Wednesday, April 2, 2014
The United States of the NRA
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras pt. 1
It is time to consider the possibility of disbanding Congress and turning over governance of the country to the National Rifle Association (NRA). At first blush that may strike some as a bad idea since Congress has been elected by the people whereas the NRA is a self-selected small (when compared with the overall population) group. But its membership is growing which indicates that it is a very popular organization and its growth does not occur in a random way. Every time there is an horrific act of violence involving guns, the NRA’s membership increases. Given the amount of violence the country now enjoys, it is safe to say that the NRA’s membership will continue to swell as gun deaths continue unabated.
By the time of the NRA’s annual meeting in May 2013 NRA membership had increased dramatically from the previous annual meeting. When addressing attendees at the 2013 meeting, Wayne LaPierre observed that NRA membership was in excess of 5 million people and its enrollment had increased by 500,00 members following the violent events of the preceding 6 months that included the Newtown School House massacre. As Mr. LaPierre said: “By the time we’re finished, the NRA must and will be 10 million strong.” He did not explain what he meant by “finished” but it’s safe to say the NRA would not, at that point, disband. Since its ranks are growing and people who join do so voluntarily, the idea that the NRA is self-selected rather than elected should not be of any great moment. Furthermore, the NRA is already heavily involved in determining what Congress does and does not do and we should quit pretending otherwise. There is, in fact, nothing Congress does these days that is of any moment since it passes virtually no legislation and confirms few, if any, nominees requiring its approval. The NRA, on the other hand, has repeatedly shown that when something needs to be done by governmental bodies it has the influence to see that it gets done.
When the question of approving a new Surgeon General was being considered by Congress, for example, a selection that one would not believe to be within the area of the NRA’s expertise, it quickly became apparent that those who so thought were wrong. The NRA proved that it had the knowledge and experience to be an important voice in helping members of Congress decide how to view the nomination. In a 2 ½ page letter to the Majority and Minority leaders of the senate, the NRA laid out a number of things the president had overlooked when nominating Vivek Hallegere Murthy to that post. In its letter the NRA examined all the things Doctor Murthy had said about guns during his life. Dr. Murthy had, for example, repeatedly suggested that anyone buying guns and ammunition should be licensed and should be required to undergo firearm safety training and testing, a proposal that the NRA’s letter says would “turn a fundamental, constitutionally protected right into a privilege for the few.” (The NRA was pointing out that learning how to properly use a gun is an unnecessary luxury and something most gun owners cannot afford.) Furthermore, (although this is my idea and not the NRA’s) on an almost daily basis one reads of children as young as two getting their hands on a parent’s gun and killing a sibling. It is perfectly obvious that neither licensing nor training would put an end to those kinds of accidents. The foregoing are not Dr. Murthy’s only transgressions. Dr. Murthy has tweeted that “Guns are a health care issue.” That is palpable nonsense since it is not guns that are health care issues but their effects when not properly used.
Others may say that the NRA lacks experience in foreign affairs, another arena in which Congress was once active. That, too, is nonsense. In September 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry signed the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty authorizing the government to participate in negotiating the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Well-versed in foreign policy as well as domestic policy, the NRA let it be known that it opposes the treaty “which clearly jeopardizes the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Chris W. Cox, the Executive Director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action said the treaty: “threatens individual firearm ownership with an invasive registration scheme. The NRA will continue working with the United States Senate to oppose ratification of the ATT.” In adopting this position on foreign affairs it was joining other countries active in foreign affairs such as Syria, Iran and North Korea, all of whom are concerned with the treaty’s effect on their sovereign rights. The Senate and the House are in complete agreement with the NRA and the leaders of those two bodies have signed bipartisan letters pledging their opposing to ratification of the treaty.
