In a truly just world, Brett Kavanaugh would not be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court for so many reasons. While the “he said – she said” conflict between Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is stealing center stage, there are countless reasons why the process is flawed. Not the least is that Dr. Ford is already receiving the Anita Hill Treatment from many Republican Senators, both on the Judiciary Committee and in the rank and file.

Let’s deal quickly with this issue. It is possible that what Brett Kavanaugh “remembers” (which seems to be nothing) more accurately describes what happened between him and Christine Blasey thirty-six years ago than what she recalls (being attacked; experiencing trauma; and carrying it with her for the intervening years). It’s possible but far from a certainty.

Suppose that there are no credible witnesses. Is the winner Kavanaugh because (a) he’s a male, (b) he’s a Republican and that party holds the moral high ground, (c) his supporters like Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley are more righteous? Or is the “winner” Dr. Ford because (a) she does not have the extensive history of shading the truth as Kavanaugh has revealed in the hearings for his nomination, (b) women are more believable than men, (c) in the history of these kinds of disputes, the man has been believed far more than the woman, and (d) it’s payback time for what happened to Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Hard to tell. Maybe an FBI investigation will turn up incontrovertible evidence. Maybe the questioning of Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford before the Committee will trip up one or the other. If we have to go by a “feeling in the gut,” I would say that the safe thing to do would be to side with Dr. Ford because the consequences of having two sitting members on the Supreme Court who have acted very inappropriately regarding sex is more than the country should have to bear. As said so eloquently by Anita Hill in an op-ed in today’s New York Times:

But, as Judge Kavanaugh stands to gain the lifetime privilege of serving on the country’s highest court, he has the burden of persuasion. And that is only fair.

Surely there is another conservative nominee who has not been charged with such and who may not have the same paper trail as Kavanaugh.

But let’s look at the broader picture of why this process is so flawed. What are we doing here? We’re selecting someone to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States? And what does he/she do? “Interpret” the laws made by extremely flawed individuals; our legislators in the federal, state and local legislatures. While there are some outstanding legislators, the nature of the job is that it attracts many who have excessive egos and who are comfortable asking for money with little to offer in return. That’s not the way in which healthy human beings interact with one another.

As a group, they are not the most qualified people we have in our society to fashion our laws. Yet we treat what they create as being sacrosanct and engraved in stone. The work of these legislators must be precisely interpreted. But what if what they made was crap, as often is the case. What do the judges do then?

If our judges are wise and capable, then their job should be to clean up the mess. That means more than interpreting what has been written. It means working to have our laws conform to the parts of our Constitution that promote democracy and fairness.

How do we know if a nominee is capable of helping us clean up legislative messes? It certainly is not from them providing bullshit like, “That is a hypothetical question and I don’t want to answer it because it’s a case that may come before the court.” Since nominees dodge most questions, we can only use conjecture to try to figure out what they support.

We need a system in which the nominees are fully vetted – and that information is available not only to the executive branch but also to Congress and ultimately to the American people. The nominees must be required to answer all questions, so we learn what their professed beliefs are.

Their skills in interpreting the laws are less important than their abilities to exercise common sense. That means being good at reasoning, having empathy and understanding irony and hypocrisy.

This system won’t change now. If we’re fortunate, Kavanaugh will not be confirmed and we’ll go through the same song and dance with the next nominee. But ultimately, we need to face reality and have Supreme Court Justices be individuals who have boots on the ground of the United States and who are more arbiters of fairness than presumed scholars of the law.

The post It’s not just Kavanaugh; it’s the whole process appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s an outlier. It is essentially unrelatable to the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights or anything else in the U.S. Constitution. But because the founding fathers wanted to make sure that white males would be able to keep slaves in check, the “right to bear arms” was included in a sloppily worded notion called the Second Amendment.

If slavery was America’s original sin, then the Second Amendment is the second sin. And they are related, as that right to bear arms was in large part included in order to perpetuate slavery.

Other than slavery, there was really no need for the Second Amendment. At the time that the constitution was being framed, guns were just another implement of life in on a lightly developed continent.

Guns were definitely an improvement over bows and arrows. There were definite human and non-human threats while living on the prairie. A gun could be useful there. It also would be efficient for the government to know that many potential draftees in a time of war would have their own weapons.

But in a lot of ways, they were just another implement, like a plow or a gas lantern. They made life easier. The Constitution already said that individuals had the right to property, so there was no need to establish a specific “right” to own firearms.

This Amendment facilitated the use of violence, something that is part of human nature. But as we look at countries such as the United Kingdom or Australia, we can see that human nature can function without easy access guns. And Australia is like the United States in that it was a vast expanse that had to be settled under dangerous conditions. But after a school shooting in the late 1990s, they called upon their common sense to make it very difficult to purchase firearms. They have had no school shootings since.

I would love it if the Second Amendment was repealed and most guns were confiscated. My reason is simple – we would be a more civil and civilized society. But I am not so naïve as to think that this will happen. The process of confiscating guns would likely result in domestic carnage the likes of which we have never seen save for the Civil War.

