Tag: crime

Anti-Gun Laws Always Wrong Path

Kent McManigal

In the wake of the recent mass shootings and the hype surrounding them, people are asking “why?”

Simpletons parrot the popular answer: “guns.”

Sensible people know there’s no single reason.

Thankfully, mass shootings are rare. The way they are publicized makes them seem common, and copycat crimes often follow on the heels of well-publicized shootings. If it were up to me, the shooter’s face would never be shown and his name would be replaced by the words “some loser.”

Mass shootings — almost without exception — happen in places where guns are prohibited. This makes sense. People who plan to shoot random people don’t want their intended victims to shoot back.

A “gun-free zone” — be it a mall or other business, a school or other government facility, or an outdoor event — gives them exactly what they want.

Some people blame poor “mental health care,” suggesting it’s government’s responsibility to run a giant socialist program for identifying mentally unstable people and rounding them up or forcibly medicating them.

I don’t trust people who believe governing others is OK to make reasonable assessments of other people’s mental health.

The “worthlessness” these shooters express in the months and years leading up to their evil deeds must play a part. If you don’t have any meaning in your life it is easier to decide nothing has meaning so you might as well act on your hopelessness, nihilism, and anger.

These guys need meaningful relationships. They need meaningful work. Both are getting harder to find for the average person. This isn’t something government can fix, but perhaps society will find solutions.

I suspect the lack of an attainable frontier may contribute to the problem, and believe if one doesn’t open up soon, things will get worse.

I would be tempted to blame violent video games, except the evidence seems clear that this isn’t the case. If you desensitize people to committing violent acts it seems they’d be more accepting of aggression in real life. Yet the data points to the opposite effect. The violent games apparently serve as a sort of pressure release.

The same goes for violent movies.

I didn’t want to believe it, but I must accept the evidence unless more evidence comes to light. I can’t help but wonder why accepting evidence is such a difficult thing for humans to do.

The evidence is clear: there are many causes, but making things worse — with additional anti-gun laws — is always the wrong path.

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Mass Shootings and the Media

Parrish Miller

Why do we have mass shootings? What has changed? It isn’t the weapons. Americans have had guns for as long as there have been Americans. Kids too. Some people want to blame mental health, but that doesn’t explain it either. Even if we ignore the fact that the mentally ill are not typically violent (indeed, they are far more likely to harm themselves than others), there have always been crazy people.

“It’s racism!” some people insist. Really? If you graphed racist beliefs in this country, you would see a steady decline over the last century. If racism led to mass shootings, they would be declining. None of the typical reasons blamed for these crimes actually explain why someone would be more inclined to commit a mass shooting in 2019 than in 1959.

So, what has changed?

The answer, to me at least, is obvious. It’s the media. The media as it exists in 2019 is perhaps the most notable change from the world we inhabited half a century ago. Non-stop, politicized pronouncements of doom and gloom spill forth from every screen, every speaker, and every form of communication. Tales of death and crime terrify and titillate in turn.

Those who feel angry and want the world to know it now have an opportunity that never before existed. They can take control of the news cycle for days or even weeks simply by committing an act of mass violence. Regardless of if they live or die, their name and face will gain a level of exposure that rivals the most notable celebrity or politician. They can be famous, even achieve a certain type of perverse immortality. All they have to do is kill some random strangers.

A well-known politician has declared that “the media is the enemy of the people.” While his pronouncement may have been self-serving, it contained at least an element of truth. The media uses fear as a currency. It stokes controversy and creates enemies. It wants you to believe that it is doing a service, providing a public good. The truth is far more sinister. The media is creating the climate of hate and fear that inspires mass shooters. The media itself has become one of the most destructive forces in our society.

Instead of providing news and information, the media manufactures misinformation spun from opinion, conjecture, and political meddling. The media has constructed a world of danger and delusion to justify its own existence. And people just keep tuning in.

Unfortunately, there is no easy or obvious solution. I can advise you to turn off your T.V., cancel your cable subscription, and boycott your local newspaper, but until a majority does the same, the malevolence will continue to spread. All I can really suggest is that you recognize your real enemy. It isn’t your neighbors or the folks on the other side of town. It isn’t those who voted for that politician you hate. It isn’t immigrants or racists or whatever other hobgoblins the media has concocted for you to dread.

The media wants you fearful and suspicious, worried and angry. When you are, you are more controllable. You keep tuning in to learn who else you should hate. Stop allowing yourself to be controlled! Stop buying the bullshit that the media delivers by the dump truck load. Turn it off and tune it out. Talk to real people. You’ll probably find that you have a lot more in common than you have been led to believe, because—despite what the media tells you—it’s not actually a war zone out there.

