Civil Liberties – Page 33 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Good Question

“State Delegate Bill Bronrott of Montgomery County says it may be time to get those bikes off the roads.

“They are potential death machines in the wrong hands,” says Bronrott. “And I think we should look at the possibility of saying these should be used on race courses rather than public highways.”

Not that seriously expect anything to happen as a result of this but I need to ask a simple question of anyone who thinks like this…

Why do you feel the need to see every single tragedy as a problem that needs fixing, some kind of moral crusade or to not hold the person who caused it responsible and rather blame the item used?

So the next time you say “Well, we don’t ban cars because people use them irresponsibly, and they kill far more people every year than guns.” maybe you should think twice before you give the politicians another bad idea.

I’ve always thought that gun control is a litmus test for how liberty minded a politician is.Â Let’s see what Delegate Bill Brainrot thinks about other issues:

Delegate Bronrott earned a 100% perfect score from the Humane Society of the United States in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Just in case you don’t know, the HSUSA is against hunting.Â What about guns?

Good Morning. Welcome. I am Bill Bronrott, a State Delegate in the Maryland General Assembly from here in Bethesda, and chair of the Montgomery House Delegation’s Democratic Caucus. We are here to issue our own Homeland Security High Alert because the clock is quickly running out on the 10 year ban on the sale of assault weapons in our country.

Remember, they aren’t just anti-gun, they are anti-freedom.Â Â I might start taking progressives more seriously when they wake up and realize there is more to freedom than abortion, social justice (whatever the hell that means), gay rights, and hating George W. Bush.Â I’ll start being impressed when they stand up for liberty in general, whether you’re a favored constituency or not.

Quote of the Day

Via Bruce, who links to this fine article:

When the state crosses that line and begins protecting adults from themselves, the people have lost their authority over the state. At once, there is no decision the state may not make regarding an individual’s personal behavior. The people have conceded that power, and it is no longer theirs.

Gonzalez Sucks Round IV

The Brady Campaign are singing the praises of our Attorney General:

Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez yesterday praising a Justice Department legislative proposal that would help prevent suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms and urging passage of the related legislation by Congress.

Paul Helmke knows a political gift when he sees it, and Gonzalez handed it to him on a silver platter. Come out against the bill, and the meme is “The NRA and the gun nuts want terrorists to have guns!”, and the media will happily lap it up and repeat it. Helmke can count on no one criticizing the administration for, once again, trampling on constitutional liberties in the name of the “War on Terror”.

This is the administration that was supposed to be so good for our second amendment rights? Given the three stooges the Republicans are currently putting out there for 2008, I’m seriously wondering if I need to switch my registration to Democrat from Independent so I can vote for Bill Richardson in the primaries.

This isn’t about terrorists getting guns, it’s about due process, and this proposal makes a mockery of our constitution.

Gonzalez Sucks Round III

You know when you make John Ashcroft look good, it’s time to think about resigning.

Comey testified Tuesday that when he refused to certify the program, Gonzales and Card headed to Ashcroft’s sick bed in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital.

When Gonzales appealed to Ashcroft, the ailing attorney general lifted his head off the pillow and in straightforward terms described his views of the program, Comey said. Then he pointed out that Comey, not Ashcroft, held the powers of the attorney general at that moment.

Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.

“I was angry,” Comey told the panel. “I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general.”

Now, as civil liberty violations go, I never thought this program was a big one. But I think there are legitimate questions as to its legality. This was a pretty low tactic on the part of Card and Gonzalez.

Bush has stood solidly by his longtime counselor’s side; calls for Gonzales’ resignation have waned in recent weeks.

Bush’s loyalty is admirable, but it’s hurt him politically. He’s held on to people far too long after they have become liabilities for him, and Gonzalez is just the latest example of this.

Meme Battles

I’m hopping angry at Attorney General Gonzalez and the Bush Administration over this terrorist watch list anti-gun bill.Â He might as well have handed the anti-gun groups and the media the rhetorical vise with which to put the screws to us.

Here’s the meme we’re fighting, it’s all over the media:

NRA wants to allow suspected terrorists to purchase guns

Take a look, and you’ll find this everywhere, and it’s incredibly damaging to us.Â The reason is because these battles are waged in the public mind through use of memes, and that is a powerful one.Â The answer to that is not a meme.Â It’s complicated, and difficult to dispense with in a sound bite.

Much of the left, which normally strikes out against the administration for various perceived or real infringements on civil liberties, has embraced this one, since it’s damaging to a core conservative constituency.

