At a Florida campaign rally on July 31, President Donald Trump informed the crowd, by way of promoting voter ID laws, that “if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card. You need ID.”

Twitterverse mockery ensued, mostly to the effect that Trump has little experience with the real world in which no, normal people generally do not need photo ID to buy milk, bread, and the latest edition of The National Enquirer at one’s local supermarket.

Maybe Trump is out of touch, but many of his hecklers are too.  More disturbing than the drive for laws to address the nearly non-existent phenomenon of voter fraud is the degree to which most Americans take current ID requirements — many of which didn’t exist even a couple of decades ago — for granted.

These days, it’s difficult if not impossible to board an airplane (or get an Amtrak train or Greyhound bus ticket) without displaying a government-issued identification card.

Of course, you need a government-issued driver’s license to operate a car. Prefer to walk or ride with a friend? In many states, you’re required to produce ID documents on demand if a police officer claims “reasonable suspicion” that you’ve committed a crime (including “loitering”).

If you’d like to accept a job and an employer would like to hire you, you must present one or more government-issued identification papers for submission to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Yes, you’re required to present government identification papers to open a bank account as well.

Over the last few decades, the US has effectively re-created the Soviet Union’s old “internal passport” system. Your rights to move about, to work, to conduct your financial affairs, and in general just to live your life, are subject to the government’s demand that you prove your identity at any time and for any reason.

America survived for exactly a century without any such thing as “photo ID” —  the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia required all exhibitors and staff to carry a “photographic ticket” produced by Canadian photographer William Notman.

It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that most Americans started carrying a government driver ID with a photograph on it (you didn’t even need a passport to enter or leave the US until after World War 2),  and not until near the end of that century that ID requirements started spilling into every corner of our lives.

In fact, prior to 9/11, most “conservatives” opposed most national ID schemes on perfectly reasonable privacy grounds. Their increasing embrace of an all-encompassing surveillance state, including everything from imposing “REAL ID” standards on the states to conscripting employers as unpaid immigration police informants, is a sad indicator of how far they’ve strayed from even minimal respect for freedom and privacy.

The scandal isn’t that Trump doesn’t know ID isn’t required to buy groceries. It’s that he, and most politicians of both major parties, think ID should be required for pretty much everything. And that Americans aren’t resisting the idea.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On July 30, National Public Radio reports, “[a] coalition of attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration  … to stop a Texas-based company from publishing instructions for 3D-printed guns on its website.”

In English: Nine state attorneys general want the federal government to censor the Internet, in violation of the First Amendment, for the purpose of making the Second Amendment less effectual.

Defense Distributed, a non-profit started by libertarian activist Cody Wilson, creates and publishes files that tell 3D printers and CNC milling machines how to make guns. After a five-year battle with the US State Department, which demanded censorship of these files on the risible claim that publishing them violated weapons export restrictions, Defense Distributed prevailed: The feds said uncle, paid the organization’s legal fees, and got out of the way.

Cue bizarre claims — actor/activist Alyssa Milano, writing on behalf of the anti-gun lobby, calls these files “downloadable guns”  in a CNN op-ed — open cries for Internet censorship, and a conspiracy of state attorneys general to give those cries legal effect.

We’ve been here before.  The 1873 Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use — parent act of the “Comstock laws,” so called after the priggish Postmaster General who pressed for their passage — provided that:

“Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use … is hereby declared to be a non-mailable matter …” The law provided for five years in prison and a $5,000 fine (more than $100,000 in 2018 dollars) for violators.

A century of resistance and legal challenges — led in part by an organization Ms. Milano avidly supports, Planned Parenthood — followed. It wasn’t until 1970 that Congress removed references to contraception from federal anti-obscenity laws.

I’m not surprised that the anti-gun lobby is throwing in with other pro-censorship lobbies (such as the anti-sex-worker lobby which recently got its own Internet censorship law, FOSTA, passed in the name of combating “human trafficking”).  Enemies of freedom may be evil, but they’re not stupid. They understand that freedom can only be successfully attacked by suppressing access to ideas and information.

