Right-to-Carry Litigation Update

While I was in the process of extracting myself from California, important progress was made on the litigation front for the the right to bear arms outside the home. After more than a year of waiting, three decision were rendered out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, affirming that governments in this circuit must recognize a right to carry functional handguns for self-defense under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, the court ordered that self-defense must be accepted as meeting the various “good cause” requirements for the issuance of concealed-carry licenses in California and Hawaii.

Drake v. Jerejian	New Jersey	Lost on appeal at USCA3.
Kachalsky v. Cacace	New York	Lost on appeal at USCA2.
Moore v. Madigan	Illinois	Won on appeal at USCA7.
Palmer v. D.C.	D.C.	Won at U.S. District Court.
Peruta v. San Diego	California	Petitioned to U.S. Supreme Court.
Richards v. Prieto	California	Lost on rehearing at USCA9.
Woollard v. Gallagher	Maryland	Lost on appeal at USCA4.

Naturally, the legal battles aren’t over yet. The controlling decision in Peruta v. San Diego has been challenged by a number of actors (including the attorney general of California) and may yet face a rehearing by a larger panel on the overwhelmingly “liberal” circuit. Petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court are the next option for whichever side ultimately loses at the Ninth Circuit. Meanwhile, Drake v. Jerejian, out of the Third Circuit, is already at that step.

The question remains whether the Supreme Court will actually step in to settle the matter.

Retreat from California

The time has come for me to surrender my ancestral homeland and to retreat to friendlier political territory.

As someone who loves freedom but lives in the state currently ranked 49th overall in this respect, I have realized for some time that I would eventually become a political and/or economic refugee from California. In my small way, I have fought for many years to hold back the tide rising to swallow the state that has been my family’s home for at least five generations, but after all the time, money, and pointless votes spent in that effort, the precious few victories have proven fleeting or largely inconsequential thus far.

Professionally, the situation hasn’t been much better for me, which isn’t terribly surprising given that state service and politics are inextricably linked. The rising hypocrisy and venality of the ivory towers of academia have simply become too much for my continued sanity to bear. Otherwise, I might have retired graciously after 25 years in higher education, but I lack the time to dither over my own future any longer.

My only daughter will be a teenager all too soon. While I might have contented myself to follow the long tradition of righteous outlawry in the face of well-meaning tyranny, it would be undeniably selfish to let her grow up in an environment increasingly toxic to her rights as a free citizen, when I could give her a fighting chance for liberty and prosperity somewhere else. By removing her to more defensible ground, I can at least give her the choices that I felt were so long unavailable to me, but this must happen before she loses her way in the emotional wilderness of adolescence and such life-changing events are perceived as the enemy of her own happiness.

Therefore, I have resigned my post at the California State University and am heading north to Washington, where I will continue my career and begin building a new home for my family. If thereby I can somehow reverse the tide through the anthropic virtue of my own sacrifice, then so much the better. God has certainly enjoyed a chuckle at my expense before. Indeed, after months and years of delays and denials, one such effect began to manifest itself scarcely two weeks from the day I committed to relocating.

While the Evergreen State is no libertarian paradise, Washington does seem to be the right place at the right time, especially if I must follow the path of traditional employment for some years to come. It is also not so far gone as California, so it might yet be saved from a similar fate. Even if the political kinesthesis now operating throughout the United Stated can’t be avoided there either, perhaps the local balance can be tipped in the right direction within the national scheme. If the Gadsden flag flying in one prospective neighborhood that I visited was any indication, there is some hope for this.

Of course, predicting the future is impossible from within this historical inflection point. I feel like I am running before a storm. That storm may happily break and pass us harmlessly by—and the sun does seem to be breaking through the clouds just now—or it may not. The Pacific Northwest with its forests, mountains, and rivers has always beckoned to me, and my mind’s eye has long seen it as a place of refuge, so that is where I have chosen to shelter and where I might reset the clock long enough to peacefully watch my daughter’s generation grow to maturity … before possibly facing the dreadful choice between fight or flight once again.

Peruta v. San Diego

Though it was eventually adopted by the National Rifle Association’s litigation team, the case of Peruta v. San Diego was widely seen as something of a dark horse compared to other right-to-carry challenges, such as the matter of Richards v. Prieto. In fact, both cases were argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit back in Dec. 2012. Today, the appeals court finally issued its decision, concluding that “the right to bear arms includes the right to carry an operable firearm outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense” and held that requiring “good cause” for the issuance of a license to carry a handgun “impermissibly infringes on the Second Amendment right to bear arms.…”

This decision represents a pleasing and unexpected victory—if a late one—for the right-to-carry movement in California. However, as history has shown, the fight may be far from over. Various judicial maneuvers may still be used to delay or reverse the order. Therefore and perhaps probably, Peruta may yet find itself petitioned for review to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has repeatedly demonstrated its reluctance to hear a right-to-carry challenge.

