“Will you accept the jury’s outcome,” ABC’s  David Muir asked US president Joe Biden concerning his son Hunter’s trial on federal gun charges, “their verdict, no matter what it is?”

Biden: “Yes.”

Muir: “And have your ruled out a pardon for your son?”

Biden: “Yes.”

The younger Biden faces up to 25 years in prison for allegedly making false statements (to the effect that he wasn’t a drug user)  while filling out a form to purchase a gun, and possessing the gun while being a drug user.

Biden SHOULD pardon his son — not out of fatherly love, but because the charges are both inherently evil and clearly and unambiguously unconstitutional.

Last things first:

The US Constitution declares itself “the supreme law of the land,” and according to its Second Amendment, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” See that period at the end there? There are no added exceptions for drug users, or for anyone else. And as Chief Justice John Marshall pointed out in Marbury v. Madison, “an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.”

As a matter of law, prosecutors should never have brought these particular charges against Hunter Biden. As a matter of law, the judge in the trial should have dismissed them the instant they were brought. And as a matter of practical deterrence, the judge should have sanctioned the prosecutors, up to and including seeking their disbarment, for bringing them. Hunter Biden may well be guilty of real crimes, but these aren’t real crimes whether the charges accurately describe his actions or not.

On the moral side:

Whether Hunter Biden used drugs and whether Hunter Biden owned a gun were never any of the US government’s business.

The right to smoke, snort, inject, or otherwise ingest any substance one pleases is a natural human right that exists independently of, and supersedes, government edict.

The right to acquire and possess arms — of any kind — is likewise a natural human right that exists independently of, and supersedes, government edict.

All people had those rights before the Constitution was ratified, and all people will still have those rights after the Constitution and the government claiming that Constitution as the basis for its power, have disappeared.

Those rights belong to you. They belong to me. They belong to Hunter Biden. And they belong to the hundreds of thousands of Americans currently incarcerated for exercising those rights.

If you commit a real crime while under the influence of drugs, you’re responsible for that crime.

If you commit a real crime using a firearm, you’re responsible for that crime.

But neither using drugs, nor possessing a firearm, the two in combination, are real crimes. They’re fake “crimes” manufactured by politicians. Ditto the “crime” of lying to those politicians by way of exercising your rights without their permission.

Biden should break out his pardon pen for his son — and for all the other prisoners of the US governments wars on drugs and guns.

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 May 26, and into the early hours of May 27, in a foreshadowing of things to come, Libertarian National Convention delegates took seven rounds of voting to nominate Chase Oliver (who beat “None of the Above” after eliminating all other opponents) for president and two ballots to nominate Mike ter Maat for vice-president.

Three days later, Libertarian National Committee secretary Caryn Ann Harlos informed the committee of “a policy issue that is causing great upset.”

That issue: “Oliver has said he believes that giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to … minors is healthcare and simply up to parents and doctors. Others argue, and I agree, that it is child abuse …”

To her credit, Ms. Harlos makes clear that she doesn’t favor rescinding Mr. Chase’s nomination (which the committee can do with a 3/4 vote) over the matter.

That “policy issue” has, however, become a talking point for the Libertarian Party’s sore losers. At least one state party — Montana —  has already announced that it doesn’t intend to fulfill its obligation to place Mr. Oliver and Mr. ter Maat on its state ballot line.

I apologize for re-hashing inside third party baseball, and perhaps burying the lede. The matter is bigger than the Libertarian Party, but it’s just too good an example of the phenomenon I want to explore to pass up.

That phenomenon is not “puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors,” but rather the use of moral panic to move opinion.

You might be surprised to learn that of the 70 million minors living in the US, fewer than 20,000 received prescriptions for puberty blockers or hormone therapy in the five-year period covering 2017-2021.

That’s about three one-hundredths of one percent.

It’s not quite as rare as getting struck by lightning or death by drowning, but it’s in the same ballpark.

Absent demagoguery for the express purpose of creating moral panic, that’s not much of a “policy issue.”

But look where demagoguery for the express purpose of creating moral panic has brought us:

Even among self-described libertarians, Libertarian Party members, and LP officials, we find factions up in arms over the “issue” of parents/guardians (with the assistance of doctors), rather than politicians, making healthcare decisions for minor children.

It’s not just L/libertarians, of course. The entire modern political discourse seems pretty much driven by moral panic.

Drugs. Guns. Immigration. Gambling. Sex work.  Heck, even a non-existent “war on Christmas.” The list of handles politicians use to grab Americans and pull them from the common sense column to the  “SOMEONE might be doing SOMETHING I don’t LIKE — there should be a law!” column never ends.

When you’re handed a moral panic disguised as a “policy issue,” try thinking it through instead of hiding under your bed.

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

As you’ve no doubt heard, a New York jury closed out the merry month of May by convicting former US president Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Media — mainstream, alternative, and social — are awash with analyses of how Trump’s criminal conviction will affect votes this November.

Hunter Biden, son of US incumbent president Joe Biden, went to trial on completely unconstitutional gun charges (there is no exception to the Second Amendment that allows the government to deprive drug users of their gun rights) at the beginning of June, so we’ll soon see a similar flood of “how does this affect the election?” punditry.

My prediction in both cases: Not noticeably.

Donald Trump and Hunter Biden are quite a bit alike in two ways.

Firstly, they’re crooked as San Francisco’s Lombard Street. They’re so crooked, they have to screw their pants on in the morning. They’re bent as pretzels.

Secondly, everyone — everyone who cares, anyway — has known that fact about both of them for a long, long time. No one with an IQ over 40 would leave a wallet, or a daughter, alone in a room with either of them (or with Hunter’s dad).

Both similarities bring me back to the well I always drink from: William James’s dictum that “a difference which makes no difference is not difference at all.”

Voters who’ve supported Donald Trump for president twice are almost certain to support him a third time. They knew he was a snake when they picked him up. One more bit of snakiness — especially one that’s old news, was really just a misdemeanor the statute of limitations had expired on, and  was tortured back into existence and into felony status by trying to tie it to unspecified “underlying crimes” — won’t change their minds.

Voters who’ve supported Joe Biden for president once are almost certain to support him again. They knew he was a snake when they picked him up. One more bit of snakiness — especially one that’s patently unconstitutional, indirect, and unrelated to corruption involving the father/son relationship — won’t change their minds.

Even those who MIGHT change their minds aren’t likely to switch “major party” sides. Former Biden voters won’t pick Trump. Former Trump voters won’t pick Biden. If they can’t bring themselves to support their previous pick, They’ll cast their votes for independent or third party candidates.

We can all predict with 99.9% certainty that, no matter how — or even if — we vote in November, either Joe Biden or Donald Trump will get (re-)inaugurated next January.

That’s a fine reason to not even bother voting.

It’s also a fine reason to make use of your vote to “send a message” that you’re unhappy with the “major party” choices.

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