Across the Great Divide

Do Not Try This Excuse With the Taxman.

I'm all for prosecuting tax dodgers, but couldn't the Revenue Department have found a bigger crook than this?

A 31- year-old Minnesota man was arrested Tuesday for failing to file income taxes since 1995 — starting when he was 18. According to the story, he owes the state more than $12,000, or less than one grand a year.

He did concrete and masonry work for a living and failed to register his business with the state. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there are more than a few other tradesmen across the state operating the same way, and not only evading taxes on their own income, but paying their buddies or other laborers off the books, too. So while his tax bill might not have amounted to much, his public arrest might serve as a warning to others who cumulatively represent a sizable revenue loss.

But he also seems to have had a strain of the tax protester in him

Carter allegedly told revenue department employees he did not believe in taxes being used for stadiums and did not need to pay taxes to have streets maintained because he owns a four-wheel-drive truck...

Corporate Espionage Hurts Trust in Government.

In the 1990s, a Maryland-based private detective agency composed of former CIA agents and law enforcement officers spied on such activist groups as Greenpeace, the firm's records show.

— "Corporate Espionage Detailed in Documents," Washington Post

The Iraq war has put the focus on private contractors like Blackwater that employ former military and law enforcement agents to do the dirty work for corporate and government customers in dangerous places overseas. But this Washington Post story touches on another aspect of the business: Former government agents spying on activists who may threaten corporate enterprises.

I think it's legitimate for companies to defend themselves against corporate espionage — attempts by competitors to gain access to business information. It's also reasonable to take steps to protect their people and assets from attack. It makes sense to employ people experienced in those fields, and retired cops, FBI and Secret Service agents make good candidates for those jobs.

But when the work turns to spying — or in more benign terms, intelligence gathering and preventive security — I worry about former government employees getting involved.

Here's an outline of how privatization of security  works.

An oil company hires a former FBI agent to oversee security of drilling sites and pipelines. A wealthy landowner buys up local ranches and employs a former game warden to protect his home and keep poachers off his property while he's in Malibu or Switzerland. The developer of a ski area worries about eco-sabotage of the lodge and condominiums he's building, so he hires a few moonlighting county sheriff's deputies.

It's the law enforcement version of the revolving door that puts former regulatory agency heads to work for the companies they once regulated. The retired agents have the knowledge, techniques and contacts of their former jobs with few of the restraints. And in many cases, like the Blackwater boys, they're making a lot more money for a heck of lot less aggravation than in their previous jobs. Their loyalty easily swings from protecting the pubic interest to protecting the boss.

As someone with numerous law enforcement people in the family, I don't begrudge them the opportunity to work in the private sector once they've retired. But how does this affect the public trust of law enforcement, when they see ex-agents freed from the restraints of their old jobs engaged in questionable behavior? How does it influence current law enforcement people who aspire to similar jobs when they retire?

Guilty of Having Deep Pockets?

Last week a jury awarded $24 million to the families of four young people killed at a rail crossing in Anoka.
From my reading of the news accounts, the verdict seems based on creating doubt about the evidence, which included a state patrol accident reconstruction that was "consistent with the Chevrolet Cavalier having driven around the cross arm" and railroad company downloads from the crossing's equivalent of an airliner's black box that supported the patrol's reconstruction.

The crossing had gates, lights, sound. The train was also supposedly visible from the street that crossed the tracks. Trains on that route apparently also blow their whistles.

Still, it's possible for gates to malfunction. I saw that happening myself a week ago at 27th and 27th in south Minneapolis.

The gates were down and wouldn't come back up.

The families' attorneys apparently based their case on two contentions — the driver wouldn't do something that stupid and corporations lie:

"[The jury] obviously didn't believe the railroad's downloads because if they had been accurate, the gates would have been down and the young people in the car would have stopped. But they did not go around the gate, and that was clear."

In other words, no one would drive around or try to beat a crossing arm, so the evidence that shows they did had to be falsified.

Personally, I believe kids do stupid stuff a lot more often than parents ever know, and corporations lie less often than most people suspect. That attitude would never get me on a personal injury case jury.

I once sat through a trial in which I got to watch a plaintiffs attorney try to sow doubt about the facts in a wrongful death case. That the jury correctly didn't buy it still did not persuade me that complex cases are best left to jury understanding of technical details. Throw in the David and Goliath set up of many personal injury cases — with the let's teach Goliath a lesson so this never happens again undertone — and even corporations in the right have an uphill battle.

I wouldn't want to throw out a system that allows people without money and power to legitimately bring their grievances against corporations that caused them harm. But sometimes people do stupid things, and bad stuff happens.

The idea in criminal court is that the accused gets tried before a jury of his or her peers. But in a case like this, the defendant gets tried before a jury of its victim's peers.

Would having a jury of experts empaneled in these cases be more fair?

Holiday Weekend Snips and Snipes.

Posting may be lighter and less fluent from here in the coming weeks, More like this...

*****

I noted the blog of Johnny Northside shortly after it launched. He's a grad student who bought a bargain/abandoned/abused property in North Minneapolis and has been very active in trying to help turn the neighborhood around. Naturally, I thought of him when I read this Star Tribune story about evictions at a problem building and figured he'd have a somewhat different point of view. He did.

Liberals (it's the system) and conservatives (it's criminals) alike could use a more nuanced and granular view of issues involved in Northside living. Johnny delivers, with stories like this.

*****

Mississippifarian metaphorically looks down an aisle of Wal-Mart, and doesn't see the same benign effect of cheap consumer goods that Steven "Freakanomics" Leavitt claims helps moderate the growing income gap between rich and poor.

*****

I keep hoping to see a Minneapolis cop riding one of those neeto-keeno T3 personal mobility vehicles that the Strib announced with a rewritten product datasheet. Jalopnik has the more appropriate
story, I think.

We've seen the T3 Motion before, and the law enforcement version may look cool in this video, but we assure you it's impossible to not look like a dork on one. So if you live in Minneapolis and are a police officer, prepare to look like a dork. Sure you'll be able to drive up to 25 MPH and run all day on just 11 cents of juice, tower over crowds, and get into tight spots a cruiser never could, but even bike cops will laugh at you. Plus it costs the city $10,000 so you're even going to out-nerd the Segway drivers.

If you want to be cool, fast and intimidating, bag the chariot and keep the horses.

*****

Charles R. Black Jr., the senior adviser to Republican John McCain whose work for foreign dictators has led Democrats to call for his ouster, is not the only lobbyist in the family volunteering on the senator from Arizona's presidential campaign.

His wife, Judy Black, is a national co-chair of the fundraising group "Women for McCain," and she has a vibrant lobbying practice that includes a foreign client and several companies with business before the Senate Commerce Committee, where McCain is a senior member.

— Washington Post

Judy Bergman Black was a high school classmate of mine. She and Charlie came to our 40th reunion last year. We didn't get a chance to talk, as they only attended the dinner and hung at the back while I announced a newly discovered set of class prophecies that had projected 40 years in the future.

Black, who was named Biggest Brown-noser by the Class of 1967, was "predicted" to hold the same honor in 2007. In some quarters, I guess that could also be interpreted as Most Likely to Succeed.

And, no, I wasn't forecast as Most Likely to be an Asshole.

*****

And the New York Times soothes my fevered brain.

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

*****

Finally, here's a workout video for candidates who need to disavow knowledge of inconvenient associations with lobbyists and their clients.

 

St. Thomas Law: Serving a Growth Industry.

When the University of St. Thomas started its law school a few years ago, it set out to distinguish itself by integrating faith and the law. But is this the way to build your reputation as a law school?

St. Thomas has denied a law student academic credit for an internship with Planned Parenthood. In so doing, it joins ranks with other Catholic law schools and Pat Robertson's prestigious Regent University. Not to mention institutions of sharia law.

The young woman enrolled at St. Thomas with a different view of the school's mission.

"I thought Catholic doctrine would be reflected in the faculty and the curriculum, and it would be a safe place to talk about those issues, but not enforce them."

The church opposes birth control and abortion, so it holds a dim view of offering volunteer service at the agency. Presumably, it still opposes murder, rape, robbery and bearing false witness, all matters that involve the legal profession. If the church is truly worried about students having their faith somehow compromised or contaminated by exposure to the legal activities  of Planned Parenthood, perhaps it should come up with ways to insulate them from being around actual criminals, too.

Or it could do what these other law schools seem designed for — funneling more tunnel-vision Christians into the service of subverting government and working around existing laws. After all, that's where the job growth has been lately.

The Good Thing About Meth.

Two suspects were arrested outside a storage unit where cash, sales records and a supply of methamphetamine were found. See if you can figure out what's wrong with this story:

Officers contacted Corley walking near the storage unit, and he admitted there was meth and cash inside the unit and that he planned to jump the fence into the business to retrieve them, the affidavit said. He later admitted he owned the meth and cash. He said the money came from selling meth, and he planned to use the money to buy more meth, the affidavit said.

Willis, who was found driving near the storage unit, told officers there was meth inside the storage unit and that she helped take it there, the affidavit said. Paperwork inside the unit indicated the unit belonged to Willis, the affidavit said.

Notice the suspects immediately confessed, even though they hadn't been caught doing much of anything. They must also have been users. My brother the cop says that's one positive aspect of dealing with meth addicts. They don't lie or even dissemble. In fact, they'll often volunteer information about their past crimes.

American Crosscut: Boy Scouts and Bogus Boyz.

Joel Rosenberg and I resume our discussion of the Minnesota bill HF498 [Download pdf] on the use of deadly force in self-defense.

Since we last posted, we've had some other exchanges that were useful to us, but a bit off track for posting here. You'll notice Joel is posting comments here, too. That's a good byproduct... no, the point of these discussions we're having. Opening up to the other side on one thing leads to another.
 
Charlie: Joel, I don't think we're too far apart on the right to self-defense or when there are questionable claims, they ought to be determined in the courts. Certainly, people will make mistakes in those split-second decisions, and those are a very different sort than the "mistake" of a driver who gets into a car after downing a quart of booze. I'm not personally big on punishing mistakes. I think we ought to try to prevent them as much as reasonably possible, and try to mitigate the seriousness of the consequences that do occur. It seems like this part of the discussion may belong with the other bill, so I'll table it for now.

The question for me regarding HF498 at the end of our previous post was the purpose of the presumption language. Let me remind readers where we left off last time. I wanted to understand how the presumption of innocence — which we all enjoy — relates to the bill's statement about immunity from prosecution:

(a) An individual who uses deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

   If we agree the place to sort these claims out is in the courts, how can that be done if the individual claiming self-defense is immune from prosecution? This language may only be intended to let someone shoot into ground in self-defense and not get hauled off to jail by the cops, but it sure sounds like he can kill someone under the defined circumstances and not even be brought to trial, where the claim could be tested if there were questions about its legitimacy.

If this language is still confusing to me after numerous readings, no wonder people who haven't even looked at it are concerned. Can you address this and straighten me out?

Joel: Utterly fair questions.  Let me give you two answers.

I'll take the easy one first.  We don't have to guess how this language will be implemented, because we know how this language is implemented.  There are quite a few other states that already have just this law -- tweaked slightly, from state to state, to make the language consistent with pre-existing state law.  While there are some Minnesota specific bits in HF498, all of the reform in the following states was based on the same model bill, lobbied for by a fairly prominent — in the view of some folks, including me, often too accommodationist — civil rights organization, the NRA.

Here's the list.

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota

I'm not including states like Utah — while Utah has very similar language (I have to know this; I'm certified by Utah as a Concealed Weapons Instructor, and teach this stuff), it wasn't part of this endeavor by the NRA; its self-defense language was already in place long before the NRA move for reform in all the other states.

Charlie, do you think that if such laws had the effects that you're worrying about, you wouldn't have heard about the murders in, say, Colorado that had gone unpunished because of them?  If it hasn't been a disaster in Colorado, why would it be one in Minnesota?

That's the easy part.  The more difficult one involves a close look at the text and at legal construction.

Here's what it doesn't say:  (emphasis mine, in both of the following quotes)

(a) An individual who claims to have used deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

Nope.  It starts off with "an individual who uses deadly force..." 

Whether or not the individual has, in fact, used deadly force as provided for in that section is, as lawyers say, a matter of fact.  In a court of law, matters of fact are determined by a trier of fact — either a jury, or a judge sitting as a trier of fact.  While, of course, the trier of fact should give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, juries (and judges, in a bench trial) aren't required to throw common sense out the window, much less run down the stairs to get it with a shovel and make sure it's dead.  They're allowed to — invited to — look at the evidence presented to them, by both the prosecution and the defense, and make some judgments about what the facts are.

When I do my carry classes, I talk about this stuff.  One of my standard raps goes something like "if you're surrounded by a dozen Bogus Boys (they're a local gang, consisting of gang bangers who have not been able to maintain the minimal interpersonal skills required by the Bloods, Crips, or Vice Lords) trying to knock you down and stomp you to death, a jury might conclude that you were in imminent danger of immediate death or great bodily harm, even if they displayed no weapons.  If you're surrounded by a pack of Cub Scouts, threatening to punch you in the thigh with their little fists, you're really very unlikely to be able to persuade a jury that you were."