The Libertarian Middle Way

At its heart, modern libertarianism is about the morality of force. A libertarian holds that force is justified only to prevent wrongful conduct against persons and their property. In this respect, libertarianism differs drastically from the philosophies of the two predominant American political factions and specifically from the demands for “social justice” on the political left and of “legal moralism” on the political right. Both of these factions must rely upon the coercive power of the state to force compliance with their respective philosophical goals.

Professor Randy E. Barnett expands on this idea in the paper linked below. It’s only 19 pages and well worth reading, if you wish to understand libertarianism.

Afterword: The Libertarian Middle Way

Time for a Basic Living Stipend?

In her seminal science-fiction novel Beggars in Spain (William Morrow & Co., 1993), Nancy Kress describes a futuristic American welfare state wherein 80 percent of the population survives comfortably, if somewhat squalidly “on the Dole,” rather than engaging in productive employment. This largess is financed by patent royalties from an energy-production breakthrough, but the actual United States of the early 21st century A.D. is a fantastically wealthy country and already provides extensive public benefits to its poorest citizens. However, these benefits are delivered through hundreds of different programs that are administered under a variety of political conceits, making the American welfare system both inefficient and condescending.

According to the Cato Institute, federal, state, and local governments spent over $950 billion on welfare benefits in 2012. That’s over $20,000 per poor person or nearly twice the federal poverty threshold. Of course, a significant portion of these funds are lost to bureaucratic overhead. Therefore, as bleeding-heart libertarian Matt Zwolinski asks, wouldn’t it be better to put the money directly into the hands of poor people rather than passing it through layers of government administrators and social workers?

That’s where a basic living stipend comes into the picture. While fictional, Nancy Kress’s version of universal welfare is broadly similar to historical proposals such as the basic income guarantee or the negative income tax. Under such proposals, governments would provide all their citizens with a certain minimum income, either as an outright grant or as a variable tax credit, in order to keep them above the poverty threshold. In theory, minimum-income schemes would replace inefficient, paternalistic welfare states with streamlined transfer-payment systems, maximizing benefits to recipients and minimizing costs to taxpayers.

A “heartless libertarian communist” myself, I am generally skeptical of welfare schemes, both social and corporate, but before I indulge that skepticism here, I should note that, as Dr. Zwolinski points out, the idea of income guarantees also has origins and support in modern libertarian thought. He offers three reasonably compelling arguments in support of such proposals. These include the aforementioned efficiency improvements, approximate reparations for historical injustices, and necessary requirements for democratic legitimacy.

I find the last argument, advanced previously by none other than free-market economist Friedrich Hayek, to be the most morally compelling. Though I would advocate for the voluntary society, the fact remains—and may always remain—that all human beings live under the rule of coercive states. Since it is the political tendency of both left and right authoritarian regimes to institutionalize relative poverty, it becomes morally imperative for governments, in order to maintain their own legitimacy, to ensure that their citizens do not fall into absolute poverty.

Moving as that argument may be, I remain highly skeptical of income guarantees for two reasons. First, I doubt that they would reduce relative poverty at all. There would still be plenty of comparatively poor people, but they would all have food, clothing, housing, and entertainment. Their numbers would also seem likely to expand due to the free-rider problem, though this could be mitigated to some extent if the system were implemented correctly.

The second reason follows from the first and is significantly more disconcerting. If free riders or economic disincentives lead to an expansion of relative poverty, how much of an increase in income transfers (and concomitant decrease in productivity) can the general economy absorb before collapsing? Assuming that the threat of such a collapse is considerable, the risk will increase with the sensitivity of income guarantees to normal political processes. This latter concern is why Dr. Zwolinski rightly suggests that income guarantees should be enacted only at the constitutional level, though the controlling economic indices would no doubt still be subject to political manipulation.

Nevertheless, I’ve begun to think that it’s a risk worth taking. One reason that the byzantine welfare state is so pernicious is because it effectively conceals the diseased portions of the political organism, allowing otherwise good people to support programs that while ostensibly intended to help the poor actually perpetuate their relative poverty. Though income guarantees would probably do no better at reducing poverty, they would cast off the veil, exposing both the free riders, who would no longer have anything to hide, and bringing greater transparency to the political kinesthesis that institutionalizes poverty. Presumably, once these problems were open to ready observation, rational political actors would move to address them.

