Cambridge MA Editorial Insults Persons With Disabilities

Do not know the source material for this editorial. (Editorial: Prisons and mental illness, Aug. 7, 2015, CAMBRIDGE Chronicle) But it makes unsupported statements which conflate crime, homelessness and psychiatry. The conclusions are extremely offensive to anyone ever accused of mental illness. There is no evidence of any causal connection between crime, violence and a psychiatric diagnosis. It is a pervasive misguided belief by journalists, lawyers and politicians. The drug industry supports the psychiatric industry promoting these literally fantastic beliefs. It is great for increasing the client base and income of those industries. But it remains unsupported by facts. It is one method of institutional demonizing of persons with disabilities which this editorial makes worse. Stop the insults.

[From editorial]
Massachusetts is at last beginning to come to grips with the fact that its prisons and jails are crowded with people whose “crimes” are inseparable from their mental illnesses. 
[. . .]
The state’s efforts will focus on individuals whose mental health issues are the underlying reason behind their imprisonment.
[. . .]
80 percent of the prisoners are held for crimes directly traceable to drug addiction or mental illness.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150807/NEWS/150807985

Editorial: Prisons and mental illness
Posted Aug. 7, 2015 at 10:39 AM 
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle

Baltimore's Image Deceiving, It's Worse

[From article]
At the center of much of the controversy here is Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, a recently elected 35 year-old rookie with little criminal experience. Her husband represents the city council district where Gray was injured. The Gray case is a daunting debut.
The lawyers defending the six police officers have blasted what they perceive as the prosecutor’s gaffes and the “media frenzy” here as they campaign for a change of venue.
In recent weeks, Mosby might have benefited from a handler. She appears to enjoy the limelight. After the riots, she appeared on stage with Prince at a concert to commemorate Gray, was interviewed by Vogue magazine, photographed by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz (yes, that Annie Leibovitz) and served as ringmaster for a circus. That last move prompted an obvious headline: “From Media Circus to Real Circus.” To add to the weirdness, a videotape surfaced of Mosby on Judge Judy when she was a student. She won that case. Mosby’s due to address a national meeting of the NAACP in Philadelphia this week.
[. . .]
Citizens from suburbia and out of state write to the Baltimore Sun and various websites vowing they will never come to the city again. Attendance at public events is off. Students accepted at local colleges and universities are said to be thinking twice about coming here.
Baltimore woke up on the Monday after the July 4 weekend to read a lively op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun by a citizen who said he’d been mugged and his bicycle stolen. That’s not a big deal here. What was a big deal was that after first getting the run-around from the 911 operator, he walked to the southwestern district police station. There, he was told the station was closed from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. For safety reasons. He complained to the police, and they argued that he’d actually been mugged in another district (an old police trick here) and took him there. But as it would happen, that station was also closed for safety reasons. The op-ed complaint seemed to work. On Tuesday, the police said the district stations would remain open 24 hours a day.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/07/09/baltimore-its-so-much-worse-than-you-think/

Baltimore: It’s so much worse than you think
By Christopher Corbett

July 9, 2015

NYPD Commissioner Explains Source of Crime. Really?

[From article]
“There is just less respect for authority. I think some of it’s coming out of the fact that we have so many home environments in our country that are not home environments in the traditional sense, in that there’s no direction at home.”
And that lack of direction has made it harder for cops in the field to do their jobs as they are forced to deal with an increasingly hostile public, he said.
“I think it’s a general sense of the liberalization of our society, and I think my average police officer in the street would tell you that he is encountering more resistance to his or her authority, and that’s inappropriate because it ratchets up what they have to do to get acquiescence to things they are attempting to enforce,” the top cop said.
[. . .]
The dysfunction extends to the schools and the streets, he said.
“Many of our schools are struggling to provide guidance and keep control in the school environment. We’re struggling in the streets,” he said.
Bratton said that in parts of New York City, poverty and substandard housing are also a big part of the mix.
“You can see in our city where you have high unemployment, high poverty, poor housing, poor schools, you have crime. They all go together,” he said.

[Suggesting that all poor people are criminals is the same as saying that all persons accused of mental illness are criminals. Crime needs to be separated from poverty and from psychiatry. Many if not most poor people are not criminals. Are there no wealthy criminals? Children of rich and famous people are crime free? No wealthy athletes and politicians who commit crimes every day? Has a lawless White House and a lawless US Attorney General encouraged any young people to ignore laws? Bratton's focus is misguided.] 

http://nypost.com/2015/06/11/bratton-blames-broken-homes-for-anti-cop-hostility/

Bratton blames broken homes for anti-cop hostility
By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
June 11, 2015 | 12:55am

Cambridge Police Say Extremely Low Crime Statistics Due to Cold Weather

They all have it backwards. Crime causes global warming. The reason it is so cold is there is no crime.  

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/2/25/crime-snow-historic-low/

Severe Snowstorms in Cambridge Drive Crime to ‘Historic Lows’
By MUJTABA A. A. WARSI, CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Harvard Crimson
February 24, 2015

Magazine Geniuses Publish Idea For a Police Free Nation

The Rolling Stone followed up their UVA rape hoax with “Six Ideas for a Cop-Free World.”

[From article]
Exit Question: So if there are no cops who will arrest the serial campus rapists Rolling Stone likes to write about?

