Internet Scofflaw

There are three things that are important to understand about the debt ceiling fight and the risk of default (in increasing order of importance):

1. The Biden administration keeps saying that the US has never defaulted on its debt. That’s flatly untrue. The US has defaulted several times, most recently during the Carter administration. This is not to say that we should default, but facts matter.
2. If the government continues to spend beyond its means, it will eventually pile up enough debt that it cannot service it. At that point it will either default or monetize the debt (which amounts to the same thing). Thus, working to rein in government spending is working to prevent default, not cause it.
3. The federal government has more than enough current revenue to continue to service its debt even if its authority to issue new debt is exhausted. Reaching the debt ceiling does not cause a default. It would however mean that there’s not enough money for some other things.
   
   Thus, there will be no default unless Joe Biden chooses to spend current revenue on things other than servicing the debt. When Biden talks about the risk of default, that is an outcome that he alone controls. It is a threat.
   
   The 14th Amendment ought to prohibit Biden from carrying out the threat, but it’s never been tested in court. In 2011, Pat Toomey submitted a bill called the Full Faith and Credit Act that would have clarified this, thus ensuring that no default could take place, but it did not receive a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

This is all essential to know to understand where the risk of default is coming from.

There is a pattern in recent American history:

1. A big problem exists.
2. The conventional wisdom says it’s hopeless; all we can do is live with it.
3. Republicans propose a plan to fix the problem.
4. Democrats mock the plan. “It won’t work. Nothing will.”
5. Republicans enact the plan. It works.
6. Democrats and the media say that the improvement — which they previously said was impossible — was actually inevitable, and had nothing to do the Republican plan.

This has happened over and over during my lifetime: Inflation. The Cold War. Crime. Energy.

We defeated inflation by controlling the growth of the money supply. We won the Cold War using a variety of tactics, most prominently a military buildup that the Soviets could not match. We defeated crime using broken windows policing and by analyzing data. We became energy independent by developing domestic energy sources.

And in every case, Democrats and the media deny that our success had anything to do with what we did to bring about that success.

Now we’re seeing the bitter epilogue, as all those crises that we defeated in the past are returning. Inflation is back. China and even Russia are aggressive and we are in retreat. Crime is surging. And our shining moment of energy independence is over.

It’s not too late. Most of these trends can be reversed by returning to sound, proven policy. It will probably take a decade to repair the damage we have done to our police, and China will be a struggle of at least a generation. But we know how to do these things now.

During the previous administration, the United States achieved energy independence, a goal that many had thought unachievable. But Democrats like Joe Biden saw that as a bad thing. When he came into office, he deliberately kneecapped the domestic energy industry.

Now oil and gas prices are soaring and Biden’s poll numbers are plummeting. First he went to OPEC to ask them to help, but naturally they refused. As a last resort, he went to domestic energy producers — the same people he proclaimed to be the enemy — to beg for help.

It would be his just desserts if they told him to get lost, but the truth is, his appeal is irrelevant. Domestic producers are not a cartel like OPEC that can just decide to produce more. They are an industry that responds to economics, and Biden deliberately created a situation in which it is unprofitable for them to produce more. They aren’t going to agree to lose money just to help Biden.

If Biden wants more domestic production, he has to undo what he has done:

By pursuing policies that restrict supply and make it harder to produce oil and natural gas here in America, Americans will have to pay more for their energy,” said Anne Bradbury, chief executive officer at the American Exploration and Production Council, which lobbies for independent oil-and-gas producers.

(Via The Daily Signal.)

UPDATE (October 2021): In the months since I wrote this, the ebb and flow of covid numbers at different places and times have made it clear that something more than just vaccination rates are driving the covid death numbers. So while the Biden campaign’s deliberate suppression of the vaccine during the presidential campaign remains reprehensible and inexcusable, it’s possible those 100 thousand people would have died anyway.

Joe Biden is getting grief for claiming credit for the covid vaccines that were the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s covid response. That grief is well deserved, but it’s actually far worse than that. Biden’s campaign actively and deliberately inhibited the vaccines’ rollout. Without their actions, the vaccines would probably have been rolled out at least a month earlier, which would have saved over 100 thousand lives.

I have the receipts:

• On September 2, 2020, the Trump administration notified public health officials that they should prepare for vaccine distribution as early as late October.
• This panicked Democrats, who based their entire campaign on Trump’s ineffective response to covid. They feared that a big success in Operation Warp Speed would vindicate his response and give him the boost he needed to win re-election. (And, given how the election turned out, it’s nearly certain that it would have.)
• On September 5 (three days later), Kamala Harris tells the world they should not trust Trump’s vaccine. She makes it explicitly political, saying “he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days, and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend that he has been a leader.” The campaign’s surrogates and the press (but I repeat myself) quickly follow suit. The threat is clear: put this vaccine out before the election, and we will destroy it.
• On September 8 (three days after that), vaccine makers issue a pledge to put science first and to release only a safe vaccine. (Basically, pledging to do just what they’re already doing.) This fails to settle the furor, because the matter isn’t actually about safety; it’s about there being no announcement before election day.
• On September 25, several “leading researchers and bioethicists” send an open letter to Pfizer, urging them to delay their vaccine. If you look up the signers, they are all Democrat donors. (Full disclosure: I only bothered to look up the first ten names.)
• On October 9 the FDA alters its standard for how many positive cases the vaccine’s testers must see before they open their results. “This guidance ensures that no COVID-19 vaccine is likely to be approved before the US presidential election.” (The linked article doesn’t give much detail on the new standard, but we’ll come to that.)
  
  ASIDE: A lot of Republicans have given the FDA a lot of grief over this decision, but I don’t actually think it was wrong, given the Democratic extortion. If we want to get to herd immunity, it is essential that Americans trust the vaccine enough to get it. Far too many people distrust vaccines already, and we cannot afford to lose the rest of the left half of the country. That is exactly what the Biden campaign and its surrogates were not-very-subtly threatening to bring about.
• On November 9 (less than a week after election day), Pfizer announces its results, and they are astonishingly good. Also in the press release, Pfizer mentioned the FDA’s moving targets. The issue was the number of positive covid cases they needed to see in testing before they could break the seal on their results and see what proportion of the positive cases were from the study’s placebo arm. (Almost all of them, it turned out.) More positive cases means less likelihood that good results were just random chance.
• Originally the number was 32. But after “discussion with the FDA” the vaccine companies “elected” to increase the number from 32 to 62, roughly doubling the length of the test.
• But in fact, they didn’t open the study at 62 either. By the time they opened it, the number had reached 94. The press release doesn’t say why; it just blandly reports the fact. But we learn why soon enough.

The New York Times ran a very informative story on the vaccines’ development. Among many other interesting details, it contained the smoking gun:

Pfizer decided it should drop that first benchmark [32 positive cases] and asked the F.D.A. to approve a new protocol on Oct. 29, effectively dashing Mr. Trump’s hopes of an announcement before Election Day.

The company also stopped processing test results from trial participants while it worked with the F.D.A. Protocol changes are discouraged once data is available, and Pfizer did not want to cross the benchmark before it got verbal approval to drop it. That approval came on Nov. 3, Election Day, or the day after.

[Emphasis mine.]

Pfizer didn’t look at the results even when the count reached the new benchmark of 62 because the FDA wouldn’t give them permission. The FDA finally gave them permission on election day or the day after. The notion that this was not a political decision defies all credulity.

So what was the consequence of this delay? Just because Trump said there could be a vaccine in October doesn’t mean it’s true. But let’s run the numbers. It took 99 days from the beginning of phase 3 trials (July 27) to get to 94 cases. To get to 32 cases would have taken until about the end of August (the infection rate was pretty flat at the time). A big company doesn’t move on a dime, so let’s give them a week to open the results, so September 5. In the history that actually happened, it took 40 or 41 days to begin vaccinations (December 14) after the results were opened, so in our alternate history vaccinations would have begun around October 16. So it appears that Trump’s estimate of “mid-October” was spot on.

When we started vaccinating in mid-December, it took until the end of January until the death rate was falling convincingly. So let’s call that a month-and-a-half. That means that in our alternate history the death rate is falling convincingly by the end of November. The two worst months of the covid epidemic in America were January 2021 (95 thousand) and December 2020 (65 thousand).

That’s 160 thousand lives lost to covid in December and January. If just two-thirds of those could have been saved (a conservative estimate, given how quickly the death rate was falling at the end of January), that’s over a hundred thousand lives lost as a result of the vaccine delays instigated by the Biden campaign.

TL;DR version: It’s hard not to laugh at a bunch of internet randos taking down hedge funds, but you should try. What’s happening is not good.

Less TL;DR version: When you buy Gamestop (etc.) at the say-so of WallStreetBets, you are giving your money to WallStreetBets’s founders and their friends, in the hope that in so doing you might be hurting some billionaires. As odd as it may sound to non-economists, those billionaires are actually providing a valuable service.

What’s going on:

One of the things you can do in the stock market is sell short, which is a way to bet that a stock’s price will fall. The way it works is you borrow the stock from someone else, and then sell it. This leaves you owning a negative number of shares. If the stock’s price goes up, you lose money, because you have to buy back the shares you owe at a higher price than you sold them at. But if the stock’s price goes down, you make money, because you can buy back in at a lower price.

