Are guns "froofy"? A "well regulated" post on the 2nd Amendment

I think I've written a fair amount in the past about the 1st Amendment, and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to write a bit on the 2nd Amendment, as it's probably the most controversial section of the Bill of Rights. Generally, I consider myself to be pro-2nd Amendment, but I'm pretty sure most of the opinions I have on the matter would be less than palatable to the average NRA member. No matter; if there's disagreement, I hope it can spark dialogue.

So first, on a very basic level, I do think that people should have the right to protect themselves, and if they choose to do so with a gun, then in general, the Constitution says that's okay. At the same time, I personally have no desire to own a gun; they don't appeal to me in any manner. Perhaps it's my distaste for guns that leads to my nuanced views of this law, although I think if I did want to own a gun, I'd still expect some reasonable boundaries to my rights.

Just because the founding fathers wanted to guarantee us certain rights about guns doesn't necessarily mean that they intended ordinary citizens to own fancy automatic assault rifles. I've heard some people say that the argument that the founding fathers couldn't have imagined the sorts of guns we have today is invalid because you could draw similar parallels to the 1st Amendment: that the founding fathers couldn't have known about things like the Internet, so maybe we should curtail freedom of expression with respect to media types that are more modern than the 18th century? This is supposed to sound ridiculous, but I don't think it is. Why? Because the Internet really has changed the way we communicate and express ourselves.

Let me tell you a story. Back around, oh, I think probably 1995, I had a friend that had one of the first home PCs I'd seen that was web ready. He had AOL. One day I was at his house, and he was showing me all the cool things that he could do on AOL, and he paused. "Do you want to see something scary?" he asked me. I wasn't sure I was, but I was curious as to what he meant. He popped into a chat room and typed, "Can anyone send me nudes of 13s?" Before I could parse what that meant, his computer chirped repeatedly "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!" and he opened up his inbox. There he showed me that he had just been sent several nude pictures of underage girls, including one of someone having sex with what was claimed to be a 12-year-old. I'm feeling pretty confident that the founding fathers never intended the 1st Amendment to protect that sort of artistic expression. I would suggest that when technology changes, our understanding of the world changes with it.

So back to guns. I don't see why an average citizen would have a practical need for guns of a certain firepower. (I'll admit freely that I'm a person who knows very little about guns, and I don't feel I have the confidence to say that I can draw the arbitrary lines between acceptable and unacceptable guns. I do feel that there are lines that are reasonable to be drawn, however.) I don't think people should have machine guns, and I have a hard time believing that the average citizen has a need for armor-piercing rounds, for instance, but this is just my personal view.

Perhaps we should take a look at the 2nd Amendment?

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I think a lot of people, myself included, are confused about the meaning and significance of the first half of this law. I mean, if the 2nd Amendment were simply the text that follows the comma, it would be pretty simple, but the stuff before the comma leads to so many questions. What precisely is a "militia"? What does it mean for one to be "well regulated"? What's the real meaning of "the security of a free state"? Let's deal with these in turn.

Going to the dictionary for the first question, we find various definitions of "militia". The first definition given is "a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies." This sounds like a group of people who are serving and protecting the government. But look at the fourth and final definition: "a body of citizens organized in a paramilitary group and typically regarding themselves as defenders of individual rights against the presumed interference of the federal government." This sounds like virtually the antithesis of the group in the first definition to me. While surely there are a lot of people today who believe it to be their right to be in a militia of the latter type, is there any evidence that the founding fathers meant that definition? Yet even if they didn't, does that make it wrong?

When something is "regulated" in any official sense (whether "well" or not) it's usually regulated by the government, isn't it? Once again, that would seem to rule out the latter definition of "militia", but I don't know I could say so with 100% surety.

The thing that's funny to me is how with all that lack of specificity so far, there is still more lack of specificity to be found in the last phrase, "the security of a free state". If the militia is guarding the security of the state, then it seems that it's working for the government, but I'm sure some would argue that the addition of the word "free" in there could imply that the militia could be fighting for a "free state" against a state that is not free. While that seems like an admirable cause, it's also quite open to differing opinion, and when people with (arguably) excessive guns are fighting to protect the right to have said guns, isn't the logic sort of circular?

