Category: Civil Liberties

Both Another Gun Blog and No Looking Backwards have covered California’s “Hasta La Vista Tax” which taxes people over a certain income for leaving the state.  Rich flight has created a serious revenue problem for California.

There’s a good case to be made that this law is unconstitutional, because it interferes with the common law right to free movement and travel.  There is a pretty strong body of law which would speak against such a law’s constitutionality.  Anyone subject to this tax probably has a good case to take into the federal courts.  California has no respect for the second amendment, it’s hardly surprising they don’t respect unenumerated rights as well.  Anything’s fair when it comes to soaking the rich, I guess.

… where I agree with the ACLU.  They are going after a police Chief in Arkansas who’s instituting a curfew:

“Now, if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK, and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”

I don’t know what constitution this guy reads, but it can’t be the same one I do.  I think it’s high time The Supreme Court ruled definitively on Curfew laws.  This might be an excellent case.

Eugene Volokh takes Larry Pratt’s other venture, English First, to task for berating Tyson foods for accomodating its Muslim workers by offering certain Muslim holidays off:

Not all religious beliefs, of course, have been accommodated, and not all should be accommodated. But requests from minority religious groups (including recent immigrant groups) for accommodation are a longstanding and respectable part of the American tradition of religious freedom. Where religious pluralism goes, multiculturalism is indeed a traditional American value. And the union vote at the Tyson plan is not “multiculturalism run amok” — it’s the American tradition of religious tolerance and religious accommodation working as it should be.

Amen.

So Bitter and I have some flyers we’ve made up, that we were looking to distribute. The one obstacle is that I’m not sure whether I’d be running afoul of campaign finance laws by doing so.  If you believe you live in a free country, where it’s perfectly lawful to use any electioneering speech you damned please to help defeat your Congressman, and replace him with someone who you feel will represent you better, you would be mistaken.  A quick perusal of federal campaign finance statutes will remove any notion of that very quickly.  This is not a system that’s designed to encourage participation of an active and engaged citizenry.  It’s a system designed to leave electioneering to professionals.  This is not a way to encourage a healthy Republic.  The sad part is, I think the people in power know this, and don’t care.  It helps them.

I’m pretty sure our fliers, which we would be distributing as private citizens, do not run afoul of finance regulations.  But you know, I’m not sure.  The fact that I signed up to be an Election Volunteer Coordinator with the NRA might complicate things.  I shouldn’t have to hire a lawyer to tell me whether or not I have free speech.  I am very tempted to put in lettering, underneath:

This Message was Approved by James Madison

It’s going to be very hard pulling the lever in the fall for that bastard McCain, who foisted much of this nonsense on us.  The only reason I can even begin to get by it, is because he had a lot of help in crafting this turd stew.  The recipe of this disaster might have brewed in McCain’s head, but it was Bush that added the corn, and Supreme Court that added the peanuts.  Mmm mmm.  It’s election year 2008, and we’re all going to have to take a big bite!

From Glenn Reynolds on the 2008 Bejing Olympics:

I won’t be going, and I don’t plan to watch. The Olympics are a fount of corruption and chicanery anyway, upholding no ideals and promoting no good ends anyway. Plus, they’re boring.

I won’t be watching either.  Even the shooting events.  What the Chinese government is doing is a disgrace.  The only thing more disgraceful is the IOC’s capitulation.  China should not be permitted to host another Olympics until it cleans up its human rights record.  What’s next?  Havana Olympics?

Some of you may have been following the Kynn incident over at SayUncle.  I’m happy to see that we’re more in an apologetic phase, with both Uncle and Kynn issuing apologies.  But I wanted to address some points that Kynn made:

Okay, now, the first point — several people, including Mr. Uncle, have said “how could someone from a group who is attacked be as bigoted as to judge gun nuts as a group? What a bigot Kynn is!”