It turns out that the people doing this are providing a valuable service, and we should be glad they’re doing it. I’ll come back to that later.

Now, the mechanics of how this works are important. The system is designed to prevent the following scenario: I borrow a thousand shares of Amazon and sell them. If the price goes down, I make money and buy a mansion. If the price goes up, I lose a lot of money, declare bankruptcy, and my creditors take the loss. To prevent me from doing this, I can only hold a short position as long as I have sufficient assets (called margin) in my brokerage account to cover my losses. If my losses exceed my margin, the broker demands that I deposit more money. (This is called a margin call.) If I cannot do it right away, the broker liquidates my assets to buy back the stock I borrowed.

Now, when I sell short, often the price doesn’t fall right away, even if I’m right that the stock is overvalued. Other investors might see things differently and keep investing in the stock, driving up the price. I still win, provided I can hold my short position long enough for the fundamentals to win out. But for me to do that, I have to have enough margin to ride out any temporary price increases. That’s why selling short is really only for the very rich. Without a lot of margin, you could be right and still lose because you get wiped out by a margin call before the price falls. The biggest players in this business are hedge funds.

That’s where WallStreetBets, a Reddit group, comes in. What they are doing is urging individuals to buy Gamestop, a surely overvalued stock that hedge funds are betting against. (Actually, they are urging people to buy call options, but that just complicates the story without really changing it.) This results in the price going up. The people who got in early — the founders of WallStreetBets and their friends — make out like a bandit. The people who got in later lose. That’s most of them; it’s a lot like a Ponzi scheme that way.

But the wrinkle here is: the losers don’t care, because they’re only in it to hurt the hedge funds. If they can drive the price high enough, the hedge fund gets wiped out by a margin call.

Now, ordinarily what WallStreetBets is doing would be an illegal pump-and-dump scam. But in this case it might be legal, because they aren’t actually pretending that Gamestop is a good investment. They are completely open about how they’re doing it just for yuks. If they get rich in the process, they’re fine with that.

Anyway, it worked. Melvin Capital was forced to close out its short position in Gamestop, taking a loss that is currently undisclosed but certainly in the billions. Melvin didn’t go under because it was rescued by other hedge funds.

Why it’s bad:

First of all, it’s morally wrong to spend your money purely to hurt someone else, even if that person is a billionaire. But let’s set that aside. Instead, I want to look at the service that hedge funds are doing us.

One of the greatest inventions in human history is the joint stock company. (In the United States today they exist as corporations.) It makes it enormously easier to start a business venture, because one can raise the capital from a lot of different people, each of whom has little risk, rather than all of it from a small number of very wealthy persons, all of whom are betting their fortune. It is one of the main reasons we have the bustling economy we have today.

But in order for the economy to allocate resources efficiently, we need stock prices to reflect companies’ true value. If Gamestop is over-valued, resources go into maintaining or even expanding Gamestop’s operations, when those resources ought to be going elsewhere. Inefficient resource use hurts our economy, which ultimately hurts employment and wages.

Stock prices are determined by investors, and, yes, speculators. If I see that a stock is underpriced, I buy it. If enough people see it the same way, the price goes up. The increase in the value of my investment is the payment I get for risking my money to assist the efficient functioning of capital markets.

The other direction is not as easy. If I see that a stock is overpriced, I can sell it, provided I already own it. But if I don’t already own it, how can I turn a profit on the research I did that determined it was overpriced? By short selling. Again, if enough people see it the way way, the price goes down. The increase in the value of my negative investment is my payment.

But there’s an important asymmetry between long and short positions. With a long position (buying stock), the most I can lose is 100% of my investment, because the price cannot fall below zero. With a short position, my potential losses are unlimited, because there’s no cap on how high the price can go. Thus, selling short is extremely risky. It is only going to be practiced by people who can afford to lose a lot of money.

What WallStreetBets is doing is making short selling much, much riskier. You no longer have to worry only about good-faith investors and speculators, but about vandals who are willing to throw money away just to hurt you.

You don’t care about the poor billionaires? I get it. But what you should care about the health of our economy. One of the things a healthy economy relies on is (mostly) efficient capital markets. And the way we get efficient capital markets is people (yes, mostly rich people) betting their own money whenever they see an inefficiency. If short selling goes away because it’s too dangerous, that ultimately hurts all of us.

In the short term there’s another serious risk. Even if short selling is too risky now, hedge funds have a lot of short positions already. They can’t just close them out, because doing so would just be preemptively taking the damage that WallStreetBets wants to do to them. If a lot of hedge funds start failing, that could spark another financial crisis. We saw how well the last one went, and this time the economy is already reeling from the covid lockdowns.

This is what Trump should have said, back in November:

There is much about this past election and its reported results that is profoundly suspicious. We believe that fraud was a significant factor in the outcome and it likely changed the election’s result. However, suspicion is not proof. It is the nature of an anonymous election that it is very hard to validate its results after the fact. We have not been able to find proof that votes were fraudulently cast or fraudulently counted in sufficient quantity to change the result of the election. Therefore, unfortunately, Joe Biden has prevailed in this election, and he will be inaugurated on January 20.

I share your frustration and disappointment at this outcome. We came tantalizingly close. The polls projected that we would lose by a landslide, but in the end the election was decided by just 40 thousand votes in four states. But it is now over, and our primary concern now must be to ensure an orderly transition of power and continuity of government. We will not obstruct the transition process, nor will we take any steps to sabotage the incoming administration. Neither will I endorse any objection to the counting of electoral votes, as has been the opposing party’s practice in recent decades.

Moving forward, I call on Mr. Biden and the new Congress to enact legislation to create uniform nationwide standards to prevent fraud in federal elections. Future presidents deserve to come into office without the cloud of suspicion created by this past election.

May God bless America, etc.

We all would all be in a much better place had he gone this route, and indeed Trump himself would be in a better place. But I suppose the fable of the scorpion and the frog applies.

I was “never Trump” in 2016. Trump seemed to know hardly anything, least of all what it means to be a conservative. As Brit Hume put it, he put less preparation into running for president than most people put into buying a sofa. The things he said sounded very much like a bizarre liberal parody of conservatism, as if he learned what it means to be a conservative from reading the New York Times. (I still suspect this is the truth.)

I was convinced that if he won, he would be a national embarrassment and do a terrible job. I was half right. My aim here is to discuss Trump’s record issue-by-issue, and make the case that he deserves re-election.

Character: We’ll start with the bad one. Yes, he is a boor and a national embarrassment. The tweets are awful. I cringe every time he opens his mouth. His personal conduct is deplorable. It is true that Joe Biden is also a bad guy (indeed, the only decent human among the four candidates is Mike Pence), but probably not to the same degree. In any case, Biden at least pretends, while Trump seems to relish his outrageous behavior. Nevertheless, this is just one issue, and there are much weightier matters at stake.

The courts: He has appointed great judges who respect the Constitution, and they have been sorely needed. I doubt that he has had much involvement in the process, but who cares? Biden, if elected, will attempt to stack the Supreme Court, not only putting progressive activists onto the court, but destroying the respectability of the court as an institution.

ISIS: It’s easy to forget this since it was so early in his administration. Under Obama’s neglect, ISIS grew for years. At its worst, it was striking targets in the US. On coming into office, Trump destroyed ISIS in a matter of months, with zero US casualties.

The economy: Before covid lockdowns brought the economy to its knees, we had arguably the strongest economy in US history. We had indisputably the best economy for minorities in US history. Deregulation and tax reform had a lot to do with that. When we finally get to rebuild our economy post-covid, they will work again.

Covid: Yes, there were missteps. But Trump got the two most important things right. First, he focused on getting a vaccine developed and deployed, quickly and safely. We will see if he succeeded soon, but indications are good. (Alas, hopes that a vaccine might be ready before the election were recently dashed by a politically motivated rule change by the FDA to slow emergency authorizations.) Second, and more importantly, he kept the federal government in its lane. Under our Constitution, it’s the states’ role to take the lead, and the federal governments role to assist. It’s extremely clear that any Democrat (and probably most Republicans) would have jumped at the opportunity to seize power that does not belong to the federal government. Indeed, Joe Biden promises to do exactly that on his first day in office. Some day covid will be a painful memory, but the powers seized today will never be relinquished.

Much has been made of how Trump “downplayed” the virus, but he wasn’t wrong to keep covid in perspective:

(Chart made by VoidSurf.)

Law and order: Trump has taken steps, within the limits imposed by our federal system, to restore order to our cities. On the other hand, Democrats have sought to extend the riots. They have consistently dropped charges against rioters arrested by the police. Kamala Harris personally raised money to bail rioters out jail. They have tied the hands of police, and in some cases have even sought to defund the police. With their allies in the press, they have pushed the absurd narrative that the riots are “mostly peaceful.” As a result, crime is soaring.

Biden has been unable to condemn any of this with any clarity. He says that Antifa is “just an idea.” And he has made remarks that seem to support redirecting police funding to social services, although the media has made great efforts to clean up the remarks.

Embassy in Israel: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush promised to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but they both broke that promise. Since 1995, presidents have been signing a waiver every six months delaying the legally required embassy move. Trump finally kept the promise. The foreign policy elite predicted that doing so would result in widespread violence from the “Arab street.” In fact, quite the opposite happened.