How do we fight this meme battle?Â How do we make the position that no citizen should be deprived of constitutional rights without due process? How do we make people understand that we don’t want terrorists getting a hold of firearms any more than anyone else in this country does?

I don’t have an answer to this. Â And I’m quite getting tired of the media, who are quick to defend liberties they find dear to them, so carefully maligning liberties other people find important, and not even having the courtesy, and actually having the gall, to suggest that our concerns are driven by a desire to arm terrorists rather than legitimate due process and civil liberties concerns.

Should it Be a Priviledge to Drive?

I said it is, Uncle disagrees.Â Â I had thought I had posted on this in the past, but I think I meant to and never did.Â I actually think driving ought to be a right, as an element of the right to travel, but it isn’t currently seen that way.Â You have a right to travel, but not operate a motor vehicle.

When arguing against gun controllers, it’s worth pointing out that it is, legally, considered a privilege.Â That’s why it gets different treatment.Â It’s important to make people understand that distinction in the law, even if we might not agree with driving being treated that way.

Do I agree with that classification?Â No.Â I think another neat question to ask is, if the right to travel includes the right to operate machinery on the public roads and skies, what does that right look like?Â How may it be limited?Â Can you still license it?

Dog Control

Eric at Classical Values is on his 9th post about California’s AB1634, requiring cats and dogs to be spayed or neutered.Â I’m neither a cat or dog owner, but this law strikes me as going way way too far, and probably won’t even solve the problems its attempting to address.

People in California, in all honestly, need to get their state government under control, and remind them who they work for, and what appropriate limits on their power is.Â Â That might mean that folks in California may need to hold their noses, and vote for another party, just to get some of these people out of office.

Terrorist Watch List Bill Out

The “Dangerous Terrorists Act” is out in PDF over at Of Arms and the Law.Â I’m really curious why the DOJ wants this so badly, and I’m also really curious why Bush has yet to fire Alberto Gonzalez.Â This is not the kind of crap I expect to be coming out of a “pro-gun” administration.

Of course, I could just chalk this up to the Aministration’s penchant for ignoring due process concerns when it comes to people they have declared “terrorists”. Â I’ve been willing to grant them a lot of leeway in dealing with foreigners captured in a theater of war, but not with the rights of US citizens. Â This is an outrage.

If this incident isn’t the poster…

… for stopping the so called War on Drugs, I don’t know what is.Â Bad things happen when you criminalize behavior that doesn’t have a victim.

Hat tip to Kevin BakerÂ

Militarization of Police

Everyone should read Radley Balko’s article in Reason, Tanks for Nothing, describing federal government efforts to transfer surplus military equipment to local police departments:

The Pentagon giveaway program began in the late 1980s, and is almost certainly responsible for the dramatic rise in the number of SWAT teams across the country, which led to the 1500 percent increase in the number of total deployments over the last 25 years, and to the increasing use of paramilitary tactics for nonviolent crimes. Many criminal justice experts say the program, along with the fact that SWAT teams and narcotics officers are often trained by former members of elite military groups like the Army Rangers or Navy Seals is responsible for the “cowboy” mentality that pervades many SWAT and narcotics units.

My favorite is this part:

About 3/4 through the book, Wright explains how the full-time Marines were getting increasingly irritated with a reserve unit traveling with them. The reserve unit was mostly made up people who in their civilians lives were law enforcement, “from LAPD cops to DEA agents to air marshalls,” and were acting like idiot renegades. Wright quotes a gunnery sargeant who traveled with the reserve unit:

“Some of the cops in Delta started doing this cowboy stuff. They put cattle horns on their Humvees. They’d roll into these hamlets, doing shows of forceâ€”kicking down doors, doing sweepsâ€”just for the fuck of it. There was this little clique of them. Their ringleader was this beat cop…He’s like five feet tall, talks like Joe Friday and everybody calls him ‘Napoleon.'”

I don’t have any problem with the police having the hardware they need to do their job. I don’t wince at the idea of patrol cars having AR-15s. I think every patrol car should have one, in fact. I don’t even have issues with police SWAT teams, provided they are used only in rare circumstances, in situations that call for it.

But this phenomena has gotten out of control. It’s time to start pushing to bring police work back into the civilian realm. Police ought not be super citizens, with special rights, privileges and yes, equipment, that sets them apart from you and I. That engenders an attitude that is dangerous to maintaining a free society. Police are civilians, that we hire to maintain law and order. That’s it. Their attitudes and equipment need to reflect that.