This comparison is pretty much laughable to me, as it would be to most people who have done any work in anti-bigotry activism: There’s obviously a big difference between characteristics such as one’s gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and so on, and characteristics such as one’s beliefs regarding gun control, birth control, abortion, war, taxes, disco music, or choice of political candidate. Transphobia is not the same thing as being angry at everyone who supports (or opposes) the Iraq War. The latter is much more like gun control than being genderqueer is.

The truth is, it’s laughable to most people.  It may be a technically correct use of the term “bigot” to describe someone “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices,” but in practical terms, “bigot” more often than not has racial connotations to most people who aren’t familiar with the true dictionary definition.

As much as I believe the fight for the second amendment is a civil rights struggle, that has parallels to other civil rights struggles in our nation’s history, I’ve always had a hard time getting over the fact that being a gun owner is a choice, whereas no one chooses to be Black, Hispanic, Native American, and, at least in my opinion, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.  In that sense, barring someone from a community because of his color just can’t, in my opinion, rank up there with barring someone from a community because he chooses to be a gun owner.  I do agree that the latter is a constitutionally protected right, but I can choose not to be a gun owner.  Someone can’t choose not to be black.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s worthwhile pointing out that many people’s views of gun owners are prejudicial, and based on stereotypes; I have no problem turning the entire political correctness machinery around on folks who relish in using it on conservatives.  But I think we should be careful throwing the “b” word around.  That’s not to say it has no place; I’ve certainly used it in instances where a person had just displayed an unapologetic disdain from people who come from a certain (rural) culture.  But I don’t think it’s the first thing to brand someone with.  Appeals to tolerance, and pointing out that the some views might be based on stereotypes and prejudices, I think is just as effective.

Hopefully Kynn can appreciate that there are as many opinions as gun owners.  Some of us are pretty conservative, both socially and politically.  I would be a liar if I said there were no racists in the gun culture.  Some of us will stand for no gun laws, some of us are willing to live with a few.  But perhaps Kynn might be surprised to learn that there are a lot of us who don’t really have issues with the GLBT community, and who support issues like gay marriage.

Kynn and I would probably never consider ourselves political allies.  No doubt on most political issues, we’d probably work against each other.  But it does no one any good to alienate others based on prejudicial views.  Regardless of whether I vote for McCain over Obama, I will be an advocate from within the conservative movement for stronger acceptance of the people like Kynn, and a recognition that whether you agree that who they are is a lifestyle choice, or something imposed on them through genetics, they have a right to live how they want as free people, and to enjoy all the same benefits as other members of our society.

To me the tragedy is that we let our petty sqibbles get in the way of that far too often.  It’s very hard to win acceptance of rights that only have support from one side of the political aisle.  Just read Ilya Somin’s article on Gun Rights, Post-Heller.  Gun owners need to accept that we need the left to buy into gun rights, and the left needs to accept that they need to get conservatives to buy into things like gay rights.  That’s really the only way we’re both going to win.

No, not by criminals, but by government officials.

I once got a letter from the township stating that, because of sewage system problems in my neighborhood, they were coming around to inspect sump hookups to make sure no one was illegally dumping sump outflow into the sewer system.

My sump hookup was fine, but I rather incredulous that township code enforcement presumed they could demand to enter my home to look for evidence of a crime without a warrant.  They stopped by while I was at work, but left a note stating that I was to call and arrange an appointment.  I tossed it in the trash can and never heard another peep from them.

In the United States, I had the law on my side, and was ready to demand the township get a warrant or go to hell.  The poor Brits are at the mercy of bureaucrats, it seems.  Still, I wonder how many of my neighbors let the inspectors in thinking they had to.

The Terrorists Watch List has hit 1,000,000 names.  Who’s on it?  How do you end up getting on there?  How do you get yourself off there if there’s a mistake?  We don’t know! Well we know at least one person on the list, and Ted Kennedy.

That’s the beauty of it for the gun control groups, and power hungry authoritarians like Senator Frank Lautenburg.  By making it illegal to sell a gun to anyone who is on this mystery list, we can take away the constitutional rights we don’t approve of, with no due process.  I thought only Bush was the one mugging our civil rights over the war on terror?