Speak the truth

U2 performs in Paris, Dec. 6 2015

On Sunday, December 6, the Irish band U2 rocked a capacity crowd in the AccorHotels Arena in Paris. Bono’s vocals soared and the Edge’s distinctive guitar rang out. Over 20,000 people waved and cheered and clapped, offering a big poke in the eye to ISIS. And then Bono sang U2’s anthem, “In the Name of Love,” and brought down the house. This was powerful stuff and showed human love and compassion in sharp contrast to the evil of terrorism.

This celebration of Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité occurred just four days after the vicious ISIS-inspired attack in San Bernardino. Radical Islamic terrorism had, once again, visited our shores. Our President sprang into action. Jumping right to the central point, he profoundly observed that “we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country,” and called for more and stricter gun laws.

While millions of ordinary Americans scratched their heads over this, the President went on to scold us. “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam.”

This is a habit Mr. Obama has long possessed. A Google search for the phrase “Obama scolds” returns over 150,000 hits.

Here is a telegram Mr. President. The American people are a good people. We are reasonably smart. We are kind, generous, and welcoming. We have Muslim friends, neighbors, and colleagues. It is very clear to us that they are good people and not radical jihadists. It is condescending of you to point this out as if you were privy to some great insight. We get it.

And to claim that this terrorism is completely divorced from Islam is an insult to our intelligence as well. Maajid Nawaz, a former jihadist who has deradicalized himself and written about it, defines it succinctly. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 12, Nawaz says:

“Islam is a religion, and like any other faith, it is internally diverse. Islamism, by contrast, is the desire to impose a single version of Islam on an entire society. Islamism is not Islam, but it is an offshoot of Islam. It is Muslim theocracy.”

“In much the same way, jihad is a traditional Muslim idea connoting struggle—sometimes a personal spiritual struggle, sometimes a struggle against an external enemy. Jihadism, however, is something else entirely: It is the doctrine of using force to spread Islamism.”

That the President and his supporters can’t mouth these terms is demeaning. We really do get the distinction.

And it goes on. In a major policy speech on December 6, the President demanded that “Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?”

Here is what possibly could be the argument. It’s surprising that a constitutional scholar needs to have it pointed out.

In 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, tried to board a flight to Hawaii from San Francisco International Airport. While trying to check in, her name flashed up on the no-fly list and she ended up being taken away in handcuffs. A long, ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get herself off the list followed. So she sued in Federal court.

The issue was the opaque nature of the process. According to the Stanford Alumni Magazine, “The U.S. government has given her no opportunity to hear the evidence against her, let alone challenge it, say her lawyers.”  Rahinah ultimately prevailed, and in 2014 (yes, nine years later), won her case. But only Rahinah was removed from the list – nothing else changed. The system is still broken.

Many others have found themselves improperly on this list. Ted Kennedy, United States Senator. Daniel Brown, United States Marine returning from Iraq. John Lewis, U.S. Representative from Georgia. And many, many more.

In proposing that everyone on the no-fly list should lose their Second Amendment rights, the president is compounding an already constitutionally challenged program. Let’s fix that first by providing transparency, notification, and due process for anyone placed on the list. Then, and only then, add the no-gun provision.

Here’s the bottom line. We are in a war not of our asking. We must prosecute it, but to truly change this jihadist meme will require generations. It will require solidarity with our Muslim brethren. We will have further attacks, further losses. Perfect safety is not possible. But emotional demands to reduce the strength of the American people will make us even less safe. Calm, cold-eyed reason must prevail. And truth. Quit the scolding, trust us, and speak the truth.

Apoplexy or solutions?

The United States Code

It was a huge disappointment to the president – he termed it “shameful”. Expanded background checks, arguably the mildest of planned gun control measures, failed in the Senate last week. Illustrating how difficult national gun legislation is to achieve, the bipartisan group of senators voting down the bill included a contingent of rural state Democrats.

Liberals were apoplectic that these senators chose to represent the wishes of their constituents rather than those of President Obama, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Conservatives were relieved that they had dodged a bullet, viewing the bill as an incremental assault on Second Amendment rights. According to Vice President Joe Biden, President Obama vowed to implement new executive actions on gun control quite soon. This stirred constitutionalists, always sensitive to whiffs of executive overreach.

What to do… what to do?

