Category Archives: Philosophy

Gun Ban Down

I’m disappointed that it was such a narrow majority:

District of Columbia v. Heller (Second Amendment challenge to D.C. handgun ban): Scalia majority opinion striking down ban. 5-4 ruling. Breyer dissent, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg. (No concurring opinions.)

If Obama does somehow get into the Oval Office, I’m glad that this case was handled this year. Almost certainly whoever his choice of nominees would be would have gone the other way. Of course, for the Dems, it will only be maintaining status quo, since it’s the “liberal” justices that are most likely to step down soonest, I think.

Souter in particular was a disastrous pick for a supposedly Republican president.

Anyway, now on to the next case, depending on who brings it (I’m guessing someone in Chicago), which will bring in the Fourteenth Amendment and incorporation. But at least the court is now on record as having declared the right an individual one (again, I’m saddened, but no longer shocked, that four justices bizarrely think otherwise).

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ll add that, based on what I’ve seen so far, it looks like the majority got it right. It’s an individual right having nothing to do with state militias, but not an unlimited one. A gun ban in shopping malls or campuses is stupid, but not unconstitutional.

[Update a little after 11 AM EDT]

Eugene Volokh already has some initial thoughts, with more surely to come later, after the opinion is read. This is an interesting political point:

This split should be useful to either of the Presidential candidates who wants to make either gun control or gun rights into an election issue — my guess is that this is more likely to be McCain. Expect McCain ads in states where there are likely many pro-gun swing voters stressing, “your constitutional right to keep and bear arms hangs by one vote.” Also expect fundraising letters to likely pro-gun contributors stressing this at length.

Also expect questions of Obama whether he continues to support the gun ban in Chicago. And whether he still thinks that gun sales should be banned within five miles of a school (i.e., almost everywhere).

[Afternoon update]

I haven’t read the dissents (and don’t know if or when I will, given time constraints), but is it possible that the majority isn’t as narrow as it looks? Four justices ruled that the DC ban was Constitutional, but they didn’t necessarily do so on the basis that the right to keep and bear isn’t individual. For instance, as Ed Whelan notes:

Stevens doesn’t dispute that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but he finds the scope of that right limited to using weapons for certain military purposes. He argues that the text of the Second Amendment (5-17), its drafting history (17-27), and the Court’s precedents–especially its 1939 ruling in United States v. Miller (42-45)–support his reading.

Breyer argues that even if the Second Amendment does protect a right of personal self-defense, D.C.’s law is constitutional because the burdens it imposes are not disproportionate in light of the law’s legitimate objectives. (That sure sounds like a meaningful test, doesn’t it?)

So now we have at least six justices who agree that it is an individual right (Whelan doesn’t say what Breyer’s opinion on that score is, since Breyer doesn’t accept that the ban would be Constitutional under that interpretation). And since Ginsburg and Souter joined Stephens dissent, and didn’t write one of their own, doesn’t it really make it at least eight to one?

Rewiring Our Brains?

Is the Internet changing the way we think?

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going–so far as I can tell–but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

It’s anecdotal, but I’ve noticed the same thing. I used to read many more books (and magazines, such as The Economist) than I do now. Almost all of my reading occurs on line, and I am much less able to focus than I used to be. But it’s not clear whether this is an effect of aging, or new habits. More the latter, I suspect.

More Vampire Rights

Jon Schaff, who started the subject, has what he hopes is the last word. I have to confess being a little lost in the conversation, not having been a Buffy fan.

And if it’s the end of the vampire discussion, perhaps it’s time we moved on. To zombies.

[Update mid-Friday afternoon]

Well, I should have Googled the subject; we could have saved ourselves a lot of discussion. Here’s a Rothbardian treatise on the subject from three years ago:

In The Ethics of Liberty, his great reconciliation of Austrian economics and natural law ethics, Murray Rothbard commented that a new species of beings having “the characteristics, the nature of the legendary vampire, and [that] could only exist by feeding on human blood”(1) would not be entitled to individual rights, regardless of their intelligence, because of their status as deadly enemies of humanity. I wish to discuss this issue in more detail and argue that Rothbard, who was kind of a night owl himself, was unfair to those mysterious creatures. The libertarian theory of justice would in fact easily allow for a peaceful coexistence with vampires.

But of course. Just no non-consensual neck biting.

Pressing (Non)Human Rights Issue Du Jour

Do vampires have rights?

Jonah wants to know if an atheist would think that vampires have rights.

I guess that they probably have some rights. I mean, I’m willing to grant them the right to be a vampire. That is, if they want to live forever, turn into a bat occasionally, not show up in mirrors, and avoid sunlight and garlic and crosses, and so on, it’s no skin off my nose (or blood out of my neck). But (like some conservatives’ view of homosexuals), I’m not willing to grant them a right to indulge in their (un)natural desire to drink blood. Particularly mine. I think that the Christian formulation would be hate the blood sucking, but love the vampire. But of course, this was about what atheists think.

Though if the blood sucking is consensual, it might be all right. But can it really be consensual? I mean, the consent can’t be very informed. You can describe what it’s like to be a vampire until the cows (and vampires) come home, but is that enough to allow someone to enter into such an arrangement*? It seems like the argument against whether or not someone should have the freedom to sell themselves into slavery. Is it society’s business to be regulating consensual blood-sucking activity, given that it has irreversible consequences (other than in the movies)? Perhaps.

The blood sucking aside, though, I don’t see (given the limited thought I’ve given to the proposition) why vampires should have any fewer rights than the rest of us. It certainly seems discriminatory, and a hate crime of the first rank, to think that one has license to stick wooden stakes through their hearts, simply because they’re vampires. But if they’ve been engaged in non-consensual insanguination and vampire recruitment, then it seems as though it would be a preemptive act of self defense, albeit taking the law into one’s own hands.

Sorry, fascinating topic, but I think I’m starting to ramble. If I gave it more thought, I might come up with a more coherent treatise.

* Come to think of it, this has some parallels to some conservatives’ argument that gays have to “recruit” young boys, because they’re unable to procreate. This is a notion that I always thought nonsensical–no one can be “recruited” to be gay unless they’re already at least bisexual. I have never been unsure about my sexuality–was approached once when I was fourteen or so, and I wasn’t recruited–I was disgusted at the thought.