Anyway, it's just awful strange. The 1st Amendment, as well as most if not all of the others in the Bill of Rights, doesn't give a reason why the people are given rights, it just gives them. Why does the 2nd Amendment give a reason, and unfortunately a reason that is, in the end, quite confusing? It's the difference between saying, "All children should get a lollipop on Friday," and saying, "Seeing as lollipops are so froofy and the well-being of children is dependent on overall froofiness, all children should get a lollipop on Friday." You find yourself suspecting that if you knew what "froofy" really meant, you'd have a better idea as to the validity of a weekly lollipop, and without that meaning, you might suspect the whole thing's garbage.

But there are a lot of people who defend the right to own a seemingly (to many) ridiculous amount and kind of gun with the argument that it does serve to keep us safe from an oppressive government. I'm not sure that I buy this in the end, for two reasons. The main reason is that if the government is truly going to turn on you and take away all your beloved freedoms, I don't think it matters what kind of guns you have. The government has tanks and bombers and chemical weapons and if they decide to come for you, guns just won't be enough, no matter how many you have.

The second reason is one that may just appeal to me as a person who doesn't love guns: The world has repeatedly been changed by a group of citizens who armed themselves and fought against oppressive governments, this is true, but the world has also been changed by people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela who never picked up a weapon, but were simply willing to lay down their lives for the cause of freedom. I'd just like to believe that the world can be changed without having to kill people to advance worthy causes. There are those who have shown that it can be done.

They say that guns don't kill people, people kill people; and that's true. But a gun is a tool that is specifically designed to cause harm, and while I respect people's right to defend themselves, a gun is something that I'll never be 100% happy with.

A: Lipstick! Get it?

I suppose after having spent so much time and energy expounding on the state of legalization of same-sex marriage in Colorado, I ought to at least take a moment out of my busy schedule of doing nothing of value to give my thoughts on the state of the legality of same-sex marriage here in my own state of California. I was actually thinking I'd put in a longer rant covering all of the full dozen initiatives set to appear on our ballot come November, and maybe I still will, but experience has taught me that it doesn't matter much what I write, nobody seems to be reading.

Speaking of nobody reading, every time I receive my official Voter Information Guide, I take some time to sit down and read through the thing, wondering as I do what segment of the population I fit into by doing so. I find it hard to believe that many people actually do take the time to read the thing, partially because nobody I've ever asked about it has said to me, "Oh yeah, I totally read that thing, too." Of course, maybe it's not apathy; it could be a form of mental self-defense. The guide is confusing and often self-contradictory because there is no requirement that the pro and con statements contained within it be checked for accuracy. Also, there's the annoying fact that since the arguments for and against the propositions are not given the option of using boldface type, virtually every argument writer opts for the (annoying long before the advent of the WWW) use of ALL-CAPITALS STATEMENTS so that they can scream from the page about how much this proposition will COST TAXPAYERS, and how they URGE YOU TO JOIN US IN OPPOSING THIS FLAWED PIECE OF LEGISLATION. But that's a more generalized rant, and I was intending to focus on the single issue of Proposition 8, the "California Marriage Protection Act". (Although the issue of SHOUTING TEXT will come up.)

It's funny, because for myself, as well as a number of other Californians, this proposition comes with a sense of déjà vu. As is said repeatedly in the guide, this is essentially the exact same law that was passed by California voters in March of 2000 (then Proposition 22). As the supporters of the law love to point out, it's just 14 words, which allows me the easy luxury of giving the whole text right here: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Before I try to dissect that in any way, let me give the history supplied in the guide just in case you're not familiar. This law, having passed in March 2000, stayed on the books for about eight years until the California Supreme Court said in May of this year that the law violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution.

Law is a fascinating thing to me for various reasons, one of which is the fact that it has the tendency as it grows to become self-contradictory. We try to build systems that deal with such problems, one such system being the various courts of the land, which--despite the way it makes some feel--are in many ways the final authority on all things legal. When the courts make a controversial ruling like overturning Proposition 22, they're either "activist judges" or "doing their job", depending on how you feel about it. Yes, how dare the California Supreme Court interpret law? Who do they think they are? It's all part of that "checks and balances" thing we hear about now and again, but it works both ways: the Supreme Court can overturn laws, but since they answer to the Constitution, it's possible to go over their heads, which is why Proposition 8 is a Constitutional Amendment. (As far as I can tell, the difference between an "initiative statute" and an "initiative constitutional amendment" is the number of signatures needed on your petition.) If this passes, the Court pretty much just has to accept it.