But what we should do is to recognize that the Second Amendment was created on spurious grounds and that it protects a specious right. It is unlike any of the other rights that are essential to a democracy.

What we can do is recognize that this mistake of a “right” will likely be with us for a long time, but we should work to craft gun policy that looks at weapons like any other implement that can be dangerous and needs to be regulated to ensure safety (e.g. power tools).

There are many Americans who resent the lives of metropolitan elites. They have good reason to hold grudges and to want a rebalancing of economic power within our society. But the right to resent should not be confused with the right to bear arms.

It might be easier for us to try to get along better if there were fewer guns. Let’s not lose sight of that.

The post Can we please not start with, “I believe in the Second Amendment” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It is obvious now that the majority of Americans, in fact the majority of gun owners, support better screening of those who shop for guns and ammunition. The majority of civilized countries manage to let citizens own firearms without the carnage we see here in the U.S. One major difference is the requirements that citizens have to meet before owning guns. Background checks, mandatory training on handling and storing guns, and other reasonable requirements result in a shared sense of safety and freedom of movement in those countries. Public safety is just as much of a right as owning a gun. If the general population isn’t “free” to travel and go about our business, we have lost much of what America is supposed to be all about.

From research done on mass shootings in the U.S. over the last few years, we can say with some certainly that angry young men are more likely to commit these violent crimes that other members of our society. Other countries know this as well and have done a few things to try to address the situation. For example, in Germany, anyone younger than 25 must undergo a psychological examination before being allowed to own a gun. In France, ALL gun buyers must provide a medical certificate declaring them physically and mentally capable of safe handling of firearms.

I’d like to suggest we pass laws similar to those we all take for granted when it comes to driving a vehicle. There are minimum standards relating to rules of the road because we all desire some semblance of safety on the highways. Violations are punishable by fines, tickets, even prison. If we begin thinking of gun safety the same way we agree on the need for rules of the road and requirements for drivers, we can refocus the conversation where it needs to be—on something we all need and want—public safety.

Insurance companies require higher premiums for younger drivers, especially young male drivers, because of the long history of that demographic causing a disproportionate number of accidents and deaths on the highway. Psychological and neurological studies have shown that the judgment part of the brain isn’t completely developed until the early 20’s. It’s the last and most important part of the human brain to reach maturity.

It makes all kinds of sense to look more carefully at younger potential gun buyers. Like it or not, males under about age 25 are in a higher risk group for committing a violent act with a weapon. Yes, they can use other weapons such as knives, but guns that can kill dozens of people in minutes should never be allowed in the general population. Military assault rifles were designed for combat situations, not for grabbing a latte at the Bread Company. We should reinstate the assault weapons ban in Congress immediately. Serious outdoorsmen and hunters don’t use automatic weapons to kill deer.

Pro-gun enthusiasts complain that the criminal justice system doesn’t do enough to enforce laws already on the books. I agree. In fact, I’d like to see more serious attention paid to gun owners who leave loaded weapons where children can find them. If a toddler is taken to the ER because he ingested rat poison he found under the kitchen sink, family services is called in immediately. Recently, a mother in western Missouri was charged with first degree child endangerment and 2nd degree murder because her child drowned in a pond. But if that same child died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, the police would have called it an “accident.” No, it’s not an accident. Anyone who leaves loaded guns for children to find and use against themselves or others is guilty of criminal neglect.

While I try to avoid arguing about Second Amendment rights, I think it’s very important that we repeat over and over that the 2nd Amendment was about a “well- regulated militia” being necessary to defend the fledgling new nation. The former colonies had tried forming a Confederation, but that didn’t work. Each state was on its own as far as defending its interests against encroachment from British soldiers in Canada, Native American tribes to the west, and raids on Atlantic ports by various European shipping companies. With no standing army organized by the federal government, states had to call up, organize and arm local citizens, usually with limited success. When Americans were colonists of the British, there were prohibitions against stockpiling weapons. That is the logic behind the 2nd Amendment. It had nothing to do with the “freedom” to own guns, much less assault rifles and other automatic weapons. And it certainly had nothing to do with the “right” to “open carry.” I doubt that anyone who walked around with rifles hung around his body while shopping in town would have been taken seriously. In fact, that person’s neighbors might join together to disarm him for fear of his mental state.

The response to my suggestions will probably be the usual cop-outs about guns always being available illegally, stolen weapons being used in crimes committed in larger cities, etc. That’s a defeatist attitude, and we shouldn’t be bullied into giving up on reasonable regulations surrounding gun ownership and use. The other illogical argument is that people are safer with guns in the home, car or wherever. But statistics show that guns that are readily available are more often used against someone known to the killer. And, yes, someone really intent on suicide will find a way to do it, but a bullet to the head doesn’t give a depressed person time to reconsider.

The time has come to find reasonable and effective ways to reduce gun violence in general and mass shootings in particular. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the majority of us have the will at this critical time in our history.

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