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Sneering at “Conspiracy Theories” is a Lazy Substitute for Seeking the Truth

Thomas L. Knapp

On the morning of August 10, a wealthy sex crimes defendant  was reportedly found dead in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.

“New York City’s chief medical examiner,” the New York Times reported on August 11, “is confident Jeffrey Epstein died by hanging himself in the jail cell where he was being held without bail on sex-trafficking charges, but is awaiting more information before releasing her determination …”

That same day, the Times published an op-ed by Charlie Warzel complaining that “[e]ven on an internet bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship, Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, ‘choose your own reality’ crisis story.”

After three years of continuously beating the drum for its own  now-discredited conspiracy theory —  that the President of the United States conspired with Vladimir Putin’s regime to rig the 2016 presidential election — the Times doesn’t have much standing to whine about, or sneer at, “conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship.”

Is Jeffrey Epstein really dead? If so, did he kill himself or was he murdered? If he was murdered, whodunit and why?

Those are legitimate questions. Calling everyone who asks them, or proposes possible answers to them, a “conspiracy theorist” isn’t an argument, it’s intellectual laziness.

Yes, some theories fit the available evidence better than others. And yes, some theories just sound crazy. If someone says a UFO beamed Epstein up, or that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump posed as corrections officers and personally strangled him, I suggest setting those claims aside absent very strong evidence.

But there are plenty of good  reasons to question the “official account.”

Yes, prisoners have committed suicide at federal jails and prisons. But prisoners have also escaped from, and been killed at, such facilities. In fact, notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger was murdered in a federal prison just last year.

Given Epstein’s wealth and power, the wealth and power of persons accused of serious crimes in recently unsealed court documents, the claim of one of his prosecutors that Epstein “belonged to” the US intelligence community, the well-established inability of the federal government to secure its facilities or prevent criminal activity inside those facilities (including the corruption of its own personnel), the equally well-established unreliability of claims made by government agencies and officials in general, and the already flowing stream of admissions that the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s procedures weren’t followed where Jeffrey Epstein was concerned, the question is not why “conspiracy theories” are circulating — it’s why on earth they WOULDN’T be.

No, I’m not saying that Epstein is alive and living it up in “witness protection,” or that he was murdered by a hit team on behalf of one of his “Lolita Express” cronies. I just don’t know. Neither, probably, do you. Nor do those screaming “conspiracy theory!” at every musing contrary to the suicide theory.

Maybe we’ll find out the truth someday. Maybe we won’t. Pretending we already have, and shouting down those who suggest we haven’t, isn’t a method of seeking knowledge. It’s a method of avoiding knowledge.

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Human Sacrifice: A Grand Old American Political Tradition

Thomas L. Knapp

On July 25, US Attorney General William Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to update its execution protocol and schedule five executions starting this December.

Whether you support the death penalty or not — I don’t because I prefer limited government and the power to kill disarmed prisoners in cold blood and with premeditation is by definition unlimited government — it’s worthwhile to ask:  Why? More to the point, why now?

Politics, that’s why.

There’s a presidential election next year. US president Donald Trump’s re-election strategy, for lack of ability to grow his electoral “base,” is to keep that base energized and enthused so that they’ll turn out to vote instead of sitting at home catching up on re-runs of their favorite TV shows. And that base overwhelmingly supports capital punishment.

With this move Trump is quite literally throwing his supporters some red meat.

There’s nothing new about the idea. Indeed, the history of public human sacrifice for political purposes runs all the way back to ancient history in the Americas.

The last large-scale pre-Columbian example of the practice, that of the Aztecs, involved removing the beating heart of the victim atop a pyramid temple before flinging his or her corpse down the steps to the approval of a roaring crowd.

In this way, Aztec kings not only maintained support from their own populace through religious appeals, but kept smaller tribes too busy raiding each other (for sacrificial captives to be given to the Aztecs in tribute) to ally with each other against the Aztecs themselves.

If these five executions occur, they will be the first federal executions since 2003. There have only been three since 1963.

So, again, why? And why now?

Deterrence isn’t an answer that fits. Overall, violent crime (including murder) in the US has trended downward, not upward in recent decades (from 758 per 100,000 population in 1992 to 383 per 100,000 in 2017).

Neither is reducing the costs of incarceration. Of the more than 200,000 federal prisoners, only 61 are on “death row.” It’s unlikely that killing every last one of them would make a big dent in the Bureau of Prisons’ $7.3 billion annual budget.

