Should victims of domestic violence receive the protection of the US Government?

 The founders would appear to have thought so if we look at US Constitution Article IV, Section 4, which says:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

The point I am trying to make is that people cannot read the US Constitution through modern eyes. The originalists have a point there because we would have a drastically different outcome if we read this using the modern definition of "domestic violence".

Would the constitution require regulation of firearms since firearms can be used in cases of "domestic violence"?

On the other hand, what we have here is yet of another example of why the argument that the Second Amendment guarantees firearms to fight the government is wrong. The "domestic violence" the founders were intending was not spousal abuse, but cases of domestic unrest, such as riots and insurrections.

Saying that there is a right to own firearms because one should be able to fight the government is just plain off WRONG Constitutionally.

Likewise, this passage demonstrates why it is wrong to try and interpret the US Constitution through a modern perspective.

Cutting the baby in half

There are a lot of reasons for calling this what I am, but the main one is that the true mother showed herself when Solomon suggested cutting the baby in half. The true mother would rather have the baby go to someone else and live than her baby killed.

The Heller and McDonald decisions ripped the baby from it mother for no other purpose than political ends.

The source from which the Supreme Court derives its power, Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 1 Cranch 137, 2 L. Ed. 60, 1803 U.S. LEXIS 352 [1803], specifically addressed the issue of clauses in the constitution with the opposite result. Marbury stated that " The subsequent part of the section is mere surplusage -- is entirely without meaning -- if such is to be the construction". And "It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect, and therefore such construction is inadmissible unless the words require it."

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 [2008], was in no way a case of first impression for the Second Amendment. There were at least two other cases , US v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 [1939] and Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886), that came to the opposite conclusion in regard to how the Second Amendment is to be interpreted. While not the holding, Miller stated that:

The Constitution as originally adopted granted to the Congress power—'To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.' U.S.C.A.Const. art. 1, § 8. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.

This is the exact opposite of what DC v. Heller stated in its reasoning.

Justice William O. Douglas, who was on the court when Miller was decided, did a gloss of this Second Amendment jurisprudence:

The leading case is United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, upholding a federal law making criminal the shipment in interstate commerce of a sawed-off shotgun. The law was upheld, there being no evidence that a sawed-off shotgun had “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Id., at 178. The Second Amendment, it was held, “must be interpreted and applied” with the view of maintaining a “militia.”
“The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia – civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.” Id., at 178-179.

And since Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 gives Congress the power to arm the militia, McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), is completely ultra vires because it judicially amends the US Constitution to place powers where they were specifically not intended to be placed. One of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence was that lawfully made legislation was overturned by unelected parties. Not to mention the judicial review isn't in the US Constitution.

Historian Joseph Ellis and Yale law professor Reva Siegel noted the irony that Scalia's Heller decision only makes sense in light of a living Constitution, a principle that Scalia rejected.

But that is a digression because I am sure that the learned justices are aware of this. Justice Stevens later called the decision "unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench" and called for a Constitutional amendment overruling it. Definite baby cutting from Scalia!

Where we get into cutting the baby in half is that these decisions really did nothing significant to change firearms laws. Other than to make the incorrect assertion that the Second Amendment is unrelated to the militia despite that jumping out in your face if you read the amendment.

Neither the Heller or the McDonald really changed much in regard to firearms laws. The only real change was that handguns were allowed to be owned in the home. The reality is that more baby cutting is found in the actual holding:

"In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights{1}, the District must permit him to register his handgun{2} and must issue him a license to carry it in the home [3}."

Further baby splitting, I am pointing out three measures which this holding finds Constitutionally permissible:

1. Background check
2. registration 
3. Licensing 

These are what "gun grabbers" are talking about when they mention reasonable restrictions. 

And they are enshrined in both holdings Heller and McDonald. 

I will keep pointing out these passages from Heller and McDonald:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Heller at 54-5

Which has as a footnote (26):

We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.

