After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
William S. Burroughs, Grand Street, no. 37 & The War Universe (1992).
July 6 serves better as a “Today in Tyranny” marker than anything positive, at least when you consider these events:
Maybe.
But the “accidental” release of the private information of thousands of California gun owners is just the sort of thing that many foes of Second Amendment rights would happily perpetrate.
So we can be forgiven if we harbor doubts.
On June 27, the California Justice Department’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal went live. The publicly accessible files included private details — names, dates of birth, and home addresses — about persons who had applied for concealed carry permits between 2011 and 2022. More than enough information to cause trouble.
The info was removed the next day. Attorney General Rob Bonta said that his office would investigate.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association is threatening to sue.
If the leak was deliberate, maybe the AG was not responsible even indirectly. Maybe the culprit was some anonymous clerk, akin in spirit to the clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court who leaked Dobbs.
If the leak was a pure accident, though, the degree of carelessness strains credulity. This wasn’t a hack of data that had been poorly encrypted in keeping with modern traditions of lackadaisical security. The data was out in the open for all to see.
But, sure, maybe the exposure was unintentional. Maybe what happened was just some tech guy not knowing what he was doing. And every tester of the system also screwing up. Etc.
Such blunders are not unknown. Government workers have bungled bigly before, serially and in parallel. There are precedents. Yes.
So maybe.
But if government cannot reliably keep private information confidential, then maybe it should not require the logging of such information in the first place. Maybe “concealed carry” should be a right, not a licensed privilege.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (1844), ”Politics.”
The Liberty Bell left Philadelphia by special train on its way to the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, on July 5, 1915 — the last trip outside Philadelphia that the custodians of the bell intend to permit.
In 1937 on this date, Spam, the luncheon meat, was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, was formally certified by President Richard Nixon on July 5, 1971.
On July 5, 1995, Armenia (flag, above) adopted its constitution, four years after the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.
Those core ideas of independence and liberty still matter — perhaps now more than ever.
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Thomas Jefferson still survives.
John Adams, final words, July 4, 1826. Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.
July Fourth events include:
1054 – A supernova was spotted by Chinese, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri, remaining, for several months, bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.
1776 — The Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, thus formalizing its policy of secession from the rule of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1803 — The Louisiana Purchase was announced to the American people.
1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author of The Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables, The Blithesdale Romance, and other classics, was born. Hawthorne became part of the Young America literary movement spawned by Loco-Foco political activism in New England.
1826 – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, died a few hours before John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States’ Declaration of Independence.
1826 – Stephen Foster, composer of “Old Black Joe,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and many other classic American songs, was born.
1827 – Slavery was abolished in New York State.
1831 – Samuel Francis Smith wrote “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” for Boston’s July 4th festivities, set to the tune of Great Britain’s national anthem, “God Save the King/Queen.”
2009 – The Statue of Liberty’s crown re-opened to the public after eight years of closure that resulted from security concerns following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Fending off the chirping sectaries, not tilting at windmills!
Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.
René Daumal, The Lie of the Truth (1938), Vol. 2, Essais et Notes.