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/01/brilliant-leftists-lay-out-six-ideas-for-cop-free-world/

Brilliant! Leftists Lay Out “Six Ideas for Cop-Free World”
Posted by Jim Hoft
Friday, January 2, 2015, 10:27 AM

Islamic State Criminal Code Published

[From article]
“Blasphemy against Allah,” for instance, is punishable by death, according to the legal code provided by MEMRI.
Similarly, “blasphemy against the prophet Mohammed” also guarantees death—“even in the accuser repents,” according to the code. The same punishment is doled out for blasphemy against Islam.
Adultery also remains a capital crime under IS’ code.
An adulterer will face “stoning until death” if he or she was married at the time and “100 lashes and exile” if unmarried.
Sodomy and, in particular, homosexuality will also be met by death “for the person committing the act, as well as for the one receiving it.”
The act of “spying for the unbelievers,” which includes all those who do not adhere to IS’s extremist interpretation of Islam, will also result in death.
Murder and stealing will not only be punished by death, but the offender will also be crucified, the code states.
However, not every crime will get the offender murdered by IS.
Theft, for example, will be punished by cutting off an offender’s hand.
Drinking alcohol, which is banned under extreme Islamic law, will be met with 80 lashes.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/islamic-state-penal-code-promises-crucifixion-lashing-for-unbelievers/

Islamic State Penal Code Promises Crucifixion, Lashing for Unbelievers
Harsh penalties for sodomy, theft, drinking alcohol
BY: Adam Kredo
December 17, 2014 1:35 pm

CS Lewis: The Trouble With The Therapeutic State

[From essay]
the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.
[. . .]
According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments.
[. . .]
Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.
[. . .]
Only the expert ‘penologist’ (let barbarous things have barbarous names), in the light of previous experiment, can tell us what is likely to deter: only the psychotherapist can tell us what is likely to cure. It will be in vain for the rest of us, speaking simply as men, to say, ‘but this punishment is hideously unjust, hideously disproportionate
[. . .]
The Humanitarian theory, then, removes sentences from the hands of jurists whom the public conscience is entitled to criticize and places them in the hands of technical experts whose special sciences do not even employ such categories as rights or justice.
[. . .]
The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community’s moral judgment on the degree of ill-desert involved) an indefinite sentence terminable only by the word of those experts—and they are not experts in moral theology nor even in the Law of Nature—who inflict it.
[. . .]
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
[. . .]
To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
[. . .]
We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution.
[. . .]
Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic.
[. . .]
If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned.
[. . .]
But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live.

http://www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment
C. S. Lewis (1949), Th e h u ma n i t a r i a n t heor y o f p u n i s h me n t ,
The Twentieth Century: An Australian Quarterly Review, 3(3), 5-12.

Bronx Was Worse Off Than Detroit, and Turned Around Its Decline

[From article]
The South Bronx has become much safer—to an extent barely imaginable a generation ago. In 2013, the 41st precinct suffered just two murders, compared with more than 100 each year during its Fort Apache days.
[. . .]
In 1985, under Mayor Ed Koch, New York launched a major housing initiative that would spend $5 billion on renovations and new construction, with the South Bronx being a prime location for the investment.
[. . .]
The area’s 40.2 percent poverty rate is only slightly better than Detroit’s 41.5 percent. And 60 percent of households with related children are headed by single mothers, a figure that hasn’t budged in 30 years. Sixty percent of South Bronx residents are on Medicaid. Though the teen pregnancy rate has declined, drug addiction remains entrenched.
[. . .]
Detroit may not have hit rock bottom yet
[. . .]
The most important lesson that Detroit can derive from the South Bronx’s experience is that things can get better. Many despaired over the South Bronx’s future during the 1970s out of conviction that New York City was ungovernable. How could a city incapable of preventing 14-year-olds from defacing subway cars be expected to revive a neighborhood resembling post-World War II Berlin? But the skeptics were wrong, as more effective government—as opposed to simply less or more—proved central to New York’s epic crime decline and many other municipal improvements.

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/eon0930se.html

Stephen Eide

Lessons from a Catastrophe

The South Bronx came back—can Detroit?

30 September 2014

Israel's Real Crime

[From article]
Israel's crime against them is very rare, so rare it doesn't even have a name, so I will invent one: I'll call it paradigmocide, destroying the intellectual basis for cherished beliefs that are empirically wrong. One well-known incident of this crime was some four hundred years ago when Galileo committed it against the Catholic Church by producing evidence for a heliocentric solar system.
Kill a man's child, rape his wife, drown his dog; many men can forgive these offenses. Present him with evidence that his most deeply-held beliefs are wrong, and that he cannot forgive.
[. . .]
Since the Left seeks power and believes it is entitled to that power because of its superior intellect, knowledge, wisdom, and morality -- think of them as the mirror image of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz
[. . .]
religious groups chose to see Israel's very existence as a sin, rather than consider that their theology might be wrong.
[. . .]
The problem starts in academia, where social scientists seek to ingratiate themselves with the Left because the Left presents itself as more intelligent and well-informed, which is how academics regard themselves,
[. . .]
And they know they're wrong, even if they won't admit it. If they thought they were right, they would make the case using reasoned arguments and supportable facts.
[. . .]
A key consideration is that if you reject the idea that self-appointed elites are entitled to rule, the only basis for legitimate power remaining is consent of the governed, a principle so central to the American creed that it appears in the Declaration of Independence. This may be why those segments of the American people who believe in this ideal, and similarly-minded people around the world, invariably support Israel. Israel is a symbol of the principle that the consent of the governed is the only legitimate basis for holding power and is thus anathema to members of elites who see themselves entitled to rule without accountability.

http://americanthinker.com/2014/09/israels_real_crime.html

September 5, 2014
Israel's Real Crime
By Fred Baggins

Atlantic City Casinos Closing, Lesson For Massachusetts?

