Gun Intimidation Forces Wyoming Sales Tax Suspension

This is not how guns and democracy are supposed to go together: yahoos at Wyoming gun shows have caused the Wyoming Department of Revenue to suspend tax collections at gun shows:

Dan Noble, director of the department's excise tax division, said Friday that an incident at a gun show triggered the decision.

He added, however, that resistance from gun show sponsors and participants has been a recurring problem statewide.

"I have 10 field reps throughout the state, and every one of them has experienced some animosity," he said. "Folks are nervous anyway because there are guns there. I don't want to put my people at risk" [Joan Barron, "State Suspends Tax at Gun Shows," Casper Star-Tribune, 2010.07.04].

I stand corrected: I guess guns can check the government. Unfortunately, this check isn't on some previously untrammeled tyranny, but a perfectly lawful tax, the very sort of sales tax that some of my conservative friends think is the fairest tax of all.

The gun goonies cry that taxing their gun show sales infringes on their Second Amendment rights. If that's the case, then taxing my purchases of paper, pens, computers, and Internet service infringes on my First Amendment rights. Of course, even if I thought that argument might fly, I wouldn't use threats of gun violence to get my way; I'd just write letters to Secretary Kinsman and Senator Olson.

Democracy at the point of a gun isn't democracy. Wyoming gun nuts, man up, pay your taxes. And try settling your political differences without relying on the threat of force.

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Update 12:06 CDT: conceivably related: reported assaults and threats against U.S. Census workers so far this year are more than double the number of such incidents in 2000.

Tea Party Rejects Judicial Activism, Expansion of Federal Power in Gun Ruling

...right? Right?!?

The Tea Party seems awfully quiet lately. BP turns the Gulf of Mexico in an oil holding pond, and the Tea Party has nothing to offer as citizens' anger rises at government for not doing enough.

Maybe the Tea Party can get back in the headlines by attacking the judicial activism and federalization of power in yesterday's McDonald v. City of Chicago gun rights ruling. Five men in Washington stripped power from your local and state governments and gave more power to the federal judiciary. Those five conservatives also engaged in the very sort of judicial activism that Republicans allegedly loathe as they look for a reason to quash Elana Kagan's nomination. Justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy have grafted a new individual right, self-defense against common crime, onto a Second Amendment predicated entirely on the principle of common defense against invaders and possibly an illegitimate government. (McDonald v. Chicago can't be about the "well-regulated Militia"—how can a ruling that only extends pistol rights as far as your front door help you play Red Dawn*?)

If I understand the Tea Party—if there is any Tea Party philosophy to understand—McDonald v. Chicago represents everything these angry conservatives hate: a power-hungry federal government violating the Founders' intent to expand its dominance over our duly elected local officials. But the Tea Party won't go there, because they are not a party of principle. They aren't even a party. They're just a writhing mass of inchoate rage with no coherent plan for practical governance.

But maybe deep down the Tea Partiers really do want anarchy. Ugh.
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*Oh my: there's a remake coming. Get you pistols ready for Chinese paratroopers!

Gun Rights Predicated on Regulation

Among other juicy topics, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a ruling on gun rights today. That got me wondering: does the Second Amendment contradict itself?

I doubt that: the Founding Fathers were smart enough not to write illogical statements into the Constitution (well, except for that three-fifths clause). The contradiction I feel coming lies more in the irrational reasoning of folks like the Second Amendment Sisters, who think you ought to be able to pack heat anywhere, anytime, or Governor Rounds and far too many of our state legislators, who think you should be able to make and use guns and ammo in South Dakota without any federal regulation.

Did someone say regulation? Let's review the Second 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.

First phrase: well regulated Militia. The Founding Fathers framed the proper keeping and bearing of Arms in the context of regulation. The Constitution gives Congress the power to call up, organizing, arm, and discipline that militia. Our right to bear Arms appears to exist, in the Founding Fathers' minds, under the assumption that Congress gets to regulate those Arms.

