relevant today as they were when laid out, if not more so.  What’s more, it’s probably the best example of the way an amendment is able to grow and change with the times.

Since its inception, a number of important clarifications and additions have been made which follow in the spirit of the amendment and extend its intent within a clear and logical progression.  It also serves to show how an amendment can grow with changes in time and technology.

For instance, the concept of the fruit of the poisoned tree established that any evidence gathered as a result of illicit practices which broke the established chain of evidence, no matter how damning, were inadmissible.  It’s been argued, of course, that this put too much of a restriction on law enforcement and has given the lawyers of some very bad people procedural loopholes to get their clients off, but, while the debate over the practice may be valid, its efficacy isn’t.

As well, when technology made us able to record phone calls and personal meetings, the judicial branch began to adapt the fourth amendment to encompass those innovations.  Even today, in our courts, the emergence of the internet and the rights of privacy there are being argued in the hallowed halls of our justice system.  We have shown, time and again, then, that an amendment with the proper phrasing and spirit, can do much to preserve the rights of the citizens it’s meant to protect. 

Unfortunately, the fourth amendment is also an excellent case for how, in an organic system of legislature, lawmakers are able to subvert the clear intent of an amendment.  The Patriot Act, first established in the aftermath of 9/11, subverted in numerous ways the protection of the fourth amendment.  Though few protested then, as fear blinded them to reason and temporarily made them unwilling or unable to understand that once a right is given up, it becomes monumentally difficult to get back and opens the door to further infringement.

All told, an organic document like The Constitution is able to maintain its relevance to the society it governs as long as those who fall beneath its protections are willing to pay attention, to advocate and take a hand in its shaping. 

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What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 4

Amendment Three: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

The third amendment states, very specifically, that the eventual army that would be raised and trained by the government, the intent to do so being tacitly established in the second amendment, would never be forcibly housed in the homes of American citizens, be it in peacetime or war, barring the meeting of very specific conditions as prescribed under law.  Those conditions would be clearly outlined in the statutes regarding martial law.

The third amendment, taking a back seat to only two others, is a prime example of how the pressing concerns of the founding fathers at the birth of the nation had a profound impact upon their mindsets.  And it was a reasonable concern, then, as Britain, in its attempts to quell the coming revolution, regularly “stationed” its troops in the homes of those suspected to be insurrectionists, thereby severely limiting the homeowner’s ability to work towards independence.  It was because of this that many early revolutionists were found and punished for their sympathies.

While an incredibly valid concern at the drafting of The Constitution, two hundred and more years later, it no longer seems nearly so much so.  Admittedly, this is in part because it was so established when the country was founded, because we have for every generation since not had to worry about a group of soldiers knocking on the front door and taking over our homes without some damn good justification.  And I’d like to think that, in a state of emergency, when the National Guard shows up to help victims of disaster, any good Americans would gladly welcome them in.

At the same time, what seemed so vital then is antiquated now and, while good to have on the books, isn’t nearly as relevant as some of the things which came after, such as the amendments which protect civil liberties in the legal system.  Even given its continued efficacy, its importance as a primary amendment has been removed with the passing of time. 

This shows two things.  First, The Constitution was meant to be an organic body, reflecting those things which are of real, pressing concern to the health of our nation at any given point in our history.  Second, the founding fathers were relying on us, their descendants, to have the good sense to recognize when it was time to let go of tradition and do what was best for the nation, just as they did.  I mean, imagine how radical these concepts were back then, drawing from ideas and philosophies from across both time and the known world and flying in the face of the social order as it was known across The Western World at the time.  And, in so doing, they forever changed the world.

While things like the 14^th amendment have shown that we’re capable of the first part, we’re still lacking a great deal on the second, choosing to hold fast sometimes, as seems to be human nature, to outdated concepts in favor of facing the real work of change.  I’m talking to all the people who say that changing the way we deal with gun control is impossible, or that tax, tort and education reform, from the ground up, just aren’t feasible.  They are, but they will take work, concerted effort and, most importantly, a solidarity that our nation seems to lack most of the time but which, it has been shown over and over, is possible when we truly try.