I find it interesting that we're going this route for various reasons. I mean, on some level it's certainly no surprise that people who feel very strongly about those 14 words are miffed that they got shot down, and so are trying to push them just a little bit harder. I'm sure more than a few people are of the feeling that it's a little unfair that when we pass a law it doesn't just stay passed, but hey, when we vote in a Governor, he doesn't just stay Governor (even if the debate over this amendment trots out the gay penguins, I seriously doubt it will halfway meet the level of bizarre that the 2003 recall election gave us), so it shouldn't really be a surprise. The thing that's so odd about this path is that while I suspect it has a lot to do with indignation and moral outrage that surely Proposition 22 was right and the will of the people, the supporters of Proposition 8 seem to be giving a pretty soft sell for this one. The argument for it seems to be taking the confusing position that Proposition 8 will essentially change nothing, and yet in changing nothing, it is still of supreme importance. I quote:

"Proposition 8 is about preserving marriage; it's not an attack on the gay lifestyle. Proposition 8 doesn't take away any rights or benefits of gay or lesbian domestic partnerships."

So essentially, same-sex couples get everything except the word "marriage", and that's of supreme importance as it somehow "protects our children". Maybe more on that later if I can make any sense of it.

Now the thing I find interesting in particular about those who stand against Proposition 8 is a single statement in their rebuttal to the argument for the proposition--a statement that stands in direct opposition to the point above--that was apparently worth putting into caps:

"CALIFORNIA STATUTES CLEARLY IDENTIFY NINE REAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS."

Wow. I mean, that's significant, isn't it? You might wonder what these nine differences are. I know I do, because nowhere in their rebuttal do they list a single one. Really, I was curious enough to visit noonprop8.com, feeling surely such a list would be posted there prominently. If it's there, I can't find it, nor did any Google search terms I could think of turn up such a list. (Maybe if there is someone who actually reads this who knows something I don't about these "NINE REAL DIFFERENCES", they could give me a heads-up. [EDIT: Found them!]) Really, if such a list exists, I think it would be excellent ammunition in this debate, so why hold it back? Even Republicans can list at least one real difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, and I wasn't aware that anyone was even asking.

What are we asking? We're asking for the law to protect us, aren't we? But from what? Those in favor claim that if Proposition 8 fails to pass, the public school system will start "to teach young children that there is no difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage." The detractors deny this, but neither side says why this is significant. Maybe to you, my theoretical reader, the answer is obvious, but I suspect that if you're a person who finds the answer obvious, you're not a person who needs to be convinced that same-sex marriage should be disallowed. Aren't both arguments here really "preaching to the choir"? It's weird, because while I do feel it's the case, at the same time I wonder why if it's so, it's done so subtly.

Contrary to popular opinion concerning the fervently rabid homophobia that runs through evangelical churches, homosexuality is not a topic that's talked about much in church as far as I've experienced. I've been a Christian for over 13 years, and in all that time, I think I've experienced less than five sermons on the specific topic of homosexuality, and the topic has come up tangentially at most maybe a dozen times, but I doubt it's even that much. That being said, within the confines of the church walls, you won't find pastors pulling punches on the subject when it does come up. Sure, all sermons are (rightly) tempered with the admonition to remember that God loves everyone, regardless of sexual preference or any other characteristic, but most pastors will come right out and say that same-gender sexual relations are sinful, period. Meeting up with the average congregant on the street, ask their view on the matter and they will probably say likewise without reservation. Does anyone really believe that Proposition 8 is about anything else but moral indignation? Aren't there really only two types of people who oppose same-sex marriage? There are people who feel that God has said "no" to it, and people who just personally think it's gross, I guess. (Yes, there's overlap between the two groups, but in my opinion, it's a long way from total.) Yet nowhere in the arguments (for or against) will you find the words "morality" or "sin".

