Crime and Punishment

Guess the Nationality!

by

Is everyone up to speed on writer Mark Steyn’s troubles up in Canada? If not, you can get a pretty good take on the basics by reading this.

Lots of pundits have weighed in on the fracas, most of whom have very little to say which is interesting or insightful. But I keep reading them because they can sometimes be unwittingly and unintentionally hilarious.

Case in point is this overly long analysis of some of the legal issues involved by a (GASP!) real live lawyer. I found the bulk of it to be just like the same-old same-old that has passed before, until I got almost to the end and found….

“Sometimes, I think a statement or a publication can go too far, and in that case, the right to be free of vilification will outweigh the right to freedom of speech.”

I have little doubt that the majority of you who hail from the United States and who just read the line above greeted it with a snort of derision, or at least a roll of the eyes to go with that moue of disgust that rose unbidden to twist your expression. I also have no doubt that most of you who were nurtured in foreign climes are wondering what we could possibly see as wrong.

Americans live in a country that contains every culture, tribe, nationality, race, creed, and philosophy that exists. The only way for anyone to have a “…right to be free of vilification…” is if the culture is completely homogeneous. If there is an absolute code of behavior, values, and mores that everyone is obliged to follow, then it might be possible. But in a place where two or more cultures rub up against each other?

That is why we are snorting and making moues at our keyboards.

Follow the link above to the source of the quote and you will see that the author is a native of Australia who is currently studying in England. You would think that she would have realized by now, considering how the decisions that shaped her life has caused her to hop continents and experience other climes and cultures, that the statement that a “…right to be free of vilification will outweigh the right to freedom of speech…” is risible. But I also noticed that she started her blogging career writing for a Libertarian blog, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that the very idea of someone being banned from saying insulting things about others is hardly in line with Libertarian philosophy.

I mean, where exactly does the concept of “liberty” come into play in such a case, anyway?

The point to all this (and there is a point for all of you who came down this far in the post), is that this is yet another illustration as to why Americans are more sophisticated than the rest of the world is willing to admit. The government in Canada is so worried about the self esteem of a select few that they have decided to force people to shut up, even though the speech in question is harmless and factual. A law student who has spanned a fair amount of the Earth’s surface seems to think that this is a good idea, only grudgingly ceding that maybe they are going just a touch too far in the Great White North.

But down here in The Land of the Free we realize that the path to advancement is to complain, grumble, and gripe about everything! We know, better than any other people in history, that the only way to see anything clearly is to hold it up to fierce and unrelenting scrutiny. Both truth and falsehood will become apparent in short order, and we trust people to make the right decision as long as the heavy hand of government doesn’t filter the debate.

How can you be more sophisticated than that?

(Hat tip to Mark Steyn.)

UPDATE
It has been pointed out that I made a mistake. The blog I linked to above is a team effort, and the person who wrote the post I commented on is not the Libertarian at the site. Their take on the subject is here.

Click on that last link and scroll down to the bottom to see that they linked to my own post. That was very kind of them, but it seems they were a might peeved over the identity confusion.

“A bunch of very smart economists who should know better have managed to confuse Legal Eagle with me. Mark Steyn didn’t make the same mistake, linking to both posts and noting the difference. Which if nothing else suggests he’s a very careful writer.”

Except that I’m hardly an economist. In fact, few of the writers here are. My own background, for example, is in law enforcement and the civilian use of armed self defense. Whether or not I’m smart enough to have known better I’ll leave to my readers to decide.

I suppose this illustrates the fact that it is easy to make a mistake concerning the identity of someone on a group blog, particularly when that blog doesn’t place signatures on the posts. (Just glance at the line under the title of this post to see what I mean.) Unless you have actually been reading the site for awhile, it would be easy to become confused as to who authored what.

Ohio is a Major Front of the Global War on Terror???

by

Apparently so.

The link above will take you to a report about an Ohio native that conspired to use “Weapons of Mass Destruction against tourists in Germany”. Let us take a look at the implications.

Places like Columbus, Ohio were what the sophisticates had in mind when they coined the phrase “flyover country”. Natives here call Ohio’s capitol city “Cowtown”, and it isn’t always meant with wry affection. I personally like to put a positive spin on things and claim that it is the world’s largest small town.

Yet we have a native son who was not only working to assemble something which would kill indiscriminately but he planned on setting it off in another country, located on another continent.

