Monthly Archives: May 2015

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There’s No Such Thing as an Illegal Knife

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“Nationwide, knife laws vary in neighboring towns, counties, cities and states,” writes Jesse J. Holland for the Associated Press. “This mishmash makes it difficult for citizens to comply.”

The AP’s interest in knife laws stems from the recent death, in police custody in Baltimore, of Freddie Gray. Police justified Gray’s arrest by claiming he was carrying an “illegal”  switchblade knife. It turned out that the knife was a perfectly “legal” blade.

That aside, Holland is wrong in any case. Knife laws don’t vary from town to town, county to county, state to state. There’s one federal knife law. It applies to all levels of government in the United States, and unlike most laws these days it is simply written and impossible to misunderstand:

“[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

You may recognize that as the operant clause of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. And you should recall that the US Constitution proclaims itself the “supreme law of the land,” superseding all others which conflict with it in any way. As Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Madison v. Marbury, “an act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void.”

Freddie Gray’s knife was not illegal, because in valid US law there is no such thing as an illegal knife (or gun). State, county and local ordinances which infringe on the right to own or carry any weapon are plainly unconstitutional and therefore void. They are also indescribably stupid and evil.

Stupid, because laws are only effective  if they are obeyed. Since criminals don’t obey laws, the sole effect of laws prohibiting possession of weapons is to disarm victims.

Evil, because in the priority of rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — life comes first. You can’t be free, nor can you seek happiness, if you’re dead.

Indisputably corollary to the right to life is the right to defend that life against any and all threats. Lacking the anatomical defenses found in other animals (claws, poison glands, etc.), we must instead rely on wit and invention. To forbid us possession of the tools of self-defense is to preemptively deny us the exercise of our primary right.

There’s no such thing as an illegal knife. There’s no such thing as an illegal gun. That claim, made explicit in the 2nd Amendment, is implicit in the laws of nature.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In 2016, Let’s Have Real Presidential Debates

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Every four years, the Commission on Presidential Debates puts on a series of campaign commercials disguised as presidential and vice-presidential debates.

The CPD is, in theory, a non-profit organization “established in 1987 to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners.”

But the CPD is really just a scam the Republican and Democratic Parties use to funnel illegally large “in kind” campaign donations, in the form of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of free media exposure, exclusively to their own candidates.

A real non-partisan, non-profit debate organization would use objective criteria for deciding which candidates may participate in debates. The CPD continuously refines its criteria with an eye toward ensuring  that no third party or independent candidates qualify for a microphone at a CPD “debate.”

Billionaire independent/Reform Party candidate Ross Perot managed to jump through their hoops in 1992, afterward polling 19% in the general election. CPD excluded him in 1996, cutting his vote percentage down to 8%. Since then, CPD has successfully excluded additional candidates from their Democrat/Republican campaign infomercials.

Libertarians aren’t fans of laws limiting the people’s ability to give their money — as much of it as they want — to the candidates they support. But if there are going to be such rules, they should apply across the board.

That’s why the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, both parties’ 2012 presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and 2012 Justice Party presidential nominee Rocky Anderson are suing CPD. The Our America Initiative, headed up by 2012 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson, is coordinating the legal challenge.

The relief the plaintiffs seek is simple: That if the CPD is going to pretend to be a non-profit, non-partisan debate organization, it be required to start acting like one. Instead of giving the Republicans and Democrats a free series of campaign infomercials, CPD  must put on real debates,  open to all candidates who are legally qualified for the office they seek and whose names appear on enough state ballots for them to hypothetically win the election.

Would victory in this suit make a real difference for third party and independent candidates? Absolutely. Exposure in the debates might or might not put Libertarians or Greens over the top, but it would at least expose the American public to the real panoply of choices instead of to one pre-selected pair.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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About That Other “Special Relationship”

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Coat of Arms of Saudi Arabia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

When it comes to entangling alliances, the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel tends to take center stage. Interposing one’s self between a herd of American politicians and an opportunity to appease Benjamin Netanyahu is a good way to get trampled to death.

Lately, though, US relations with Saudi Arabia seem to be hogging the spotlight, and not in a good way.

US relations with the Saudis have always seemed pretty good, apart from a brief low point in 1973-74, when the Kingdom participated in an oil embargo, pressuring the US to in turn pressure Israel on the matter of Syria’s Golan Heights.

It worked. Relations immediately improved, and ever since there’s been a steady traffic of Saudi oil to the US, US arms to Saudi Arabia, and lots of money flowing back and forth, too. In 1991, I was among the hundreds of thousands of US troops sent to defend Saudi Arabia’s oil fields and crush the threat of Saddam’s Iraq (liberating Kuwait was the excuse, not the reason, for Desert Storm).

Since then, though, things seem to have gone downhill behind the scenes.

The oil, arms and money still flow, but 28 still-classified pages of the US Senate’s report on 9/11 reportedly implicate the Kingdom in that attack’s funding. Former US Senator Bob Graham, lead author of the report, has launched an effort to make those pages public.

Now, famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in the London Review of Books, credibly claims that the Obama administration’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden  is a fairy tale: That the Kingdom paid off Pakistan’s government to protect bin Laden, keeping him under “house arrest” in Abbotabad and that, contra the whole Zero Dark Thirty narrative in which adept US intelligence analysts tracked him down, a rogue Pakistani official dropped the dime on him for the multi-million-dollar reward.

Obviously, openly admitting either of the above as fact would entail a very public reconsideration of the “special relationship” between the US and Saudi Arabia.

Just as obviously, three major concerns — oil, Israel and the Kingdom’s putative status as a regional counterweight to Iran — militate in America’s corridors of power against that kind of disclosure and reconsideration.

But this is the kind of agonizing reappraisal entangling alliances always come down to sooner or later. If we’ve been clasping a viper to our bosom, better sooner.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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