Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Several years ago in Ohio, a middle-aged man was involved in an automobile accident. A Vietnam combat infantry veteran, he had worked as an auto mechanic for a long time, then became a finish carpentry craftsman capable of some very fine, gifted work. He was almost killed when a drunk driver slammed into the side of his car. He had to be cut from his demolished car by rescue workers using hydraulic Jaws of Life. He suffered serious head injuries, underwent two major operations, and was put into an induced coma lasting several months. The road to recovery has been slow. He lost the use of his hands for any more than rudimentary tasks. His livelihood has been snatched from him, not only by the accident, but by an unsupportive and indifferent state bureaucracy more concerned with liability than with assisting citizens.
The drunk driver, who ran a red light and caused the accident, carried no insurance despite the state requirement to so do. After being charged, he declared bankruptcy so that he couldn't be held liable for damages in the event of a civil lawsuit. The state charged him with a traffic misdemeanor or two, not including driving without insurance, and let him off with probation.
Last year, in the same state of Ohio, in the same county of Delaware, a man riding a motorcycle was killed when a car turned left into his lane and broadsided him. This man, a Naval Reserve Chief Petty Officer had been home only three weeks from a long deployment in Afghanistan, planning and leading convoys of SeaBees on IED-strewn roads, and helping to build a children's home.
The pot-smoking driver who hit the motorcyclist, carried no insurance despite the state requirement to so do. He had been stopped the day before for expired license plate tags, and admitted that he still had no insurance when he was allowed to purchase his tags the following day. He had a loaded gun in his car with no permit on the day of the accident. A blood test showing evidence of marijuana use was ruled inadmissible because it was taken 3 hours 26 minutes after the accident instead of within 3 hours as required by law. The gun charge was ignored by the judge, and the felony motor vehicle homicide charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. Despite a jury recommendation for a lengthy prison term, the judge sentenced him to 90 days in jail and probation for 90 more, and his license to drive was suspended.
As fortune would have it, the Afghanistan war veteran who was killed was the youngest brother of the Vietnam war veteran who was so badly injured. Both were victims of drivers who broke laws involving operating motor vehicles under the influence, menaces who ignored required insurance laws and gun permits, miscreants who used the legal system to escape responsibility for their misdeeds, criminals who weren't punished for their crimes. The brothers' reward for having selflessly served their country, defending our freedoms and rights, was to be cut down by those among us who ignored our laws, violated their rights, and cost them their freedoms.
When politicians claim that we need more laws to solve problems, beware their hollow promises. More laws are just more restrictions on those who obey them. They make not a whit of difference to those who ignore them. Prosecutors and judges often make examples of the cowed citizens who inadvertently violate them and are caught. But those who flagrantly violate those same laws that the politicians have promised will protect us, acquire an immunity and go unpunished, free to inflict more pain and misery. They continue to drive without licenses or insurance, and carry guns without permits. They proceed on their unrepentant ways, leaving a wake of grief, debt, loss, and financial ruin.
Our society has always admired and lionized rebels, those who defy authority, those who go their own way (despite the fact that the collectivists find them extremely inconvenient). One of my favorite movie lines is from "The Last of the Mohicans" where, in reply to the British officer's question of whether Natty Bumppo calls himself a "loyal subject of the Crown," he retorts, "I do not call myself subject to much at all!"
That's not who these miscreants are. They're cowards who neither claim nor take responsibility for their actions, or the consequences, but hide behind lawyers whining on their behalf to judges with "empathy" for their largely imagined circumstances. Once freed, they swagger to their friends that they beat the system. They boast about how they got away with it. And they will continue to ignore the laws that inconvenience them, and violate their terms of parole, knowing they can count on overwhelmed courts to not deal with them further.
Meanwhile, two brothers, with one life shattered and the other life lost, will never receive justice from those for whom they fought to protect and keep free.
If it weren't so pathetic, it would be hilarious.
That's how I viewed State-Supported Public TV's "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" report on all the US "assault weapons" being smuggled into Mexico and taking such a heavy toll of innocent victims south of the border. Taken as gospel by the anti-freedom left, funded heavily by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation, presented by some leftist British Commonwealth emigre to southern Kalifornia, it was the same old tripe but with a heavy dose of appalling ignorance and bigotry masquerading as factual news.
This moron insisted that the lame, already discredited, argument of "assault weapons" being legally bought from US gun stores and smuggled into Mexico is at the core of Mexico's border violence. This claim was based on patently false statements by the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary for Homeland Security, and a high ranking BATFE official that "90% of the assault rifles rounded up by Mexican could be traced back to the US" primarily by their markings and serial numbers. It turned out that it was really 90% of the 17% which had markings or serial numbers that could be traced, and it also ignored the several thousand US produced, US taxpayer funded arms were stolen from Mexican Army sources by defecting soldiers. Undaunted by facts -- or reason -- he forged ahead by going to the border to witness the massive increase in car searches by US Border personnel of southbound cars, then admitting that they had found almost no assault weapons.
Yet he couldn't bring himself to admit that perhaps they're not finding them because IT'S NOT HAPPENING! Breaking from his dogmatic premise would have required NOT ignoring the obvious!
He then attempted to blame the US for it's lax gun laws. He was shocked -- shocked!-- that a civilized Western nation didn't have a Stalinist central registry of guns and law-abiding gun owners, so that they could be readily traced.
His explanation of why Mexico, with its strict prohibitions against gun ownership, was awash with assault weapons was that it was OUR fault. Apparently, he assumed that all Mexicans are scrupulously law-abiding citizens who would NEVER violate their gun laws, while ignoring the plain fact that almost 20% of their population violated OUR immigration laws!!
Instead of at least asking for an alternative explanation from authoritative and learned scholars such as Stephen Halbrook and John Lott, who would have told him -- as they have testified before Congressional hearings -- that most of the real, burst/full automatic assault weapons are leftovers from the Central American communist revolutionaries of the '80's, he relied on some half-baked anti-gun zealot from the Violence Policy Center to lip-sync the same tired old falsehoods.
Undaunted by his glaring faults in logic and reason, he raced ahead to his conclusion that the BATFE was failing the Mexican public by refusing to ignore Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and American public opinion.
It's bad enough that so many reporters today have abandoned all pretense of objectivity. It's worse when they're too stupid to realize that their cherry-picked facts don't even lead to their own foregone conclusions.
But that's what passes for investigative journalism today.