Speaking which, if money was the problem, all five of the prisoners to be killed could as easily have been left to the justice systems of the states in which their crimes were committed and would have likely been sentenced to either death or life imprisonment without involving federal tax dollars in the first place.

The same is true regarding any moral “eye for an eye” imperative.  Handling this kind of crime, and this kind of criminal, was never supposed to be the federal government’s job.

That leaves politics. Trump is playing Montezuma in hopes of holding on to his adoring crowd.

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Policing For Profit: How Civil Asset Forfeiture Has Perverted American Law Enforcement

Brian Miller

Picture this: You’re driving home from the casino and you’ve absolutely cleaned up – to the tune of $50,000. You see a police car pull up behind you, but you can’t figure out why. Not only have you not broken any laws, you’re not even speeding. But the police officer doesn’t appear to be interested in charging you with a crime. Instead, he takes your gambling winnings, warns you not to say anything to anyone unless you want to be charged as a drug kingpin, then drives off into the sunset.

This actually happened to Tan Nguyen, and his story is far from unique. It’s called civil asset forfeiture and it’s a multi-billion dollar piggybank for state, local and federal police departments to fund all sorts of pet projects.

With its origins in the British fight against piracy on the open seas, civil asset forfeiture is nothing new. During Prohibition, police officers often seized goods, cash and equipment from bootleggers in a similar manner to today. However, contemporary civil asset forfeiture begins right where you’d think that it would: The War on Drugs.

In 1986, as First Lady Nancy Reagan encouraged America’s youth to “Just Say No,” the Justice Department started the Asset Forfeiture Fund. This sparked a boom in civil asset forfeiture that’s now become self-reinforcing, as the criminalization of American life and asset forfeiture have continued to feed each other.

In sum, asset forfeiture creates a motivation to draft more laws by the legislature, while more laws create greater opportunities for seizure by law enforcement. This perverse incentive structure is having devastating consequences: In 2014 alone, law enforcement took more stuff from American citizens than burglars did.

The current state of civil asset forfeiture in the United States is one of almost naked tyranny. Don’t believe us?

Continue reading Policing For Profit: How Civil Asset Forfeiture Has Perverted American Law Enforcement at Ammo.com.

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No Bail is Excessive Bail, Even for Jeffrey Epstein

Thomas L. Knapp

Multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein stands accused of sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex. On July 18, US District Court judge Richard Berman denied bail, ordering that Epstein be confined until trial.

The US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment is short and sweet: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

What would constitute “excessive” bail in Epstein’s case? Whatever it might be, no bail at all fits the definition, especially given what Epstein put on the table by way of a bail proposal.

There are two issues at stake:

In a 1951 case, Stack v. Boyle, the US Supreme Court held that “a defendant’s bail cannot be set higher than an amount that is reasonably likely to ensure the defendant’s presence at the trial.”

The Bail Reform Act of 1984 does provide for “preventive detention” without bail, but only if a judge “finds that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure … the safety of any other person and the community.”

What would assure Epstein’s appearance at court, and protect young women from further depredations of the type he’s accused of?

Epstein offered more than $100 million in cash bail. That’s a powerful incentive to appear for trial. Perhaps not enough for someone of his means. But there’s more.

Epstein also offered to submit to house arrest at his New York residence, with an electronic bracelet to track his every move, armed guards to keep him from leaving or prospective victims from entering,  prior approval by federal authorities for ANYONE to enter, and a court-appointed live-in trustee whose sole job would be to report any violations of the bail agreement to the court. All of that paid for by Epstein himself.

Furthermore, Epstein offered to de-register and ground his personal jet, and to  preemptively waive extradition from any country on Earth.

It’s difficult to imagine a bail arrangement more fully encompassing  the two legitimate objectives of bail itself.

That offer puts the lie to what Berman called “the heart of his decision” — his doubt that “any bail package could overcome dangerousness … to community.”

That leaves two plausible explanations for Berman’s decision.

One is that, like many judges, he just habitually defers to prosecutors (who in turn habitually use “no bail” requests to grandstand as “tough on crime”).

The other is that he’s already tried and convicted Epstein in his mind and sees no reason to wait for a jury to hand him the fore-ordained “guilty” verdict before Epstein’s punishment commences.

Either way, Berman should recuse himself from the case or be removed from it.

Why should any of us care about the plight of poor, poor, ultra-rich Jeffrey Epstein? Because this kind of stuff goes on every day in courts across the land, featuring poor defendants held on minor charges. We’re only HEARING about it because Epstein is rich and infamous.

If they can do it to Epstein, they can do it to you. So they shouldn’t get away with doing it to Epstein.

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