Getting back to my first answer, we ran into these same sorts of objections to carry reform.  We heard all the theoretical worries about how the Personal Protection Act would turn bar arguments into gunbattles, fender benders into gunbattles, disagreements about parking spaces into gunbattles... and when we pointed out, then, that something like three dozen states already had similar laws in place — in some cases for many decades — it hadn't happened there, we were right... but the folks opposing carry reform just refused to listen and to look for themselves at the other states, but kept repeating the same theoretical fears, over and over again.

So, in answer to your question: in other states, with laws similar to HF498, people who have claimed self-defense have, in fact, been brought to trial.  I don't see any reason to believe that it will be different here — and, in fact, every reason to believe that prosecutors will bring people claiming self-defense to trial, if and when they have sufficient grounds to believe that the claim is bogus, and that they'll be able to persuade the juries of that, when they have sufficient evidence that the claim is bogus.

That any help?

As a heads up, when we get to the gun registration bill, I'm going to be pointing out how gun registration has been — not everywhere, nor all the time — a necessary precondition to gun confiscation, and how almost invariably useless it's been for the purported purpose of preventing violent crime and aiding in the apprehension and punishment of criminals.

Over to you.

Charlie: Well, I've always made a living by my imagination, so maybe it's too highly developed. I've also had a youthful experience of entering a dwelling by stealth — at least in the view of my girl friend's father, who had a shotgun and no sense of humor. It's easy for me to imagine not being around to have this discussion, had Colorado passed its law about 20 years earlier.

But I take your point. Here I am.

I also noted that the Halloween story recounted in an article I linked to last time was from 1992. So yes, there are cases used to evoke fears, but they're not exactly ripped from the headlines.

Here's a case from Colorado that's more current. It involves a homeowner wounding a late-night intruder in his home, who was drunk and disoriented from a motorcycle accident. He thought he was entering his father's house down the street. After considering charges against both parties, no one was prosecuted, and no apparent outcry followed.

Another involves a man assaulted in his house shooting one of the assailants in the back while the guy is sitting in his own car. The jury, interpreting the evidence and the law, found him not guilty of murder. That one was more controversial, but despite the ambiguity (Colorado also has a detailed self-defense statute), the Colorado legislature hasn't gone back to clarify the 1985 Homeowners Protection Act.

You've allayed most of my concern about the intent of HF498 and how it's likely to be interpreted. I'm still not convinced it's needed, but I don't believe it will unleash gunplay in the streets, either. I hope I don't come across too wishy washy here, but I'm not anti-gun or anti-self-defense. I do not represent gun control forces; I represent me trying to come to terms with this issue and trying to provide a model for how others might, as well.

Now, speaking of active imaginations, tell me about how gun confiscation and registering private gun sales come together in your mind. The usefulness of regulating sales requires a whole 'nother post, at least.

American Crosscut, Round 4: At Last, the Bill.

When I started this conversation, I didn't expect it to be a single-shot. Now it looks like we'll need a big magazine.

Joel and I switched red and blue last time, and I've kept those colors here.

Joel: When we last left off, Charlie, we'd agreed to move on to the specifics of the two bills, HF498 [Download pdf] and HF3324.  I'd like to take the first one first; all in all, I think it's the one that's much more likely to be in front of the lege this session — it may be amended onto another bill on the floor — and, if not, well, we'll be back to it next session.

I'm also going to try to keep my opening of this round short, and as focused on the bill itself as I can.  A bit of preparatory stuff, for those who have never looked at these before:  language that isn't either stricken through or underlined is in the law now; stricken through stuff would be removed, and underlined stuff added, if the bill becomes law.

609.065 JUSTIFIABLE TAKING OF LIFE USE OF DEADLY FORCE IN SELF DEFENSE.

Which is where I'm going to start off:  at the beginning, and what I'm going to focus on in this installment.  At present, Minnesota law is clear — both statute and case law — on when you can lawfully kill somebody, not when you can lawfully do something that may kill somebody, or legitimately and lawfully threaten somebody.  (I hope you will agree that there are times when it is legitimate to threaten somebody — not out of anger, but out of a reasonable fear that one is about to be harmed.)

That's a problem, and I'm going to draw on some experience as a guy who teaches civilians, cops and lawyers about this stuff in saying that.  Nobody — nobody sane — really wants to kill another person, even if under a deadly, violent attack.  But reasonable people do want to know what they can do — both short of that and, should it become necessary, including that — so that an encounter that they didn't want doesn't end up with their blood on somebody else's hands.

