Obama can do no wrong, even when he is doing right

This column in the Vancouver Sun by Shelley Fralic annoys me on two levels.

Firstly she looks at the photo of US President Obama supposedly ogling the butt of a Brazilian girl, along with French President Sarkozy and immediately writes a gushing column as to how it is not only all right for Obama to be doing this but it is a good thing.

The good news is that President Barack Obama is a real live red-blooded all-American man, and I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have that kind of guy running the most powerful nation in the world than some moribund frozen-pulse old fart (can you say the Bush boys) leading the free world.

[snip]

Thank heavens Obama has a natural, instinctive eye for the ladies, otherwise he’d be dead.

In fact, anthropologists will tell you that humans always have been, and always will be, attracted to beauty in the opposite sex, be it a peacock’s plumage, a woman’s curves or a man’s burly biceps. It’s what keeps the species interested, and going.

So if the U.S. President, who’s married to a looker and is no slouch in the handsome department himself, has a thing for junk in the trunk, good on him.

The continuing story from the media: If it;s done by Obama it,s OK.

Secondly, it is all bullshit as the actual video of the event shows.

I am no fan of the President of our neighbours south of the border, nor his apparent policies, but I detest this kind of cheap reporting. Pluck a frame out of a video stream or a sentence out of a paragraph to prove a non-existent point to manufacture a non-existent story.

They used to be able to get away with this type of crap, but since the advent of the internet it is much harder to keep under cover. But obviously Ms. Fralic needs to learn how to do a bit of research.

Scum of the earth

In my mind, one of the worst crimes is that of rape, and the vilest of the vile is the rape of a small child. Unfortunately it happens far too often as this most recent story of a rape of a 6 year old girl in Surrey attests.

We can only hope that the piece of scum that perpetrated this crime will be caught before he harms another child. The problem being that even if he is caught and convicted there will come a time – far too soon – when he will be released back on to the streets where he will be at high risk to offend again.

I am not a proponent of the death penalty although I am inclined to believe that there are those who, like rabid dogs, should be put down for the well-being of the populace at large. Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo come immediately to mind.

Unfortunately even if Canada still had a death penalty the human aberration who committed this latest crime, because his victim – however traumatized – lives, would not qualify for the ultimate penalty. If caught and convicted there would not even be the comfort of knowing that his sentence would permanently remove him from  contact with the general population.

The courts dispense the law but the pity is that too often they don’t impart justice.

New Zealand police call for a return to firearm registration

A District Arm Officer in New Zealand has called for a renewal of the gun registry, which was terminated in 1983.

The district arms officer says without firearms being registered in New Zealand there is no real control over them.

Paul McLennan, who has been in the role 27 years, said registration of individual firearms – scrapped in New Zealand in 1983 – once kept holders of firearm licences accountable and responsible for their weapons. It also helped identify stolen firearms.

Today, firearms are not registered and there is no restriction on how many firearms a licence holder can own.

“If we had a registration system we could have firearms licence holders accountable for their firearms,” said Mr McLennan.

This after a raid by the Tauranga Armed Offenders Squad (which appears similar to the US SWAT teams and the Canadian ERT or Emergency Response Teams).

On Thursday morning, the Tauranga armed offenders squad raided a Pyes Pa home where they found 18 firearms or pistols and 2000 rounds of ammunition. The hoard allegedly belonged to David Bryan, 48, who is expected to appear in Tauranga District Court on Monday for a bail application.

Bryan does not hold a firearms licence.

Among the cache found at Bryan’s home were two military-style semi-automatic (MSSA) weapons.

The guns require a special endorsement on a firearms licence, brought in after David Gray killed 13 people in Aramoana in 1990.

Which rather makes his point moot.

The person raided wasn’t licenced to own firearms to begin with so it would be a bit silly to expect him to have them registered. Actually more than a bit silly.

There was no mention in the article as to why the individual was raided – although I can only assume that the police had probably been informed that he had unauthorized ownership of firearms. Was he a threat to his neighbours or the public? Did he have a criminal background and would have been denied a licence if he had applied? Or was he just missing the paperwork that would change his status from “honest citizen” to  “dangerous criminal”.

