God Bless the Second Amendment

Happiness is a Warm Gun www.ebsqart.com/Art/45/26709/HappinessisaWarm).

Shoot Shoot. Bang Bang.

Guns. Of course I love them. A while back my daughter Halley and I went and saw Brownsville's gunman Chuck Fredieu. He took us through his course and reminded me how to shoot without knocking off the top of my thumb. It was a father-daughter kind of thing. I helped Halley buy a shiny new pistol just in time for the new laws allowing us to carry a pistol in the car. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling doesn't it?

Now, yes I love guns, but I am not a good shot and rarely have fantasies of murder or self protection or suicide or even shooting critters or winning a target shooting competition (this one, yes, sometimes). I think I love guns like I love cameras and bicycles, even though I am not much of a photographer and I am not likely to actually ride a bicycle. They are pretty and the heft feels good.

It's not a man thing either. Halley loves her guns as much as I do. I have caught her pointing and clicking and reading Pistol Shooting Basics when she thought no one was watching. I love that girl.

Now the shrinks, over the years, have discussed "cognitive dissonance" with me and I think some of it creeps in here. The Ahimsa Shooters Club. Pistol Packin' Pacifists. Gun lovers against the war.

On the one hand those fond childhood memories of my grandfather leading a squirrel, my grandmother with the brass knucks and the blackjack in her purse, my dad blowing out a car window with a shotgun blast. On the other hand, all of that Gandhi, Tolstoy, Zinn and Chomsky.

I like the story about the single pistol in the Warsaw Ghetto keeping out the Nazis. I like all of those news reports about the little old lady who blows away the robber.

But.... I do believe the advocates of nonviolence win the argument. In particular, may I recommend:

Bailie, Gil (1995). Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. Introduction by René Girard. New York: Crossroad. ISBN 0824516451

and three volumes by Walter Wink, The Powers Trilogy:

* Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8006-1786-X
* Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. ISBN 0-8006-1902-1
* Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8006-2646-X

More Jail Musings

"When is my death row job available?"

Archer Daniel Midland could do executions cheaper

All rise!

Finally some real judicial economy.

Cameron County does not have the worst jail in the world. In fact it is not even the worst jail in the Valley. On a scale of bad, worse, horrible, the standings would be Cameron County, Willacy Detention Center, with La Villa coming in last. These are all places where federal prisoners are kept, but the last two are privately owned facilities.

My impression has been that La Villa is by far the worst of the three and lately there seem to be fewer Brownsville prisoners housed there. Maybe the U.S. Marshal's office finally gave up on them. I had one client in La Villa who tells me he screamed for twelve hours trying to get attention during an appendicitis attack. The other guys in the jail were screaming with him. He didn't die and after his surgery, he cleaned up pretty well, but it could have been bad. He was in jail on a charge of entering the country illegally.

There are certain things that privatization may make cheaper, but depending on the goals involved, it sure doesn't make things better. Private jails may make a profit, but they don't do much for the quality of justice.

Why not sell the courthouses to Walmart and allow them to use Walmart greeters as judges? This would be cheap. The same for executions. Executions could be contracted out to Archer-Daniels-Midland. They could use the same employees used in the slaughterhouses. This would be cheap.

Why not Hillary?

Kathy is supporting Hillary. I think she thinks men are not fit to run anything, much less the country. Maybe she's right.

Hillary’s not my first choice because I stayed disappointed with Bill all the time he was running and in office. Remember when he went back to Arkansas as governor to execute the retarded guy? It seemed like, if I remember correctly, he was trying to shore up the white male vote in South Carolina. Then he gratuitously attacked some woman African American singer to work on that base some more.

After he got in office, he wiped out aid for dependent children, brought us the anti terrorism and effective death penalty act, bombed an aspirin factory in the Sudan and built a wall across from Tijuana. With friends like these….

So maybe Hillary will be better. We can always hope, but her performance so far has not been very encouraging.

Maybe she will act faster to get everybody some health care, but I am not encouraged by her first effort.

Also, I don’t trust that she won’t move to the right during the general election and her presidency and make sure we have plenty of more years of war.

The right-wingers keep promising me that both Barack and Hillary are secret socialists. I doubt that. With all of the banking and defense contractor money sloshing around, I suspect they are both what they seem to be: cautious conservatives.

So why don’t I just avoid the process? No way. Hey, I even voted when we had two frat brothers from Yale running against each other last time. Both were rich kids with apparently limited skills, but I sucked it up and voted for the one with long catsup stained face rather than the one with the drooling Hapsburg jaw.

In truth, I think this may be more of a choice than we have had in a long time. I am willing to aim low enough to vote for Barack first, and then Hillary, if need be.