The Abraham Accords: The treaty normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain is the first real step toward middle east peace in many years. The importance is not so much the agreement itself, since there was already peace between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, but the signal it sends that the other Arab nations are no longer willing to put up with the nonsense of the factions ruling the Palestinians. If the Palestinians continue their intransigence, the other Arabs will go ahead without them and they will be isolated.

Of course, the UAE and Bahrain are not big players. The real promise is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis haven’t joined yet, but Bahrain (closely aligned with Saudi Arabia) joining is a signal that the Saudis are considering it. The Saudis agreeing to allow overflights is another important sign. And the public statements of Prince Bandar are yet another. If Trump is re-elected, there is a good chance the Saudis will join. But the Democrats don’t support the Accords. If Biden is elected, I doubt he will actually repudiate the Accords, but they will be dead as an agenda. No energy will be put into extending them.

Due process: In April 2011, the Obama administration issued its infamous “dear colleague” letter, which ordered colleges to deny due process to any students accused of sexual assault. The Obama administration bypassed the usual process of regulatory rule-making, and was unable to give any convincing legal justification for its order. Most colleges complied anyway, and for years students were denied due process. Horror stories abound. Fixing the problem has been one of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s priorities. Moreover, she fixed it properly, going through the normal rule-making process. Unfortunately, that takes time and they way the timing has worked out, a Biden administration might be able to reverse the process, returning us to kangaroo courts in which accused students are unable to defend themselves, or even be told what they are accused of.

Iran: Weakness invites aggression. Iran violated international law when it captured 10 Navy sailors who had wandered into Iranian waters due to a navigational error, and its outrageous, illegal treatment of those sailor upon capturing them was even worse. The Obama administration meekly thanked Iran for treating our sailors well (!). In negotiating his nuclear deal with Iran, Obama made it clear from the outset that he had to have a deal, no matter what, and Iran responded in exactly the manner one would expect. Obama got his deal, an unenforceable promise not to develop nuclear weapons for a while, and in exchange we were taken to the cleaners. In addition to accepting the abduction of our sailors, Obama spiked an investigation into Hezbollah trafficking drugs into Europe and the United States, lifted sanctions on Iran, allowed Iran to import sensitive equipment, and, most astonishingly, shipped Iran almost $2 billion in cash. (The claims that we owed them the money are untrue. Indeed, the payment was illegal: a law signed in 2000 by Bill Clinton prohibited it.)

Much of the damage could not be undone; certainly Trump could not claw back the money. But Trump has stopped presenting weakness, and has begun the process of reestablishing sanctions. Trump approved the killing of Iran’s terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani, who had boldly crossed the border into Iraq to organize attacks against our allies. The Democrats flipped out at this, saying that it would certainly lead to war. Of course, nothing like that happened. On the contrary, with an indispensable terror leader removed, things have been much quieter. Trump has also offered moral support for Iranian dissidents, which Obama pointedly refused to do.

Huawei: The Trump administration led the effort to have Chinese chips banned from use in 5G networks because of security concerns. That effort has been successful with several of our closest allies, including the UK, Australia, and Japan.

The environment: Trump will not ban fracking or push the “green new deal”, both of which Biden and Harris have both pledged to do. Fracking has finally made us energy independent, and in fact has helped the environment greatly, by making it possible to move industry from coal to natural gas. The “green new deal” is communism painted green. It would be an utter catastrophe to everyone except the nomenklatura that it would empower.

Nonsense: No, Trump didn’t call white supremacists “very fine people.” He has condemned white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK many times. He didn’t say covid was a hoax. He didn’t say that Mexicans are all murderers and rapists. He didn’t say immigrants are animals. And on and on. Certainly he has said some awful things, but the quotes that seem most appalling are misconstrued beyond all recognition.

Donald Trump is not senile. Joe Biden is.

Fun fact: The very first time the newly formed Democratic Party received a Supreme Court nomination, in 1828, they refused to vote on it, so that Andrew Jackson could make an appointment the following year.

Another fun fact: The very first time a Democratic president had a Supreme Court vacancy in the final year of his term, in 1841, the Democratic Senate confirmed the appointment. They confirmed the nomination four days after it was made, on the second-to-last day of the lame-duck session that took place after they lost the election.

At first glance, I seriously thought this was white nationalist propaganda, claiming that all the best ideas and attitudes are white:

Alas, it’s from a critique of “whiteness” by the Smithsonian Institution! According to it, the ideas and attitudes that are exclusively white include: individualism, self-reliance, the nuclear family, science, objectivity, rational thinking, classical antiquity, the work ethic, Christianity, respect for authority, planning for the future, delayed gratification, showing up on time, viewing time as precious, steak, English common law, the notion that justice should consider intent, trying to solve problems, making decisions, democracy, using correct grammar, and politeness.

No. Good ideas and attitudes do not belong to any specific race, no matter what the racists on the right or the left might say.

(Via Byron York.)

Time traveller from 1939: So this is 2018! How are things going?

Social justice warrior: Unfortunately, we have a big problem with fascism.

TT: Oh dear. What’s going on?

SJW: The judgements of the organs of the state must be accepted without question!

SJW: Speakers we disapprove of must be silenced, by force if necessary!

SJW: The president must set aside the law and do what’s right!

SJW: A supreme court that might rule contrary to our wishes is illegitimate and should be abolished!

SJW: Only the state should have access to weapons!

TT: You’re right, you do have a problem with fascism.

Megan McArdle has an amazing article about the political culture of Denmark, and its implications for ours. It’s well worth reading in its entirety.

(This is more stream-of-consciousness than my usual essay. Sorry about that.)

The facts

We now know many things about the February 14 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. We know that a former student (I won’t be using his name) who had been expelled from the school, went in with a rifle and murdered 17 students.

We know that the shooter talked about shooting up a school all the time. He would introduce himself saying “Hi, I’m Nick. I’m a school shooter.” After another mass shooting he bragged “Man I can do so much better.” And we know that his threats were relayed to local police and the FBI on numerous occasions, but no action was taken. Some of the warnings were quite explicit. We know that the police were called to the shooter’s home on numerous occasions, but, as far as we know, no action was taken. (CNN has reported that this happened on 39 occasions, but the Broward Country sheriff’s office says it was only 23 times.)

We know that the sheriff’s office had a deputy stationed at the school. The deputy, Scot Peterson, ran to the building where he heard the shooting, and then waited outside while the shooting continued. The Broward County sheriff, Scott Israel, offered Peterson up as a sacrificial lamb, but the problem went beyond Peterson.

We know that, in addition to Peterson, three other Broward County sheriff’s deputies responded to the school. None of them went in. All four waited outside, taking cover behind their cars. (Sheriff Israel had previously claimed otherwise, but that turned out not to be true.) Nor did they even prevent the shooter from escaping. They might as well not even have shown up at all.

The first officers to enter the building were police from a neighboring municipality, Coral Springs, who responded even though the school was out of their jurisdiction. They reportedly were disgusted with the Broward County deputies cowering outside. But it appears that by that time, the shooter had already escaped. He was eventually captured by an alert police officer in another municipality.

We also know that a Sheriff Israel had a reputation for hiring political cronies to staff his force, and liked to reply to critics by saying “lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep.” And we know that the same Deputy Peterson had earlier refused to share information about a previous incident involving the shooter with the Florida Department of Children and Families. The reason he would refuse to cooperate with them has not been revealed, but it must be.

The rant

With all these facts known, who do the left/media blame for the massacre? The shooter himself? The FBI or various local police who ignored the warnings? The deputies who cowered outside the school, or the political sheriff who was responsible for their recruiting and training?

Of course not. The true culprit was the NRA.

The NRA, who had nothing whatsoever to do with it, that’s who the leftists and the media (but I repeat myself) think are to blame.

What in the hell is wrong with these people?

While they blame the NRA, they make excuses for the cowardly deputies. A guy with a rifle is just too scary, you can’t expect them to take him on. For example, an editor at the Los Angeles Times wrote “not every has, or should be expected to have, the guts to face a maniac with an AR-15.” It was their job!

ASIDE: While they excuse the useless cops and blame the NRA, let’s not forget the barefoot, civilian plumber from Sutherland Springs who engaged a shooter who was armed with a rifle and wearing body armor. That man was an NRA instructor.

But the worst take on the cowardly cops was from CNN’s Chris Cillizza, who wrote:

A related idiocy was from MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who said it is useless for a handgun wielder to confront a AR-15 wielder, since AR-15 bullets travel faster. I guess a man armed with a laser will be invincible.

To go along with the idiocy were the outright lies. Everytown for Gun Safety — the deceptively-named gun-control advocacy group funded by billionaire Mike Bloomberg — claimed that there have been 18 school shootings so far in 2018. This isn’t remotely true. (To come up with this number, they have to count nonsense like a window being shot out by a bb gun.) Many media outlets pointed out this it wasn’t true, but not all. The always-execrable New York Daily News cited it without reservation. So did Jeff Greenfield, a long-time political analyst for various networks. (He later deleted the tweet.) Various politicians including Bernie Sanders and Bill DeBlasio cited it as well. ABC couldn’t pass it up either, but did point in the 4th paragraph that it was disputed. Finally, in CNN’s town hall they took a question that cited the bogus statistic; the event’s moderator, Jake Tapper, didn’t point out that it was false, nor did he give anyone else a chance to do so.