It all comes back to the fact that by their very nature, police want as much control over the citizenry as possible. They need to have everything in black and white because it makes their job much easier. And unfortunately, whenever the political need seems to warrant it, governments seem to be more than agreeable to further expand police authority over various sections of the public.

Historically we have seen the end result of this in oligarchies such as the Soviet Union and the Shah’s Iraq to name just a couple, but in democratic nations the tendency toward the extreme is at least blunted by public reaction.

That is a positive, but we should never lose track of the fact that the tendency to control is alive and well.

On a final note:

A firearms licence can only be held for 10 years, with licence holders contacted by police when their licence expires.

However, Mr McLennan said one of the biggest problems in firearms licensing was people not notifying police when they changed their address.

The Government scrapped lifetime firearm licences in 1992.

Ten years later nearly 50,000 people failed to respond to a campaign appealing for lifetime gun licence holders to renew or surrender their weapons.

A pretty frightening scenario. It appears that in 2002 New Zealand generated 50,000 new and dangerous criminals. I’m surprised that the country has survived.

I see dead celebrities

So Michael Jackson has passed to the great MTV show in the sky and from all of the media hype there is apparent concern that civilization teeters on the brink of the abyss.

I must admit that he was outside of my era but I can accept the apparent consensus that he was an innovator and a brilliant performer. But I’m afraid that from my point of view his weirdness trumped his musical heritage.

From his friend the chimp (the best line I read that was that Bubbles had been relegated to a sanctuary because he knew too much),  to his flamboyant dress and the gloves and the face masks, the ongoing facial surgery that left him looking more and more like a fugitive from a horror movie and the numerous stories, lawsuits and charges that tainted him with the evilness of pedophilia, he had become more of a caricature than  a real person.

Heavily in debt and living far beyond his means he was in the process of engineering a ‘comeback’ through a series of concerts, which no doubt would have brought the crowds and money in, but would in reality have been, shades of the Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond and others,  just one more trip down memory lane.

A comeback would have entailed  new material and acceptance by the young crowd that drives the pop market and that was not likely. Jackson had his time and his place in the fickle world of pop music and he was unlikely to ever regain the glory years.

But what fascinates me in all of this is the public reaction, with people in tears and apparent trauma over the death. It’s not like Jackson has done anything positive in recent years – just the opposite, but his passing seems to generate a hysterical response in a certain section of the populace. Is this a ”get a life’ factor coming into play?

Of course it’s not just with Jackson. When Princess Diana was killed the reaction worldwide was even more pronounced. And even when Pierre Elliot Trudeau died at the advanced age of 81 and many years removed from the political process, there were people calling in to talk shows concerned about the future of Canada with PET no longer there to steer the country.

There is always the public fascination with celebrity death – even minor celebrities – as witness the never-ending soap opera regarding the death of Anna Nicole, but only a few of them generate the mass grieving syndrome.

It’s not as though it is a new phenomenon either. The death of Rudolf Valentino in 1926 saw a massive turnout of people.

An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of New York City to pay their respects at his funeral, handled by the Frank Campbell Funeral Home. The event was a drama itself: Suicides of despondent fans were reported. Windows were smashed as fans tried to get in and an all day riot erupted on August 24. Over 100 Mounted officers and NYPD’s Police Reserve was deployed to restore order. A phalanx of officers would line the streets for the remainder of the viewing. The drama inside would not be outdone. Polish Actress Pola Negri, claiming to be Valentino’s fiance, collapsed in hysterics while standing over the coffin, and Campbell’s hired four actors to impersonate a Fascist Blackshirt honor guard, which claimed to have been sent by Benito Mussolini. It was later revealed as a planned publicity stunt.^[69] Media reports that the body on display in the main salon was not Valentino but a decoy were continually refuted by Campbell.

