Why the Far-Left Should Value the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

     Newly-elected New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was correct when she said during her campaign that the N.R.A. (National Rifle Association) represents gun companies, not gun owners. Like her, I, too, feel that the N.R.A. does not do enough to represent gun owners. But that is because the N.R.A. actually lobbies against personal ownership of powerful weapons (albeit while supporting ownership of less powerful weapons like rifles and handguns).

     Recent federal court rulings concerning the legality of 3-D-printed plastic weapons, is just another example of what I've been saying: letting technology and automation run their courses will lead to cheap alternatives which subvert authorities (authorities which, I will remind you, are Republican, do not give a shit about you or me, and will most likely be in and out of power for the rest of our lifetimes, unless significant change occurs). If allowed to flourish, this technology will not only help protect us against the government, it will also allow private citizens to compete with the big gun manufacturers. But of course, the success of that competition is only realistic when big gun manufacturers are insulated from legal accountability and financial risk through L.L.C. incorporation, and given additional privileges, protections, and favors.

     Conservatives and libertarians tend to criticize Leftists for wanting gun control “like they had in socialist countries, like Soviet Russia, or Venezuela, or Cuba, or China, etc.... I would recommend that any Leftist who supports gun control and hears this critique, simply explain that: 1) not all Leftists, communists, and gun control proponents are Stalinists or Maoists, 2) they don't all want to kill millions of people, 3) “I want common-sense gun legislation because I don't want anyone to get shot”, and 4) the C.I.A. and Yale helped Mao get into power in the first place.

     I think the only way to avoid claims that socialism will lead to mass murder, is to support the use of guns to defend workers against tyranny. Many conservatives are perfectly willing to admit that bosses take the product of the worker's labor every bit as much as politicians and bureaucrats do. Try telling a conservative that “profit is theft”, watch him struggle to understand, then ask him how he would feel if he found out that he had been the victim of wage theft, and then explain that profit is theft because profits are stolen wages. But back to the topic at hand: guns.

     Gun control supporters might argue that guns support white privilege and police brutality, or that gun rights supported the rights of slave patrols to kill black people. I won't deny that they have a point. But those people – black people, the sons of former slaves, and victims of police brutality – do still have the right to arm themselves with weapons too. They retain the right to keep and bear arms, to keep themselves safe from racist and homophobic attacks, sexual assault, and if need be, unlawful arrests wherein police officers use deadly force without cause.

     But Karl Marx, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. all supported gun rights. King applied for a gun carrying permit before his death, but was denied one by his racist state government, which for all we know, probably collaborated with the FBI to murder King. Malcolm X and Karl Marx, and the people of the Paris Commune of 1871, believed that armed workers are safe from both exploitative bosses and tyrants alike. Marx said that any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated with the use of arms if necessary.

     About 200 million people were murdered in the 20^th century by their own governments, very many of them murdered with guns. Sure, many died unintentionally, because of economic mismanagement that led to droughts and starvation). But 55 million of them died in countries which had legally disarmed their citizenries first. The Nazis' 1930s gun restrictions limited Jews' rights to own guns (while expanding Germans' rights to do the same), which led to 1) the creation of an unarmed Jewish police force in the ghettos (Jewish Ghetto Police), 2) the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, in which Jews, lacking guns, brandished Molotov cocktails and hand grenades against the Nazis, 3) pogroms of Jews at gunpoint, and 4) the adoption of Nazi-inspired gun control legislation in America, with efforts spearheaded by Senator Christopher Dodd, Sr..

     There are plenty of libertarians who side with the Black Panthers against Ronald Reagan's gun control measures which limited their right to open-carry. To those of my readers who are leftists: if a libertarian challenges you on gun rights, then ask them whether they support Reagan or the Black Panthers on this matter. If they say Reagan, tell them they support the gun rights of career politicians over the gun rights of working people; people who have families that they can't get the taxpayers to protect for them.