Do the supporters think that if they don't put the thought into words, that people won't know it's there? On the other hand, if it's not there, then what's the point of the argument at all? Aren't we left with the nonsensical line of "reasoning" that since things have never been the way they've been since the Supreme Court ruling in May, then they should continue not being that way? The "for" argument mostly stays away from using all caps, but does have one sentence, "CALIFORNIANS HAVE NEVER VOTED FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE." See, it's not about morality, it's about how since we never voted FOR same-sex marriage, we therefore obviously ought to vote AGAINST it.

It was very entertaining for me to try and put myself in the fantasy neutral mindset of someone who's been living in a cave* and has no opinion whatsoever on gay marriage, but now finds himself beset with the task of sorting out how to vote on this proposition. (After all, I can't imagine who else is supposed to be swayed by these arguments.) PRO: Apparently, this law was considered to be a good idea by most people, but the courts said that it wasn't, so we have to make it a good idea, or else our children will suffer the consequences: being taught that same-sex relationships are okay, not that we're saying that they aren't okay. Basically, gays don't have the right to redefine marriage, so we're going to instead, and if they wanted that right, they should have excercised it. CON: Everyone should be treated the same, but if this passes, everyone won't be treated the same, because this treats people differently, in different ways. Domestic partnerships are different in many ways; many, many ways indeed. Different people are different, but that doesn't mean they're different and should be treated like they're different, which this law does, and that's not what we need.

Who knew 14 words could say so much and yet say nothing of substance whatsoever? You'd think the California Constitution was written by bloggers.

(*Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said, "For anybody who has been living in a cave, let me just say this: congratulations! You've apparently made the soundest real estate investment possible. Once again, bin Laden wins.")

A plague of frogs

I came across an interesting article in the newspaper this weekend. It was in the comics section, actually, as one of the local papers carries a section in the middle of the comics that's like a miniature newspaper for kids; you've probably seen them before.

Apparently, various species of frogs are going extinct at an alarming (to whom?) rate. According to the article, "Experts believe half of all frog species are now facing extinction." The culprits? Well, there are actually a number of factors, but apparently most of them tie in to global warming in some manner. The conclusion of the piece was essentially that it is our job as caretakers of the earth to do what we can to stop this massive frog genocide.

This reminded me of a question I've often pondered in one form or another. Let me give a disclaimer that I'm all for doing what we can to avoid damaging the environment. Frogs, along with so many other animals, are really great, and I think it's good to have them around for various reasons. But the question...well, it's really two questions, and the issue of how they interrelate.

#1 - Is there something inherently wrong with driving a species of animal to extinction?
#2 - Is it our responsibility to keep such a thing from happening?

See, while the disclaimers I give above hold, it seems to me that the answer to neither of these questions is self-evident. I examine here the specific case of frogs, since it was what drove me to question these assumptions again.

Suppose frogs simply disappeared from the face of the earth. There's nothing inherently great about frogs per se. One of the most vital items that is actually pointed out in the article is that frogs eat insects. Get rid of the frogs, and the insect population gets out of control. Now, aside from the fact that frogs obviously are eating insects that share their ecosystem, and if they died due to loss of a viable ecosystem, the insects probably are not to far behind, there are various problems with this still. Similar to the assumption that losing frogs is inherently bad is the assumption that gaining insects is inherently bad. How can we really place a value on one species over another?

Of course, the net effect goes beyond that. The bigger picture is that when a piece is taken out of the puzzle, well, it's sort of like the ecosystem is akin to a game like Jenga: if you pull out a piece, it may lead to a total collapse of the system. Insects grow out of control, and those animals that subsisted mainly on a diet of frogs will start to dwindle. The impact of the loss of the frogs has a ripple effect on everything around. But is this wrong? Nature has a tendency to restore that balance eventually. While in the short-term, chaos may reign, eventually either something else will eat the insects or the food supply of the insects will run short. Probably both.