The CNN town hall brings me to the main point of this rant, the shameless politicization of this crime. The gun-control movement is clearly frustrated that mass shootings have failed to move to move public opinion on gun control. The reason for this is they have never rebutted the common-sense logic: If guns are made illegal, only criminals will have guns. There are other important arguments for gun-rights as well, but that one suffices.

The only way they can get their gun bans is to have them enacted when the public is emotional, and not thinking rationally. That is why they always bristle at the suggestion that we should wait to consider gun-control measures until we can do so with a clear head.

But even so, it hasn’t been working. Worse — from the anti-gun perspective, but also from the sensible perspective — we are getting accustomed to mass shootings, so they don’t create the same level of emotion as they used to. Something must be done to increase the emotional temperature.

Hence, the Parkland kids. To be clear, I don’t blame the kids. Being from Broward Country, they have surely be taught to view the world from a liberal perspective, and they survived a horribly traumatic experience. Their feelings are genuine. But making those kids the face of the gun-control movement is shameless emotional blackmail of the crassest sort.

They tell us — with a straight face — that these kids have a special wisdom we have to listen to. No. They are children. There is a reason that juvenile and sophomoric are synonyms. And this especially applies to high schoolers, who tend to think they know everything, when in fact they know very little. And everyone knows it. Yes, the bull curve is wide, and some children are wise, but you identify those special children by their wisdom. To assume they are wise simply because they are children is simply insane.

As I said, everyone knows this. Including the people who are pretending that these kids are Charles Wallace Murray because the kids are speaking from the worldview with which they were indoctrinated.

The game plan is clear: Put forward the kids. Some internet crazies will attack them. You publicize the crazies and the public recoils in horror. Then, you tar anyone who disagrees with the kids as the same as the crazies. That is, exactly this: You start with crazies like Alex Jones, and then sliiiiide into Ben Shapiro, The Federalist, and National Review. By the end, you’re supposed to condemn supposedly outrageous statements like:

If you have ever been, or known, a teenager, you know that even comparatively well-informed teens are almost always just advancing arguments they’ve heard from adults.

In case that seems nothing more than common sense, then comes the emotional punch: “Even, it seems, teens who have recently been shot at by a mass murderer.” You aren’t supposed to notice that this is a complete non sequitur.

Then there’s this:

Another approach was to find individual survivors of this massacre who did not happen to support the call from a large number of their classmates for gun control. The Daily Wire managed to find a pro-gun Marjory Stoneman student who accused the media of “politicizing” the massacre to talk about gun control.

Wait a second, you’re not supposed to have your own kids rebut ours! See, it’s not all the kids who have special wisdom, just the ones who agree with us!

That brings us to CNN’s travesty of a town hall. You can find a transcript here, but the transcript with its “(BOOING)” and “(APPLAUSE)” doesn’t capture the sense of the event. It resembled nothing more than one of Red China’s struggle sessions in which an audience would watch and jeer while the party abused a victim until he confessed his crimes against the people.

It was obviously a set-up from the beginning. The host, Jake Tapper, used to be the spokesman for Handgun Control, Inc. — not that CNN disclosed that fact — where he was known for insights such as this:

[Charleton Heston’s] interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is unique to him and his organization and has never been upheld in court.

(That was before Heller v. DC, so the latter part was true at the time, but only a true ideologue would try to claim that it is unique to the NRA to believe that the Second Amendment protects gun rights.)

The questions were all approved in advance. (Despite the he-said/she-said about the correspondence between the producers and possible participants, this point is not in dispute.) And this was the sort of insightful question they approved:

Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nicholas Cruz, but the point is you’re here and there some people who are not.

and:

So, I had a question for Ms. Loesch but she’s not here yet. So for her and the NRA — she’s probably watching — and all of you puppet politicians that they are backing. Was the blood of my classmates and my teachers worth your blood money?

The government failed them at every level, but a civil-rights organization with no involvement whatsoever, one that wants to give your teachers the means to defend you, they are the ones with blood on their hands!

Rubio and Loesch were courageous going in there, and generally acquitted themselves pretty well. Rubio orchestrated this revealing moment:

RUBIO: … Now on the issue that you’ve raised about the background checks, relate directly to what you said about the — about the assault weapons ban. It’s not the loopholes. It’s the problem that once you start looking at how easy it is to get around it, you would literally have to ban every semi-automatic rifle that’s sold in the U.S.

(APPLAUSE) [this is an understatement]

RUBIO: Fair enough. Fair enough, that — that is a valid position to hold, but my colleagues do not support banning every semi-automatic rifle sold in America.

This is how far out of the mainstream the audience CNN assembled was. It’s not about “assault weapons,” it’s about banning every semi-automatic rifle in America.

Bottom line

Rant over. Let me wrap up with the bottom line. We are not going to ban guns in America. It isn’t going to happen. You are welcome to try; if you want to try, go ahead and get started.

But if not, please stop wasting our time with these proposals that sound superficially reasonable, but are extremely broad or nonsensical when you look at them closely. Stop telling us you want to ban assault weapons, when you actually want to ban all semi-automatic weapons. Stop saying you want to expand background checks, when your policy would actually make it illegal to fire any gun you don’t personally own. Stop saying you want to want to keep terrorists from buying guns, when your policy would actually give bureaucrats the power to block anyone from buying a gun without any probable cause at all. Stop saying you want to ban bump stocks, when a rubber band can serve as a bump stock

If you’re going to try to ban all guns, let’s get started on that fight. But if not, can we please try to do something about the problem? Something that could actually be enacted?

I’ve been told that I’m immoral because I don’t care if children die. This is offensive. Because I disagree about your preferred policy response does not mean I don’t care about the problem. I could just as well say that gun-control advocates don’t care about our children because they want to lock them into “gun-free” hunting preserves for psychos. But that would be unfair.

If we’re going to keep this on a partisan basis, then I’ll be pushing to end gun-free zones. They are idiotic, and history shows that mass shooters seek them out.

But there’s an alternative. We could look for other ways to address the problem that don’t involve expanding or restricting gun rights. We could look for a consensus approach. Personally, I think it would help enormously if we placed public pressure on the media to stop making mass murderers into celebrities. I’m sure there are other things we could try too.

Alas, that’s not what I’m seeing. When I tried to start such a dialogue among my Facebook friends, I had only one person join in.  For the rest, I gather it’s gun control or nothing. And that strikes me as lamentable.

I am really surprised and dismayed to see so many people who ought to know better jumping on the enough-of-your-prayers bandwagon. When an atheist says “if God existed he would have prevented this, so prayer is useless,” I strongly disagree with that, but at least it makes some logical sense. But when people whom I know do believe in prayer, come out against it in the wake of an atrocity, I find that regrettable.

“But no,” they explain, “I’m not against prayer at all. I’m against prayer as a substitute for action.”

Really? Let do a thought experiment. A few years ago, people were praying for the plight of the Yazidis who were being slaughtered by ISIS. Why only pray? Why not demand action? Why not demand a US invasion to rescue the Yazidis? No, we can’t support that action, it would be expensive, ineffective, and/or counterproductive.

Yes. EXACTLY.

In fact, “thoughts and prayers” are not a substitute for action, nor are they intended as such. They are an appropriate response for the believer, independent of whether he or she thinks any particular policy is wise. Unfortunately, prayer has become politicized as a proxy for a policy debate, and people who should know better have joined in.

The Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The operative clause seems perfectly clear, but the prefatory clause has been the source of endless confusion and mischief. The proper role of the preamble in statutory interpretation is to clarify the statute’s intent and meaning, when ambiguity exists. In the case of the Second Amendment, there seems to be no such ambiguity, but we look to the prefatory clause to make sure it is consistent with the operative clause’s plain meaning.

Those who wish to ban arms often argue that the prefatory clause points to a meaning that actually conveys no right for the people at all, or a right that applies only for people who serve in a state militia. This argument reveals a confusion over statutory interpretation (again, the preamble is used to clarify the operative clause, not to alter it), but more than that, it reveals a confusion over the meaning of the terms in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was enacted.

What did the framers mean when they wrote “a well regulated militia”? In today’s parlance, we think of a militia as an organized military or paramilitary group. (Some go on to say that a well-regulated militia is therefore a military organized by the government, such as the National Guard.) But in the language of the day, the militia referred to the entire body of able-bodied men of military age, who could be called up in the event of war. Thus, taken in its historical context, “militia” is not constraining at all.

But what of “well regulated”? It has always seemed like an inkblot to me, meaning to everyone just what they want it to mean. Heller v. DC says it “implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.” This seems plausible, but their citation didn’t seem super-convincing.

But reading Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of George Washington, I found a quote that sheds some light on the matter. On the eve of the disastrous Battle of Long Island, Washington was incensed by the poor discipline of his troops, finding “something more like a crazy carnival atmosphere than a tidy military camp.” Washington lashed out to one of his generals:

The distinction between a well regulated army and a mob is the good order and discipline of the first, and the licentious and disorderly behavior of the latter.