     Not only must the workers be armed, the populace must be armed in order to guard against the draft, against forcible, conscripted service in the U.S. military. Even allowing “support roles” reduces the value of the citizen's labor to zero, because it is forced. Furthermore, it reduces the conscientiously objecting citizen to the status of an accomplice to mass murder. Read the 2^nd Amendment six months before it was formally adopted, before it was chopped in half. It used to protect conscientious objection; it used to protect our right to shoot at the government, to shoot at armies – British, American, Chinese, I.S.I.S., al-Qaeda, any army – whomever is trying to steal our children and turn them into child soldiers and murder us for our land.

     That's what the 2^nd Amendment was originally trying to protect; the right to conscientiously object to being forced to render military service in person, and forced to defend oneself with a gun and as part of a regulated unit. The formal legal definition of “unorganized militia” in the U.S. Code, and a close analysis of the text of the Second Amendment written six months before its adoption (with close attention to the meaning of punctuation marks therein), will confirm this. Founder George Mason was correct when he said that “the whole of the people” is the militia.

     I know that supporting gun rights is a tough sell to leftists, but we must not repeat the genocides and democides of the 20^th century. We must stop American governments from enforcing all sorts of liability regulations and gun control measures that interfere with people's rights to defend themselves and innocent people who are unable to defend themselves.

     I, by the way, am a private security guard who works in a gun-free zone. I think this fact is utterly absurd, and the ridiculousness needs to end. The only kind of common-sense gun control regulation I support is “controlling your gun” by aiming straight, and shooting tyrants and terrorists who want to draft and enslave you.

     That's why, I beg your pardon, weapons of war do belong on the streets of America. And if they don't, then maybe a better place to start would be getting tanks and drones out of the hands of local police departments (a consequence of a Clinton-era law), like we saw in Ferguson, Missouri. Maybe; that is, only if and when the people trust the federal and state governments more than they trust the local police.

     However, if there is any truth to the idea of “common sense gun control”, then certainly, criminally insane people who have committed acts of violence, should not be able to access guns. But that does not mean that we ought to take Senator Dianne Feinstein's lead, and carelessly cast American veterans as insane from P.T.S.D., and thus incapable of owning a firearm. These people served this country for years after learning how to use firearms in highly disciplined fashions, which is an insult.

     To take away someone's right to purchase, own, or practice using a firearm, or to hunt, without reasonable suspicion that they are actively planning to use it to harm someone, is an affront to not just the 2^nd, 5^th, and 7^th Amendments, but also to the very notion that people ought to be presumed innocent until they are proven guilty.

     The “red flag” bills being signed into law in Democratic states (including Illinois and New York), allow judges to issue orders to confiscate weapons of people deemed to be immediate and present threats, by their families who seek orders of protection. While it is more just for a legal order to be issued by a court than by a legislative body, some people could potentially become targets of wrongful disarmament due to fraudulent grounds for orders of protection.

     I am not worried about veterans going crazy and killing a bunch of people. What worries me is that we don't have any mental illness background checks on the psychopathic, sociopathic, and Machiavellian politicians who are crazy enough to think that they're better than everyone else, and so, can order us around. They get away with paying poor people's children to protect their property and die in wars, while they themselves shout “get rid of guns”, surrounded by armed security guards who protect them with guns.

     People like that should not be governing us, and if anyone should be screened for potentially posing a threat with weapons, it should be the biggest arms dealers on planet Earth, the members of the U.S. Congress (located in the District of Columbia, whose chief export is weapons and armaments).

Written on July 4th, 20th, 26th, and 27th, and August 1^st through 4th, and 6th, 2018

Edited on November 16^th, 2018

Originally Published on November 16^th, 2018

A Libertarian “Family Values” Solution to Fighting Gang Violence

     Between 3 P.M. on Friday, August 3^rd, and 6 A.M. on Monday, August 6^th, 2018, seventy-four people were shot in Chicago, Illinois. In the first three hours of that Sunday alone, thirty people were shot, in addition to another ten people within the few hours before and after that. Eleven or twelve of those 74 people reportedly died as the result of their injuries.

     As a response to the escalation in violence, hundreds of additional police officers have been put on patrol in the city. The rash of shootings has prompted calls for the resignation of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel, who served as Barack Obama's chief of staff during the first year and a half of his presidency, condemned the shootings, calling them “unacceptable in any neighborhood”. Chicagoans might have considered this number of shootings “normal” if they had occurred during the Fourth of July weekend, but given that they took place in early August, it just seems out of place.