Here’s an idea. There are over 12,000 words of the United States Code dealing with unlawful acts related to firearms possession. This is settled law – it’s already on the books! If only we were to enforce these laws, imagine the enormous reduction in gun violence we could achieve.

Here are some examples, with the USC citation and related prison sentence provided.

18 USC § 922 (g)  - 10 years in federal prison

Unlawful to possess a firearm or ammunition by one who is a felon, fugitive, drug user, adjudicated as mentally defective, illegally in the United States, subject of a restraining order, or convicted of domestic abuse.

18 USC § 922 (j)  - 10 years in federal prison

Unlawful to receive, possess, conceal, store, barter, sell, or dispose of  stolen firearm or ammunition.

18 USC § 924 (b)  - 10 years in federal prison

For shipping, transporting, or receipt of a firearm in connection with a federal crime of violence or drug trafficking.

18 USC § 924 (a)(1)(A)  - 5 to 30 years in federal prison, consecutive mandatory minimum sentences

For carrying, using, or possessing a firearm in connection with a federal crime of violence or drug trafficking

18 USC § 924 (j)  - death penalty or up to life in prison

Committing a murder while possessing a firearm or while trafficking drugs

There are many more firearm-related prohibitions, all with severe penalties. What would be the effect if these laws were assiduously enforced?

Well, we know the inverse. Chicago, with the toughest gun control laws in the nation, racked up 522 murders last year. Yet the Department of Justice prosecuted only 52 gun crimes, the lowest rate in the nation. So it’s evident, as well at intuitive, that fewer prosecutions don’t lead to favorable results.

The problem of gun violence in this country, statistically, is urban. Yet the administration has been focusing their collective effort on the rest of us. It is to this that the right objects. Why not ramp up federal prosecution of existing laws, no senate vote required, no constitutional objections, and see what happens?

Here’s why it won’t happen:

      1. Increasing the incarceration rate for gun crimes will further burden the federal prison budget, and, more importantly; 

      2. The majority of urban crime is committed by minorities on minorities. The PC police would not permit an unrepresentational increase in the minority prison population.

But if we’re serious about saving just one child, here is one: Hadiya Pendleton. Previously covered by this column, Hadiya was senselessly murdered in Chicago by two reputed gang members, guilty of all of the above USC provisions and more. Both President and First Lady Michelle Obama have invoked Hadiya’s name in their quest to crack down on gun ownership in Kingfield, Maine, and Eudora, Kansas.

Perhaps the president and his attorney general should look first to the cities, and put their focus on vigorously prosecuting the laws that we already have. Call your elected representatives and ask them, "why not?"

More free stuff!

What a week it’s been in politics.

On the campaign trail in California, President Obama cried out, “Free stuff! More free stuff!” The administration is again pushing banks to make taxpayer-subsidized mortgages to those with weaker credit ratings. While it is laudable to want folks to own houses, we continue to pursue policies that increase risk in the housing market. Have we learned nothing from the Great Recession?

While those on the left love to hate corporations and their profits, it is instructive to observe how the profit motive works. A corporation is simply a group of people. Groups of stockholders amass capital, labor, and know-how to provide something that the public wants. They do this because they desire to make a return on their capital investment. In the process, they create jobs, pay wages to employees, and shell out huge sums of taxes to state, local, and Federal government coffers. Evil stuff, huh?

Now the key to making a profit is to avoid booking a loss. In the banking scenario, that means loans must be granted conservatively. Defaulted loans (such as home foreclosures) are very expensive, and many successful (performing) loans are required to offset the expense of each failing one. As a result, banks extend mortgages very carefully, controlling the risk they are undertaking by assessing the ability of mortgagees to repay their loans. You might say that banks are conservative precisely because of their profit motive.

And that they are, until Uncle Sugar steps in with promises to subsidize losses. This reduces the risk that banks face and makes them less conservative, more willing to make loans to those who wouldn’t otherwise qualify. This is precisely what happened in the run-up to 2008 and we are still all paying for the collapse.

There is another path. The safest and most effective way of getting more folks into their own homes is to make sure that they have good jobs. Government policies should focus on economic growth and job creation. (A recent Pew poll revealed that both Democratic and Republican voters agree on this simple priority). Instead of more free stuff, let’s rely on economic growth and the dignity of work.

Because, at heart, we really understand that nothing is free. Someone always pays.