Compare the phrasing of the Second Amendment with its neighbors. No other Amendment feels the need to explain itself. The First Amendment does not say why we need freedom of religion and speech ("A well exercised and expressed conscience, being necessary to the functioning of a free Democracy and personal integrity..."); it goes right to business, saying "Congress shall make no law...." Same with the other amendments: Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, et al. don't explain why the government can't quarter soldiers in peacetime or search without a warrant or impose excessive bail. The later amendments don't go there, either: the Constitution doesn't tell use why we can't have slaves or why we should have an income tax or why we should not or should have a stiff drink.

The Second Amendment is an anomaly, specifying the context motivating its protection. And that context is not individual self-defense or pheasant hunting or a God-given right to blast old buckets with your AK-47 (that happens here at Lake Herman). The Second Amendment explicitly assumes our guns exist in a framework of regulation to serve the State. If you want to posit other gun rights and oppose gun regulation, you can't rely on the Second Amendment; you have to hope for judicial activism.

Obama Loosens Gun Laws Tomorrow

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act comes in with a bang tomorrow. But the bang won't be layoffs at Premier or Citi. An eager reader points out the bang comes in an odd amendment, Section 512 of P.L. 111-24, which allows firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges.

So even if Premier takes you to the cleaners with new annual fees and more 79.9% interest rates, you can still run to the wilderness, pin your credit cards to a tree, and do some target practice. Backpack with your Baretta! Camp with your Colt! Hike with heat!

And be sure to thank President Barack Obama for his continued defense of the Second Amendment.

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Update 2010.02.24: Understanding Government further refutes the NRA propaganda that President Obama is anti-gun.

Hurst: Guns Are Intimidation, Not Political Speech

Remember the lockdown-freakout in Tea last week? Remember the honyockers with guns outside Presidential speeches this summer? The Dakota Day's Sam Hurst puts two and two together:

So my first anxiety is not just that goofballs are parading around in public with their guns. It is their proximity to impassioned political debate and their proximity to a President who they ideologically and racially hate, that makes nightmares of past assassinations flash through my brain. These are not armed men at a gun show, or a shooting range, or even the parking lot of Cabela's. These men are at political rallies. If an armed man appears in the neighborhood of Central High School the school goes into lock down, and the SWAT Team is called in. But if the same man appears at a political rally, outside a presidential appearance, where ideological tensions are already high, he is simply expressing his Second Amendment rights [Sam Hurst, "August Gun Strutting Opens a Terrifying New Constitutional Frontier," The Dakota Day, 2009.09.30].

Hurst goes on to make an even more important point about guns and the Constitution. We can argue about whether we have a right to our guns to hunt, to pick off criminals, or to play Chuck Norris in Invasion U.S.A. But it's downright scary to think that anyone has a right to carry weapons as an act of political intimidation. If you need a gun to make your point, you must not have much of a point.

Update 08:33 CDT: I think Hurst is sensing the same frightening vibe that Thomas Friedman senses. The NYT columnist compares the increasing hateful disunity in America to the "poisonous political environment" he saw in Israel in 1995 right before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Dr. Newquist hears something similar in John L. Perry's call for an American coup d'etat. Wake up, America. We're better than this.

Obama Supreme Court Pick Coming for Your Nunchuks

Everybody will be kung-fu fighting over this one: Judge Sonia Sotomayor wants to take away your nunchuks. As a justice on the Second Circuit federal court of appeals, President Obama's choice to fill Justice Souter's seat ruled with the majority this year in Maloney v. Cuomo that the Second Amendment doesn't stop states from banning nunchuks. Expect the NRA to go postal over this one... and to make themselves sound as silly as the rest of the sputtering conservative movement.

Of course, Judge Sotomayor is o.k. with baseball bats. In 1995, the robed South Bronx native saved baseball by ending the last Major League Baseball strike.

Seriously, for those of you interested in learning more about Judge Sotomayor's track record, SCOTUSBlog offers a great summary of the judge's appellate opinions in civil cases.