Local blogger Raging Red and I don’t often agree, though that doesn’t stop me from enjoying her blog. However, on the topic of Desmond Clark, I agree with her completely.

For any non-local readers who aren’t familiar with the story, Desmond Clark is a scumbag who, despite his colorful criminal history, was free on 7/5/2008 to kill his girlfriend, Na’lisha Gravely in a local Taco Bell (Gravely had run into the Taco Bell fleeing from Clark, and hid in a closet, where Clark found her and shot her several time).

Apparently, part of the reason the courts have been so lenient with Clark in the past is because the police requested leniency, due to Clark’s status as an informant. That’s where Raging Red’s post comes in:

Exactly. She probably felt helpless. She’s not going to testify against him knowing that the police are cutting him breaks, because if she does, she’ll just get beaten and abused even worse.

…

This is a guy who tracked her down at her grandmother’s house and dragged her out to his car and forced her into it, firing a warning shot. In another incident, he forced her into his car, shot at her, then drove around for hours until she managed to escape the vehicle. During a traffic stop, do you think she’s going to lean over and say, “Excuse me officer, could you help me?” She wouldn’t be paranoid to think that Clark might just drive off if she did that. Based on Clark’s history of always getting released, why would she think that asking a police officer for help would make her any safer?

The whole post is worth a read.

Law enforcement and the judicial system exist to protect the citizenry, and in this particular case, they failed us miserably. I am not generally one of those who believes that the police should prevent every crime — the amount of power and presence they would need in order to do so is undesirable. Still, they should do their best to investigate crimes and prosecute those crimes to the best of their ability. By doing nothing to get this violent criminal off the streets, the justice system in Charleston let all of its citizens down, not just Na’lisha Gravely.

I found a link to Consumerist.com the other day, and I’ve been reading through some of the posts there when I have a few minutes. The stories they share are entertaining, and it gives consumers a decent idea of what sorts of things we might want to look out for when doing business with large corporations — and how to deal with those corporations when we are slighted.

I can’t say I agree with everything that’s said there, though. This is from an op-ed a couple of weeks back:

But we can’t wait for Congress, or the next President, to feel like reviving the emaciated agencies of the FCC, FTC, and CPSC. It’s up to you to protect your consumer rights. Do your research. Ask questions. Knowing who to and how to complain when things go wrong. Get informed. Vote with your dollar. Your new policy? “It’s company policy,” is not a valid explanation for ripping you off.

While the advice here is good, there are no such things as consumer rights. The government is not obligated to protect you from your own stupidity. Read the contracts you sign, and only sign the contract if you’re absolutely certain that you understand it. If you don’t do this, and end up owing money for a fee you didn’t realize you would be charged, that’s a “stupid tax,” as Dave Ramsey would call it. Pay it, and learn your lesson. Don’t go whining about how Big Brother should have stopped the mean corporation from making you sign something without reading it (unless, of course, they actually did make you sign it by threatening you with a gun or something).

This is what annoys me about the freeze on ARM interest rates. Many people are yelling about unfair mortgage practices, but I haven’t heard anything that I really thought sounded unfair. I haven’t heard anyone say that the mortgage company forced them to take a loan they couldn’t afford; I’ve heard them say that the mortgage company allowed them to take a loan they couldn’t afford. In other words, they signed the loan contract willingly, and now that they’re being forced to live up to the terms of the contract, they want Big Brother to come help them out.

I sympathize with these people, really. I’ve paid more than my share of stupid tax already in my life, and I am sure that I will pay even more of it as time goes on. When I have to pay a stupid tax, though, I own up to it. I know this bill is my fault, and while I think it sucks that I have to pay it, I acknowlege that the reason I have to pay it is not because XYZ Financial loaned me more money than I could afford, it’s because I borrowed more than I could afford.

Are there times when corporations are actually committing fraud and tossing in truly hidden fees that weren’t in the contract at all, or advertising one thing while giving another? Sure there are, and in those cases, the government should be involved if they won’t make it right. As long as they’re being honest, though, there’s nothing wrong with companies trying to make a profit, and until they’re actually crossing the line into fraud, consumers should fight back by taking their dollars elsewhere and encouraging everyone who will listen to do the same, not by asking the government to intervene. There’s too much government involvement in the market already. Why would anyone want more?