This article purports to give an explanation for the phenomenon:

The rise of celebrity also corresponds with a public increasingly devoid of total relationships with others, individuals’ connectedness with others and the broader society dampened by the anonymity of urban life, reduced civic involvements, increasing rates of singlehood and living alone, and by the instrumental relationships demanded by the workplace and marketplace. Further amplifying appetites for celebrities’ stories is the new personality type populating the social landscape, characterized by sociologist David Riesman as being “other-directed,” relying on others to define one’s own lifestyles and beliefs— particularly those publicly identified as living more interesting, glamorous, or important lives. Thus the public may know more about the celebrities’ stories than they do of those of their neighbors and associates.

And who knows, maybe he has it pegged right. But maybe it’s’simply that there are just a lot of nutbars out there.

A Canada Day Gift From Premier Gordon Campbell

B.C. received its long awaited Canada Day gift from Premier Campbell today: An additional 1.2 cent per litre tax on gasoline. Today – July 1st – gas at the pumps jumped from $1.059 to $1.072 per litre, the extra penny – I presume – being GST.

All this supposedly done to reduce B.C.’s carbon footprint.

But what a crock. As I see it, it is just another way to get the government’s hand deeper into my pocket and as for it being a tax neutral system, that certainly remains to be seen. This money is going directly into the black hole of general revenue and once government has your money in hand, they are notoriously stingy about giving any of it back.

I like this from the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation:

People pay taxes so government can provide essential services, not to be manipulated in some social engineering experiment. Heating our homes and driving our cars are already expensive enough. It’s time for government to eliminate the carbon tax and stop creating more worries for families who are already concerned about jobs, the economy and their future wellbeing.

So thanks again Premier Campbell for the gift that keeps on giving.

Government disconnect from reality or just plain arrogance

This article deals with the disconnect between what government expects from industry and government’s own sad history of how it runs the public’s business.

Just a few months ago, members of Congress took turns wagging their fingers at CEOs of the automakers for not making tough choices–not shedding “legacy costs,” not making products consumers wanted, not cutting bloated bureaucracies.  Detroit had become self-referential, unable to compete because it was unwilling to deal with its internal constituents.

Now Washington faces a series of domestic crises that will shape the health of our society for decades–unaffordable healthcare, balkanized financial regulation, and a mind-boggling deficit, to name three.  But Washington will likely fail–indeed, may even make the problems worse–unless it deals with its own “legacy costs” and bloated bureaucracies, which currently make it impossible to achieve new focus and efficiencies.

Detroit is Google compared to Washington.  Year after year, Congress makes laws but almost never repeals them.  Washington is like a huge monument to legacy costs.  Laws from the Depression will send tens of billions in unnecessary subsidies this year to farmers, organized labor and other groups thought to be in need–80 years ago.  Bloat is also notorious–it’s nearly impossible to fire anyone under civil service laws, so layers of middle management have grown exponentially.  Professor Paul Light found 32 levels in some agencies (compared to 5 levels in most well-run enterprises).

All this accumulated law–about 300,000 pages of federal statutes and regulations–operates as a form of central planning.  It bogs people down in bureaucracy.  In healthcare, the labyrinthian requirements of Medicare, Medicaid, HIPAA, plus the equally dense, and often conflicting requirements of 50 states, plus the insurance company red tape, make it impossible for people to deliver care efficiently.  Add to that bureaucratic nightmare the ever-present fear of being hauled into court whenever a sick person gets sicker, and you have a system that looks like it was designed for frustration and waste.

The inertial forces that make it hard to achieve change in Washington, in the best of circumstances, become a kind of invincible fortress when reinforced by thousands upon thousands of pages of binding law.  Each of those provisions is zealously guarded by special interest groups, and changing any word of a statute requires the votes of 218 members of the House and (generally) 60 senators.

The article is, an interesting read, but if anyone thinks that there is any chance of a federal bureaucracy reforming itself – especially one as huge as in the U.S. – they are smoking some really strong stuff.

But it is funny – sad but funny -  that government, which has an abysmal history of piling pointless legislation on top previously passed pointless legislation, has the arrogance and the smugness to tell the auto industry how to fix its problems.

