Archive for October, 2006

A trailer is not a gun show!

October 12, 2006 at 2:24 pm · Filed under Louisiana, Policy, Society ·Tagged , , , , ,

I grew up on a country road outside the small town of Leesville, LA. At the entrance to the road was a trailer where a friend of mine used to live. Some time after he moved away, the trailer became “Bunn & Sons Gun Shop,” with a red arrow painted to indicate the “gun show” around back. Why was a gun show in continuous operation behind a trailer on my road?

I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out that the “gun show” was a response to the Brady Bill, enabling Bunn & Sons to use a loophole in the bill to sell handguns without a mandatory background check. Now, since this was the rural south, folks would always complain about how somebody was trying to take away their 2nd amendment rights. What is the actual text of the 2nd amendment?

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. – Bill of Rights, Amendment II

Reading these words, and interpreting them literally, it seems that the second amendment protects the right of the people to bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia. While the NRA would like to delete the first clause of the Amendment, it defines the right in the context of a militia, as noted in this summary at Thomson Findlaw.

The courts have clearly decided that the right to own a tank, rocket-propelled grenade launcher, or even a sawed-off shotgun is not necessarily protected under the 2nd Amendment. In the US v Miller, 1939, the Supreme Court Justice McReynolds wrote,

“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”

Federal firearms regulations also regulate the sale and transfer of firearms through the aforementioned Brady Bill and other legislation. Until recently, they also banned an entire class of semi-automatic weapons known as assault weapons.

Back to Bunn & Sons, and their “gun show”: all Bunn may have been trying to do was increase his business by removing the hurdle of an electronic background check from the sales process. In a larger context, the NRA has fought to keep the private-sale loophole available, in order to eliminate the background check process where possible. But why is the NRA so afraid of background checks? They argue that the overwhelming majority of American gun owners are law abiding citizens; then why not subject gun sales to the same level of scrutiny placed on prescription drug sales? For better or worse, guns are a part of American culture, and European-style gun restrictions will not and should not take place here. But with the advent of instant background checks, is it too much to ask that we control gun sales at least as much as we control sales of heart medication?

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Global warming is real; should you care?

October 11, 2006 at 2:48 am · Filed under Economics, Environment, Policy, Society ·Tagged , , , , , ,

There is little scientific dispute at this point that global warming is occurring, and that humans are causing some part of it, as even the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a conservative free enterprise think tank) is now willing to admit. The remaining question: just how big a problem is global warming, and what are the consequences if we do nothing? An Inconvenient Truth makes it appear that Florida will be underwater sometime soon if we sit idly by. Reality, at least as scientists currently understand it, probably lies somewhere between Al Gore’s doom-saying and CEI’s laughable slogan, “CO2: We Call It Life.”

Of all the potential effects of global warming, rising sea levels are thought to have the most catastrophic consequences. If the Greenland ice sheet or a large part of Antarctica really do melt, the resulting 20 foot rise in sea levels would destroy the majority of the world’s great cities and displace billions of people. But how long will a rise of 20 feet, or even two feet, take at current rates of warming and ice melt? Realclimate.org summarizes recent research here, wherein the most aggressive estimates indicate that Greenland’s ice sheet melting is increasing sea levels by up to 0.57mm per year. But if Greenland continues melting at that rate, it will take one thousand years to raise sea levels one foot!

Even an order of magnitude increase in ice melting would only cause sea levels to rise a foot by 2100. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report’s most aggressive estimate calls for a three foot sea level rise by 2100; this estimate includes significant ice melt. While this scenario has significant implications for coastal cities, it is not apocalyptic, and it also represents an outlier prediction compared to most climate models. It seems then that we should care about global warming in the very long term, but it is unlikely to have a significant impact during our lifetime. There are dozens of environmental and social issues that deserve greater present concern, including the AIDS pandemic and infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, which continue to kill tens of millions annually.