[From article]
Three premier Atlantic City casinos will be closing in the next two weeks with the lost of almost 6,000 jobs. Another casino closed earlier this year, making the total job loss close to 8,000 - one quarter of casino employment in the city.
[. . .]
Despite the gleaming towers and swanky hotels, the rest of Atlantic City is still a grimy, crime-ridden mess. We've seen this same selling point by casnino operators fall flat here in Illinois. Gambling brings its own set of problems to a community and residents should think very carefully about approving one.
Massachusetts might become the first state to actually repeal casnino gambling. There's a ballot measure in November that will decide the fate of casino gaming. Some other states have decided against expanding casino gambling. Whatever extra cash flowing into state coffers, the social cost is sometimes too high a price to pay.

http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/09/casino_closings_threaten_atlantic_city.html

September 1, 2014
Casino closings threaten Atlantic City
By Rick Moran

Illegal Alien Charged With Taking Upskirt Photos

[From article]
Plano Police say a male shopper happened to see 44-year old Fermin Morales-Gonzalez taking pictures up the skirts and dresses of unsuspecting women. Reports say the man told the store management and then flagged down a Plano Police officer who was driving by.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/07/21/suspected-illegal-immigrant-arrested-for-taking-lewd-pictures-of-women/

Suspected Illegal Immigrant Arrested For Taking Lewd Pictures Of Women
L.P. Phillips

1080 KRLD | CBSDFW.COM

July 21, 2014 5:20 PM

Unsafe Cambridge Neighborhood

Posted July 17, 2014 10:18 AM ET; Last updated July 18, 2014 1:04 PM ET


Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs explained in her wonderful book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, that if you need police in your neighborhood it is not safe. Safe neighborhoods do not come from police presence. They are safe because of interested persons who live, work and pass through that neighborhood If persons do not watch who is in the neighborhood it becomes unsafe. Most crimes are committed by persons who do not live in the neighborhood. If only politicians read some books. 



Councilor Simmons admits that neighborhood residents sit on their front stoops. That is a major deterrent to crime. When they see a suspicious person they can speak up and/or call the police. 



But expecting civilians to "snitch" on criminals who brazenly commit murder is asking a lot. Read the awful story about 18-year-old Sarah Pearce who was convicted and served 12 years for a crime she did not commit.


Sarah Pearce

http://enoughroomvideo.blogspot.com/2014/07/idaho-woman-18-set-free-after-12-years.html An entire family knew she was innocent but refused to identify the guilty person because of fear. That is not only a local problem. Why do politicians expect young people to snitch on their colleagues when  police, politicians, doctors and lawyers do not snitch on their colleagues? To suggest that "a couple of dozen additional officers" should be assigned to one neighborhood is irrational.  On previous occasions Councilor Simmons lamented the presence of FBI and cameras in Cambridge, but suggested that there should be an officer on every corner. Her policy making needs re-evaluation.

[From article] A number of residents at the Pisani Center mentioned that they may spend hours on their front stoop and never see a uniformed officer.
[. . .]
I would like to see a couple of dozen additional officers walking the beat in Area Four,

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20140718/NEWS/140716740

Guest column: Preventing the ‘us versus them’ mentality towards police in Cambridge
By E. Denise Simmons
Posted Jul. 18, 2014 @ 10:04 am
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle


* * *

[From article]

"I don't want to be afraid in my neighborhood," Cambridge City Councilor E. Denise Simmons said Thursday, July 10, at the Area Four Neighborhood Coalition meeting. "I want to be able to walk on my street anytime I want to. I want to be able to walk in my neighborhood and feel safe."
According to Denise Phillips, an Area Four resident, police officers used to walk the neighborhood several years ago, but that is just no longer the case.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20140716/NEWS/140717327

Area Four asks for more police presence after shooting
By Sara Feijo
Posted Jul. 16, 2014 @ 2:06 pm
Updated Jul 16, 2014 at 3:29 PM
CAMBRIDGE Chronicle

Psychiatric Court Chaos

Posted November 23, 2007 4:42 AM ET; Last updated July 5, 2014 3:27 AM ET


http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/john_l_ecker_of_indian_orchard.html

Springfield Police: Indian Orchard man, arrested for stalking teen girl, has house burglarized while in custody

By Dave Canton dcanton (at) repub.com
on August 30, 2013 at 1:59 PM, updated August 30, 2013 at 3:24 PM

* * *

The courts cannot distinguish between crime and disability. (Laurel J. Sweet, "Mentally ill alleged serial stalker could be released," Boston Herald, November 21, 2007) Psychiatrists do not know disability law or Constitutional Rights. Criminal defense lawyers are clueless about disability laws. Civil commitment lawyers know little criminal law. No lawyers litigate civil rights
laws protecting persons with disabilities. Court rules and civil commitment laws were written for the benefit of the psychiatric industry and the drug companies. Psychiatry is arbitrary and based
upon personal opinions masquerading as science. The courts and psychiatry are vehicles for profits which conflict with the Constitution and public safety. This will only get worse until some legislature is able to rise above campaign contributions. Until then neither the rights of the accused nor the public will be safe. Suggesting as this story does that mental illness causes crime is irrational and misguided, demonizing all persons with disabilities.