What is even funnier and sadder is that probably not one of the members of congress sees the irony of the situation.

Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.

Now the threat of U.S. knife ban courtesy of their Customs agency

I’ve written a few times about proposed knife bans – usually in the UK, and unfortunately also in Canada – over concerns about sharp, pointy knives that could cut someone. No kidding. But I had always considered this to be the rantings of various nutbars. But now we see an actual threat to knife ownership in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave (or the USA for short).

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency is proposing a new definition that could be used to eliminate 8 of 10 legal pocketknives in the United States right now, according to activists who are gearing up to fight the plan.

The federal bureaucracy is accepting comments – written only – that must be received by June 21 before its planned changes could become final, but Doug Ritter of KnifeRights.org, said the implications of the decision would be far-reaching, since many state and federal agencies depend on the agency’s definitions to determine what is legal in the United States.

For a long time, those switchblades that have long stiletto blades that are spring-ejected powerfully from the side or end of the handle have been illegal in the United States, but now a review by the agency of its own approval in 2008 of a particular type of knife for import is raising serious alarms.

“They are saying that any knife that you can open quickly or any knife that you can open with one hand is therefore a switchblade,” Ritter told WND.

It really makes you wonder what is happening within the Obama administration, although I doubt that these are instructions coming down directly from the White House.

A possible explanation is that we are  seeing the reaction of a bureaucracy emboldened by how they interpret the current administration’s philosophy on governance and control.

………. the change came after the incoming administration of President Barack Obama reassigned some managers at the agency.

“What we do know is when the incoming administration reshuffled assignments at Customs, it moved the responsibility for knives and switchblades from one organization with Customs to a new organization,” he said. “That group has, as far we can tell, virtually no experiences, background or anything with knives.”

On the other hand it may be just the normal and ongoing practice of a federal bureaucracy that sets and changes regulations with seemingly little oversight and less concern about consultation with the public.

I wouldn’t hold out much optimism on the chance of getting the agency to withdraw their proposed regulation change unless some serious political pressure can be applied.

More info here.

Government tables bill to allow police to snoop through electronic communications

If you gave police free reign you would be carrying an official identification card, have your fingerprints and DNA on file and probably (OK a bit too far) have video cameras in your house to make sure you aren’t breaking some law out of their sight.

Think not?

The Canadian government has just tabled legislation that would give police much easier access to your e-mail content and other digital equipment such as cellphones and the like. As the Globe and Mail reported:

Police will have sweeping new powers to collect information about Canadian Internet users without a warrant, and activate tracking devices in their cellphones and cars under legislation proposed by the Conservative government yesterday and criticized by privacy advocates as excessive.

If the government’s latest shot at introducing “lawful access” legislation – something successive governments have tried but failed to do for the past decade or so – succeeds, Internet service providers will also be forced to install monitoring technology on their servers to keep track of their users’ online activities.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan yesterday introduced two bills – the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act and the Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act – just before the House of Commons empties out until the fall session.

In another article in the National Post:

The draft legislation would also oblige telecom firms and Internet service providers (ISPs) to quickly give authorities subscriber information such as name, address, telephone number and Internet protocol address, e-mail address, service provider identification and certain cellphone identifiers.

You don’t think that the various police departments and certainly the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs haven’t been lobbying the government for just this kind of  legislation?

Certainly it bothers me that the police continually push for even more ways to insinuate themselves into your private life, but what bothers me a great deal more is how casually our elected representatives are willing to offer up legislation that reduces Canadians’ rights and freedoms.

On a narrower scale we have Victoria police of chief, Jamie Graham, wanting the B.C. government to ban all cellphone use while operating a vehicle.

Certainly there is inappropriate use of cellphones by drivers, but I have seen even worse instances of people driving while reading material laying on the passengers seat, eating or numerous other distracting activities.

As the article says, four provinces already have bans in place for the use of hand held phones while driving, but Graham also wants to ban hands-free units. For the life of me I can’t see why talking on a hands free cellphone is any more distracting than talking to a passenger in your car. Personally, I would think it would be less distracting.