     The shootings have also renewed public interest in calling-in the Illinois National Guard to help the Chicago Police Department patrol problematic areas of the city. Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner disagreed, saying “the national guard is not for neighborhood policing”. Rauner, who is up for re-election this November, added that improving economic opportunities would help to end the violence in the city.

     In November, Rauner faces re-election challenge from Democratic nominee and fellow billionaire J.B. Pritzker, Conservative Party nominee and state legislator Sam McCann, and Libertarian Party nominee Kash Jackson, as well as, possibly, various other independent, minor party, and write-in candidates.

     On March 3^rd, Kash Jackson was nominated for governor by the Libertarian Party of Illinois, defeating challengers Matthew C. Scaro and Jon Stewart. Although Stewart was the only one of the three candidates who was open to considering deploying the Illinois National Guard in Chicago, he articulated his own comprehensive plan to address gang violence during their campaigns, as did Mr. Scaro and Mr. Jackson. All three candidates agreed that economic opportunity would play a part in the solution to gang violence, as well as the decriminalization of non-violent drug offenses and gun possession. Jackson in particular would like to give inmates the opportunity to acquire skills while in jail that will help them become valued, contributing members of society and the labor force.

     The Libertarian Party and its candidates, of course, do not agree with Bruce Rauner on everything. If we liked Bruce Rauner, we wouldn't be running anyone against him. However, I, and many L.P. members, feel that Bruce Rauner and Kash Jackson are correct in their agreement on this particular issue. Economic opportunity should be part of the solution, and calling-in the National Guard should not.

     In my opinion, this is a position which fits in line perfectly with what libertarian-inspired public policy should look like. It also stands as an example of what moderate Republicans do right, as far as libertarians are concerned; looking to freedom, rather than brute strength, to fight gangs, gun crime, and violent behavior associated with the use and sale of drugs.

     You don't fix urban gang violence by calling the National Guard into cities, nor by imposing a curfew on adults. That would violate the freedoms of all people within the areas being patrolled; even adult citizens who vote and pay taxes, and who of right ought to be allowed to make their own decisions. To impose a curfew is to disregard people's natural freedom of locomotion (movement; travel), and makes them unfree to leave their homes. This is not Saudi Arabia, nor it is Egypt in 2011, where governments can get away with using brutal, uncivilized means to supposedly achieve civil “order” (which essentially amounts to a state of legalized terror over the public).

     The patrol of streets by police officers, who often watch and even follow people without warrants or reasonable suspicion, essentially create a standing threat against citizens. When supplemented by officers trained in military techniques, and especially when provided with military-grade weaponry and surveillance technology, police departments can be transformed into what essentially amounts to units of a standing army. That is what the second and third amendments to the U.S. Constitution were intended to prevent.

     Calling-in the National Guard sends the message that not just law-breakers, but also potential law-breakers, will be dealt with as if they were an invading army of foreign militants, posing an immediate threat to people. This makes people feel as if they are not at home in their own country. This treatment especially negatively affects people of color, and brings back bad historical memories (more than those whose relatives do not have stories of similar situations can imagine).

     Additionally, the ubiquitous presence of police results in what is called “the alienation of the will”, as well as the “Panopticon” effect. It causes people to worry that they are being watched, and change their behavior as a way to compensate. The motivation behind the Panopticon is to cause people to “police their own behavior”. Unfortunately, this has turned many of us into our own worst enemies. Thus, the Panopticon has done little other than to put a man's leash into his own hand, and to allow police to get away with shouting “fire” in a crowded theater with no fire, by shooting at people who they claim to be threats.

     This can have disastrous consequences, including 1) more secretive behavior on the part of citizens and law enforcement officers alike, 2) government encouraging citizens to spy on their neighbors, and 3) criminals killing more witnesses and police in order to get away with their crimes than they otherwise would have (a problem which is spurred-on by the harsh penalties involved). Moreover, 4) an environment of fear is created in the community, as well as the perception that one is being watched, and that privacy is impossible. Also, 5) some citizens begin to behave as if they were police officers. Not by protecting and serving, mind you, but by using the violation of petty infractions as an excuse to shoot people who are engaging in harmless behaviors which they personally don't like, and by extrajudicially detaining someone who “looks like a terrorist” in a grocery store for no reason, while they call the cops.