[From article]

A paranoid-schizophrenic Wilbraham man accused of a “20-year-plus history” of

stalking women from behind bars will be back roaming the streets if a better

plan isn’t hatched for his return to society, a federal judge warned the U.S.

Attorney’s Office yesterday.

Problem is, John Leonard Ecker’s behavior toward women he imagines are in love

with him - including prison employees - is considered so dangerous that the

state Department of Mental Health has refused to have anything to do with him,

federal prosecutor Mary Elizabeth Carmody told U.S. District Court Judge

Nathaniel M. Gorton.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2007/11/mentally_ill_alleged_serial_stalker_could_be_released

Mentally ill alleged serial stalker could be released
DMH refuse to take on danger
By Laurel J. Sweet
Boston Herald
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - Added 7h ago

Cambridge Police Commissioner Is Pleased to Find Less Crime

Crime is down and so is freedom. What about crimes that Cambridge police refuse to investigate because the Commissioner thinks they are not crimes? Was the Commissioner surprised at this press release? Does he not know what his PR flacks will release to the public, using standards which the FBI no longer uses? Why do Cambridge police withhold descriptions of street robbery suspects? Are Cambridge police protecting criminals? If there are no police reports of crime there are no crimes. Easy way to reduce crime. Just ignore civilians. Speaking about victimization, what about police abuses of persons with disabilities? Do they count as crimes? 

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/2/24/cambridge-crime-low/#

Serious Crime in Cambridge Hits 50-Year Low
By DANIEL R. LEVINE

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
February 23, 2014

New, New York Mayor Relaxes Focus on Crime

[From article]
Nothing has been more important to the revival of New York than the conquest of crime. New York’s unprecedented crime drop is the greatest urban success story of the last half-century, one that should be seized upon by every conservative politician searching for a government program to support. But if New Yorkers once again fear walking home at night from the subway, if tourists worry about getting to their hotel after a concert or a show, expect the folly of electing a mayor who thought he could play politics with public safety to become clear.

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/eon0131hm.html

HEATHER MAC DONALD
Re-breaking the Windows
Mayor de Blasio’s decision to settle the NYPD lawsuit threatens the city’s triumph over crime.
31 January 2014

Unable to Publish Regularly Due to Harassment, Computer Tampering

Posted January 19, 2014 8:15 PM ET

Thoughtful Harvard University campus police recruited some student members of the university to conduct the harassment that the campus police no longer are willing to do. The students are the equivalent of the undocumented workers (formerly illegal aliens, before those words were banned at Harvard University, and in Cambridge MA), who do the jobs that Americans refuse to do. Thus over the past several weeks the harassment has intensified. Students are not known for having common sense. These twenty-something members of the elite upper class bully association attack a 70-year-old white male who survived 45 years of police, crime families, Communists and FBI harassment in three states. They exhibit their courage attacking a shell of a man. 

They also prevent me from publishing other than sporadically. On Friday evening of the MLK Jr. three day holiday weekend, January 17, 2014, as I did errands, someone entered my apartment and tampered with my computer. It was acting extremely unstable the next day. An alternative scenario is that the computer was attacked remotely. It was easy to notice one thing they did. They changed my home page. I fixed that. But on Sunday, when I began trying to save an essay on a flash drive, I got a system  error message saying that the disk cannot be repaired. The error message urged backing up the data and reformatting the disk. So I immediately without thinking saved the contents of the flash drive onto another external drive. Then I erased the flash drive and tried to verify it. The system was unable to do that. So I erased the the flash drive. Alas the new file on the external drive was empty. Hopefully I will be able to save, recover what I do not have access to at present. It was not a complete loss. Only three months of essays.

But it will cost me at least $100 and time. Thank you Harvard University. I was made aware that there is a new campaign to force me to leave the state of Massachusetts. It is not the first time that has happened to me. I am constantly being harassed and threatened. So this is no great event, just the latest example of what these upper class elitist criminals do to those they see as vulnerable.  
 

Eliminating Evil and Crime

[From article]
All these shootings are united by one clear thread: They all were committed by visibly crazy people, known to be nuts but not institutionalized.
Mental illness was blindingly clear in the cases of Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Maj. Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood), Jared Loughner (Arizona shopping mall), James Holmes (Colorado movie theater), and a dozen other mass shootings in the past few decades.
[. . .]
Mass shootings don’t correlate with any of these things. They correlate with not locking up crazy people. We’re not worried about school kids being systematically gunned down by angry husbands, gang members or antique gun collectors. We’re worried about a psychotic showing up in a public place and shooting everyone in sight.
There’s absolutely no point in making it more difficult to buy firearms at gun shows — unless gun dealers have no trouble getting files on the mentally ill. Until we do that, we’re wasting our time.

Coulter refuses to recognize that anyone who disagrees with liberals is mentally ill. Under the Coulter doctrine it is essential to lock up people who disagree with liberals, and force them to take their medication. Liberals blame guns for mass shootings. Conservatives blame mental illness. Both are irrational. What happened to evil and criminals? Have they been vaporized by psychiatry? 