Fortunately, defenders of freedom understand that too. Even if today’s Comstocks manage to shut down Defense Distributed like they shut down Backpage, the genies are already out of the bottle. Sex workers are already advertising elsewhere (and more securely). Defense Distributed’s gun plans have been downloaded thousands of times and made available via numerous publicly accessible venues.

The second round of the battle against Comstockery isn’t going to last a century. In fact, Comstock’s spiritual children have already lost — nothing short of shutting down the Internet, if even that, could possibly turn the tide for them.

Now it’s time to punish those rogue attorneys general — in court, in reputation, and at the ballot box.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Nine Attorneys General, and Alyssa Milano, versus the First Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Jacksonville, North Carolina Daily News, 07/31/18
• “Nine Attorneys General, and Alyssa Milano, versus the First Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, New Bern, North Carolina Sun Journal, 07/31/18
• “Nine Attorneys General, and Alyssa Milano, versus the First Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kinston, North Carolina Free Press, 07/31/18
• “9 attorneys general, & Alyssa Milano, vs. the 1st Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, 08/01/18
• “Nine Attorneys General, and Alyssa Milano, versus the First Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Uintah Basin, Utah Standard/Vernal Express, 08/07/18
• “Nine Attorneys General, and Alyssa Milano, versus the First Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 08/10/18
• “Nine Attorney Generals versus the First Amendment,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Columbia, South Carolina Panorama (web and print and editions), 08/11/18

On July 26, Michael Drejka shot and killed Markeis McGlockton in a Clearwater, Florida parking lot. Pinellas County sheriff Bob Gualtieri declined to charge Drejka, citing the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Outrage ensued.

It was just an argument over a parking spot, some say, hinting that the whole thing is Drejka’s fault in the first place because he  has a reputation for arguing about parking spots.

Drejka’s presumptive belief that shooting McGlockton was “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” (as the “Stand Your Ground” law requires), they claim, was obviously not  “reasonable” (as the law also requires). They want Drejka charged with murder. Some want the law allegedly protecting his conduct repealed.

They’re wrong. Drejka’s belief that he was in danger of “imminent death or great bodily harm” was clearly reasonable, the law was clearly applicable, and his actions were clearly taken in self-defense. The video tells the story — not completely, of course, but with a measure of clarity.

Britany Jacobs pulls into the parking lot of Circle A Food Store. Even with several non-handicapped parking spaces available, she pulls into a handicapped-only spot. Her boyfriend (McGlockton) and their son exit the car and enter the store.

A short time later, Drejka pulls up, exits his own vehicle, steps behind Jacobs’s car to look at her plate, then begins to verbally remonstrate with her about illegally (and rudely) using a parking spot reserved for the handicapped.

McGlockton exits the store. Jacobs exits her car — whether to attack Drejka herself, or to distract him while McGlockton attacks, or for some other reason, is unclear. In any case, Drejka is still speaking to Jacobs and seemingly unaware of McGlockton’s presence when McGlockton knocks him to the ground.

At this point, Drejka is on his knees and likely dazed. He’s just been  violently assaulted, by surprise, out of the blue, by someone he  didn’t even know was there. His actual assailant and a second potential assailant are on their feet and may be preparing to do him more violence. He has neither a duty to retreat nor the ability to do so if he wants to.

It’s about five seconds from the time McGlockton attacks Drejka to the moment that Drejka shoots McGlockton. In that five seconds, Drejka has to determine whether or not he is at risk of “imminent death or great bodily harm” and act accordingly. His assessment, whether correct or not, is obviously within reason.

“Stand Your Ground” isn’t about cases in which the victim has ten minutes to make a decision while watching a known serial killer approach from afar, wearing a hockey mask, chainsaw in one hand and severed head of his last victim in the other. “Stand Your Ground” is about cases in which a victim has to make a difficult and almost certainly life-changing decision, in a very short time frame, and under extreme pressure.

Michael Drejka’s decision to defend himself wasn’t improper.

Markeis McGlockton’s decision to commit assault was the problem.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY