Guns Still Allowed in Checked Luggage
"The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability." -- Tom Lehrer
From huntersagainstterrorists:
"There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." -- Marcus Tulius Cicero (106-53 BC)
Tom Knapp's description of the smith2004 mailing list:
This discussion group has a history of straying far, far away from its charter in any case. Buffy. Guns. Property rights. Guns. Some stuff about guns, a little stuff about guns, speculation as to why guns don't appear very often on Buffy, and some more about guns. Anime. Mangia. Guns. People hopping around naked on pogo sticks. Guns. Smith's novels. Guns. Georgists and guns. Sex, food and guns. Cloning, the internet and guns.
Did I mention guns?
AP via Join Together Online - Guns Still Allowed in Checked Luggage - a bit of good news from a gun-grabber site. [firearmnews]
Bill St. Clair at ar15.com - Oath vs. Law - another question for the Brothers of the Shield. Not many answers yet, and there probably won't be, since the question seems to be a FAQ, and there have been complaints of "beating a dead horse."
Have you encountered or can you imagine a situation where the enforcing the law would conflict with your oath to protect and defend the U.S. and your state's constitutions? Said a little differently, are there laws that you have or would refuse to enforce or orders from your superiors that you have or would refuse to follow?
Some examples.
If you were asked to enforce a new law that required confiscation of all citizen firearms, would you do it?
If a new law required all non-citizen Arabs to sew a yellow "A" to their clothing, would you enforce it? What if you were required to round them up and put them in boxcars? What if the law covered drug users instead of Arabs? Smokers? Gun owners?
If a new homeland security law required traffic checkpoints at all state border crossings where you were to check IDs of all passengers and search all vehicles, would you do it?
These are only examples. I'm interested in whether you think there are limits to your responsibility to enforce the law, whether you think that a law could be so abhorent that it would become your duty as part of honoring your oath to NOT enforce it, possibly to arrest a fellow officer if he DID enforce it.
I request that we don't get in a pissing match over exactly which laws should or should not be enforced. We won't agree on that. In particular, you may find my examples unsuitable. I don't care about the examples. If you don't like them, don't answer them. Make up your own. I care about the principle.
I have noticed that many district attorneys and LEOs believe that it is not their place to question the law, only to enforce it and let the courts sort it out. I want to find out whether you believe that your duty to enforce the law can be or maybe already is in conflict with your duty to honor your oath and preserve the peace.
George Smith at The Village Voice - Weapon of the Week: The Soft Bomb - how to destroy a country's electrical grid with little collateral damage. [grabbe]
In war, one of the first things the Pentagon likes to do is turn out the lights. Along with liberal use of high explosives, it now does the job with a cluster bomb whose canisters spin out a payload that looks much like angel hair--the fine fibrous stuff you used to find in packets of itching powder as a child.
This classified weapon has been called the "blackout" or "soft" bomb, the latter because it doesn't explode with a big bang or tear people to bits outright while going about its business. Whether it is actually harmless is still a matter for debate. The Pentagon, you see, won't talk about it much, and the only pictures of the thing seem to come from former Yugoslavia, where it was used to destroy Serbia's power grid in 1999.
Ranch Rescue New Mexico - Operation Jaguar - Ranch Rescue is organizing protection for landowners in southeastern New Mexico for protection against "terrorists, criminal trespassers, drug smugglers, vandals, and thieves." Good for them. They have a dress code. [huntersagainstterrorists]
Jeff Elkins - The Free State Project - why the Free State Project is doomed. The federales won't allow it, and they have lots of federal judges on their team and lots of big guns to enforce the judges' rulings. [smith2004]
Thomas L. Knapp at Rational Review - Contra Trinward: the secret virtue of the Hail Mary - in support of the Free State Project. [smith2004]