Aiding him in this endeavor were two immigrants who had plans of their own. The guy born in Kashmir wanted to help al Qaeda destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, while the other from Somalia was interested in setting off bombs in an Ohio shopping mall during the Christmas season. Both of the immigrants had been recruited by al Qaeda while overseas, and one of them had even received some military-style training at a secret base in Ethiopia.

So a guy from Somalia trains as a terrorist in Ethiopia before hooking up with a guy from Kashmir and a local in Columbus, Ohio. They plan on causing mass death in Germany, in Columbus, and committing an act of sabotage by destroying one of America’s most iconic landmarks located in New York.

Global War on Terror, indeed.

The only reason why none of these terrible plans came to fruition is because of Bush’s supposedly illegal wiretapping project. FBI agents approached the erstwhile bridge saboteur and managed to turn him. With a double agent in place, the evidence gathered was sufficient to convict them all.

If international terrorist groups like al Qaeda have plots hatching in the very heart of America’s heartland, what must it be like in those places where things are happening? How many terrorist cells are scheming and gathering materials for their dark work this very minute in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or Washington, DC?

Just a thought to speed you on your way on this fine summer day.

(Hat tip to Glenn, Gateway Pundit, and I cross posted this essay at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Live by the Study, Die by the Study

by

According to a NY Times story:

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented. The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

I can only say one thing: ROFLe3!

Read more

Pitiful Aim

by

Most of the students in my charity self defense course eventually get around to asking my advice concerning the most effective home defense weapon. I always recommend a shotgun without reservation.

There is a lot to be said for the humble scattergun. It is probably the most devastating close combat weapon there is, unless you have access to a submachine gun or a flamethrower. (And both of those damage your house too much.) Load it up with the right type of ammo and it will cure what ails you.

They are also incredibly intimidating, which has caused more than a few violent criminals over the years to give up without a struggle when they found themselves on the business end of a 12 gauge. They are so scary, in fact, that the Germans accused the United States of war crimes when our troops started to use shotguns in World War I. The guys who embraced poison gas as a weapon thought that a Doughboy using a pump action scattergun in the trenches was beyond the pale!

For more than a century, shotguns have also been the main heavy arm for street cops. They are extremely effective close up, but have less penetration and range than a rifle. Just the thing if you are concerned about innocent civilians, yet still have to take down a nest of criminals who have set up shop in a densely crowded neighborhood.

As a last note, shotguns are easy to learn how to use, and to use well. This doesn’t mean that no training at all is necessary, just that it doesn’t take nearly as much time to turn a novice into a safe and effective defensive shotgunner as it does to teach the basics of using a rifle in an urban setting.

All of that was going through my mind when I read this article by Bob Owens. It seems that the Chicago Police Department, reeling from a week of increased criminal shootings on the streets, is planning on buying 13,000 assault rifles and issue them to their patrol officers.

Whoa, Nelly! Hold the phone! Are they going to invest in SWAT training for every single one of their patrol officers? Because that is what it would take to minimize the risk to innocent civilians that using weapons with such high penetration in a city would bring.

No, of course Chicago wouldn’t invest in such training! They would never have the budget for something like that. Click the link to the Owens article and read how it is problematic for them to be able to find the money to buy the rifles, let alone the ammo needed for training and the infrastructure to keep the weapons in repair.

Have I mentioned that shotguns are only about 20% of the cost of an assault rifle? They are even cheaper than most handguns! So why advocate a poorly reasoned plan to buy assault rifles when a cheaper, easier, safer, and extremely effective alternative is available?

Because it is all an exercise in public relations. The city has been subjected to some bad press because of their lack of ability to control criminal violence, so this is an attempt to be seen as taking positive and highly visible action. Assault rifles are sexy and have a bad boy cachet, while shotguns are dull and pedestrian and lack charisma. The fact that it wastes money and actually puts innocent civilians at greater risk isn’t important, they have to look good on the evening news!

You might think that this is an isolated event. Chicago has a few bad weekends, some ne’er-do-wells shoot each other up in gang territory, and the city tries to deflect criticism by buying some unnecessary toys for their boys. But I would like to bring this news article to your attention, which reports that several other police agencies are planning on equipping their patrol officers with semi-auto versions of military weapons.

I suppose this post here at The Chicago Boyz will destroy any chance I have of employment as a firearms instructor for a major police agency. They’d never waste money on someone who says it is better to go with what works instead of what looks good on camera.

(Hat tip to Glenn for the heads up on the Bob Owens article.)