Look, the dinosaurs died out, right? Science tells us that 65 million years ago, the dominant life form on the face of the earth went away. This was after existing as an order of life for 160 million years. During those millions of years, I don't know the numbers, but it is my understanding that wave after wave of species of dinosaur came to be extinct, only to be replaced by later generations of dinosaurs. Of course, once the last of the dinosaurs were gone (either completely wiped from existence or evolving into birds as some suspect), the world kept on going fine without them. Sure, I'd miss frogs because I have lived with them, but I somehow don't miss dinosaurs, mammoths, or dodos. Dinosaurs were definitely not wiped out by humans; dodos definitely were. Mammoths? Humans hunted them, but the final cause of their extinction is unknown. Does the manner of extinction make for more or less of a tragedy, and why?

Anyway, what I'm driving at is that whether or not a species may be dying out due to our own actions or due to natural changes beyond our control, in the end, species simply die. We can't say with complete accuracy when, but it seems to me that it's fair to say from an evolutionary standpoint that eventually every species existing today will cease to exist. For many, it will take millions of years, but for some others, I imagine they will die out within the next month or so, many due to no action on the part of humans. That's just nature.

Maybe you might want to argue that if we know or at least highly suspect that the imminent extinction of a species is due to our own poor choices, we might have a responsibility to clean up our own mess. I'd buy that from an emotional standpoint, but really, it's not much more than an emotional argument, is it?

Okay, let's talk penguins one more time. In the movie Happy Feet, (no major spoilers here, but maybe minor ones) the main character is a penguin who eventually realizes that part of the reason he and his fellow penguins can't find enough food is that there are these strange alien creatures (humans) that are eating all of the fish. He eventually decides that the best thing to do is try to communicate with the aliens, and convince them that the best thing to do is share the fish with everyone. The idea is sweet and all, but there's a built-in assumption that I don't buy: that penguins (and perhaps by extension other animals) are somehow morally superior to humans. While certainly any penguin being aware of the fact that they are contending against humankind for the fish supply would not like the idea of giving up all the fish to the humans, does anyone really think that out of the options of sharing the fish with humans or eating all the fish themselves, any penguin would choose the former? We're not morally inferior, we're technologically superior. Whether or not the power of our technology requires a moral temper to it is a matter of opinion. If you don't think so, then explain why humans hunt whales? Obviously someone feels that we owe no moral debt to our harpoonally-challenged sea dwelling cousins.

This is the hard part of relative morality, but to be honest, absolute morality has problems here too, in that it's fair to assume there will always be moral dilemmas that are not clearly covered by a given moral code. There are few religions or philosophical world-views that will tell you what to do about the frogs. Even Buddhists--who no doubt would advocate avoiding any actions that would harm frogs, penguins, whales, or elephants--do not to my knowledge address the issue of what to do for a frog that dies of natural causes. Really, not even the newspaper has a definitive answer. If only we could ask the frogs, what do you suppose they would say?

One...

While I was away on my trip, I spent a lot of time sitting in a meeting room waiting for an appropriate time to put in my two cents worth. I always feel a little embarrassed to admit such things, but often when I'm wasting time in a meeting, important or not, I pretend to take notes on the meeting, but in reality am taking notes on whatever random thought happens to be crossing my mind at the moment.

After using up several note pages analyzing the behavior of the chaotic iterations of a rather simple function I had thought up a few days before when reading an old math textbook (which caused me to discover a delightfully odd connection between Pascal's Triangle, Fibonacci numbers, and the powers of two--don't worry about it, it was interesting, but essentially trivial), I turned my thoughts to ponder a fundamental issue of theology.

There's an argument for the existence of God that's often known as the "first cause" argument. Pretty much it goes like this. Everything that has a beginning has a cause. As it makes no sense for there to be a chain of causes stretching back ad infinitum, there must be at the beginning of the causal chain a cause that has no beginning and is itself uncaused. This "first cause" is God.

Now, if you're a theist, you might like this argument, and you almost certainly accept each part of it as being true, whether or not you accept the validity of the logic contained in it. Most Christians at least tend to believe that the Bible teaches this to be so. As for me, though, I hate to see someone purporting to have definitively answered the question of the existence of God when I see no such thing.

In preparing to write this entry, I came across this page which seems to feel it has dealt with the objections sufficiently. I think it misses the boat just a tad.