Better yet:

But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Heller at 64

From McDonald:

It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” 554 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 54). We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 54–55). We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms. McDonald at 39-40

The only thing off the table is anything that purports to be a ban. Which leads to my question: had Chicago theoretically allowed for registrations (as does New York City) since that is not an “absolute prohibition”– would the law have passed constitutional muster? After all, NYC’s law has been around for 112 years: doesn’t that count as a longstanding regulatory measure?

Likewise, Candidates cannot say that gun laws violate the Second Amendment if they do not infringe upon the rights to truly “law abiding citizens” to own firearms. As the Court said (twice) “the right to keep and bear arms is ‘not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.’”

The US Supreme Court has churned out some terrible decisions, with Heller and McDonald being two of them. 

The ultimate upshot is that these decisions have churned up what was once pretty settled case law: that the Second Amendment related to what is now the National Guard. I would take the opinion of someone who was on the court when US v Miller was decided as to its meaning. I'm not sure why that is left out of the "jurisprudence".

I can go into even more depth as to why the "individual rights" interpretation is ripping the baby in half. One doesn't need to go outside the text of the Constitution to come to that conclusion: the constitutional text is fairly clear. I am surprised that people who claim to be constitutional scholars would give it air it's that silly.

Once again, "Gun rights" is trotted out to justify a shit interpretation of the US Constitution

I have to admit that I am not sure how the misinterpretation of the Second Amendment received any traction: especially from "legal scholars". Then again, I don't have a high opinion of "scholarship" in the United States. That said, here is the short form, which pretty much blows any long tome most "Second Amendment Scholars" produce.

There’s a problem when you go around saying someone supports or doesn’t support the Second Amendment: How much do you understand what it really means?

This is a model that George Mason pushed relating to what would become the Second Amendment.  It pretty much summarises the issues surrounding its adoption. It was adopted by Virginia:

“That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power”

When the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775, the colonial revolutionaries did not have an army. Previously, each colony had relied upon the militia, made up of part-time civilian-soldiers. The initial orders from Congress authorized ten companies of riflemen. The first full regiment of Regular Army infantry, the 3rd Infantry Regiment, was not formed until June 1784. After the war, the Continental Army was quickly disbanded because of the American distrust of standing armies, and irregular state militias became the new nation’s sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point’s arsenal.

The States had their militias and the Federal Government had an Army and the Naval forces. The problem is that the US Constitution gave congress the power to arm the militia, among other things (article I, Section 8, Clause 16). If you actually spent time reading the primary sources instead of quotes taken out of context, you would find that was the issue. Not private arms.

The US Constitution makes it clear in the preamble. You know the bit people usually truncate as “we the people” that one of the purposes of the US Constitution was to provide for the “Common defence”. There are other goals which the seem to contradict the “gun rights” position, like “insure domestic Tranquility” and “promote the general Welfare”. A close read of the document shows that rebellion runs contrary to its principles (Hint: try Article III section iii).

There is a concept in the law that if a legal document is silent on a topic. That is it fails to mention something, That topic is not covered by the law.

So, show me EXACTLY where the US Constitution mentions “self-defence” or “tyranny” and we can have a discussion.

Otherwise, you need to have a serious rethink of what exactly the Second Amendment means.

Oh yeah, and historically the concept of self-defence required that only the minimum of force reasonably necessary to stop that threat should be used. Reasonableness was left to the finder of fact, not the defendant. That meant that deadly force was usually the LAST resort. not the first.

You can do the research for yourself (start with Blackstone's commentaries).

The Common law position on self-defence also contradicts any interpretation of the Second Amendment other than it was meant to address Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the US Constitution.

The reality is that the Second Amendment was intended on preserving a system which would be like the one Switzerland HAD. I say "had" because it hasn't had a universal military service requirement for a while. What I am talking about is a system where the professional, full time military is small and mostly made of administrators and trainers. The bulk of the forces would be part-time soldiers.

Switzerland doesn't have this system and the US hasn't for quite some time. 

The US has a large, standing military, which was exactly what the founders were hoping to prevent. That said, the Second Amendment is a relic which has no purpose in modern society. Reinterpreting that Amendment to guarantee a personal right to weaponry is wrong for a multitude of reasons. First off, it goes against the principles of “insure domestic Tranquility” and “promote the general Welfare”.

