Category: crime and punishment

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

The Myth of the Monoliths

NRA, monolith, March for our Lives, members, gun control, guns

According to organizers of the “March for Our lives,” the National Rifle Association is wholly evil, a corrupter of democracy, a malign presence straight out of Mordor, bent upon murder — a monolithic influence responsible for every mass shooting event.

The clearest expression of this is by young David Hogg, who figured that the NRA’s sum of contributions to Sen. Marco Rubio, when divided not by the number slain in the recent Parkland shooting but instead by the total number of students throughout Florida, came out to $1.05 per student.

Forget the computation — think nasty imputation.

What Hogg and his friends in the media elide is a simple little fact: the NRA is a membership organization. When critics of the Second Amendment point at the NRA and shout “evil!” they are really pointing at the organization’s millions of members. 

People, not malign institutions.

Also neglected? The fact that, as near as I can make out, not one NRA member has mown down students in any school or church in America. Instead, at least one civilian NRA member took out his AR-​15 to bring down one such mass-​murdering shooter.

“Evil NRA” talk is misdirection and slander.

Also not a monolith? Students. Christian Britschgi, writing at Reason, notes that teenagers made up only 10 percent of marchers at the recent rally, and, catching a whiff of astroturf, cites a poll that found less than a majority of Millenials favoring an “assault rifle” ban.

Citizens of all ages disagree. Pretending that all kids are against guns, or that the NRA is anything other than a citizen advocacy group, distorts reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard privacy responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Ecstatic with Independence

free range, freedom, Utah, children, walk, outside, law, hysteria

Utah’s legislature unanimously passed it; the governor signed it — the nation’s first measure protecting what’s become known as “free-​range parenting.” 

It was once known simply as “parenting.”

Certain activities are now exempt from a state law criminalizing child neglect. Children may legally “walk, run or bike to and from school, travel to commercial or recreational facilities, play outside and remain at home unattended” — thereby allowing “a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities …”

Back in the day, we apparently played outside in a sort of statutory limbo.

Do we really need a law saying kids can walk on a public street? 

Sadly, yes: government agencies across the country are grossly violating the most basic rights of parents to rear independent children.

Regular readers may recall my 2015 defenses* of the Meitiv parents against the absurd charge of “unsubstantiated neglect” leveled against them by Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services. Ultimately, Maryland authorities acknowledged that permitting one’s kids (in the Meitivs’ case, a 10- and a 6‑year-​old) to walk on a public sidewalk (from a local park) wasn’t prima facie evidence of a crime. 

The current free-​range parenting movement was launched in 2008 when Lenore Skenazy publicly admitted — to mass shock and condemnation — to allowing her 9‑year-​old son to take a trip alone on New York City’s subway.

“My son got home,” she wrote in the New York Sun, “ecstatic with independence.”

Notice how rare it is to find anyone ecstatic with dependence.

Lesson? An old one: Happiness must be pursued with freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* My writings on the Meitivs’ battle to keep their kids:

PDF for printing

 

Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

High on Hemp?

hemp, marijuana, legalization, prohibition, THC, CBD, Mitch McConnell

Hemp is not marijuana.

And yet it is.

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will introduce legislation to legalize industrial hemp.

He is not concerning himself with marijuana, which is what we call the plant Cannabis sativa when cultivated for its Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, the principal chemical in the plant that makes it ideal for “recreational” uses. Industrial hemp is Cannabis sativa, too, just with minuscule THC.

Hemp products are actually legal to buy and sell in the United States. 

Sort of.

But growing it is murky, considering that ingestible hemp is a Schedule 1 drug no matter how little THC it has — despite the fact that Congress has allowed states to regulate the growth of low-​THC hemp for “industrial” purposes. 

A complicating factor is that industrial hemp contains an oil, Cannabidiol (CBD), which is neither an ecstatic nor a hallucinogenic drug, but is widely believed to have many therapeutic powers. And is widely sold all over the country, wherever states have allowed for medical marijuana.

Nevertheless the DEA objects to it as much as to THC, saying that all ingestible forms of hemp are illegal.

Because of all this murkiness, McConnell’s bill might seem to be welcome step towards clarity.

Trouble is, since industrial hemp is indistinguishable from cannabis with THC — to look at; to smell; to touch — officials hoping to crack down on marijuana-​as-​a-​psychoactive-​drug would be much hampered were industrial hemp commonly and legally grown.

