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Thursday, June 26, 2008
A second thought on Second Amendment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom.” — NRA President Wayne LaPierre
You know, this victory could eventually backfire politically on LaPierre and his buddies.
Over the past few years, the American voting public had demonstrated pretty clearly that they weren’t eager for a lot more gun regulation. As a result, the gun debate had turned to the advantage of the GOP.
But this changes the debate. Somehow, I also don’t think the public is eager to start rolling back a whole range of gun laws, laws they had come to accept and support as necessary for public safety. It’s possible that with this ruling, an issue that has worked to the political benefit of conservatives could instead become a problem for them.
Because the NRA has never demonstrated a finely honed sense of how far is too far….
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The Supreme Court and guns
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The National Rifle Association and other groups are celebrating the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on the Second Amendment, which confirmed for the first time the NRA’s reading that the amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. To that degree, their glee at the ruling is justified.
From a practical point of view, though, it’s hard to predict the ruling’s impact. Justice Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, made it clear that a lot of government regulations concerning firearms are constitutional. However, government crosses the line when it bans certain firearms altogether, as Washington D.C. did in banning handguns.
That does leave a lot of room for regulation, because very few gun laws proposed or passed go as far as the D.C. law did. But it also poses some interesting questions that the court will be forced to address pretty quickly.
For example, if banning handguns is unconstitutional, is it also unconstitutional to ban machine guns and other fully automatic weapons, as current law does? How would you craft a legal opinion based in the Constitution that allows one form of weapon to be banned while protecting another? The only way to do that would be to “legislate from the bench” by basing the decision on the relative risk posed by various classes of arms. But that kind of argument has no basis in the Constitution.
It was also ironic to see the court’s more liberal minority complain about the majority’s “newly discovered right” in a document more than 200 years old (even Scalia acknowledges they did so). “Newly discovered rights” is a term usually flung at the court by conservatives. The minority also argued that such decisions should be left to legislatures and other elective bodies and not be decided by courts.
In other words, the Scalia majority has revealed itself as a bunch of activist unelected judges eager to impose their own beliefs on the rest of us. At least I think that’s how the rhetoric goes … conservatives, did I get that lingo right?
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Why not nationalize oil?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve gotten several emails from readers wondering at my statement that any “new oil” pumped from our continental shelf or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be sold to Americans — or to foreigners — at the world price for oil. There would be no “hometown discount” to Americans for oil produced from American soil. Today, for example, we pay the same amount for a barrel of crude from the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana as we do for a barrel of similar quality from the Persian Gulf.
The question some readers have is why. Here’s the answer:
Under our current system, we Americans don’t own the oil pumped out of our territory. It’s owned by the private companies — Exxon, Chevron, etc. — who find it, drill it and pump it. And once they get it out of the ground, they sell it to the highest bidder. That’s how the industry works.
To get a “hometown discount,” we would have to nationalize our oil industry as countries such as Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia have done. Then any oil pumped out of the ground would belong to the government, and the government could sell it to American consumers and businesses at less than the world market price. That’s how consumers in Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia can pay much less than the world rate for gasoline and oil.
Sounds great, right? No, not really. If we’re selling American oil to Americans at $60 a barrel, while the world price is $140 a barrel, some bad things happen. We’d all want to avoid that $140 oil and buy a lot of that $60 oil, putting great pressure on our domestic reserves and draining them much more quickly. It would be short-term gain and long-term pain, and we’ve had too much of that already.
We’d also be creating a false foundation for the economy. In effect, we’d be subsidizing petroleum use; the artificially low price would encourage more consumption at a time when conservation is necessary. In economic terms, it would send a false price signal. You simply can’t run the world’s biggest economy on heavily subsidized energy. Not for long, anyway.
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Thought for the day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It is perpetually fascinating — no, strike that — it is way too boring to see so many commenters come to this blog and profess to be outraged and offended by the liberal viewpoints they find here.
Folks, this is an opinion blog by an opinion writer who happens to be (ohmigod!) liberal. At least by Georgia standards, anyway — I have friends in other parts of the country who snicker when told I’m considered liberal.
Anyway, coming here and acting offended by the liberalism expressed here is like going to McDonald’s and acting offended to find hamburgers. You’re at McDonalds — that’s what they serve there. Get over it.
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