Had Scalia been honest in his opinion, he would have had to admit that it was indeed his job to declare the Amendment no longer relevant to modern society: not to reinterpret it to fit a political agenda.

So, don't talk to me about supporting the Second Amendment unless you are doing so in regard to drastically reorganising the US military.

Tucker Carlson calls for Breaking Up Google!

 No wonder he's under attack by the "left".

 

I started watching him because of the covid thing. I don't agree with him a lot of the time, but he does give an alternative take on the stories in the news. Greg Gutfeld is fun to watch as well.

Sky News Australia is also an interesting view.

Why would I like these sources? It was because the US Main Stream Media was too sycophantic to the Biden-Harris ticket and uncritical of the Covid thing.

Anyway, it's amusing to watch Tucker mention breaking up Google. It would get really interesting if they went all the way. I mean breaking up Bezos' monopoly, which included WAPO. And how exactly did Facebook make all that money?

By selling your information.

That's what makes these companies really frightening by trashing our rights: especially the right of privacy. They are the basis of something called surveillance capitalism.

He could also talk about how weak US Data Protection laws happen to be, which is why those trashy background check sites exist. But even more importantly, failure to have strong data protection laws are what allowed for surveillance capitalism to make billions off of our data without our consent.

Or the ability to correct mistakes in that data.

Socialism isn't making money off of the work of others, that's capitalism. And surveillance capitalism is making money off of people's data. And it's making some people very rich.

The problems with an assault weapons ban

Or the many reasons that Biden will fall flat on that promise. 

First off, been there done that with the original AWB which was a failure. It was intentionally a failure in that it was poorly written. Fixing that would require that the firearms that are banned would be simply defined as "any semi-automatic firearm capable of accepting, or has, a magazine capacity of over 10 rounds". The problem there is that the political will doesn't exist. It never has in the US. Making New York's gun laws the laws of the land might have worked when the NFA was first passed in the 1930s, but good luck getting them through now.

The Second Amendment isn't really a barrier to adopting strict gun laws. It never really has been. The Second Amendment is an obscure clause in the US Constitution which few people really understand, has been openly misinterpreted, and will be a barrier to action as long as it is considered a part of the Constitution. Heller and McDonald didn't change the landscape. Point it out once again: the Heller-McDonald language showing regulation is acceptable:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Heller at 54-5

Which has as a footnote (26):

We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.

Better yet:

But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Heller at 64

From McDonald:

It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” 554 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 54). We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 54–55). We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms. McDonald at 39-40

The only thing off the table is anything that purports to be a ban. Which leads to my question: had Chicago theoretically allowed for registrations (as does New York City) since that is not an “absolute prohibition”– would the law have passed constitutional muster? After all, NYC’s law has been around for 99 years: doesn’t that count as a longstanding regulatory measure?

If that isn't good enough for you: show me the words "self-defence" or "Tyranny"  in the US Constitution and we can have a discussion.

Next we come to the people who are running around talking about defunding the police. That goes to one of the talking points that the pro-gun crowd have working for them. Who is going to protect you if the cops can't? Like it or not, one of the objects to having a government is to keep order. No order=no society.

Or to paraphrase the 60s bumper sticker: "Don't like the police? call antfa!"

And Antifa are a set of bozos I can live without. They did fuck all to stop the rise of fascism the first go round. If anything, they helped it get powerful.

Anyway, we've had toddlers shot and a horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. Nothing has happened yet.

If anything, the divide between the two sides has widened and become more entrenched. I see the animosity getting stronger.

So, if anything, the situation will get far worse.

Barely do I do a post about Bitcoin when...

 The BBC does a piece on whether the blockchain is unsustainable.

It seems that the price of Bitcoin cannot stop increasing, but how sustainable is Bitcoin itself? With such huge energy demands to keep Bitcoin mined, are some countries risking the stability of their electricity supplies to take advantage of the Bitcoin boom? Financial economist and founder of the blog “Digiconomist”, Alex de Vries is on the show to answer these questions. He says, in his paper published in the journal Joule, that the entire Bitcoin blockchain network consumes as much energy per year as all data centres across the world.