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/12/18/mental-health-laws-are-trouble-for-democrats/

MENTAL HEALTH LAWS ARE TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS
By: Ann Coulter
12/18/2013 05:01 PM

Essay: A Nation of Cowards

A Nation of Cowards

---

Preface:
Jeff Chan obtained reprint permission for the Internet for Jeffrey Snyder's "A Nation of Cowards". It may be reproduced freely, including forwarding copies to politicians, provided that it is not distributed for profit and subscription information is included.
I especially encourage you to copy and pass on this strong statement about firearms ownership to friends, colleagues, undecideds, and other firearms rights supporters. Your grassroots pamphleteering can counter the propaganda blitz now going on by introducing some reason to the debate. This essay is one of our best weapons.
Jeff Chan
chan (at) shell.portal.com

---

"A Nation of Cowards" was published in the Fall, '93 issue of The Public Interest, a quarterly journal of opinion published by National Affairs, Inc.
Single copies of The Public Interest are available for $6. Annual subscription rate is $21 ($24 US, for Canadian and foreign subscriptions). Single copies of this or other issues, and subscriptions, can be obtained from:

The Public Interest
1112 16th St., NW, Suite 530
Washington, DC 20036
(C) 1993 by The Public Interest.

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A NATION OF COWARDS

Jeffrey R. Snyder

OUR SOCIETY has reached a pinnacle of self-expression and respect for individuality rare or unmatched in history. Our entire popular culture — from fashion magazines to the cinema — positively screams the matchless worth of the individual, and glories in eccentricity, nonconformity, independent judgment, and self-determination. This enthusiasm is reflected in the prevalent notion that helping someone entails increasing that person's "self-esteem"; that if a person properly values himself, he will naturally be a happy, productive, and, in some inexplicable fashion, responsible member of society.
And yet, while people are encouraged to revel in their individuality and incalculable self-worth, the media and the law enforcement establishment continually advise us that, when confronted with the threat of lethal violence, we should not resist, but simply give the attacker what he wants. If the crime under consideration is rape, there is some notable waffling on this point, and the discussion quickly moves to how the woman can change her behavior to minimize the risk of rape, and the various ridiculous, non-lethal weapons she may acceptably carry, such as whistles, keys, mace or, that weapon which really sends shivers down a rapist's spine, the portable cellular phone.
Now how can this be? How can a person who values himself so highly calmly accept the indignity of a criminal assault? How can one who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of that self-determination? How can he, quietly, with great dignity and poise, simply hand over the goods?
The assumption, of course, is that there is no inconsistency. The advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply hand over the goods is founded on the notion that one's life is of incalculable value, and that no amount of property is worth it. Put aside, for a moment, the outrageousness of the suggestion that a criminal who proffers lethal violence should be treated as if he has instituted a new social contract: "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I want." For years, feminists have labored to educate people that rape is not about sex, but about domination, degradation, and control. Evidently, someone needs to inform the law enforcement establishment and the media that kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and assault are not about property.
Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract, but also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty. If the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with others, then crime always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth your life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can hardly be said to exist.

The Gift of Life

Although difficult for modern man to fathom, it was once widely believed that life was a gift from God, that to not defend that life when offered violence was to hold God's gift in contempt, to be a coward and to breach one's duty to one's community. A sermon given in Philadelphia in 1747 unequivocally equated the failure to defend oneself with suicide:

He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath no

authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by defense,

incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined him to seek

the continuance of his life, and Nature itself teaches every creature

to defend itself.

"Cowardice" and "self-respect" have largely disappeared from public discourse. In their place we are offered "self-esteem" as the bellwether of success and a proxy for dignity. "Self-respect" implies that one recognizes standards, and judges oneself worthy by the degree to which one lives up to them. "Self-esteem" simply means that one feels good about oneself. "Dignity" used to refer to the self-mastery and fortitude with which a person conducted himself in the face of life's vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others. Now, judging by campus speech codes, dignity requires that we never encounter a discouraging word and that others be coerced into acting respectfully, evidently on the assumption that we are powerless to prevent our degradation if exposed to the demeaning behavior of others. These are signposts proclaiming the insubstantiality of our character, the hollowness of our souls.
It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.

Do You Feel Lucky?

In 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh released the FBI's annual crime statistics, he noted that it is now more likely that a person will be the victim of a violent crime than that he will be in an auto accident. Despite this, most people readily believe that the existence of the police relieves them of the responsibility to take full measures to protect themselves. The police, however, are not personal bodyguards. Rather, they act as a general deterrent to crime, both by their presence and by apprehending criminals after the fact. As numerous courts have held, they have no legal obligation to protect anyone in particular. You cannot sue them for failing to prevent you from being the victim of a crime.
Insofar as the police deter by their presence, they are very, very good. Criminals take great pains not to commit a crime in front of them. Unfortunately, the corollary is that you can pretty much bet your life (and you are) that they won't be there at the moment you actually need them.
Should you ever be the victim of an assault, a robbery, or a rape, you will find it very difficult to call the police while the act is in progress, even if you are carrying a portable cellular phone. Nevertheless, you might be interested to know how long it takes them to show up. Department of Justice statistics for 1991 show that, for all crimes of violence, only 28 percent of calls are responded to within five minutes. The idea that protection is a service people can call to have delivered and expect to receive in a timely fashion is often mocked by gun owners, who love to recite the challenge, "Call for a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza. See who shows up first."
Many people deal with the problem of crime by convincing themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special "crime-free" zones. Invariably, they react with shock and hurt surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the rules and do not respect these imaginary boundaries. If, however, you understand that crime can occur anywhere at anytime, and if you understand that you can be maimed or mortally wounded in mere seconds, you may wish to consider whether you are willing to place the responsibility for safeguarding your life in the hands of others.