And as the article points out:

Newly appointed Solicitor General Rich Coleman said the Ministry of Public Safety is looking at a broad number of issues that distract drivers, and will consider the cellphone issue if the B.C. police chiefs bring it forward.

“But the problem is at one time it was the cellphone. It’s not just the cellphone anymore. It’s electronic devices like BlackBerries, MP3 players, GPS units.”

Right. It’s not a cellphone that causes the problem it’s driving without due care and attention.

But regardless, they want to give us another law that doesn’t really solve a problem; as if we don’t have enough of those already.

Besides, do you really think that people aren’t going to continue to use their cellphones in their cars? Give me a break. It’s now part of the culture. It just gives the police one more reason to pull you over and write a ticket (and act accusatory).

The problem is not cellphones or BlackBerries or MP3 players. The problem is human stupidity, of which we all have a genetic share. I have seen a person almost walk into the side of a moving vehicle while totally engrossed in texting. Certainly one way to be removed from the gene pool.

You can pass all the laws you want, but you can’t legislate common sense.

Silencers and ineffective, silly and pointless laws

The other day, obviously having nothing more important on my mind, I got to thinking about the illegality of silencers as applied to firearms. Now I don’t have an extensive background on silencers or suppressors, as Wikipedia likes to categorize them, but years ago I actually had the opportunity to shoot a German made .22 rimfire rifle that had been manufactured with a silencer as an integral part of the barrel. The story was that in Germany big game hunters would keep the silenced smallbore rifle with them in their stand to pot small game without the fear of disturbing other game in the process. It was rather a neat gun. Also many years ago, while on a coaching course with the Shooting Federation of Canada at Fort Benning Georgia, I had the opportunity to shoot some centrefire rifles complete with silencers and shooting sub-sonic ammunition.

But I digress. What did occur to me is that silencers would, in many instances, be extremely useful and certainly have no detrimental effect on public safety. For shooting ranges it would solve the noise problem which would be of enormous benefit. For all shooters, suppressors would significantly reduce hearing damage and for hunters there would be the benefit of game not spooking from the crack of the rifle on a missed shot. Kind of a win-win situation.

So why – I said to myself – are they illegal or at least so heavily controlled in so many places?

In Canada, a device to muffle or stop the sound of a firearm is a “prohibited device” under the Criminal Code.^[13] A prohibited device is not inherently illegal in Canada but it does require an uncommon and very specific prohibited device license for its possession, use, and transport. Suppressors cannot be imported into the country.^[14]

The United States taxes and strictly regulates the manufacture and sale of suppressors under the National Firearms Act. They are legal for individuals to possess and use for lawful purposes in thirty-eight of the fifty states. However, a prospective user must go through an application process administered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which requires a Federal tax payment of US$200.00 and a thorough criminal background check. The $200.00 buys a tax stamp, which is the legal document allowing possession of a silencer. The market for used suppressors in the U.S. is consequently very poor, which has driven innovations in the field (buyers want the height of technology, because they are basically “stuck” with the purchase). Primitive suppressors are available in other countries for under US$40,^[15] but they are usually of crude construction, using cheap materials and baffle designs that were obsolete in the United States by the 1970s. While suppressors in the US are more expensive (hundreds to thousands of dollars), they are generally built with highly advanced baffle stacks and exotic materials like Inconel and high-grade heat-treated stainless steels. Several states and municipalities explicitly ban any civilian possession of suppressors.

The Federal legal requirements to manufacture a suppressor in the United States are enumerated in Title 26, Chapter 53 of the United States Code.^[16] The individual states and several municipalities also have their specific requirements.

The question is: Why have silencers been demonized and banned and ultra-severe penalties been set?

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of information available on the history of silencer/suppressor laws, but I did find this excellent paper titled Criminal Use of Firearm Silencers written in 2007 by Paul A. Clark. The abstract sums up the situation neatly.