     Making people believe that they are being watched at all times, has more unintended consequences than we can anticipate. There is little evidence that creating an environment of Kafkaesque fear – fear that we'll be accused of anything and everything, and be on our own to defend ourselves against charges our accusers can't even articulate, and fear that we could be breaking some obscure law no matter where we go and what we do - has ever made people into better or more law-abiding citizens.

     This environment of fear has, thus far, only served to reproduce in the streets what the people of Pamplona feel every year; that of an approaching stampede shaking the ground, and of a public panic about to ensue, which, for everybody's safety, needs to be prevented.

     The “law of the instrument”, explained by a quotation whose origin has been attributed to many different people, states that “every problem looks like a nail if the only tool you have is a hammer”. Not all of our problems can be killed or destroyed; didn't we learn that from our failed war on the ideology of terrorism?

     I believe that it is impossible to solve gang violence by treating ordinary citizens as if they were standing threats to public order, even if they are supposedly walking in dangerous neighborhoods. We cannot put all of our potential “problems” in jail, just because we think that they might do something bad or harmful. Especially when our “problems” are human beings, who nearly always have perfectly rational motivations for the things they do.

     The idea that we can police our way into paradise, and that all we need is increased police presence on the ground, presumes people guilty until proven innocent, instead of innocent until proven guilty. It puts the responsibility upon the accused person, to defend himself against accusations which the accuser has little to no responsibility to even articulate, much less for which to provide evidence. All of this subverts our civil liberty to due process of law and fair legal proceedings. It plays into the idea of “thoughtcrime” (a term coined by George Orwell in his novel 1984) and “pre-crime” (a term used in the film Minority Report).

     Using this logic, we might as well put everyone in jail! But then, who would hold the keys?

     Willingness to violate a petty infraction does not make one a violent criminal, and failing to follow the law should not merit being treated like some sort of hostile foreign invader who is incapable of living in a civilized society.

     In Illinois, many Republicans want a more strict enforcement of the law, and say “make an example of small-time rule-breakers”. But ironically, some of them defend calls for Democratic former Illinois Rod Blagojevich to be pardoned, and prematurely released from prison, after being sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption. Granted, political corruption is not technically a violent crime, but this is our government, and we ought to be holding our elected officials to higher standards than ordinary citizens.

     Why these Republicans are defending a corrupt Democrat is confusing enough as it is; but maybe they're just taking Trump's lead. Either way, the fact that they'd rather release Blagojevich (who isn't eligible for release until May 2024) than “small-time rule-breakers” is not only disturbing, but perhaps even shows a tinge of racism. Maybe these are the same people who chose to set Barabbas the murderer free instead of Jesus Christ.

     It amazes me; the lengths some Illinois Republicans are willing to go, to compare non-violent petty offenders to murderers, and to cast Rod Blagojevich as a faithful public servant who was unfairly targeted. The man offered to sell the vacated seat of the outgoing U.S. Senator who became president, and all but admitted it on audio tape.

     As we saw in Operation Iraqi Freedom, “shock and awe” failed to win the United States of America “the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people”. Likewise, the police should not expect to be able to win the public's trust.

     Especially not by simply making sure that most of the police officers who are arresting minorities, are themselves minorities, or “look like the neighborhoods they're policing”. Especially not if they are arresting their own families and neighbors for petty theft, minor drug charges, and the possession of weapons without permits and licenses.

     The only way the police can gain public trust is to make sure that people are less afraid of the police than they are of gangs. And one of the best ways you can do that is to decriminalize the non-violent possession of drugs and weapons, and decriminalize prostitution by consenting adults, and repeal laws against victimless crimes. Fortunately, it's also one of the easiest ways to deal with the problem, because the police would have less work to do, and therefore less resources would be expended, leading to lower taxes.