Megan McArdle writes about vouchers. Specifically, she writes about individuals who have enough money to pull their kids out of public schools and then oppose the idea of helping poorer families do the same:

I very rarely get angry about politics. But every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers “destroying” the public schools by “cherry picking” the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today. Now, I don’t accuse David Nicholson of this particular sin . . . yet. Right now he’s only guilty of the lesser sin of viewing real estate purchases as the natural vehicle through which one should excercise educational choice. Perhaps he favors vouchers to help the kids he’s left behind. But if he does, I sure wish he’d mentioned it.

Is the problem with vouchers the cherry-picking of the best students? I wouldn’t have thought so. Cherry-picking the best students seems like a lesser problem to me. It is true that the best students tend to be those with the most involved parents, and the most involved parents would be the most likely to make use of a voucher system. That would leave the worse students (and some good students who happen to have less involved parents) in the public school system. If that cherry-picking of students was all that happened, the voucher system wouldn’t hurt anyone. It wouldn’t help everyone, but it would help enough individuals that it would be an overall positive for our society.

It seems to me that the more valid argument against vouchers is not that it allows for the cherry-picking of the best students, but that it allows for the cherry-picking of the best teachers. A school that offers better teachers would get more students (and, thus, more money). As a result, schools would not only be competing for students, but also for teachers. The better teachers would be able to demand better salaries at these schools, leaving only the worst teachers for the worst schools. Arguably, this, not the cherry-picking of students, is what hurts the most, because the students who are left behind are left behind in a lower-quality school than they would otherwise have attended.

Despite this, I believe that the overall effect of a voucher system^[a] would be positive. I readily admit that I could be wrong about that, but our current public school system is very broken and fixing it is a very difficult problem. Vouchers seem to me to be the best option to fix the system at this point, but I am more than willing to examine other alternatives.

1. I’d even take a pseudo-voucher system, where parents and students were given the right to choose from a selection of public school options. [↩]

The thought of a la carte pricing being required for cable networks never quite sat well with me, but I wasn’t sure why. For me, it was probably just a knee-jerk reaction against additional regulations. CoyoteBlog, though, explains why the regulation hurts niche channels.

The Ambulance Driver linked The AnarchAngel the other day, and I’ve been working my way through the archives during my free time. Today, I reached this post, titled “Three Questions”. There isn’t much to the post itself, which asks three questions (as you could probably guess from the title) to gun control supporters:

1. You say you feel safer knowing that guns are banned; why is that?
2. Do you recognize that when guns are banned, the only people carrying guns will be criminals (who ignore such bans because they are criminals. no law will stop criminals from carrying guns); and as such by supporting gun control, you are saying that you’re fine with criminals having guns but not law abiding citizens?
3. Given this, do you believe that the mere possession of a gun turns a law abiding citizen into a criminal menace?

What makes the post interesting to me are the answers in the comments. I would’ve responded to this in the comments section of that post, but it’s a couple of months old, so the comments would likely never be read (except, maybe, by the proprietor of the blog). At least if I post them here, my two (semi-)regular readers might see it.

A commenter calling him(?)self “cREbralFIX” answers (apparently playing Devil’s Advocate, because he himself isn’t an “anti”) with a couple of basically emotional answers for the first two questions. Then, he says, in response to question #3, that “Guns are dangerous and only trained people with authority should have them.”

That very nearly made me laugh out loud. A later post from that same blog gives one example as to why it’s laughable, but that case is, perhaps, arguable — statists may think that the authorities were doing the rigth thing, or that a few incidents of this type are acceptable. What about cases like this? Are those the hands in which you feel comfortable placing the security of your family?

Later, a commenter named Stephen answers all three questions (I’m editing this slightly to remove Stephen’s restating of the questions, since you can see them above in the blockquote):

1. Fewer criminals get their hands on them. I feel safer on the Tube in London knowing the thug in the car is less likely to be armed than one on the train in Chicago.
2. Your logic is flawed, knowing that criminals will break the law doesn’t make one fine with it. Criminals and law enforcement will have guns. I personally wouldn’t have a problem with trained and licensed citizens carrying weapons, but I have a feeling that would be objectionable to you.
3. Of course not. The CCW holder is not a threat. The problem is the nature of the market leads this to an immense number of firearms on the market, many of which end up in the hands of criminals, and the social cost of that is unacceptable.