Both the public and sentencing judges regard silenced firearms as more dangerous than ordinary unsilenced firearms, and the federal penalty for possession of a silenced firearm during crime is a 30-year mandatory minimum. The assumption that silenced firearms are more dangerous than ordinary firearms has never been empirically researched. This study examines federal and state court data to compile statistics on who is being prosecuted for possession of silencers and what crimes they are used to commit. This data indicates that both on the federal and state level those prosecuted for crimes involving silencers are far less likely to have a criminal record, and are far less likely to actively use their weapon than those people convicted using ordinary unsilenced firearms.
The data indicates that use of silenced firearms in crime is a rare occurrence, and is a minor problem. Moreover, the legislative history of silencer statutes indicates that these provisions were adopted with little or no debate. The silencer penalty has been justified by a need to crack down on “professional criminals” or to punish people using “dangerous weapons.” The evidence suggests that 30-year minimum sentences make no sense. Mandatory minimums should be repealed and sentencing judges permitted to treat each case on an individualized basis.

I was thinking recently about how pointless many laws are. Too often legislation is written and passed in an attempt to solve (or appear to be attempting to solve) some real or perceived problem, but without any intelligent consideration as to whether there is any logical or practical value to the legislation. Silencer laws seem to fit neatly into that category.

It’s not that anyone would be hard pressed to obtain a working silencer as there is a volume of information available on the internet and construction plans are easily available as well. So if a criminal thought that it would be advantageous for him to have a silenced firearm there would be little to stop him from doing so. Again it turns out that like most laws of this type the people it controls is the law abiding citizens and has no effect on the criminals who don’t obey the laws anyway.

The author of the paper mentioned above did come up with some historical background on how silencers became dangerous in the eyes of the courts and the politicians.

Legislative History of Federal Silencer Regulation

The history of silencer regulation is complicated, and the documentation of why various provisions were passed is sparse. Courts that have tried to determine the legislative history of some of these provisions have expressed dismay at the paucity of information in the legislative record (U.S. v. Hall, 171 F.3d 1133, 1139-40 (8th Cir. 1999)). Scholars who have examined the history of gun control statutes in general have concluded that they tend to be the result of complex compromises and determining legislative purpose is difficult (Hardy, 1986: 585).

In 1934, the federal government began to regulate machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers by placing a $200 tax on such weapons to discourage their sale (U.S. Congress, 1986b:219-220). The 1934 congressional debates provide no explanation about why silencers were licensed. Paulson (1996:10) opines that during the Great Depression, poaching game was thought to be a problem and silencers were licensed because of this concern.

In 1968 the federal government passed the first major federal gun control provisions. Anyone committing a felony which could be prosecuted in federal court received an additional one to ten years if a firearm was used (88 Stat. 1214, 1225 (Oct 22 1968)). The statute did not distinguish among different types of firearms, or include silencers.

In 1986 Congress adopted a 20-year enhanced sentence for crimes committed with a silencer–and this was increased to 30 years in 1988.6 Congressional debates contain no clear statement of reasons why the additional penalty for use of silencers was enacted. The House report on the legislation says little about silencers but describes them as “used in assassinations and contract murders” (U.S. Congress, 1986b: 4). The most thorough article on the 1986 Act, of which the silencer provision was one small part, does not even mention the silencer provision (Hardy, 1986:585). However, looking at the congressional hearings held on the bill, it is clear that the silencer  rovision was a reaction to the murder of a Jewish talk-show host by white-supremacists. Alan Bergwas a well-known radio personality in Denver, whose outspoken criticism of hate groups resulted in his murder in June of 1984. He was ambushed outside his home and riddled with bullets from a .45 caliber sub-machine gun.The murder was widely publicized and resulted in a book being written about it (Singular, 1987).

In December of 1984, the FBI raided the home of their prime suspect, Gary Yarbrough: When agents searched the home, they found the MAC-10 [.45 caliber sub-machinegun] and four crossbows, 100 sticks of dynamite, plastic explosives, hand grenades, semi-automatic rifles, infrared night vision scopes, gun silencers, booby traps, police scanners and 6,000 rounds of ammunition (“Aryan Group, Jail Gangs Linked,” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 1984, cited in U.S. Congress, 1986a:158).