At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to take some simple steps to curb CO2 emissions growth. The CEI and others complain that it is impossible to curb CO2 emissions growth without hurting the economy. On the contrary, prudent shifts in government policy can reduce emissions while increasing growth. If the United States were to fund all highway construction with gasoline taxes, for instance, this would pass the costs of car travel directly on to the end consumer – which increases economic efficiency while decreasing emissions. I’ve written previously about applying the gas guzzler tax fairly, so that consumers are not rewarded for buying large SUVs instead of large cars. Finally, ending the huge subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries would make alternative energy more competitive, while saving taxpayers billions.

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What to do with North Korea

October 9, 2006 at 2:21 pm · Filed under Geopolitics, Policy ·Tagged , , , , ,

It’s official: North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test this morning, defying warnings from the UN, US, and its neighbors. North Korea’s tested weapon was small by nuclear weapons standards, and its missile systems are inaccurate, but the test confirms that the world’s most dangerous weapons technology is now in the hands of Kim Jong-Il.  So what can the US and the world do now to prevent tragedy at the hands of a madman? Let’s review the options:

  1. The US could launch a preemptive air strike against North Korea to destroy its nuclear devices. If successful, this would almost certainly result in conventional war with North Korea. If unsuccessful, North Korea could nuke South Korea or Japan, killing millions.
  2. The US could try to cut off all economic support for North Korea. While the US may now be able to convince South Korea and Japan to cut off aid, China fears the collapse of North Korea and the subsequent flood of refugees more than the regime itself, and may agree only to token steps. If North Korea is completely embargoed, Kim Jong-Il might lash out in desperation.
  3. The US could begin a slow and orderly draw down of its troops in South Korea beginning next year, until no meaningful forces remain. This would leave South Korea to defend itself, with the understanding that if North Korea ever chose the nuclear route, the US would retaliate in kind.

Why is the last option most appealing? American forces in South Korea are now short-range targets for a North Korean desperation attack. By withdrawing our forces we would remove them from danger, while the US military would still have the capability to defeat North Korea should the need arise. Removing US forces also denies Kim Jong-Il the bogeyman he needs to justify his evil regime, weakening internal support for his rule.

If the US withdraws from the Korean peninsula, Japan, South Korea, and China will finally have to devise their own strategy for dealing with their bad neighbor. North Korea’s economy is in a death spiral; if these neighbors withdraw life support, the state will likely collapse. As long as the US is responsible for regional security, they have no incentive to make these tough choices. If we withdraw, North Korea’s neighbors may make the tough decisions, and resolve the problem on their own. On the other hand, if the situation destabilizes, we will have removed our soldiers from harm’s way, while placing confidence in our military’s ability to win a war if that becomes inevitable.

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Detaining terrorists, or any foreigner?

October 2, 2006 at 1:57 pm · Filed under Policy, Society ·Tagged , , , , ,

The United States Constitution and its common law judiciary protect the writ of habeas corpus, a means by which an unlawfully imprisoned individual can petition for release from detainment. Habeas corpus is considered among the most important protections against wrongful imprisonment, so important that it is part of the main body of the Constitution, predating even the Bill of Rights. Why then did Congress attempt to take this right away from individuals living in the United States in the recently-passed bill on detainee treatment?

According to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Senate bill S.3930 (House H.R. 6166), “No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”

Non-citizens of the United States, including permanent residents, could therefore be held indefinitely by the government without ever being provided any of the rights we cherish here in the US. No right to an attorney, no right to a trial, nor even the right to be taken before a judicial body of any sort. If the United States government mistakenly designates a non-citizen as a terrorist, they could theoretically be held until death without having ever seen any aspect of legal or even military justice!

How does such a provision increase the security of the United States? If the government has evidence against an individual, why not allow that evidence to be brought before a judge, or even a military court, to decide whether continued detainment is warranted? If there is a need to temporarily hold potential terrorists before bringing them before a court, then why not establish a 90-day holding period? This would surely be Constitutional, and would enable the state to fight terror while preserving individual rights.

The current form of the Military Commissions Act is repugnant and un-American in its current form, and it is probably also unconstitutional. It is far worse to take away an individual’s right to contest detainment than it is to practice mock executions, forced nudity, and other forms of interrogation banned in the same Act. After all, the latter may humiliate, but do limited permanent damage, while there are few punishments worse than a life imprisonment without a conviction.

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