"Nothing in our Constitution even vaguely promotes the redress of grievances with guns; the "redress of grievances" clause of the First Amendment has nothing to with the "right to bear arms" described in the Second Amendment. Rather, what the Constitution protects is the ability to redress our grievances by petitioning our government.
There may be no more damning indictment of our society than this: We too often seem to be equipping our young men with the guns and excuses to kill one another, rather than the safe schools and knowledge it takes to frame a good and righteous petition."
Quote from: Trayvon Martin case also about guns By Jeanne Bishop and Mark Osler, at CNN Mon April 16, 2012
Hoodiez (The Trayvon Martin Justice Song!)
For newly released family photos of Trayvon Martin go to :Final Memories: Trayvon Martin 9 Days Before His Death (PHOTO)Posted April 14, 2012 by Amir Rowe for Global Grind Staff
There are a number of issues which have been raised concerning the shooting death of Trayvon martin .
These include racial profiling and racism and the reactions of police and Mainstream Media when the victim is not white; there is in the Florida case also the issue of the "Stand Your Ground Law" which encourages citizens to shoot first and there is also questions to be raised about the lack of substantive laws regarding gun control.
Trayvon Martin case also about guns By Jeanne Bishop and Mark Osler, at CNN Mon April 16, 2012
Editor's note: Jeanne Bishop is a criminal defense lawyer in Cook County, Illinois. Mark Osler is professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and a former federal prosecutor.
(CNN) -- As criminal attorneys, we know that tragic cases very often bring festering social issues into public view. Bill Cosby was right: The Trayvon Martin case brings to the surface troubling questions not only about race but also about the role of handguns in our society.
Now that the shooter, George Zimmerman, has been charged with second-degree murder, his defense under Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law will become the focus of discussion. This law is grounded in a factual error and a deeply flawed principle. The factual error is that a proliferation of handguns makes us safer. The flawed principle is that somehow the right to bear arms needs to be enlarged to a right to resolve disputes with guns.
The notion that guns make us safer is a fallacy. People with guns in their homes are much more likely to be killed with their own gun -- by accident, domestic violence or suicide -- than to use it ever against an intruder, according to Arthur Kellermann, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine. Similarly, people who carry guns are more likely to be shot and killed than those who are unarmed. A University of Pennsylvania study found that people carrying guns were 4.5 times more likely to be shot and 4.2 times more likely to be killed.
That study's author, Charles Branas, has speculated that one reason may be that guns give carriers a sense of empowerment that causes them to overreact in tense situations. That may be precisely what happened in the case of Zimmerman.
Florida's Stand Your Ground law changed the previous understanding of self-defense in a simple way. Traditionally, one could only claim self-defense if there was no reasonable chance to retreat from a situation where one felt threatened. The revised law says if you feel threatened with imminent great bodily harm, you may use force, including guns, against the person you find threatening, even if there is a reasonable opportunity to retreat. What this invites is the settling of personal disputes with guns, as evidenced by a 300% increase in the number of killings by private citizens justified by "self-defense" in Florida since the law passed.
Most murders involve young men, often as both shooter and victim, as in the Trayvon Martin case. Young men, of course, often get in conflicts where they are threatening one another: that is, where both of them are trying to scare the other with "imminent great bodily harm." Florida's law may allow one of those chest-bumping young men, without consequence, to end the mutual dispute by shooting the other dead on the street. When it is over, the only witness may be the shooter, and his version of events will presumptively control. There is no morality in this rule.
Nothing in our Constitution even vaguely promotes the redress of grievances with guns; the "redress of grievances" clause of the First Amendment has nothing to with the "right to bear arms" described in the Second Amendment. Rather, what the Constitution protects is the ability to redress our grievances by petitioning our government.
There may be no more damning indictment of our society than this: We too often seem to be equipping our young men with the guns and excuses to kill one another, rather than the safe schools and knowledge it takes to frame a good and righteous petition.
Meanwhile Obama proves he is not a progressive or liberal when it comes toliberalizing or legalizing drugs in the USA or anywhere else. Obama has put his conservative foot down . But why? For all his talk about pragmatism and science and logic Obama tosses out reality to favor the unworkable and destructive anti-drug laws. So because he and other leaders can't take down the heads of various drug cartels and other gangsters he is going to allow hundreds of thousands more Americans to be imprisoned for exercising their right to use substances which at the moment are illegal.
And why does this matter? Because it illustrates that Obama is an opportunist and prgmatist when it comes to his own political career. He fears he will lose votes but more importantly lose funds by some or all of his big money backers for his re-election campaign by supporting legalization or even consideration of legalization.
So what will Obama do if some of the south and central American governments move towards legalization -cut off funding humanitarian and military or insist the UN, NATO and IMF and World Bank to put pressure on those countries no longer willing to kow tow to the American Empire.
So for Obama it does not matter about the scientific studies or other studies economic, social etc. when it comes to "THE WAR ON DRUGS" all that matters is the STATUS QUO. And facts be damned. So in what way is the re-election of Obama a good thing for real liberals and progressives. So even though legalization of Marijuana would create more revenue for America and would reduce the amount of money dumped into the useless War On Drugs.
If Obama was the man he claimed to be during the 2008 election he would study the subject of legalization and then use the bully pulpit to educate Americans about the reality and scientific data on Marijuana and other drugs but also on the economic logic for legalization. Or does Obama just want to put more Black and Hispanic Americans in prison to assuage the fears of the White Majority.
Obama Dismisses Latin American Leaders’ Calls for Drug Legalization in Colombia By: Jon Walker at FireDogLake.com Monday April 16, 2012
With the total failure of the drug war causing many Latin American political leaders to publicly question the wisdom of prohibition, President Obama was forced to repeatedly address the issue this weekend at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. Unfortunately, Obama did his best to quickly dismiss the topic with incoherent excuses. From the LA Times:
Facing calls at a regional summit to consider decriminalization, Obama said he is open to a debate about drug policy, but he believes that legalization could lead to greater problems in countries hardest hit by drug-fueled violence.
“Legalization is not the answer,” Obama told other hemispheric leaders at the two-day Summit of the Americas.
“The capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting, than the status quo,” he said.
This is simply an absurd defense of prohibition. If drugs were legalized and regulated like any other product, the business running them would be operate like any other legal business such as beer breweries, pharmaceutical makers, car manufacturers, alcohol distillers, dairies, etc. While corporations can and sometimes do have a corrupting influence over a nation’s politics, the idea that the level of corruption and violence from a legal business would ever be on the scale that we see with the cartels in the illicit drug trade doesn’t pass the laugh test.
I’ve never seen stories about Grupo Medelo, the brewer of Corona, offering local politicians the choice of the “silver or the lead.” Legal breweries simply don’t assassinate dozens of local politicians, police officers and reporters to get their way. Rival Tequila distillers compete with each other for market share using advertising and sometimes lobbying to get a tax or regulatory advantage, but they don’t use armed gangs to fight for market control in a bloody war that cost 50,000 Mexicans their lives. Legal car manufacturers don’t employ criminals to dissolve hundreds of their enemies in acid.
Just as the end of alcohol prohibition in America caused legal and law abiding businesses to replace the deeply corrupt and violent mafia in the American alcohol trade, ending the prohibition against other drugs, like marijuana, would result in law abiding businesses replacing the cartels.
No comments:
Post a Comment