Let me tell you a short story; I'll file off some names and play around with dates and muck with some of the facts, but it was at least as bad as I'm telling you that it was; you've my word I'm not whitewashing this.

Al and Betty were having a few folks over one evening, when they heard a commotion outside their house.  When they went to the window, they saw four guys kicking the crap out of a fifth guy.  "Hey," Al yelled, "get away from him!" and they fled; Betty was on the phone to 911, and Al went out and administered first aid until the ambulance and the police arrived.  The kickee was hauled off in the ambulance; the police took a report and left.

A little while, there was another commotion outside.  The four perps plus another had returned, and they were not happy that Al had interfered with their kicking.  Another call to 911.  Average response time to a Priority One in Minneapolis is in the double-digit minutes.  They started moving up the sidewalk, announcing their intention to come in and do harm to Al and his family and friends, in no unambiguous terms.

At that point, Al made a decision that was to cost him. Granted, it almost certainly saved him to come to his wife come and his friends from some serious harm — but it was to cost him.  He stepped out on his porch, a shotgun in his hand, and told the thugs — remember, these were four men who had just beat another man unconscious, and then had been kicking the unconscious body; they'd brought along a friend — to go away.

They started to move toward him — he fired one shot into the ground, not near them, but signaling his intent — and they scattered.  Fast.

The police arrived.  Giving no consideration to the fact that they'd know where to find him if they needed to arrest him, giving no consideration to the fact that he had just called the police, twice — once to report the beatings; the second time (technically, yes, it was his wife) to call them for help — they cuffed-and-stuffed him, and hauled him off to jail.

He was charged with two felonies.

That is among the outrages that this law is needed, if not to prevent (it won't remove the "ham sandwich" prosecutor powers, but it might inhibit them a little), to make less common.

We can go into the provisions of HF 498 that would have been applied here, but I think — and hope — that you'll agree that he would not have been better off waiting until the threat was even more imminent, and he would have been allowed, under present law, as we've seen above, to take one or more of their lives.

Over to you.

Charlie: First, let me say I have no problem with Al's conduct. In fact, he behaved the way I'd want my neighbors to behave. You don't say what happened after he was charged, but based on your account, it sounds like he was dealt with unjustly. The story raises several questions for me.

One, was Al constrained by current law from doing the right thing? It doesn't appear so.

Two, will others, knowing what happened to Al, be constrained from behaving in a similar, responsible manner? Some will argue yes, though I bet most gun owners in his position, including those doing the arguing, would still act as Al did.

Three, should we try to prevent what happened to Al, if we can do it without unintended consequences that are worse?  Again, I say, yes.

And that brings me to four: How? I'm not convinced the bill under consideration would actually accomplish something we both agree would be a good thing. I've thought about this and have some alternative proposals, but if you want to convince me about this legislation first, keep going.

Joel: Well, after some time in jail, several thousands of dollars to a very good criminal defense attorney, the case was settled. He didn't go to prison. 

Was he constrained by law? Well, he clearly wasn't constrained from doing the right thing — he did it, after all — but he could have been, quite easily, put in front of a jury, and that's always a roll of the dice. He clearly was treated unjustly — it's the old MPD "arrest the gun" problem.  The cops — and for all I know they were good, service-oriented cops — weren't allowed to cut him loose, write up a report — and they weren't required to consider his self-defense explanation (as HF 498 would have required) before arresting him, even though they would have known, had they looked into it. that he wasn't some sort of transient who was likely to disappear, but a working man and homeowner who, had he been indicted, would have been easy to find.

It's still possible, I guess, that he could have been indicted; it's also possible that the cops wouldn't have done more than pretended to consider the circumstances surrounding it, and that it was pretty clearly self-defense... it's just more likely that he would have spent that night in his own bed — sleeplessly, fearfully, granted, but his own bed nonetheless — and never have been indicted in the first place.

Your second question — and it's a good one — is what would other folks do, knowing that.  I don't know; there is no way to tell.  But I think it's fair to guess that at least some, knowing about that, would say, "Hey, Betty — a guy's been kicked to death in the street, and if I go out and shout at them to stop, they are going to know that it's us who called the police, and we might end up, if we're lucky, like that guy Joel told me about in class. If we're lucky."

I'm really glad we've gotten to your third question, because I think it's exactly the right one. And exactly the right way to look at any changes in law. It's important, as you say, to consider both the benefits and costs.