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Memory and Dream

There are mornings when I wake,

Stumbling out of bed

On legs aching and still somehow numb,

To sit before this screen,

Always too bright.

I know that I should sleep,

But the dreams, the dreams…

Twice in two days,

I wake to the after-effect

The roiling, writhing emotion

Of failure, loss, regret,

Feeling within swollen fingers

The things I could not hold,

The things I cannot catch.

So I stare at the page,

My salvation, and wait,

For the words, the words…

Redemption in verse

Burning hopefully the pain,

Leaving me seared, but whole

Leaving me…

With only the ghosts of morning.

-8:03am

2/5/12

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Thomas Paine on The Birth of a Nation

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again.  The birthday of a new world is at hand." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense Read more!

What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 3

Amendment Two: “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.”

If not the most controversial amendment these days, it seems to be the most polarized.  At one extreme, you have those who feel that guns are nothing but a danger to society, with the risk posed to the public outweighing the possible safety benefits, and, as such, will fervently refuse to even enter a home where the dreaded object rests.  At the other, you have the gun nuts who think that, in order to be safe, every good American should have a bunker filled to the brim with any and every kind of projectile-firing powder weapon known to man.

Somewhere in the middle are most Americans, who are made a little uncomfortable, or a little excited, by the presence or possession of a firearm.  Even statisticians can’t agree.  There are so many studies to back up both sides that it’s often used in stat classes as a prime example of how easy it is to manipulate statistics to fit an agenda.  It has been to be true that, while guns can be an effective deterrent to criminals, the fact that they are legal and common does lead to a drastically higher number of fatal injuries amongst the public.  There are new studies every year that point out, one way or the other, that guns in the home both make it safer from those outside the home and much more dangerous for those in the home. 

So why did the founding fathers think that this was the second most important thing we needed to form a country?  What you have to realize is that these guys were sitting around a room after a long, bloody war with Britain where it was, quite literally, the common man fighting against an overwhelming, oppressive regime.  Not only that, but many historians acknowledge that, had Americans not made certain innovations in firearm development during the war, we may well all be saluting a different flag every afternoon before tea.

To the men who were drafting The Constitution, the enemy was literally just over their shoulders and they realized how fragile their situation was.  We didn’t have an army, we had a militia.  We won the war not so much because we were fighting for our homeland, but more likely because we were fighting in our homeland, with which we were much more familiar and therefore able to use every dirty, guerilla tactic in the book.  We were able to field a militia only because, in the years prior to the way, most every home had a rifle or two for hunting, because grocery stores were notoriously hard to come by and people loved meat.

So the founding fathers realized that, in order to keep anyone from coming over and taking our new country away, we all needed to have guns and know how to use them, at least until we could fashion a real army like everyone else, which we promptly set about doing.

The problem, and this is almost always the case with decisions inspired mostly by fear, is that they forgot something important, which was that last bit about the army, something which came back to seriously bite them in the ass a few years later when half the country decided that they wanted to be a separate country altogether and had more than enough guns to make a fairly good show of succession. 

While that one was completely on them for not seeing it coming, given that slavery and the business practices which it fueled and around which it revolved, was such a terse issue even then that it very nearly tore apart the first Constitutional Congress, there are a couple of things that they couldn’t have seen coming and, had they, may have made the second amendment a great deal different.

The first was the evolution of the firearm.  In 1787, there was no way any of them could have possibly seen two key innovations coming: handguns and automatic weapons.  While dueling pistols were somewhat fashionable around that time, Samuel Colt was still about fifty years from the first revolver and the gatling gun, the precursor to automatic weapons, was nearly thirty years after that and required multiple people to operate.  Either one of those things alone would have terrified the hell out of them, but the concept of a small, easily concealable weapon that could fire seventeen bullets in a matter of seconds with an average effective range of about 50 meters was probably inconceivable, even for the freakishly prescient Ben Franklin.