On a more optimistic note, public stipends should sweep away paternalistic welfare schemes by treating recipients as adults responsible for their own financial decisions. This would also be a step toward the moral courage required to accept individual failure as a natural and occasionally healthy part of human development. Furthermore, though this may mostly be Marxist wishful thinking, it is possible that even free riders might contribute some unexpected dividend to justify the productive members of society carrying their general slack. In fact, savvy free riders who were wise with their public stipends could eventually save enough money to channel into private investment, profiting for themselves while financing real economic growth. Finally, since guaranteed incomes would effectively remove low-end workers from the labor pool, competition in the labor market should become more robust, leading to increased wages and salaries for those who remain in the workforce. Both of these would be examples of Keynesian economic policies properly applied.

Welfare reform remains the key to unlocking and resolving many social problems, and as counterintuitive as it may seem, basic income guarantees might just be the kind of reform we need. In the end, I find myself swayed by the argument that we have a moral duty to the beggars in Spain, not out of guilty compassion for their relative destitution but because our coercive states are largely responsible both presently and historically for creating them. When that is done, perhaps we can continue the journey away from the coercive state and toward the voluntary society with greater alacrity.

Spending Fallacies

It’s no secret that people spend their money in different ways, depending on whether they are comparatively rich or poor. The poor will usually spend a larger portion on basic necessities, while the rich will typically spend more on luxuries. The latter never fails to cause consternation and concern among many observers.

Naturally, “liberals” are quick to condemn the “excesses” of the rich, but even self-styled free-market “conservatives” will express dismay at how the affluent use their wealth. Both political factions seem to think there are better, more beneficial ways to spend all this money. That betrays their fundamental misunderstandings about economics … or at least shows that their own emotional responses can blind them to economic realities.

For example, the lavish wedding of a wealthy heiress will employ caterers, florists, photographers, and the other creative and service professionals whom “liberals” supposedly want to help while also feeding the free market that most “conservatives” claim to support. Would these funds be better spent on charity? Or should they simply be taxed and redistributed as welfare payments? Then the recipients would know well enough to elect Democrats, I suppose.

Attack on Titan

I don’t usually write reviews, but in this dreadful new era, here’s the second in a row. Furthermore, though I’ve also touched upon my interest in and involvement with anime (Japanese animation) in the past, I haven’t written much about it. Recommended to me by friends and acquaintances, this example seemed worthy of mention for both enthusiasts and those unfamiliar with the medium.

Attack on Titan (Japanese: Shingeki no Kyojin) is a science-fiction/fantasy television series adapted from the ongoing manga (graphic novel) of the same name by Hajime Isayama. Thousands of years in the future, presumably, human civilization has been all but destroyed by the onslaught of a mysterious race of humanoid giants, the Titans, who seem to exist solely to kill human beings. The survivors eke out a kind of pre-industrial existence behind a series of concentric walls. These walls have kept the Titans at bay for a century … until that day when they don’t.

The protagonists then find themselves in a renewed fight for survival and soon realize that they must also begin to unravel the mystery of the Titans and their origins if humanity is to prevail.

Like any other medium, anime ranges from the cheap and formulaic to the artful and innovative. Attack on Titan has proved to be an example of the latter. It manages to achieve unusually beautiful and consistent animation for an episodic television production with detail that is not too simplified to distract from the viewer’s enjoyment. The plot and characters are equally engaging. The ensemble cast carries the viewer through emotions that run from terror to courage and from grief to hope. The story is intriguing and engrossing, combining mystery, dramatic (and sometimes brutal) action, philosophy, and palpable dread. The viewer is always left eager for the next episode … or the next season.

Of course, the series isn’t entirely without flaws. Setting aside the central technological conceit that has the protagonists fighting the Titans in an entertaining but farfetched form of aerial, sword-based combat, the show suffers from some of the usual storytelling crutches. For example, the Titans almost always appear at the speed of plot, rarely interrupting important conversations between the protagonists. Many of the characterization clichés that often plague anime are avoided, but the seemingly obligatory scenes of angst and self-doubt are occasionally indulged for interminable moments. The computer-aided animation is very well done without clumsy CGI inserts, though still pans and other low-budget motion-avoidance techniques are employed with annoying frequency.

In conclusion, Attack on Titan is well worth watching and stands as a perfect example of what anime can be. It is currently available for subtitled viewing via both Crunchyroll and Funimation. A home-video release is expected next year … hopefully along with a second season.