Power And Responsibility

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police's, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?
One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.
Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone — the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the "great equalizer." Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many.
The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens armed with razors and knives.
But since we live in a society that by and large outlaws the carrying of arms, we are brought into the fray of the Great American Gun War. Gun control is one of the most prominent battlegrounds in our current culture wars. Yet it is unique in the half-heartedness with which our conservative leaders and pundits — our "conservative elite" — do battle, and have conceded the moral high ground to liberal gun control proponents. It is not a topic often written about, or written about with any great fervor, by William F. Buckley or Patrick Buchanan. As drug czar, William Bennett advised President Bush to ban "assault weapons." George Will is on record as recommending the repeal of the Second Amendment, and Jack Kemp is on record as favoring a ban on the possession of semiautomatic "assault weapons." The battle for gun rights is one fought predominantly by the common man. The beliefs of both our liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the criminal rampage through our society.

Selling Crime Prevention

By any rational measure, nearly all gun control proposals are hokum. The Brady Bill, for example, would not have prevented John Hinckley from obtaining a gun to shoot President Reagan; Hinckley purchased his weapon five months before the attack, and his medical records could not have served as a basis to deny his purchase of a gun, since medical records are not public documents filed with the police. Similarly, California's waiting period and background check did not stop Patrick Purdy from purchasing the "assault rifle" and handguns he used to massacre children during recess in a Stockton schoolyard; the felony conviction that would have provided the basis for stopping the sales did not exist, because Mr. Purdy's previous weapons violations were plea-bargained down from felonies to misdemeanors.
In the mid-sixties there was a public service advertising campaign targeted at car owners about the prevention of car theft. The purpose of the ad was to urge car owners not to leave their keys in their cars. The message was, "Don't help a good boy go bad." The implication was that, by leaving his keys in his car, the normal, law-abiding car owner was contributing to the delinquency of minors who, if they just weren't tempted beyond their limits, would be "good." Now, in those days people still had a fair sense of just who was responsible for whose behavior. The ad succeeded in enraging a goodly portion of the populace, and was soon dropped.
Nearly all of the gun control measures offered by Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) and its ilk embody the same philosophy. They are founded on the belief that America's law-abiding gun owners are the source of the problem. With their unholy desire for firearms, they are creating a society awash in a sea of guns, thereby helping good boys go bad, and helping bad boys be badder. This laying of moral blame for violent crime at the feet of the law-abiding, and the implicit absolution of violent criminals for their misdeeds, naturally infuriates honest gun owners.
The files of HCI and other gun control organizations are filled with proposals to limit the availability of semiautomatic and other firearms to law-abiding citizens, and barren of proposals for apprehending and punishing violent criminals. It is ludicrous to expect that the proposals of HCI, or any gun control laws, will significantly curb crime. According to Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) statistics, fully 90 percent of violent crimes are committed without a handgun, and 93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through the lawful purchase and sale transactions that are the object of most gun control legislation. Furthermore, the number of violent criminals is minute in comparison to the number of firearms in America — estimated by the ATF at about 200 million, approximately one-third of which are handguns. With so abundant a supply, there will always be enough guns available for those who wish to use them for nefarious ends, no matter how complete the legal prohibitions against them, or how draconian the punishment for their acquisition or use. No, the gun control proposals of HCI and other organizations are not seriously intended as crime control. Something else is at work here.

The Tyranny of the Elite

Gun control is a moral crusade against a benighted, barbaric citizenry. This is demonstrated not only by the ineffectualness of gun control in preventing crime, and by the fact that it focuses on restricting the behavior of the law-abiding rather than apprehending and punishing the guilty, but also by the execration that gun control proponents heap on gun owners and their evil instrumentality, the NRA. Gun owners are routinely portrayed as uneducated, paranoid rednecks fascinated by and prone to violence, i.e., exactly the type of person who opposes the liberal agenda and whose moral and social "re-education" is the object of liberal social policies. Typical of such bigotry is New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's famous characterization of gun-owners as "hunters who drink beer, don't vote, and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend." Similar vituperation is rained upon the NRA, characterized by Sen. Edward Kennedy as the "pusher's best friend," lampooned in political cartoons as standing for the right of children to carry firearms to school and, in general, portrayed as standing for an individual's God-given right to blow people away at will.
The stereotype is, of course, false. As criminologist and constitutional lawyer Don B. Kates, Jr. and former HCI contributor Dr. Patricia Harris have pointed out, "[s]tudies consistently show that, on the average, gun owners are better educated and have more prestigious jobs than non-owners.... Later studies show that gun owners are less likely than non-owners to approve of police brutality, violence against dissenters, etc."
Conservatives must understand that the antipathy many liberals have for gun owners arises in good measure from their statist utopianism. This habit of mind has nowhere been better explored than in The Republic. There, Plato argues that the perfectly just society is one in which an unarmed people exhibit virtue by minding their own business in the performance of their assigned functions, while the government of philosopher-kings, above the law and protected by armed guardians unquestioning in their loyalty to the state, engineers, implements, and fine-tunes the creation of that society, aided and abetted by myths that both hide and justify their totalitarian manipulation.