1. The thug in the Tube car in London is not less likely to be armed than the thug in the Chicago train. The London thug is simply (relatively slightly) less likely to be armed with a gun. The likelihood that the intended victim is armed in London is much lower^[a].

   I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me feel safe. Even if the intended victim is an average law-abiding citizen, he’s almost certain to be less capable in a physical fight than a thug (whose lifestyle would, presumably, make the ability to hold one’s own in a fight pretty necessary). A thug attacking a law-abiding citizen can be fairly confident that he can handle a hand-to-hand fight. A thug attacking a law-abiding citizen who is obviously physically weaker (see: your grandmother) can be almost certain of it. Firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens who have familiarized themselves with the use of said firearms evens the score^[b]. As the saying goes, “God made all Men, Samuel Colt made them equal.”

2. I actually agree that the original question is posed somewhat awkwardly, but Stephen is seizing on that awkward wording to defend himself when I’m fairly certain he knows what was intended. Whether “fine with it” or not, gun banners are actively choosing a situation where criminals are armed and citizens (law-abiding) are not.

   Without gun bans, there is a possibility that anyone (if not everyone) is armed. With gun bans, the only armed people are criminals^[c]. I see three scenarios:

   1. Guns are restricted, but the restriction is not perfect Criminals have guns, and their victims don’t. In this case, the victim’s best hope is to pray that the criminal is a mostly-decent (for a criminal), non-violent person who only wants to take their physical property. Given that the criminal has already pulled a weapon and threatened to use it, I’m not hopeful about the victim’s chances. The criminal has a massive advantage
   2. Guns are restricted, and the restriction is perfect No one has a gun. Physically imposing individuals who know how to handle themselves in hand-to-hand combat are probably safe, but most of us are probably at a disadvantage against any thug who chooses to attack us. ^[d] The criminal, being able to (mostly effectively) judge the threat level of their target, has a distinct advantage here, even if it’s not as much as when he is armed and the victim isn’t.
   3. Guns are not restricted. In this case, criminals have no way of knowing whether their intended victims are armed or not, which provides something of a deterrent to criminal behavior. If their victim is armed, the criminal may still have an advantage (he initiates the violence, and may be more experienced in combat), but it is a minimal advantage compared to the advantages he has in the other two cases.

   I don’t know about you, but I prefer scenario 3.

3. Many criminals will be armed regardless of whether guns are banned. For example, the fact that guns are banned on the Virginia Tech campus (and that it was probably illegal for Cho to have purchased a gun at all, given his history) did not protect the 32 people killed on April 16, 2007. Heck, even a “perfect” ban, arming no one but Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) will still be arming some criminals^[e]. The choice is not arm everyone or arm no one, it’s “arm the victims or leave them to the mercies of the criminals”. Despite that, those who would ban guns actively (and knowingly, in some cases) choose the second option.

Gun control supporters remind me of those who support socialized health care. I understand their motivation and thought processes, and I even admire them for what they are trying to do, but I fear that letting the government take over these things (self defense and health care) will lead to far worse problems than the current situation.

1. Thugs are, by their very nature, criminals. If they’re willing to disobey the law to attack/rob someone on a train, they’re probably willing to have a gun if they can get one. We’ll say the probability of the thug being armed drops from 75% to 25% with gun banning. On the other hand, the victim is, presumably, a law abiding citizen. No matter what the probability of his carrying a weapon in a nation where it is legal to do so, his probability of carrying in London is nil. [↩]
2. At least, it evens things somewhat. A thug who has experience in dealing with armed opponents may still have the advantage, but his advantage over grandma is considerably lessened when she’s holding a pistol. [↩]
3. Well, criminals and LEOs, but given that the latter can’t be everywhere at once and that the former will simply choose to blend in with law abiding citizens rather than conveniently attacking only when LEOs are nearby, the reality is that criminals are the only individuals armed in most violent encounters when guns are banned. [↩]
4. I’m reminded of the Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episode that spoofed The Monkey’s Paw. After a wish for world peace was made and all guns were destroyed, the world was attacked by aliens. A subsequent wish for the aliens to leave led to the development of a weapon — a board with a nail in it — that, given the absence of all the guns, was very effective. Banning guns won’t ban weapons. [↩]
5. LEOs as a whole are honest, I’m sure, but I can’t imagine there’s a police force in the world that’s entirely without corruption, unless it’s the size of Mayberry’s [↩]