     Why shouldn't legalizing harmless, peaceful, non-violent market activity – even if it is supposedly “black-market” activity - be part of extending economic opportunity to these often poor, overlooked neighborhoods experiencing gang violence? We should be careful to avoid confusing non-violent “black market” behavior, which is technically illegal but harmless; with violent “red markets”, which involve crime for profit, such as murder-for-hire, robbery and burglary, and coerced prostitution. The longer we pretend that the black and red markets are the same, the longer they will work together to avoid their mutual enemy the state.

     Of course, selling drugs and becoming a prostitute is by no means the only type of “economic opportunity” which would help struggling neighborhoods. Bootlegging could be decriminalized. Jurisdictions could reduce fines on becoming a food vendor without applying for a permit, or they could get rid of the permits, or reduce the fees or requirements therefor, or they could re-evaluate which professions need strict permits altogether.

     Job opportunities aside, minor traffic and parking infractions which result in no harm to person or property could be dealt with more fairly; and in a more lenient fashion; and without relying on the impossible dream of an omnipresent state, to make all behavior everywhere to conform to what the state wants.

     When the people are not constantly antagonized - and overregulated, tracked, and spied on – in their places of business (legitimate or not) and elsewhere, then the prospect of citizens and police getting along, and working together against violent crime, will become possible. Only when that happens, will the people be less afraid of the cops than they are of the gangs.

     To expect people to “snitch” on members of criminal gangs that would want them dead for doing such a thing, is patently absurd. But it is nowhere near as absurd as the idea that one set of violent criminals (the state) is qualified to crack down on another set of violent criminals who help them enforce the drug cartel. The state has just as much of a history threatening and intimidating peaceful people as organized criminal gangs do; maybe even more. Considering how much material support Al Capone's gang provided to needy people, I almost want to recommend that people turn-in problematic police officers to their local gangs.

     To many people, to snitch on a criminal is a “turn in a friend, get a free plea deal” situation; it's a no-win situation. This is to say that small-time drug dealers are afraid to turn-in drug dealers who steal, kill, or poison the drugs they sell; and that prostitutes are afraid to call the cops on pimps and johns who abuse them. Not only are prostitutes and small-time drug dealers not criminals; if they are reporting any of the offenses I have mentioned, they are victims of crime. To prosecute such people is to send a clear message that the police have no interest in protecting and serving vulnerable members of society.

     It's not that co-conspirators, accomplices, and accessories to the crime shouldn't be prosecuted; what I'm saying is that people who break laws against victimless crimes, such as vice laws, should not be perceived as criminals, simply because they have broken some petty infractions. Harming “the public” is impossible, because what “the public” is, is a social construct. It is a fantastical, made-up thing, which does not tangibly exist, and thus cannot be physically harmed, much less called to testify in open court. When the public is the accuser, a fair trial is all but impossible, since one cannot confront one's accuser, except through a duly authorized representative (and what makes that representative acceptable is a matter of debate).

     Whether we're talking about decriminalizing non-violent black market activity, or legalizing under-the-table work in “gray markets”, or just getting rid of some of the many laws that ordinary people violate every day without even knowing it (several felonies per day, by one estimate); the point is to rid ourselves of the need to create laws whose enforcement results in the police unnecessarily antagonizing the people.

     Through liberalization, legalization, and decriminalization of non-violent behaviors, the need for police to enforce the law can be diminished, and the presence of police in neighborhoods will diminish due to that lessened need. Perhaps it helps to think of the police as an occupation force, like the United States was, and still is, in Iraq and Afghanistan: as the people rise up to defend their homeland, the police will draw-down their level of active duty assistance in policing those neighborhoods.

     But of course, people are only governable if the set of laws by which they're expected to abide are reasonable, and are limited to the protection of people and justly acquired property. Otherwise, a system of officers of the peace (who may not go on patrols), citizen militias (who may not forcibly recruit), and deputized citizens (whose arrest powers must be limited), would burst through those constraints, and collapse into an occupying army. “Mission creep” would set in, and many people would be coerced into becoming Stalinist “see something, say something” spies on their neighbors - volunteer snitches who do police bidding without caring whether the laws they're enforcing are just in the first place – in order to survive through currying favor with the authorities.