The Unarmed Life

When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun control and uses a gun to defend his home, when Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic "assault weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill people, while he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple hypocrisy. It is the workings of that habit of mind possessed by all superior beings who have taken upon themselves the terrible burden of civilizing the masses and who understand, like our Congress, that laws are for other people.
The liberal elite know that they are philosopher-kings. They know that the people simply cannot be trusted; that they are incapable of just and fair self-government; that left to their own devices, their society will be racist, sexist, homophobic, and inequitable — and the liberal elite know how to fix things. They are going to help us live the good and just life, even if they have to lie to us and force us to do it. And they detest those who stand in their way.
The private ownership of firearms is a rebuke to this utopian zeal. To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state's totalitarian reach.

The Florida Experience

The elitist distrust of the people underlying the gun control movement is illustrated beautifully in HCI's campaign against a new concealed-carry law in Florida. Prior to 1987, the Florida law permitting the issuance of concealed-carry permits was administered at the county level. The law was vague, and, as a result, was subject to conflicting interpretation and political manipulation. Permits were issued principally to security personnel and the privileged few with political connections. Permits were valid only within the county of issuance.
In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform concealed-carry law which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria. The law requires that a permit be issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least twenty-one years of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse, no history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having satisfactorily completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other competent instructor. The applicant must provide a set of fingerprints, after which the authorities make a background check. The permit must be issued or denied within ninety days, is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed every three years, which provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating whether the permit holder still qualifies.
Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed by HCI and the media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting each other over everyday disputes involving fender benders, impolite behavior, and other slights to their dignity. Terms like "Florida, the Gunshine State" and "Dodge City East" were coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of the law, were encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a "Death Wish" society.
No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the elitist beliefs underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership. Given the qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can only believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so mentally and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will.
Did the dire predictions come true? Despite the fact that Miami and Dade County have severe problems with the drug trade, the homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this law, as it did in Oregon following enactment of similar legislation there. There are, in addition, several documented cases of new permit holders successfully using their weapons to defend themselves. Information from the Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning of the program in 1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and only 530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a permit for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the law is benefitting those whom it was intended to benefit — the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission of a crime involving a firearm.
The Florida legislation has been used as a model for legislation adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi. There are, in addition, seven other states (Maine, North and South Dakota, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and, with the exception of cities with a population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania) which provide that concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who satisfy various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in Vermont. Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves may do so. While no one appears to have compiled the statistics from all of these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data base for those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding citizens who carry firearms.
Other evidence also suggests that armed citizens are very responsible in using guns to defend themselves. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.
It is simply not possible to square the numbers above and the experience of Florida with the notions that honest, law-abiding gun owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to shoot someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of determining when it is proper to use lethal force in defense of their lives. Nor upon reflection should these results seem surprising. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers of observation and great book-learning to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, "You're coming with me," her judgment that a crime is being committed is not likely to be in error. There is little chance that she is going to shoot the wrong person. It is the police, because they are rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are more likely to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and innocence are not so clear-cut, and in which the probability for mistakes is higher.

Arms and Liberty

Classical republican philosophy has long recognized the critical relationship between personal liberty and the possession of arms by a people ready and willing to use them. Political theorists as dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all shared the view that the possession of arms is vital for resisting tyranny, and that to be disarmed by one's government is tantamount to being enslaved by it. The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed. As Kates has shown, the Second Amendment is as much a product of this political philosophy as it is of the American experience in the Revolutionary War. Yet our conservative elite has abandoned this aspect of republican theory. Although our conservative pundits recognize and embrace gun owners as allies in other arenas, their battle for gun rights is desultory. The problem here is not a statist utopianism, although goodness knows that liberals are not alone in the confidence they have in the state's ability to solve society's problems. Rather, the problem seems to lie in certain cultural traits shared by our conservative and liberal elites.
One such trait is an abounding faith in the power of the word. The failure of our conservative elite to defend the Second Amendment stems in great measure from an overestimation of the power of the rights set forth in the First Amendment, and a general undervaluation of action. Implicit in calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment is the assumption that our First Amendment rights are sufficient to preserve our liberty. The belief is that liberty can be preserved as long as men freely speak their minds; that there is no tyranny or abuse that can survive being exposed in the press; and that the truth need only be disclosed for the culprits to be shamed. The people will act, and the truth shall set us, and keep us, free.
History is not kind to this belief, tending rather to support the view of Hobbes, Machiavelli, and other republican theorists that only people willing and able to defend themselves can preserve their liberties. While it may be tempting and comforting to believe that the existence of mass electronic communication has forever altered the balance of power between the state and its subjects, the belief has certainly not been tested by time, and what little history there is in the age of mass communication is not especially encouraging. The camera, radio, and press are mere tools and, like guns, can be used for good or ill. Hitler, after all, was a masterful orator, used radio to very good effect, and is well known to have pioneered and exploited the propaganda opportunities afforded by film. And then, of course, there were the Brownshirts, who knew very well how to quell dissent among intellectuals.