(Emphasis mine.) It is important to note here that the Continental Army, which was under Washington’s orders, is the one he deemed to be a “mob,” not a “well regulated army.” This makes clear that — to General Washington at least — the property that makes an army “well regulated” army is not to be under government orders (his army was under orders), but to show “good order and discipline.”

It’s particularly instructive to note that Washington’s army had just swelled from 10,500 to 23,000 men, mainly by the arrival of newly recruited militiamen. (They faced 26,000 trained British soldiers and 8,000 Hessian mercenaries.) So Washington was acutely aware of the problem of discipline as it applied to “callow youths grabbed from shops and farms.” The common man needed to know how to handle himself in armed conflict, particularly since the founders had no intention of forming a standing army.

If we take Washington’s use of the terminology as canonical, the Second Amendment could be rephrased in modern terminology to say:

Since the security of a free state requires that the common man who might be called up for military service know how to handle himself in armed conflict, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

It should be noted, then, that Heller’s interpretation of “well regulated” to mean the “imposition of proper discipline and training,” seems to be entirely correct. However, where Heller seems to go wrong is when it gives license to ban the “weapons that are most useful in military service.” They base this on a historical analysis that suggests that the pre-existing right that the Second Amendment protects is for the weapons that were “in common use” and allows the prohibition of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

But here the clarifying purpose of the prefatory clause is applicable. If the intent is that the common man be able to handle himself in armed conflict, he should be familiar with military weapons. More precisely, he should be familiar with the standard infantry weapon. This does not alter our view of the pre-existing right: At the time, standard infantry weapons and common weapons were one and the same. They are different today precisely because military weapons have been banned since 1934. If there were a “dangerous and unusual” weapon it would have been field artillery, not the standard infantry weapon.

Bump fire is all over the news this week, with reports that the Las Vegas shooter had several bump-fire stocks in his arsenal. Predictably, gun-control advocates are calling for bump-fire stocks to be banned, but, more surprisingly, gun-rights supporters are not putting up the same kind of fight they usually do. Let’s talk about why that is.

First, what is bump fire? Bump fire is a technique for pulling the trigger of a semiautomatic rifle more quickly. The idea is you let go of the rifle with the trigger hand, and push forward with the non-trigger hand. When you pull the trigger, the recoil causes the rifle to bounce against the forward pressure of the non-trigger hand. The upshot is the entire rifle bounces forward and backward while the trigger finger remains still, causing the trigger to be pulled very quickly.

You can buy a stock that makes bump fire easier to do. Bump-fire stocks containing springs are illegal under ATF regulations, but you can get a special stock that makes it easier to hold a rifle in the awkward way that bump fire requires. You can also construct a bump-fire stock from a rubber band and some other household objects.

A bump-fire stock does not make a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon. The weapon still fires only one round per trigger pull. It also does not make a semi-automatic weapon into the functional equivalent of an automatic weapon. Bump fire — with the rifle literally bouncing around in your hands — is incredibly inaccurate.

We don’t know for sure that the Las Vegas shooter used a bump-fire stock in the shooting, we only know that he had several in his arsenal. But many people, myself included, suspected that he might have been bump firing, based on the sound.

So what are the arguments for and against banning bump-fire stocks? For:

1. Bump fire has no purpose in either self-defense or hunting. Its only legitimate use is recreational. (Yee haw, look at all the bullets!)
2. We might be able to strike a compromise in which we exchange bump-fire stocks for something harmless that we really want, like suppressors.
3. With the rifle bouncing around, bump fire isn’t safe.
4. Many serious gun aficionados look at bump fire as a tacky, low-class pastime.

Against:

1. Sure, many serious gun aficionados look at bump fire as a tacky, low-class pastime, but we should not allow the gun-control advocates to use bump fire as a wedge to divide the gun-rights community.
2. Bump fire is safer with a bump-fire stock than with a jury rig.
3. The slippery slope: Gun control advocates want to ban all firearms. If they get anything, they will just move on to the next thing. Give them nothing.
4. It’s nearly impossible to define what a bump stock is. You can get the same effect from a rubber band. Vague laws create opportunity for mischief.

For my part, the most telling arguments are #2 for and #4 against. Ordinarily I would agree with the slippery slope argument, but if we got something in exchange, that would mitigate it. Whether I could support a ban would depend a lot on the precise wording.

POSTSCRIPT: Alas, it might be hard to strike the compromise, because the gun-control people would have to admit that they’ve been lying about suppressors.

UPDATE: I guess the other reason to oppose banning bump fire stocks is the gun banners do not operate in good faith, and once they come forward with their ban, it will turn out also to cover a lot of other things that do matter. And that seems to be exactly what has happened.

I was asked on Facebook if I had any thoughts on how to address the problem of mass shootings. This is what I said, pretty much off-the-cuff. I might update this at some point to give it more polish.

The sad truth is in an open society, with high population density, mass murder is easy. You can do it with guns; you can do it with trucks; you can do it with bombs; you can do it with hijacked airplanes; you can do it with poison; you can do it with a computer virus. You can do it using means that no one has thought of yet. Trying to keep killers from obtaining the means to kill just seems impossible to me.

I think the focus has to be on the perpetrators, not their tools. There are different sorts of mass murderer, and each sort demands a different strategy. On the one hand, there are terrorists (9/11, Boston Marathon, Orlando). Then you have random psychos (Aurora, Sandy Hook). Then you have people suffering from brain tumors or adverse drug reactions (University of Texas). (I suspect that when we figure out Stephen Paddock, we’re going to find he was in the third category.)

We fight terrorists by attacking their organization and their funding, by destroying their safe havens, and by intelligence work. We’re doing that.

The random psychos kill for the glory of it. They are basically all copy-cat killers. We need to stop giving them glory. Don’t release their name. Don’t release their picture. Get the whole story out of the news after a few days. We can’t force the media to do this because we treasure free speech, but maybe they can be shamed into doing the right thing.

The brain-tumor people are tough. They don’t kill for glory, they kill because something in their brain is broken. But unlike most mentally ill persons, they have the capacity for meticulous planning. Functionally they are like terrorists. I’m not sure what the solution is in this case, but it probably has something to do with public health.

There are also steps you can take to reduce your chance of becoming a victim. That doesn’t prevent the mass murder (most people prefer to live their lives unaware of the dangers around them), but you can make yourself less likely to be part of it.

In the aftermath of the horrific shooting in Las Vegas, the opportunistic ghouls of gun control quickly emerged to exploit the incident. A lot of people are passing around an “explainer” from Vox.com entitled Gun violence in America, explained in 17 maps and charts. It contains a few valid facts, but most of it is misleading or outright false. I didn’t find a rebuttal on-line, so I thought I would do it myself.

I’ll go through it point by point:

Point #1 (misleading):

America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany

The chart shows “homicides by firearm per 1 million people” for 14 countries, and shows the United States as an outlier, dramatically worse than the second worst country on the chart. There are two big problems with this chart: First, it focuses on “firearm homicides.” Who cares? Are people murdered using a gun more dead than if a different weapon were used? If you just look at homicides, the numbers change dramatically. For instance, the second worst country on the chart (Switzerland) actually has a much lower murder rate than the best one (Australia).

Second, they are cherry-picking the countries. This is a consistent pattern throughout this article (and others like it). There are countless statistics one can draw from the data, so it’s not hard to quote statistics to support any hypothesis. One needs to look at whether the quoted statistics are natural ones. In this case, one should ask, why choose these particular countries? In fact, there are many countries with a worse murder rate than the United States, and some of them are developed nations. (Russia and Brazil are much worse.)

In fact, the US does have one of the highest murder rates among developed nations. It certainly is a problem. But the chart exaggerates.

Point #2 (true):

America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world

In fact, American civilians have more guns than the militaries and police forces of the rest of the world put together.

Point #3 (false):

There have been more than 1,500 mass shootings since Sandy Hook

Simply untrue. The standard definition of a mass shooting is four or more people killed, in a public place, while not committing a crime, and excluding war. (This definition was employed by the FBI until Obama tinkered with it in 2013.) By that measure, this number is orders of magnitude too high. Even Mother Jones makes this point.

To get numbers like this, some people have deliberately lowered the threshold to include four or more people killed or injured, including criminals. That generates big numbers to be sure, but it’s plainly dishonest to pass off gang wars, and incidents in which no one was killed, as if they were incidents like Sandy Hook.

Point #4 (false):

On average, there is more than one mass shooting for each day in America

See above.

Point #5 (misleading):

States with more guns have more gun deaths

This one is very popular; I’ve seen it all over the internet the last couple of days. But note the careful wording: “gun deaths” not “gun homicides.” In fact, this statistic is entirely about suicides. If you remove suicides from the count, the correlation entirely disappears:

Also, recall point #1; people killed by other weapons are just as dead as people killed by guns. There’s no reason to exclude non-gun murders, other than to skew the numbers.

Also, their chart isn’t even honest in its own terms: they omit the District of Columbia which has the nation’s strictest gun laws and worst murder rate. If they put DC on the chart, they would have to resize the Y-axis to make room for it.

Point #5 goes on to say this:

And it’s not just one study. “Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,” David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s director, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health.