Back in those days, if you wanted to kill a man, it took some real effort.  Drive-bys were much more complicated, for instance.  You were only likely to get a couple of shots off before you had to spend a few minutes reloading and/or getting the carriage back under control by calming the horses who were having a perfectly healthy, natural response to a nearby explosion.  And even then, your accuracy probably wasn’t all that great.  So, rather than bothering with all that, people would resort to the more old-fashioned, up close and personal methods, you know, the ones where you had to look someone in the eye and feel the blood on your hands when you killed them.

The other thing that they couldn’t have seen coming was the evolution of American culture into one completely saturated with ultraviolent imagery. It’s gotten to the point now where science is finding that our brains are literally wired differently here than in other developed nations where violence is still abhorred, rather than glorified.  When people from those countries are shown graphically violent acts, even in stills, the parts of their brain that control things like revulsion and terror light up brighter than a Christmas tree.  When your average American is shown the same imagery, not only are those places much dimmer, we have a tendency to light up in the same places that we do when we’re sexually aroused. 

Yep, that means we literally get turned on by the prospect of enacting violence.  Sit and think about that for a second.  Now think about the fact that you and your kids are probably wired that way, too.  The prevailing theory is that it’s the result of a combination of desensitization, which accounts for the dimmer registers of the revulsion and terror, because we’ve become used to the idea, and some base animal instinct that used to be necessary, way back when, to make it possible to go out and beat small, furry things to death with rocks for food.

What it all breaks down to is that we’ve evolved into a country that not only has the ability to kill someone quickly, cleanly and easily, without having to deal with lots of the conscience-searing issues of killing someone with your bare hands, but also one that’s wired to actively get off on the idea of it.

So where does that leave us?  Well, first off, nowadays, every citizen doesn’t need to own a gun in order to prevent foreign invaders from taking over the country, barring some kind of Red Dawn scenario.  We’ve got one of the most effective armies in the world to do that for us.  Should we be allowed to own them?  Of course.  There are a lot of people who still provide meat for their families a good part of the year by grabbing their rifles and heading out into the woods, which is most likely what the founding fathers had in mind. 

The problem now, though, is that, in typical American fashion, we’ve taken the law and run with it.  The sole purpose of a handgun is to shoot not deer or ducks or fish, but other people.  The fact that about 75% of the gun-related homicides in the U.S. each year are committed with handguns backs this up pretty well.  The same is true of fully-automatic assault rifles because, quite frankly, it’s not only overkill but pretty dangerous to take on a hunting trip, where any good hunter will tell you that a single shot is all you really need to take down your quarry.  And before you go bringing up using a handgun to, “put the deer out of its misery,” your rifle does it just as well.

But, they argue, the criminals all have guns and we need our guns to stop their guns.  The rest of the world has actually shown that to be untrue.  If, as in many of them, you make possession of a handgun an automatic charge of attempted murder, for the above reason, within a relatively short span of time, the criminals won’t have them, either, or, at the very least, the average mugger or meth-head won’t.  And, again, if it comes to home defense, your rifle is a hell of a lot more intimidating than a pistol to a would-be burglar.  I promise.  Plus, it’s way harder for him to sneak it up to and inside your home if it doesn’t tuck under the shirt in the waistband of his pants.

Finally, there’s the old standby line, “Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.”  While true, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and, I assure you, to anyone who’s been shot, that distinction isn’t terribly comforting.  It’s one of those blame games we play in order to keep from having to face the reality of a situation.  Apply it to a couple of other things in your life and see how much sense it makes.  Bulldozers don’t dig holes, people do.  Sure, true, but good luck digging those holes with just your hands.  Frying pans don’t cook eggs, people do.  Yep, again, you’re going to have a hell of an issue making those scrambled eggs without that pan. 