If you don't like Fiat Currency, you should avoid Bitcoin like a shitcovered plague

 One of my hobbies is collecting hyperinflated currencies, I have old German Marks, Yugoslavian Dinars, and Zimbabwe dollars. I bought some "fake" bitcoins. Those things that get pictured when people talk about the Bitcoin since Bitcoins have no real physical form. I tossed in mention of the Euro as well since it had no real physical form until 2002, but there's a difference between the Euro and bitcoin.

Doggone has been asking me to write something about Bitcoins and why they are dangerous. I have been procrastinating about this in my usual style until the Wire article "Bitcoin’s Greatest Feature Is Also Its Existential Threat" popped up on my radar. There are three types of currency: one is currency backed up by a commodity which is usually gold or silver, Fiat currency which is where a government prints money and gives it value, and now cryptocurrency which isn't issued by a government. Cryptocurrencies are probably closer to commodity based currencies in that they get their value from the market. 

Yet Cryptocurrencies' market value isn't based upon a commodity. It's based upon something called a block chain, which makes it somewhat similar to Fiat currency in that there isn't some form of actual value to either one. Fiat currency at least has a government backing it up. The blockchain is far more fragile and dangerous.

"See footnote for Hitchhiker's Guide Quote"

But let's get down to a really basic history of what "hard cash" money is. Basically, an economy is based upon trade. I have grain and you have bricks, or some such. Maybe bricks aren't available where I live and I can't trade directly with you. So, a commodity was chosen to make trade easier. The commodity was made into coins. Currency came about when banks wrote promissory notes to pay the value of the note.

Cryptocurrency gets its value from something called a blackchain and isn't really backed up by anything other than that. Blockchains are fairly complex topics. I'm not going to get into what exactly the blockchain is, but it is actually quite fragile. It's based upon a key, and woe upon you if you lose that key. I was trying to find the story about the person who died taking his bitcoin key with him. A story titled "$66,500,000,000 in Bitcoin Is Lost and Will Never Be Recovered, Says Crypto Intelligence Firm Chainalysis" was one of many that showed up.

That gets me back to the Wired story which led to this being written:

It’s best to avoid explaining the mathematics of Bitcoin's blockchain, but to understand the colossal implications here, you need to understand one concept. Blockchains are a type of “distributed ledger”: a record of all transactions since the beginning, and everyone using the blockchain needs to have access to—and reference—a copy of it. What if someone puts illegal material in the blockchain? Either everyone has a copy of it, or the blockchain’s security fails.

In other words, anything which can corrupt the blockchain will result in bitcoin literally being nothing. Those fake bitcoins I have will be worth more than a "real" one. Toss in that cryptocurrencies require a lot of computer power, or eat up a lot of electricity, to store those blockchains. This comes from a very cryptocurrency friendly article:

Cryptocurrency mining, by its very nature, requires a lot of electricity and sophisticated computers. In a paper published this week in the journal Joule, data scientist Alex de Vries — correctly — argues bitcoin mining is likely to exceed an annual consumption of 101 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity as the price fluctuates.

The Wired Article is much better about the fragility of cryptocurrencies. The best way to remind someone of the danger of bitcoin is to point to things like Tulip mania. In other words, commodities, whether physical or not, can be subject to DRASTIC fluctuations in price. People who advocate for commodity based currency based upon their stability are ignorant of economic history. There were severe depressions when commodity based currencies existed. 

Bitcoin isn't even commodity based. it is based upon the integrity of the blockchain. And if you don't trust a government, You really shouldn't trust a blockchain. Bitcoin’s self-positioning in opposition to fiat monetary systems is misguided, because the established system relies less on fiat than Bitcoin itself.

See also:

• The Fragility of Bitcoin.
• Beat Weber: Bitcoin and the legitimacy crisis of money
  

 Footnote:

"The Triganic Pu is a unit of galactic currency, with an exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu. This is simple enough, but, since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change."