In this case, we don't have to hypothesize. Language very similar to HF 498 exists in the laws of around 20 states; HF 498 is the Minnesota flavor of a bill that the NRA has been pushing for, nationwide.  (There are additional states that have very similar language — Utah, for example — but they don't have the same origin.)

So, I'll ask you, in all of those states — some of those having had similar language for many years, some for only a few years — what have the costs been?  Show me — I'm willing to consider that these laws have resulted in people being unreasonably killed when they otherwise wouldn't have been, or murderers have gotten off when they otherwise would have gone to prison. 

But give me examples — as many as you can.  Not, please, some prosecutor saying that if some gang banger shoots another gang banger he'll claim that he was scared and get off on a self-defense claim; for that sort of thing, show me where some gang banger murdering another gang banger got off on a self-defense claim because he claimed he was scared.  Don't restrict yourself to that; you don't have to.  Show me where, in the more than two dozen states that have similar language in their self-defense laws, authorizing scaring an attacker or not retreating has resulted in bad things happening that likely otherwise wouldn't.

Beyond that...

I'm going to be fair here.  If I was having this discussion with one of our local antis, who have been characterizing this as the "Shoot First!"  or the "Shoot the Avon Lady" bill, I'd be asking for the numbers of dead Avon ladies.  But I'm having it with you, and I'll refer to you how the bill would handle "arrest the gun":

(b) A law enforcement agency may arrest a person using force under circumstances described in this section only after considering any claims or circumstances supporting self-defense.

The emphasis is mine.

Your turn.

Charlie: I am not going to be drawn into representing all the anti-gun arguments in the world or separating actual from imagined consequences. I won’t supply you with a bunch of counter examples, because I am willing to grant you that the changes you seek may result in very few dead Avon Ladies, Mormon Missionaries or Trick or Treaters.

Ooops, here’s a dead kid in a Halloween costume, but it’s only one kid, he was a Japanese exchange student, and Rodney shot him in 1992 before these newer laws were in place.

Again, the way Al was treated was extreme, especially since no one was harmed. I have no problem with the cops saying, in cases like Al's, “don’t leave town for a few weeks while we look into this.” But I also think being dead is a pretty severe penalty, whether it's for someone’s mistaken reading of kids looking for a party, or for being on the wrong side of a drug deal. So I think it's reasonable to expect in those cases that even a normally law-abiding citizen could be inconvenienced a bit before the facts are sorted out.

I confess, I've read the text of the bill a number of times, and I've read a lot of pro-commentary on it, but it wasn't until re-reading the beginning of your post that some of the fog lifted. You said (my emphasis):

At present, Minnesota law is clear — both statute and case law — on when you can lawfully kill somebody, not when you can lawfully do something that may kill somebody, or legitimately and lawfully threaten somebody.   

If I understand you correctly, your intent is to cut some slack for Al — the guy who scared off some thugs. But not to let Rodney — the guy who killed a kid in a white tuxedo who didn't understand the idiom "Freeze" — off the hook.

You may hope HF498 would change that murky bathwater, but the bill still looks to me like it could excuse shooting screaming babies. (At least if someone had just finished reading Ray Bradbury.) It first presumes an individual who perceives a threat is justified in using force and then it appears to give a stay out of jail free card in (a) preceding the (b) you mentioned above.

(a) An individual who uses deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

Maybe you can walk me through how (a) and (b) relate, and how the new law would treat Al, Rodney and some of the other permutations likely under claims of self-defense.

American Crosscut: Ask Questions First, Shoot Later.

My regular American Crosscut counterpart, Joey Monson, has been very busy making Wisconsin safe for secondhand smoke, so I invited Joel Rosenberg to  join me for this edition.

A common thread runs through Joel's blogging, novels and training work — guns and civil rights. To some, he's a knowledgeable and heroic advocate for individual freedom. To others, he's a fanatic who just may be compensating for something.

Which is kind of how public debate about guns tends to break down.

From reading him, though, I knew he'd welcome a discussion that didn't involve hysterics over guns, so I gave it shot...

Charlie: Two gun bills are before the legislature this session. One dealing with self-defense has gun opponents in an uproar. The other requiring background checks for gun sales in the secondary market has gun owners up in arms. We can get into the specific legislation if you'd like, but I'm more interested in the reactions underlying these proposals.

I understand why people unfamiliar with firearms are worried about guns being misused, and why their desire to suppress guns in society drives responsible gun owners nuts. Both sides seem to think the facts are on their side and their fears about the other side are justified.