What it all comes down to is this: while it’s true that a gun is, by itself, a harmless object under most circumstances, it’s a tool that facilitates one thing and one thing only, violence.  While you could kill someone quite handily with a bulldozer or a frying pan, those aren’t their sole functions. 

With guns, that’s all there is to them and, while it isn’t right to blame the tool for the way it’s used any more than it is to thank the bulldozer for digging the hole, we have to acknowledge, as reasonable, aware people with a pretty clear view of the results that gun control as it exists today isn’t working out very well.  What’s perhaps more disturbing is that more than half the gun-related deaths in a given year are self-inflicted.  Of the other 45% or so, the majority are accidental discharges. 

I stand firmly in the middle, where I do with most things, in that we need to reform and rewrite regulation to take into account the complete and utter short-sighted idiocy of the average citizen.  Because, and this is coming from someone who has looked down the barrel of a gun, while the vast majority of people I know who have guns are responsible and safe, I also know a handful of people with whom I would probably be scared to be alone in their home, had they access to a gun.  Think about it this way.  Why are we willing to trust some countries to have nuclear arms while others, like Iran and North Korea, who are run by leaders shown to be completely batshit crazy and willing to bring the world down around them to make a point, we aren’t?  Same deal.

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A Thought: On Flying

You know how they always say that you stand a much bigger chance of getting in a car crash than a plane crash?  While that's true, take a look at the survival rate for one versus the other, then get back to me on how flying is awesome. Read more!

What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 2

Amendment One: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Perhaps one of the most oft-cited, the first amendment actually addresses three issues which the founders saw as foundational to the creation of a democratic nation.  First, that there be no state religion, nor any law regulating the worship of whatever the hell you choose to deify.  Second, it grants the almighty freedom of speech, going so far as to specifically extend that to a free press.  Finally, they make it perfectly legal to assemble peacefully in order to protest, both in general and, maybe more importantly, in order to air grievances towards the government.  Let’s tackle these one at a time.

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What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Part 1

Here in America over the last decade or so, we’ve become very fond of expounding on exactly what it is that our founding fathers meant when they laid out some pretty basic tenets that they figured we ought to use to run the country.  The interpretation of our Bill of Rights has become, in this incredibly heated political climate, a source of great divide amongst the citizens of this great nation.

There are those who believe that, when it suits them, it ought to be followed to the absolute letter with the kind of sacred fervor that many religious folks attach to their holy doctrines.  It should never be changed, nor can those rights be taken away by those in power, as the benevolent, omniscient beings that were our mythical progenitors knew exactly what it took to make a perfect country back in the late 18^th century.

On the other, we have the people who say that it was meant to be followed in spirit, rather than exactly as laid out, which opens an entirely different can of worms.  While I’m much more inclined to be in line with these people, it does allow for some truly terrifying interpretations and presents the key problem of whose is more right, the guy who thinks that freedom of expression means he ought to be able to crap on the courthouse steps as an act of protest to the guy who thinks that the right to bear arms means he can shoot said person for being anti-American.

What people seem to fail to realize is that the guys who drafted The Constitution were completely and totally aware that they couldn’t build a perfect nation, now or ever, because times and circumstances change.  They were laying out guidelines for our nation at its inception, taking into account what they knew and had witnessed in their lifetimes.  That’s why they gave us the ability to change it as we went, something we seem grossly unwilling to do these days.

So, starting tomorrow, in an attempt to muddle through these various viewpoints, I’d like to put forth a contemporary interpretation, in ten parts, using sound logic and basic reasoning (and probably a bunch more jokes of the gaseous variety) to take a look at what our noble forefathers said, what they meant and what they could not have possibly seen coming. 

If you found me on Stumble, Reddit, Digg or any other such service, please hit that like button and share my message so that my slow, insidious rise to power can begin.  There’ll be a place for you in the new world order as one of my trusted aides.  Also, cake.  Thanks!

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