They are quoting the book accurately. But when you follow the link, the book does not cite a single one of the “wide array” of studies. It just makes a bald assertion. On the other hand, there is considerable scholarship to the contrary.

Point #6 (misleading):

It’s not just the US: Developed countries with more guns also have more gun deaths

This one hits nearly every misleading point. It uses gun deaths, rather than gun murders or overall murders. And the choice of countries is odd. If you follow the link, you find that the countries are supposedly selected by high scores (greater than 0.79) on the Human Development Index. But the choice of countries doesn’t match the linked data, it leaves out countries (Russia and Uruguay) that would completely spoil the picture.

Point #7 (misleading):

States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths

Once again they use gun deaths rather than gun murders or overall murders. Plus, their proxy for tight gun control laws is this: “States with at least 1 Firearm Law Designed to Protect Children in Place.” So, gun locks? Come on. This is obviously a cherry-picked criterion.

In fact, the cities that have the very highest murder rates (e.g., Chicago) are in states with very strict gun control. And states that have loosened their gun laws have not seen any increase in the murder rate.

Point #8 (true):

Still, gun homicides (like all homicides) have declined over the past couple decades

Point #9 (true):

Most gun deaths are suicides

Point #10 (dubious):

The states with the most guns report the most suicides

I don’t know the statistics, and I don’t have time to look them up, but it’s very suspicious that they use a 5-year window, 12 years ago. This smells like cherry-picking.

Point #11 (obvious):

Guns allow people to kill themselves much more easily

Point #12 (chart does not support headline):

Programs that limit access to guns have decreased suicides

It’s believable that there could be some low-order effect here, but the chart doesn’t show one at all. The chart shows that the suicide rate was already steadily falling when Australia instituted its gun confiscation program, and it continued falling.

UPDATE: The article also cites a study of the Australian gun confiscation program that found (page 532) that it did result in a statistically significant drop in firearm suicides. But the study did not find a statistically significant drop in the overall suicide rate. Quite the contrary. They found a small decrease in the overall suicide rate, but the p-value is a staggering 95.6%, meaning that the decrease is almost certainly due to random chance. So, once again, there’s something here only if suicide-by-gun is somehow worse than suicide by some other means. Moreover, the headline claims a decrease in overall suicides, which is flatly unsupported by the study.

Point #13 (irrelevant):

Since the shooting of Michael Brown, police have killed at least 2,900 people

Let’s assume this statistic is true. I fail to see why relevance it has to gun policy. Moreover, just on its own terms, I have no benchmark to judge whether this is a lot.

Point #14 (dubious):

In states with more guns, more police officers are also killed on duty

They are comparing the 8 states with the least guns with the 23 states with the most guns. 8 and 23. Those are very strange numbers to focus on; this is obviously a cherry-picked statistic.

Point #15 (true):

Support for gun ownership has sharply increased since the early ’90s

Point #16 (true):

High-profile shootings don’t appear to lead to more support for gun control

Point #17 (misleading):

But specific gun control policies are fairly popular

Yes, when posed using terminology tested on focus groups by gun control advocates, they are fairly popular. But, support plummets once people learn what is really being proposed:

• “Preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns” is pretty popular. But once people find out that “mentally ill” means nothing more than “has someone handling their finances,” they realize they’ve been had.
• “Barring gun purchases from people on no-fly or watch lists” is pretty popular, but “a bureaucrat can suspend your right to buy guns, and they don’t even have to suspect that you’re a terrorist, and in fact they don’t even have to tell you you’re on the list, and you have no legal right to contest being on the list, and even if you get off the list you still can’t buy a gun for years” is much less popular.
• “Background checks for private sales and at gun shows” is pretty popular. That disappears when people find out “background checks for private sales” means you cannot borrow or rent a gun, so there’s no practical way to try a gun out before you buy it. Also, the so-called gun-show loophole is a complete myth.
• “Banning high-capacity magazines” is somewhat popular, at least among people who don’t know anything about guns. But then people find out that “high-capacity” actually means regular capacity.

UPDATE: John Lott has a thorough debunking.

I was away from internet during the Charlotteville fiasco and aftermath, and I returned to find my Facebook feed filled with demands for denouncements. I don’t like to take orders, but in this case I’m game. So without further ado, the denouncements:

1. To the white supremacists: Your ideology is repellent and you have no place in a civilized society. Moreover, you have no grasp of history. America is not the product of “white people.” It is the culmination of ideas that come down to us originally from the Jews and the Greeks, two peoples you hate. Among those who have tried to destroy America and the principles she is based on are the Confederates and the Nazis, two groups you love. We tolerate your presence in this country, not because we have any affinity for your racism, but because our own ideology demands that we tolerate even those we find repellent. Your aim of sparking a race war in America will never succeed.
2. To Antifa and the other communist thugs: You represent the only ideology in the world with more blood on its hands than the white supremacists. I would say you’re not helping, but we both know you’re not trying to help. The only difference between you and the white supremacists is which collectivist tyranny you want to install after tearing down the republic.
3. To Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: I’m sure it seemed really clever to let the thugs fight it out in your streets and then exploit the carnage for political benefit. Now an innocent woman is dead. You should have done your job and directed the state police to maintain order. Don’t tell us the state police were outgunned. We know that’s a lie.
4. To all the people who advocate political violence, against white supremacists or whomever: Your stance doesn’t mean you hate Nazis more. It means you are a bad American. In this country, we resolve our differences through legal and political processes, not through violence. Plus, you’re an idiot. If our republic breaks down because violence has replaced politics, do you think that will help your cause? Not bloody likely. I’m not just talking here to the Washington Post and to David Harbour. I’m talking to every person who has told me that it’s okay to punch neo-Nazis, imagining that saying so makes them a better person. I hope you see now where that road leads.
5. To the media/Democrats: You share a common aim with the white supremacists. You both want the public to think that there are a lot of white supremacists, when in fact they are a tiny fringe movement. They think it will help them grow their disgusting movement; you think the backlash will push people to vote Democratic. I would have hoped that 2016 would have taught you the risks of trying to play angles. You wanted an easy win for Democrats, but instead you got Trump. Just tell the story straight. When Richard Spencer gives a speech, there are more press there than Nazis. It’s okay to ignore him.
6. To Donald Trump: Please get better at your job. When evil people endorse you, you disclaim them immediately, even when there are other evil people out there. This isn’t hard.

I can understand why Democrats are so upset that Merrick Garland’s nomination for the Supreme Court never obtained a hearing or a vote. Although the Democrats had used the same tactic for lower court nominees, and although they had announced their intention to do it for any Supreme Court nominees as well, the Democrats never had the opportunity to follow through on their pledge. Thus, the Republicans were the first ever to deny even a hearing to a Supreme Court nomination. In so doing, they broke an important rule of US politics: The rules and practices of the Senate shall be altered only by Democrats.

It was the Democrats who first added the cloture rule to allow filibusters to be broken by two-thirds majority. Decades later, when Democrats had 61 seats, they reduced the cloture requirement from 67 to 60 votes. In 2005, the Republicans considered abolishing the filibuster for judicial appointments, but eventually backed off the idea. Eight years later, it was the Democrats, then in control, who followed through on the scheme, abolishing the filibuster for nearly all presidential appointments. (They made an exception for Supreme Court appointments, as they currently had none pending.)

It was the Democrats who first brought hyper-partisanship to the consideration of judicial appointments with their shameful treatment of Robert Bork in 1987. The waging of character assassination against an appointment to public office soon came to be known as “borking.” During the Bush administration, Democrats first made filibusters of judicial appointments standard practice.

The tactic of leaving a judicial appointment to languish without so much as a hearing was first used by Democrats in 1988, who hoped in vain that a Democrat might be elected when Reagan’s term expired. The tactic worked better when Democrats used it again in 1992 against Bush (Senior). In 2007, Democrats took the tactic to the next level, leaving several Bush (Junior) appointments to languish for the entire 110th Congress, a full two years without so much as a hearing. In 1992, Joe Biden (then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee) pledged to do the same for any Supreme Court nomination, but the occasion to do so never presented itself. In 2007, Chuck Schumer (now Senate Democratic leader) made a similar pledge, but again the occasion did not present itself.

In 2016 the occasion finally did present itself, but the parties were reversed. Republicans took the Democrats’ lower-court tactic and applied it for the first time to the Supreme Court. Democrats were outraged, having grown accustomed to a pleasant situation (for them) in which Republicans felt bound by tradition, but Democrats did not. For the first time, it was the Democrats who felt the sting of having the Senate’s practices being changed to their disadvantage.

I can understand why they didn’t like it.

Obamacare is getting all the attention right now, but Dodd-Frank needs to go too. This Economist article blasting the law must be read in its entirety, but here’s the best summary:

The law that set up America’s banking system in 1864 ran to 29 pages; the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 went to 32 pages; the Banking Act that transformed American finance after the Wall Street Crash, commonly known as the Glass-Steagall act, spread out to 37 pages. Dodd-Frank is 848 pages long. . . And the size is only the beginning. The scope and structure of Dodd-Frank are fundamentally different to those of its precursor laws, notes Jonathan Macey of Yale Law School: “Laws classically provide people with rules. Dodd-Frank is not directed at people. It is an outline directed at bureaucrats and it instructs them to make still more regulations and to create more bureaucracies.” Like the Hydra of Greek myth, Dodd-Frank can grow new heads as needed.