There are a number of other advantages to turning the country over to the NRA not least of which is the elimination of the need to raise hundreds of billions of dollars every two years to determine who will sit in the Congress and do nothing more than draw salaries and quibble. Citizens would simply pay $35 annually for membership in the NRA. No proof of citizenship or other form of ID is needed to join. It’s a great opportunity and we should seize the moment.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
The United States of the NRA
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras pt. 1
It is time to consider the possibility of disbanding Congress and turning over governance of the country to the National Rifle Association (NRA). At first blush that may strike some as a bad idea since Congress has been elected by the people whereas the NRA is a self-selected small (when compared with the overall population) group. But its membership is growing which indicates that it is a very popular organization and its growth does not occur in a random way. Every time there is an horrific act of violence involving guns, NRA’s membership increases. Given the amount of violence the country now enjoys, it is safe to say that its membership will continue to swell as gun deaths continue unabated.
By the time of the NRA’s annual meeting in May 2013 NRA membership had increased dramatically from the previous annual meeting. When addressing attendees at the 2013 meeting, Wayne LaPierre observed that NRA membership was in excess of 5 million people and its enrollment had increased by 500,00 members following the violent events of the preceding 6 months that included the Newtown School House massacre. As Mr. LaPierre said: “By the time we’re finished, the NRA must and will be 10 million strong.” He did not explain what he meant by “finished” but it’s safe to say the NRA would not, at that point, disband. Since its ranks are growing and people who join do so voluntarily, the idea that the NRA is self-selected rather than elected should not be of any great moment. Furthermore, the NRA is already heavily involved in determining what Congress does and does not do and we should quit pretending otherwise. There is, in fact, nothing Congress does these days that is of any moment since it passes virtually no legislation and confirms few, if any, nominees requiring its approval. The NRA, on the other hand, has repeatedly shown that when something needs to be done by governmental bodies it has the influence to that it gets done.
When the question of approving a new Surgeon General was being considered by Congress, for example, a selection that one would not believe to be within the area of the NRA’s expertise, it quickly became apparent that those who so thought were wrong. The NRA proved that it had the knowledge and experience to be an important voice in helping members of Congress decide how to view the nomination. In a 2 ½ page letter to the Majority and Minority leaders of the senate, the NRA laid out a number of things the president had overlooked when nominating Vivek Murthy to that post. In its letter the NRA examined all the things Doctor Murthy had said about guns during his life. Dr. Murthy had, for example, repeatedly suggested that anyone buying guns and ammunition should be licensed and should be required to undergo firearm safety training and testing, a proposal that the NRA’s letter says would “turn a fundamental, constitutionally protected right into a privilege for the few.” (The NRA was pointing out that learning how to properly use a gun is an unnecessary luxury and something most gun owners cannot afford.) Furthermore, (although this is my idea and not the NRA’s) on an almost daily basis one reads of children as young as two getting their hands on a parent’s gun and killing a sibling. It is perfectly obvious that neither licensing nor training would put an end to those kinds of accidents. The foregoing are not Dr. Murthy’s only transgressions. Dr. Murthy has tweeted that “Guns are a health care issue.” That is palpable nonsense since it is not guns that are health care issues but their effects when not properly used.
Others may say that the NRA lacks experience in foreign affairs, another arena in which Congress was once active. That, too, is nonsense. In September 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry signed the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty authorizing the government to participate in negotiating the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Well-versed in foreign policy as well as domestic policy, the NRA let it be known that it opposes the treaty “which clearly jeopardizes the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Chris W. Cox, the Executive Director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action said the treaty: “threatens individual firearm ownership with an invasive registration scheme. The NRA will continue working with the United States Senate to oppose ratification of the ATT.” In adopting this position on foreign affairs it was joining other countries active in foreign affairs such as Syria, Iran and North Korea, all of whom are concerned with the treaty’s effect on their sovereign rights. The Senate and the House are in complete agreement with the NRA and the leaders of those two bodies have signed bipartisan letters pledging their opposing to ratification of the treaty.
There are a number of other advantages to turning the country over to the NRA not least of which is the elimination of the need to raise hundreds of billions of dollars every two years to determine who will sit in the Congress and do nothing more than draw salaries and quibble. Citizens would simply pay $35 annually for membership in the NRA. No proof of citizenship or other form of ID is needed to join. It’s a great opportunity and we should seize the moment.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
The Supremest Court
In defeat: defiance.
—Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm
Once again I have been asked to explain a matter legal. The question that has been referred to me is on its face a simple one but in reality has a quirk that makes the answer unexpected. The question is, what is the highest court in the land?
The uninformed will immediately respond that it is the United States Supreme Court and the next highest, in the legal hierarchy, the Federal Courts of Appeal. People answering in that fashion can be forgiven for their answers since they are merely reflecting conventional wisdom. In fact, however, the highest court in the land is the Missouri Supreme Court. It has repeatedly shown itself to be above the United States Supreme Court and other federal courts when it comes to death penalty cases over which, most people, including the federal courts themselves, thought they had the final word. By repeatedly refusing to delay executions while the appeals of the condemned are being considered by federal courts, the Missouri Supreme Court has shown that it considers itself to be the final arbiter of such matters. Its defiant proclivities are described in great detail in a dissent by Judge Kermit E. Bye, a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in the case of Zink, Nicklasson et al vs. Lombardi. That case involved a motion for a stay of execution filed by Mr. Nicklasson who was asserting that his execution violated the federal constitution. Mr. Nicklasson, like other death row inmates described in this space last week, was seeking information about the drug protocol the state intended to use to effect his dispatch. He was not to get it. As Judge Nye explained in the opening part of his dissent, “Missouri put Nicklasson to death before the federal courts had a final say on whether doing so violated the federal constitution.”
If this were an isolated case, one could simply attribute it to an innocent mistake of the sort anyone could make. In fact, however, ” Judge Bye’s painstakingly detailed dissent describes in detail how the Missouri Supreme Court has repeatedly been told by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and federal district courts that when those courts are considering a matter, the Missouri Supreme Court should defer to those courts and not take it upon itself to permit executions to proceed without waiting to see what the higher courts say. Mr. Nicklasson was not, as Judge Bye observes, an aberrance: “Missouri has a well-documented history of attempting to execute death row inmates before the federal courts can determine the constitutionality of the executions.” Judge Bye’s opinion is replete with examples of the judicial wanderings of that court in Missouri’s death chambers.
Judge Bye opens his discussion by observing that in 1983 the Missouri court set an execution date for Doyle Williams before the time for Mr. Williams to petition the Supreme Court for direct review of his conviction and death sentence had expired. Justice Harry Blackmun stayed the execution and explained to the Missouri Justices that they had to wait for that time to pass before executing Mr. Williams. A few months later Missouri set the execution dates for four inmates before the required time had run. Justice Blackmun, said of the date: “I thought I had advised the Supreme Court of Missouri once before. . . that I . . . shall stay. . .the execution of any Missouri applicant” if the execution is scheduled by the state before the requisite time had passed. Justice Blackmun further observed that if Missouri “fails to fulfill its responsibility, I shall fulfill mine.” Thirteen months later in similar circumstances the Missouri Court again denied a request for a stay. The Federal district court granted the stay saying: “The Missouri Supreme Court ignored its responsibility to stay executions while federal judicial review is pending.”
Less than a year later, the Missouri Court refused to postpone an execution while a defendant exercised his constitutional right to have a court review the questions raised. The federal court granting that stay said “it becomes painfully obvious that the Missouri Supreme Court’s refusal to stay Gerald Smith’s execution. . . had no basis in fact nor in law, but was merely an expedient way of washing its hands of the matter and passing the buck to the Federal courts. . . .” In January 2014 Missouri executed Herbert Smulls 30 minutes before the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay. The executioners were prescient.
In the Zink case Judge Bye concluded his dissent saying: “Missouri’s past history of scheduling executions before a death row inmate has exhausted his constitutional right of review. . . has earned from this federal judge more than just a healthy skepticism regarding Missouri’s implementation of the death penalty. . . . Its current practice of using shadow pharmacies hidden behind the hangman’s hood. . .numerous last-minute changes to its execution protocol. . . and finally its act of proceeding with an execution before the federal courts had completed their review of an active request for a stay, has committed this judge to subjecting the state’s future implementation of the penalty of death to intense judicial scrutiny. . . .” The condemned will applaud the wisdom of the judge. The rest of us, and especially the federal courts, now understand why Missouri calls itself the “Show Me” state.