     But no army, nor police force, can survive long, if it is itself itself occupied with enforcing unjust laws that are impossible to obey, and which are undesired by the people. It is only through the efforts of people, who put up with and sometimes even help enforce unjust laws, that the legitimacy and finance of the occupying police army are maintained (or else destroyed).

     While we, as libertarians, may feel the impulse to reject calls to resolve the problem of gang violence by “restoring family” as socially conservative, traditionalist, or outmoded. However, the gubernatorial nominee of the Libertarian Party of Illinois, Kash Jackson, believes that fatherless homes are a major contributing factor leading to increased likelihood of youth drug use and involvement in gangs. The statistics prove him right on that.

     Jackson believes that family values are a potential solution to gang violence, but he does not promote family values in the manner in which Republicans are apt to promote family values. His is a “family values” platform which avoids that control-freak fantasy of an omnipotent, state that can make criminals into law-abiding citizens by locking them in cells and depriving them of opportunities, nor that it can make peaceful citizens into better people by treating them as criminal suspects.

     Nor does he stoop to paternalism; his platform supports equality of the sexes, as the Libertarian Party has since its formation in 1971. When you listen to Kash Jackson, you will not hear any judgmental, dog-whistle-laden talk about minority fathers in urban areas being deadbeats, nor talk about single mothers leading immoral lifestyles. Rich or poor, white or black, whichever gender; Jackson and his supporters in Illinois are following through on their promises to treat individuals the same, regardless of their demographic differences, and regardless of what they can do to benefit the candidates personally.

     On June 29^th, 2018, after the Libertarian Party of Illinois turned in tens of thousands of signatures to the Illinois State Board of Elections in Springfield, the candidates and several state party officials held a press conference. At that press conference, Kash Jackson criticized Social Security Title IV-D (child support), saying that “Illinois sets support orders that exceed double of the national recommendations.” Kash Jackson recognizes that it is the Social Security system, not necessarily moral failings on the part of parents, that has created the mess that families are in (especially in Illinois).

     Like Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Jackson has also criticized what Ryan called “the poverty trap in welfare”; something that is a key factor contributing to the difficulty of transitioning from welfare to work. In this “poverty trap”, people are cut-off from government assistance as soon as they become required to report new income. As a result, people who receive government assistance are effectively given a disincentive to get off of welfare. While Ryan criticized this problem more generally, Jackson has criticized it in regards to the fact that single-parent households are more likely to need some form of supplemental income than two-parent households, whether from government or through child support. But then, of course, Jackson emphasizes in his speeches that the government of Illinois gets paid by the federal government every time it helps to collect on child support orders. That aside, the point is that not only does Social Security offer this perverse incentive; other government assistance programs do too.

     It would not be unfair to conclude that a two-parent household – with parents of any gender, sex, or sexual orientation – can do a better job of raising a child than the state can.

     The Libertarian Party joins those conservatives who recognize that, at least in Illinois, child support is an extortion racket, which all too often assumes fathers to be at fault, and which hurts good parents as well as “deadbeat” and abusive parents.

     But the Libertarian Party also joins those liberals and progressives who know that parents also shouldn't have their children taken away, nor their right to become parents, simply because they are an undocumented immigrant, or gay, or unwed either.

     At the Libertarian Party of Illinois's June 29^th press conference, Jackson stated, “No Illinois citizen should be kicked out, and separated from their children. The exact same thing that happens to the kids on the border, that's been happening to American citizens with child protective services and with our family court system, should be ended today, because it's Draconian, it's archaic, and it shouldn't happen.”

     And all the evidence we have seen – from the concentration camps at the border (which, for all we know, are operating on a for-profit basis) and the separation of children from their parents (at the border and internally); to the jailing of first-time and petty offenders who then learn criminal lifestyles while in jail; to the failed wars on crime, drugs, terrorism, and poverty – points to Jackson and the Libertarians being right.

     It's just too bad that Libertarians want to defund public schools. Without public schools, who would teach your children that all of these catastrophic failures of leadership are just the price we pay for living in a civilized society, and that the community and the government know better than parents what's right for their children anyway?

Written Between August 8^th and 11^th, and 14^th, 2018

Published on August 14^th, 2018