I firmly believe in free speech.

So do I.

Great! Let’s talk current events. I think this latest terrorist attack shows that we really need to wrestle with the danger posed by radical Islam.

You can’t say that! That’s Islamophobic!

You just said you believe in free speech.

Hate speech isn’t free speech. You can’t say things like that.

Maybe another topic. I think that the owners of private property should be able to set the rules governing their own bathrooms.

Transphobic hate speech! I am feeling so triggered right now.

Never mind. Let’s talk about Israel’s security measures. Now that ramming attacks are becoming common around the world, we can learn a lot from the steps Israel took to fight them.

Israel?! Defending genocide is not free speech!

What genocide? Anyway, the official State Department definition of anti-Semitism includes holding Israel to a standard not demanded of any other democratic nation, so aren’t you wrong-footing your own espoused opposition to hate speech?

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

Oh, forget current events. Anyway, we’ve invited Ben Shapiro to come speak on campus. I think you might find him interesting.

Ben Shapiro? He can’t speak here; he’s a security risk!

A security risk? He’s just one guy, and all he does is talk.

There will be riots.

Riots? Who’s going to riot?

We are.

Oh. Well, on another topic, I read an interesting story in the alternative media. It said that on the first day of the Democratic convention, they didn’t have any American flags on stage.

Stop repeating fake news.

Fake news?

Yes, that’s fake news. Snopes said so. Facebook is implementing a system to suppress that stuff.

But, you can watch the convention video and the story is true. The only flags on stage the first day were during a brief opening ceremony, hours before prime time. The flags appeared the second day, after their absence was reported.

Fake news! Snopes!

Well, if we’re going to suppress fake news, at least we’ll clean up the mainstream media too. They won’t be repeating fabricated events like “hands up, don’t shoot” which have led to a dangerous backlash against police.

No, the mainstream media is reliable.

What?! Oh never mind. Let me tell you about a project I’ve been doing. Two friends and I made a documentary about some candidates for election.

Cool, I look forward to seeing it.

Okay, great. Anyway, we formed a corporation to distribute it, it’s called—

Hold on. A corporation? Forget it. Corporations aren’t people; free speech doesn’t apply to them.

But it’s just me and two other guys. We only formed the corporation to protect ourselves against frivolous lawsuits.

Nope. No rights for corporations. Our democracy is not for sale.

But, isn’t the New York Times a corporation? Or CBS? Shouldn’t they get free speech?

Yes, but we can trust the government to suppress the right corporations.

Oooo-kay. Let’s just talk sports. I think that Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest is ill-considered, and the means of his protest is not only disrespectful to veterans but frankly ungrateful toward a nation that has given him a lot.

Why are you so opposed to free speech?

A month after the election, people are still arguing the relative mendacity of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. “Who lies more?” ought to be a quantitative question, admitting an empirical test. But as a practical matter, collecting all their statements and fact-checking them all is difficult. Worse are the methodological problems: Hillary was in politics much longer than Trump; how do you normalize for that? During the campaign, Trump spoke much more than Hillary, how do you normalize for that? What do you do with the things they said more than once?

In order to get a controlled basis for comparison, I focused on the first presidential debate. Restricting our attention to that setting addresses the practical and methodological problems. (All three would have been better, but it was too much work.) I fact-checked the entire thing, using a neutral standard that I call the “misleading” approach.

To summarize the results: Trump, Hillary, and Lester Holt were all almost exactly as truthful, when you restrict your attention to determinate claims of fact. Nevertheless, nearly everyone savaged Trump as much more dishonest than Hillary. It simply wasn’t so.

Now, I’m quite sympathetic to the notion that this was an unusual setting, and Trump is normally less honest than Hillary. But how are you going to demonstrate it? Polling the “fact-checkers” is easy but useless. The only controlled assessment I’m aware of is the one I did, and it found no difference between the two. To broaden its basis out to the entire campaign (or more) is a worthy goal, but then you would have some severe practical and methodological problems to address.

The latest find in the Wikileaks document drop has the White House on the defensive. In the email, Cheryl Mills (Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff) learns that Barack Obama claimed to have learned that Hillary was using a private email server “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.” She replies:

we need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov

Whatever the White House might claim now, this shows clearly that they saw a problem with Obama’s statement. You don’t clean up something that isn’t dirty. And, indeed, a few days later they walked back the president’s statement:

President Obama exchanged messages with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at her private email address but did not know how the address was set up, the White House said Monday.

ASIDE: I actually find the revised statement plausible, but it’s not really exculpatory. You don’t have to know how the server is set up to know that there’s something shady about doing official business over “clintonemail.com”.

Anyway, now the email is public and people are calling it the smoking gun. Naturally, the White House would love to impeach the email, so the hapless White House spokesman is sent out with this:

“I can’t verify the integrity of these emails,” Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama as he fundraised in California, speaking of illegally obtained messages from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that were published by WikiLeaks and apparently show the Clinton camp challenging Obama’s assertion that he didn’t know Clinton was using a private email account.

Podesta’s emails were “stolen,” and, therefore, their authenticity cannot be verified.

Well, as a public service, let me help. The email includes a DKIM signature:

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
        d=gmail.com; s=20120113;
        h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to
         :content-type;
        bh=ZHarGwofbGy5infz7Thpz6DG+ykstdddQQmn2MUub2g=;
        b=nW8z1BSu8I+k9aDKnEI2hWIZZ0Vs1MWg8ip+5XLxoJjCo/IMhPhf//Pjt0bQQvsaVo
         ebmYE10DgrOfc+RDiWxDQqjU9/5UFJF33vlFnTAUCe5X3uvGQAJU9+A46NV3TVpjf87/
         0TYfKP0jinTz4UqQC34veevl0kjLi1vEHsxYTvCQBeHydP4OV3D5sBDagmTC+CxT3HJM
         UJpd6g/yJyulgsbcYKKSHmjofZT2VOmpraXEO12jLxCzJMeiPL1ZsT3ccxgokX3SM4ug
         Rv5Y4RvJVy+L9X22WclWFaON9zvuvt9h0ChVnBFU5vlfNnngWLC0Zx8LmbXAULs//Da/
         KcIQ==

(You can see it yourself by clicking “view source” on the email.) The purpose of DKIM is to authenticate that an email came from a particular domain; in this case, gmail.com. It uses a mathematical technology called digital signatures. A digital signature is a string (all the nonsense text at the end of the signature) that testifies to the content of a message, and that can only be computed by the holder of a secret key (in this case, Google). A signed message cannot be forged or altered by anyone who doesn’t have the key. In DKIM, a mail server automatically adds this signature to outgoing mail, thereby proving that the mail has not been tampered with since it left the server.

So all we have to do to authenticate the mail is to verify the digital signature. This is very easy to do. The Thunderbird mail reader has a DKIM verifier plugin that you can install in about 15 seconds. Then you simply open the email and see:

Observe the fourth line: “DKIM Valid (Signed by gmail.com)”.

This tells us that this email definitely hasn’t been altered since it left gmail.com, assuming that Google has kept its secret key secure, and assuming that Russia can’t crack a 1024-bit RSA key or a SHA-256 hash. In 2016, both of these are very safe assumptions.

So what are we to make of Josh Earnest’s claim that the email can’t be authenticated? We know it’s false. We also know that Earnest didn’t bother to check with any experts before he made the claim. (Or, that he just outright lied.)

Is anyone surprised that Hillary Clinton, despite all her claims to the contrary, still has not handed over all her work-related emails?

The Obama administration has discovered a chain of emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of work-related correspondence as secretary of state, officials said Friday, adding to the growing questions related to the Democratic presidential front-runner’s unusual usage of a private email account and server while in government.

The messages were exchanged with retired Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military’s U.S. Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began before Clinton entered office and continued into her first days at the State Department.

Believe literally nothing this woman ever says:

Documents released by a conservative watchdog group Thursday show Hillary Clinton personally signed official forms in 2012 that allowed her top aide [Huma Abedin] to attain status as a special government employee (SGE), despite the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s denial of any involvement in the situation during a recent interview. . .

The document, obtained by Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that Clinton signed off on a title change for Abedin on March 23, 2012. . .

In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that aired Sept. 4, Clinton was asked about the propriety of Abedin collecting a salary from the State Department and Teneo, which was founded by a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton.

“Well, you know, I was not directly involved in that,” Clinton answered.

If the idea of the federal government ranking colleges and universities made you a little queasy, you were right:

The new “College Scorecard” released by the Department of Education and the White House that ranks universities excluded several institutions widely considered among the best conservative colleges in the nation: Hillsdale and Grove City colleges.

Of course progressive politics plays a role in their rankings. Could you imagine anything else?

(Via Instapundit.)

1. Mormons are too weird to be president. (2, 3, 4, 5)
2. There are too many Catholics on the Supreme Court. (2, 3, 4, 5)
3. Jewish senators are not loyal to the United States. (2, 3, 4, 5)
4. It is never acceptable to consider religion when evaluating candidates for public office. (2, 3, 4)

UPDATE: “What they really mean is that no values should ever come before the liberal agenda.”