The first objection listed is actually meant to be a thought-provoking question: "Who created God?" Children love to ask this question, as well as atheists both trying to be difficult and genuinely questioning. The author of the page dismisses this question by merely pointing out that the argument applies to things which have a beginning, and God is not a thing with a beginning. Okay, fair enough, but now we are faced with another problem I think, at least if we're trying to use this argument to pursuade the atheist that God (and in particular our God) must exist. That problem is, how do you know that God had no beginning?

There's a difficult bit of circular reasoning that always threatens to creep into our arguments for the existence of God. Atheists will accuse a Christian of making this argument: Everyone should believe in God. Why? Because the Bible says so. Why believe the Bible? Because God wrote it. Hmmm... Sorry, but if you're going to be convincing to a non-believer, you're going to have to get out of this loop. While in my experience, some atheists love to accuse people of making this argument when they are not in fact doing so, in the case of the "first cause" argument, and the response to this objection/question in particular, the circular reasoning is contained hidden within it in a way that most atheists and some children immediately see. I ask again, how do you know that God had no beginning? Only because the Bible tells you that is the case. If you think you're going to use the "first cause" argument to show that God has no beginning, I don't think it will really work, both because the answer to the question "Who created God?" becomes unanswerable in an unbiased way, and for other reasons that I hope to include in this post below.

The second objection, as stated on the site, is that not everything that has a beginning has a cause. It's interesting to me that this goes into some specifics that I hadn't even considered before today. Generally, I'd always considered a major objection to be "How do you know that everything that has a beginning has a cause?" Apparently, the author of the page happens to think science has shown this not to be true. (As I said, it's the first I've heard of it.)

It's very strange to me the way he responds. "Randomness, if randomness there be, is confined to the microscopic." I ask, "So?" First of all, if there are exceptions to a rule, then there are exceptions. I don't think logically you can say, "There are no exceptions, because what exceptions there are happen to be very small ones." Maybe I'm wrong, but this is the way I'm reading the response, and it comes across as nonsense. Secondly, if we concede that exceptions exist on the microscopic level, then let us not forget the fact that the Big Bang theory essentially says that the universe started out as a microscopic particle! Really, this argument is hopeless.

But in a more general sense, I do wonder how it can be said that all things with a beginning have a cause. Perhaps with those microscopic particles, their action is indeed caused, but not in a manner we can easily understand. Even if we eventually come to explain their behavior, and this exception to the rule disappears, how do we really know that there is a rule at all? I've yet to see any proof for the claim that all things with a beginning have a cause; it seems to be stated as an obvious fact, but it somehow escapes me.

Getting back to my paper with random thoughts in the background of my meeting, I started to think of alternate hypotheses. What if it is possible for causes to stretch out to infinity? Could the universe have been created by something outside of this universe, which was in turn created by something outside of itself, etc.? Or what if cause is something that, outside of the confines of the space-time continuum can loop on itself? If you're going to suppose the existence of a being outside of space and time (God), that is separate from many of the rules that govern us, then why couldn't the universe somehow have created itself in a causal loop? What if a sentient being within the universe created God, and God, being outside of time, was able to create us in turn?

What if God was created? Does that imply we would need to worship this arch-deity that was/is the cause of God? Or maybe such a being doesn't care, and we are in the hands of God only, despite the fact that He was created. Or perhaps the God of the Bible, claiming to not be created, when in fact He was, is a liar. I don't think so, but in an abstract sense, one must consider the possibility, right?

Then again, if we suppose the existence of one non-created being, then why not multiple created beings? I remember I once suggested the possibility to someone that perhaps the "angels" are not created beings, but also are self-existent from eternity, despite being less powerful than God. "But God created everything that was created!" I was told. "Yes, but I'm not claiming that angels were created." Sure, this goes against mainstream theology, but when you talk abstractly about uncaused beings, isn't this a distinct possibility? And since we are told that angels interact with the universe, this makes multiple uncaused causes. (Sounds like a pantheon, and once again, in theory, why not?)

The universe is filled with philosophical questions that have no easy answer. Plugging in God as the one and only answer to each of these questions may be satisfying for the theist (I know it is for me!), but is it really conclusive on a logical level? Sometimes I fear that theistic philosophers miss that we're only proving to ourselves the one thing we already believe.