It was assumed that the silencer had been used in the attack, because silencers were found in the same place as the apparent murder weapon. Witnesses testifying before the Judiciary Committee called attention to this possession of a silencer by the prime suspect. Sam Rabinove, Legal Director of the American Jewish Committee told the House Judiciary Committee:

I have with me several news articles, all of which in some way relate to the kind of racist
violence [which] saw the death of Allen [sic] Berg in Denver, with the Aryan Nations, the
Order, and other such racist extremist groups. In each of these articles, there is always the
mention of a silencer, or a 9mm handgun (U.S. Congress, 1986a:142).

It turned out that Yarbrough was not involved in the murder. In 1987 (long after the silencer provision had been adopted), two other members of the neo-nazi group were convicted of the murder and given 150-year prison sentences (“150-Year Sentences Given to Two Killers of Radio Show Host,” 1987). There is no evidence that a silencer was used. The murder was reported by neighbors who heard gunshots, making the silencer theory unlikely (Singular, 1987:19-20).

In any event, a number of witnesses assured the House Committee that machine guns and silencers were “basic tools of racketeers, drug traffickers and professional killers” (Statement of American Academy of Pediatrics, U.S. Congress, 1986a:167). There was no statistical evidence cited as to the incidence of silencers in crime. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was asked to provide information on the incidence of machine guns in crime, but no one bothered to ask for any such data about silencers (U.S. Congress, 1986a:221; see also Hardy, 1986:673).7

Unfortunately, that is all the legislative record contains as far as silencers are concerned. Silencers were declared to be the tools of professional killers with no legitimate purpose. There are a number of other reasons one might advance for the silencer provisions which do not seem to have been considered. One might think that silencers are inherently more dangerous than other firearms. At least one court has declared that it is the dangerous nature of silencers which lead to their control (U. S. v. Dunlap, 209 F.3d 472, 478 (6th Cir. 2000)). Yet there is nothing in the legislative record to indicate the inherent danger of silencers was an issue. One congressman, before being corrected by the expert witness, thought silencers were used “to transform a gun into an automatic weapon” (U.S. Congress, 1986a:75). Otherwise, despite numerous people testifying against silencers at the hearings, no one actually claimed they were dangerous. Congressman Hughes, for example, in discussing the provisions regarding machineguns and silencers, began by declaring: “To have an operating machinegun in somebody’s house, it is a dangerous weapon. It is extraordinarily dangerous. It really is.” He then went on to discuss silencers in a totally different vein, merely declaring that there was no reason “why a sportsman would want a silencer” (U.S. Congress, 1986a:759-60). One might think that silenced firearms are more likely to be discharged than a normal firearm, or that they make it easier for a criminal to get away with a crime. No reasons for punishing use of silencers were advanced; the constant refrain was that these devices were used exclusively by professional criminals.

So in effect, silencers were demonized and banned in the U.S. because some politican at the time sold the legislature and the public a bill of goods on how banning silencers on firearms would stop violent criminals from quietly killing people. And the police chiefs of the day would have nodded their heads and said “Yes, yes, we need this law because if don’t, we won’t hear the gang members shooting each other we won’t know where to go to arrest them”. Other countries, including Canada, went along with the same kind of nonsense.

Doesn’t this all sound a little too familiar?

Firing David Letterman

David Letterman has taken some heat over his tasteless joke about Governor Sarah Palin’s daughter, and now there is the inevitable call to get him fired.

Now I’m no fan of Letterman. I have always found his humour to be mean spirited, although I thought he might have mellowed a bit over the past few years. Obviously I was wrong. However my personal opinion has always been that Cher’s assessment of him as being an “asshole” was pretty much on the mark.

Regardless, I have a deep aversion to this trend where you call for the firing of any individual who makes a comment however tasteless or controversial and which offends some segment of the public.

If you don’t like what someone like Letterman says simply don’t watch his show because on the other side there are those who would get people like Limbaugh and Hannity off the air in a heartbeat if they could swing it.

It cuts both ways.