Polite Society

In addition to being enamored of the power of words, our conservative elite shares with liberals the notion that an armed society is just not civilized or progressive, that massive gun ownership is a blot on our civilization. This association of personal disarmament with civilized behavior is one of the great unexamined beliefs of our time.
Should you read English literature from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, you will discover numerous references to the fact that a gentleman, especially when out at night or traveling, armed himself with a sword or a pistol against the chance of encountering a highwayman or other such predator. This does not appear to have shocked the ladies accompanying him. True, for the most part there were no police in those days, but we have already addressed the notion that the presence of the police absolves people of the responsibility to look after their safety, and in any event the existence of the police cannot be said to have reduced crime to negligible levels.
It is by no means obvious why it is "civilized" to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is "civilized," a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding — because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers — certainly cannot claim this distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with lethal force is not "civilized" arises from the view that violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is of such intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The necessary implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not worth defending. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that counterviolence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do.
In truth, one who believes it wrong to arm himself against criminal violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (or, in modern parlance, does not properly value himself), does not live up to his responsibilities to his family and community, and proclaims himself mentally and morally deficient, because he does not trust himself to behave responsibly. In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly.
While gun control proponents and other advocates of a kinder, gentler society incessantly decry our "armed society," in truth we do not live in an armed society. We live in a society in which violent criminals and agents of the state habitually carry weapons, and in which many law-abiding citizens own firearms but do not go about armed. Department of Justice statistics indicate that 87 percent of all violent crimes occur outside the home. Essentially, although tens of millions own firearms, we are an unarmed society.

Take Back the Night

Clearly the police and the courts are not providing a significant brake on criminal activity. While liberals call for more poverty, education, and drug treatment programs, conservatives take a more direct tack. George Will advocates a massive increase in the number of police and a shift toward "community-based policing." Meanwhile, the NRA and many conservative leaders call for laws that would require violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and would place repeat offenders permanently behind bars.
Our society suffers greatly from the beliefs that only official action is legitimate and that the state is the source of our earthly salvation. Both liberal and conservative prescriptions for violent crime suffer from the "not in my job description" school of thought regarding the responsibilities of the law-abiding citizen, and from an overestimation of the ability of the state to provide society's moral moorings. As long as law-abiding citizens assume no personal responsibility for combatting crime, liberal and conservative programs will fail to contain it.
Judging by the numerous articles about concealed-carry in gun magazines, the growing number of products advertised for such purpose, and the increase in the number of concealed-carry applications in states with mandatory-issuance laws, more and more people, including growing numbers of women, are carrying firearms for self-defense. Since there are still many states in which the issuance of permits is discretionary and in which law enforcement officials routinely deny applications, many people have been put to the hard choice between protecting their lives or respecting the law. Some of these people have learned the hard way, by being the victim of a crime, or by seeing a friend or loved one raped, robbed, or murdered, that violent crime can happen to anyone, anywhere at anytime, and that crime is not about sex or property but life, liberty, and dignity.
The laws proscribing concealed-carry of firearms by honest, law-abiding citizens breed nothing but disrespect for the law. As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. A federal law along the lines of the Florida statute — overriding all contradictory state and local laws and acknowledging that the carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens is a privilege and immunity of citizenship — is needed to correct the outrageous conduct of state and local officials operating under discretionary licensing systems.
What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.
At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.
This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America's gun owners will not go gently into that good, utopian night: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." While liberals take this statement as evidence of the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses, word processors, and television cameras. The republic depends upon fervent devotion to all our fundamental rights.

Government, Journalists Refuse to Recognize Cause of Poverty

[From article]
The breakdown of marriage, in particular, drives impoverishment. The poverty rate is about six times higher for single-parent families than two-parent families. About 70 percent of all poor families with children are single-parent families. According to Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation, if single mothers were to marry the fathers of the children, about two-thirds of them would no longer be poor, in a stupendously effective anti-poverty program.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0114/lowry010314.php3#.Uswf6d00i6Y

Jewish World Review
Jan. 3, 2014/ 2 Shevat, 5774
The great equalizers
By Rich Lowry

Violent Criminal Sentenced For Homicide of Caregiver

[From article]
After they took Deshawn Chappell back to Bridgewater yesterday, Stephanie Moulton’s mother, Kimberly Flynn, said she blamed both the schizophrenic patient who stabbed her daughter to death and the operators of the group home who should have warned her daughter about the dangers she was facing.
[. . .]
“These poor people lost their daughter,” [Daniel] Solomon said, “and my client’s mother who fought for years for services for her son, basically lost her son as well. And the fact of the matter is since the commonwealth has deinstitutionalized people like Deshawn, this is the type of stuff that’s been happening. You have people like this who have not been properly housed.”

There are two unrecognized issues here. One is the psychiatric industry promotes merging mental illness and crime. It allows the drug industry to increase their client base with a captive population. This young man was a known violent offender. He belonged in jail, mentally ill or not. Too many criminals are declared mentally and used as subjects for treatment rather than punishment. 

The second issue is these heinous events are exploited by the drug and psychiatric industry to promote taxpayer funding of more treatment and building new hospitals. Criminal belong in  jail. Troubled persons need care and compassion not drugs. This is one more example of how the human services industrial complex (MA State Rep. Marie Parente's term) promotes its economic intertest above the interests of the humans for which taxpayer money is appropriated. 


http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/peter_gelzinis/2013/10/gelzinis_families_pay_price_for_mental_health_system

Gelzinis: Families pay price for mental health system failures
Wednesday, October 29, 2013
By: Peter Gelzinis
Boston Herald