I’ve heard people describe Donald Trump as a self-made man. He is, in fact, the opposite of a self-made man. He inherited a huge real-estate fortune. If he had sold all his real-estate holdings and invested the proceeds in an S&P 500 index fund, he would be much richer today than he is, according to the Washington Post.

All that Trump’s ballyhooed deal-making has accomplished is to lose himself $3 billion, relative to what a passive investor could have obtained. (That’s according to Forbes’s numbers. According to Trump’s own numbers, he’s only lost $2 billion.)

And in order to get himself that terrific -$3 billion return, he has had to employ strategic bankruptcies, abuse eminent domain, and exploit taxpayer funds. If business acumen is an important quality for President of the United States, Donald Trump is disqualified.

Okay, first let’s be clear (again) that Obergefell is the law of the land. (Okay, literally it’s controlling Supreme Court precedent, but let’s not split hairs.) Government officials have no right to deny citizens any service (including marriage licenses) to which the law entitles them. Kim Davis, the (Democratic) clerk jailed by a (Republican) judge for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, is in the wrong.

Now, let’s marvel at the astonishing hypocrisy shamelessly exhibited by our Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton:

I guess she was out of characters, and simply didn’t have room to add the important conclusion:

But just this one time only.

I mean, where could Kim Davis have possibly gotten the idea that Democratic elected officials can ignore the law?

Could it be from Democratic officials in DC and Chicago who — in a very parallel situation — refuse to issue firearms permits despite a Supreme Court decision ordering them to do so? Could it be from Democratic officials in California who violated California law to issue marriage licenses before the court cleared them to do so? Could is be from a Democratic president who decided simply to ignore immigration law, or who many times has ignored the text of his own health “reform” law, or who decided that the Constitutional requirement to obtain Senate approval for treaties is obsolete? Could it be from a Democratic administration that ignored a court injunction against its immigration policy? Could it be from a Democrat-run IRS that illegally targeted conservatives for negative treatment, and illegally shared confidential filings with progressive activists, and which destroyed the relevant records once their misconduct came to light? Could it be from a Democrat-run ATF that shipped weapons to Mexican drug cartels, and never gave a plausible explanation why? Could it be from a Democratic Secretary of State who, in violation of public records laws, maintained a private email server, and then, in violation of classified information laws, used it for classified information, and then in further violation of those laws, turned all that classified information over to a private law firm? Could it be from a Democrat-run Justice Department that filed false affidavits in order to obtain illegal wiretaps on journalists? Could it be from a Democratic president who ignored the War Powers Act and launched a war against Libya without any notice to or consultation with the Congress? Could it be from Democratic officials in Seattle who imposed punitive taxes on guns and ammunition in clear violation of state law? Could it be from a Democrat-run EPA that imposed limits on carbon dioxide that were plainly outside the parameters of the law, and justified it by making up entirely different parameters? Could it be from a Democratic mayor of Baltimore who “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that”? Could it be from a Democratic prosecutor in Austin, Texas who indicted the governor for using his constitutional veto prerogative? Could it be from Democratic prosecutors in Wisconsin who raided homes with no cause other than their support for Republican candidates, and then barred them from discussing the raids, even with their own lawyers? Could it be from Democratic strategiests who urged the president to ignore the Supreme Court if they lost the King v. Burwell case? Could it be from a Democratic White House that set new records for denying Freedom of Information Act requests, and did so in violation of the law one-third of the time?

And could it be from a Democratic Party that watched all above the above happen, and never gave the slightest hint of any discomfort with any of it? From a party that scoffs at the rule of law in any circumstances where it might stand in the way of their goals?

Gee, where could Kim Davis have possibly gotten the idea that Democratic officials can get away with anything at all?

So yes, officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law. Let’s start doing that now please. Any time you’re ready would be fine.

POSTSCRIPT: This was all just off the top of my head. If I went through my notes, I could find plenty more.

UPDATE: Wow, the White House spokesman said this:

I will just say on principle that the success of the democracy depends on the rule of law, and there is no public official that is above the rule of law. Certainly not the president of the United States, but neither is the Rowan County clerk.

He really did say that. Unbelievable.

In keeping with its mission to ruin absolutely everything, the Obama administration is trying to put an end to vagrancy laws.

Fox News has the heartbreaking story of an incident in which an Albuquerque emergency dispatcher hung up on a caller when the panicked caller swore at him. The caller was trying to summon help for a 17-year-old boy who had been shot in a drive-by shooting. The victim later died.

Aside from the tragedy of the story itself, this illustrates the folly of relying of the government to protect you. (This was the fire department, not the police, but the same principle applies.) Under Supreme Court precedent, the government is under no obligation to assist you, and sometimes it simply chooses not to, either through malice or (as in this case), through callous indifference.

Fox News reports:

A reported two-month gap in emails from Hillary Clinton’s private account during 2012 coincides with a period of escalating violence in Libya and the obtaining of a special exemption by her top aide, Huma Abedin, to work for both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

The Daily Beast reported late Tuesday that no emails between Clinton and her State Department staff for the months of May and June 2012 are among the estimated 2,000 messages that have been released from the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s account.

A State Department spokesman told The Daily Beast that only emails related to the security of U.S. diplomats in Libya or the consulate in Benghazi were turned over to the House select committee investigating the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack. If true, that means neither Clinton nor her staff communicated via e-mail during a period that saw three attacks on international outposts in Benghazi, including one on the consulate itself.

I love the journalistic “if true” here. It’s so much more even-handed than “she is obviously lying, because.” I wonder if one of the missing emails would have shed some light on how the Benghazi consulate got an exemption from the usual security requirements.

Hillary Clinton really did say this today:

Clearly I’m not asking people to vote for me simply because I’m a woman. I’m asking people to vote for me on the merits. And I think one of the merits is I am a woman . . .

Wow.

(Via Ace.)

When gun control advocates, such as Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), cannot make their case without lies, it gives one the strong impression that they do not have a real case at all:

Since Sandy Hook there has been a school shooting, on average, every week. How on earth can we live with ourselves if we do nothing?

One per week? We certainly haven’t seen anywhere close to that number on the news. Is it possible that so many could go unreported?

Obviously not. Nevertheless, the Washington Post Fact Checker column takes a look at the numbers. (SPOILER: They give it four pinnocchios.) The number is based on a report from a gun control organization called Everytown for Gun Safety. (ASIDE: It offends me that the gun prohibitionists are now trying to relabel gun bans as “guns safety.”  Gun safety is important and we mustn’t lose the term.)

Everytown for Gun Safety claims there have been 126 school shootings since Sandy Hook, as of earlier this month. Almost none of those bear any resemblance to Sandy Hook, even including unsuccessful attempts. The Post came up with 10 such. In order to get their number an order of magnitude higher, they included suicides and gang-related violence. That’s a standard tactic for the prohibitionists to inflate their numbers, but even that didn’t get them there.

To get to 126, they also had to include virtually any discharge of a firearm on any premises connected with any kind of school. For example, they included the case in which a man accidentally shot himself while unloading his gun in the parking lot of Beaver County Community College.

(Via Hot Air.)

I guess it’s time to abandon the old-fashioned notion that the meaning of a law has anything much to do with the words that make up the law:

You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. . . Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges.

From now on, the way our system works is: (1) Congress passes a law; it doesn’t much matter what it says because, (2) the President then does whatever he feels like to achieve what he deems to be the aims of the law.

If, to make the law work, someone who the law plainly says does not have to pay a penalty, must nevertheless be ordered to pay a penalty, he has to pay. That’s how our system works now. (Uh, I mean tax, not penalty. Sorry.)

POSTSCRIPT: Ann Althouse says that Republicans should be glad, because this is politically better for them. That’s only true if we value the GOP’s political fortunes over the rule of law.

In light of recent events, I think that it is indeed time to ban that old symbol of slavery, racism, and division. It should have no place in today’s society. So, once and for all, let’s get rid of this:

The legacy of the Democratic Party is thoroughly entwined with the Confederacy, and every bit as appalling. For decades, the Democrats were the political vehicle for the perpetuation of slavery. Slavery’s abolition only became possible when internal struggles among the Democrats allowed Abraham Lincoln (our first Republican president) to be elected. A Democratic president (James Buchanan) shipped weapons to the south in advance of the Civil War. Even once war was underway, the Democratic platform called for allowing the south to secede.

And, of course, the Democratic party continued its legacy of racism long after it failed to preserve slavery. All of the implementers and defenders of the Jim Crow south were Democrats, and of course it was a Democratic president (Woodrow Wilson) who resegregated the military and federal government.

UPDATE: Randy Barnett has more on the astonishing racism of Democratic hero Woodrow Wilson. (Although one of the pieces he quotes whitewashes Wilson’s non-racist evils. I wouldn’t say that the only US President to hold political prisoners was particularly interested in the “extension of democratic liberties.”)

UPDATE: Indeed.

The UK, having largely banned guns, is shocked to learn that non-firearms can also be used to commit crimes. Hence this: “British Police Call On Nation To ‘Save a Life, Surrender Your Knife’ As ‘Knife Violence’ Continues.” No word on whether the next step is sticks or chains. Rocks may take a few years.