Suppose you were doing a course entirely for the folks who think the Castle Doctrine/Shoot First bill is a bad idea. How would you open their eyes to your point of view?

Joel: The second step would be a little history, and I'd ask folks to combine history with common sense.

But, before that, I'd ask folks to step back, and take a look at the facts.  I'd say something like, look, whenever you're trying to figure out what legislation will do, should it become law, the first three things to to look at are the legislation, the legislation, and the legislation.  I'm told you think it's a bad idea, I'd say. 

Okay -- and I'm not asking this to embarrass you:  how many of you folks have read HF 498?  Hey, it's okay -- I haven't read all of the thousands of bills up in front of the lege, either.  But we're talking about this one, and Charlie Quimby has been nice enough to put this class together of people who say that they think that the bill's a bad idea. That's great, by the way; I've long had a standing offer to Heather Martens of the "Citizens for a 'Safer' Minnesota" to let me do a presentation on other laws to her followers, and over the five years that offer's been in effect, it's been ignored.

So, let's get started. 

If you haven't read the bill, I think that you're here at this class under false pretenses -- you've been fooling yourself.

You don't think that this bill is a bad idea, because you haven't given yourself the necessary tools to think about this bill.  If you don't know what it says, you haven't begun to equip yourself to have an informed opinion about what it will do. What you have are feelings about it, and you've set yourself up to be manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who are appealing to ignorant feelings, not appeal to your informed opinion.

So, yes, let's start off with the specifics of the bill, and then go on to the history of it -- what problems it addresses here in Minnesota, and what the history is of similar law elsewhere.  And by the time we're done, if you still think that calling it "Shoot First!" or the "Shoot the Avon Lady" bill, you'll have to explain to yourself why similar laws haven't left any dead Avon ladies lying on the ground or given legal permission for gangbangers to shoot up the neighborhood

If what you're reacting to are feelings that you've gotten from what opponents or proponents of the bill have said to you, I'd suggest you ask yourself this -- after you've read the bill, and carefully:  "Who's been telling me the truth about this?"

So, let's get started. If we're going to understand it -- whether you end up agreeing with it or not -- let's, well, understand it.

That's how I'd start off.  And then I'd turn to the bill, and go through it, line by line. Let's get informed first, and then we can deal with feelings based on information.

Charlie: Maybe we can take the rest of the class in a follow-up session. For now, I think we likely agree that emotion, coupled with personal experiences, accounts for where most people line up on either side.

I grew up in the small town west where guns are a pretty normal part of life. We took gun safety in gym class. When my grandfather died, my dad inherited two possessions — a quarter horse and a lever action Remington 30.06. Those were venerated valuables worth passing on. I liked to shoot, but not to kill, so hunting wasn't a big part of my experience, but until I gave my rifle to my son a year ago last Christmas, I've always had a gun around.

I suspect people who've never had that normalization of guns associate them mainly with violence, power trips and aberrant thinking. And if I may go out on a limb early, people with those types of issues are probably disproportionately attracted to guns. They just don't represent the vast majority of gun owners.

On the other side, there's a strong current of aggressive defensiveness — of the "pry my gun from my cold, dead fingers" variety — that spooks gun opponents. What in your experience makes you such a staunch defender of gun rights, and why should these people not be afraid of you? 

Joel: Well, okay, if you want to get into facts -- or, at least, the facts about the bill -- later on, I'm willing to do that.

I'm not sure that it's just emotion and personal experiences that do drive folks; I'm pretty sure that it shouldn't, all by itself.  I think too many tend to generalize from too few experiences, and too few facts.

But, yeah, too many people are rationalizers, rather than rational.

One of the many things I respect about Felicia -- we've been married for thirty years, come this year -- is that it was facts and reasoning that brought her -- she did her own research; being an information professional, she's very qualified to do that; nobody else does her thinking for her, and smart people don't try to -- over a period of years, from being emotionally anti-gun to, among other things, being the first woman in line at the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office in 2003 to apply for her permit.  (She wasn't the first person in line; there were some guys who got there ahead of her.)  If you want to know what combination brought her there, ask her; she's been an adult for some years now, and is perfectly capable of speaking for herself. 