What a mess. The only real solution is to de-​list all forms of Cannabis sativa from the War on Drug’s Schedule of Drugs It Unconstitutionally Proscribes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Unlovely Congress

Craigslist, HR 1865, "FOSTA", Trump, Congress, censorship, liability

If you recently tried to post a personal ad on Craigslist, the popular classified-​ad site, you were in for a shock. Craigslist has suddenly discontinued all personals. You can still sell your used rototiller, but forget about telling the world you’re lost in Louisville looking for love.

The company doesn’t want to be prosecuted for helping people find each other en route to becoming partners in outlawry.

Congress has just passed legislation subjecting site publishers to criminal and civil liability when their users “misuse online personals unlawfully.” The president’s signature is expected. Craigslist doesn’t want all that open-​ended liability. “Any tool or service can be misused,” it observes. 

Indeed. If the principle underlying this law were consistently applied, any good or service that facilitates communication (or other human activity!) would expose providers to liability for any illegal conduct abetted by their products. Would curtain manufacturers be exempt? We all know how bad guys plotting evil pull their curtains. Freedom of speech, freedom of casual encounters, freedom of curtain-​trafficking, it’s all at risk.

What about Congress’s goal of discouraging prostitution? 

Will all U.S. prostitutes now retire?

Not if the last several thousand years are any clue. Especially as other sites follow Craigslist’s lead, prostitutes who had escaped the streets thanks to online means of client-​hunting will tend to return to those streets. If so, neighborhoods less seedy and less dangerous thanks to Craigslist etc. will now tend to reacquire such unlovely qualities.

Thanks to (unlovely) Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Good Guy With Gun

Blaine Gaskill, school shooting, gun, gun control, Maryland, defense, 2nd Amendment

Short version of the story: a good guy with a gun at a Maryland high school stopped a bad guy with a gun. In less than a minute. How? Because the good guy had a gun and was inside the school with the gun.

The bad guy was able to shoot a 16-​year-​old female student, apparently someone with whom he had a previous relationship, as well as a 14-​year-​old male before an officer on site responded. This officer, Blaine Gaskill, was on the spot in less than a minute. Gaskill and the assailant fired simultaneously. The assailant fell dead. What exactly happened is still unclear; there has been some media speculation that the bad guy may have shot himself. 

But the 17-​year-​old shooter is dead. The female victim, though still alive, is unfortunately in critical condition. The male victim is in stable condition.

The good guy was armed — with a gun. And he was on site. If you’re learning about the incident here first, it’s because the story isn’t being plastered all over the place 24 – 7 as it would have been had the shooter been able to wreak much more havoc because nobody could quickly counter him.

So, is it okay to let responsible, well-​trained administrators, teachers and others in schools be armed? 

Well, ask the question a different way. If you happened to be inside the school at the time, would it be okay to survive when some maniac with a gun starts shooting at you and others inside that school? 

Let’s defend our loved ones.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard too much government

Governments Gone Wilding

South Africa, land, expropriation, reform, genocide, refuges, media, racism

I was late to the story, and had a hard time finding information on the anti-​white violence in South Africa — farm families raped, pillaged, slaughtered, beheaded.

And I wasn’t at all aware of the “land reform” that South Africa’s Congress is voting on, the explicit aim of which is to expropriate white farmers without compensation.

Every day, I read through The Washington Post but noticed no articles there. Or elsewhere — until a fleeting Facebook post sent me to Lauren Southern’s video documentary, “Farmlands.”

The Wall Street Journal did cover the farm expropriation story — on its editorial pages. “No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.” 

Zimbabwe on repeat.

Worse yet, it is being argued for on racial grounds, and some of its proponents are notoriously … genocidal?

Quartz takes a different approach, in an article charmingly titled “South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant.” The Leftwing publication appears to be gearing up to defend mass theft as “land reform,” heedless of its long, violent, destructive history. 

Meanwhile, Ms. Southern, the “gonzo journalist” who detailed the ongoing race-​based murder spree in South Africa* that Quartz failed to mention, found herself detained in Calais, France, prevented from entering Britain. Why? In part for “being racist.”

Southern had once engaged in a stunt pitching the provocation that “Allah is a gay god” — to seek reactions from people after a major news source produced an article claiming Jesus was gay.

Islam is a religion, not a race, of course, but it’s racial collectivism that still unhinges minds.

To what extent? Socialist expropriation, at least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “According to the best available statistics,” the BBC relates, “farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-​11.”

PDF for printing