And, sure, lack of familiarity often breeds fear.  There's a fair number (I'm not going to claim a majority; haven't taken a survey) of white folks, particularly suburban liberals, who seem to be utterly terrified of black folks -- particularly black folks who live in the city.  Of those I've talked to about it and have been willing to talk about it -- I think that many bigots have trouble copping to bigotry; most simply change the subject, at least around me -- not one has ever so much as sat down and had a cup coffee with a black guy who lives in the city.  Kind of reminds me of that awful Bill O'Reilly thing where he (granted, not a liberal) went to some restaurant in, I think, Harlem, and was utterly surprised to learn that when black people eat in a restaurant in a black community, they use utensils and engage in conversation.

Sometimes I wonder what planet some people come from. 

Me, I grew up in what was, in many ways, a stereotypical liberal Jewish household, at least on the gun issue.  Guns were a horrible, goyish thing, and, of course, it would be utterly horrible if any Jew were ever to have anything to do with one . . . unless, of course, they had an Israeli accent and were wearing an IDF uniform, in which case it was a good thing.

That said, the importance of civil rights was part of my upbringing. Civil rights aren't just what allow a black guy with the appropriate amount of money in his pocket to sit down at a lunch counter and buy a cup of coffee, or for all of us to go into the voting booth and support the candidates of our choice (or try to vote one out of office); it's also what protects those of us with unpopular views or -- in some asshole's view -- the wrong progenitors from being hauled off in the middle of the night to disappear into Lubyanka or the Isle of Pines or Buchenwald or a swamp on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, never to be seen alive again.

Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about that.

We can get back to that, if you'd like, and how central the issue of the right to keep and bear arms is to other civil rights -- enumerated and otherwise -- if you'd like, in another round, but this is already getting long, and I haven't dealt with your question as to why people shouldn't be afraid of me, nor asked you one.

So let's get to that.

I dunno. I'm not sure that people shouldn't be afraid of me. It's okay if some are. After all, I'm a professional writer who has some tools I've honed a bit in the practice of my craft over some decades, and I think -- and hope -- a sometimes biting wit, and am, when I feel it appropriate, utterly willing to engage in criticism that is intended to be cutting and painful, and if, say, a fellow I'm not going to name on your blog still holds a grudge over how I metaphorically and very publicly raked him over the coals over the time he tried -- and failed, miserably, and embarrassingly -- to get me jumped-and-thumped by the MPD and he still wants to keep his distance, hey, that's fine with me.  Hell, the more distance, the better; I'll be happy to buy him a bus ticket to Tierra del Fuego. One-way, and he's got to promise to use it, and at least stay there for awhile.

But I guess you really mean about the gun stuff.  I don't get to decide what other people feel, but, hey, let's take a look at the facts.  I've been regularly carrying a handgun in public -- lawfully -- since years before the Personal Protection Act passed, and have yet to take it out to kill, wound, threaten or intimidate somebody for, well, irking me.  And, truth to tell, it's at least arguable that I irk pretty easy.  (The Star Tribune used to worry aloud about "irked" permit holders.  That irked me.)

You could ask my friends.  And some folks who don't like me.  Need a list?

Rationally, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, isn't it?  Since I've managed to go through something like a dozen years of carrying without killing, wounding, threatening or intimidating somebody with my handgun* --

after having been, at various times, insulted in person, in print and in email; cut off in traffic; bumped into on the street; sworn at by a stumbling drunk coming out of bar; gotten bad service at any of several establishments; had my parking space stolen and my car towed;  and a zillion other irk-worthy things I could list, if you'd like

-- the smart money is that I'm not going to do it today. 

But, hey, even if after all that, if some folks choose to be afraid of me shooting them, I'm not equipped to deal with it, even if they'd like me to; I'm a writer, not a psychotherapist.  Ask any shrink you'd care to, though; if people don't want to change, there's nothing they can do about it, either.

So far, this has been more of a Q&A than an exchange; I think it's time that I ask you a question before I take another one -- so let me ask you this: if, after all that, somebody is frightened of me shooting them, what measure or measures do you think should I take to reassure them, why should I take those measures, and how effective do you think they'll be?

___________
* Except in my very few defensive gun uses.  Let's not get into those, here; it'll get 'way too long.  I've never had to put my finger on a trigger, and have never come close to being prosecuted in those very few cases. Granted, a robber or two got scared out of hurting me or my family, and that's just fine with me -- that was, after all, the whole idea. Can we leave that part of it at that, or do we need to go into detail?
___________ 

Charlie: On a personal level I’d expect you to avoid threatening language and behavior and try to engage them in ways so they get to know you as a human being. You already do a lot of education, and I knew you’d be open to this, so that’s why I contacted you in the first place.

But I think we both know the issue here is not the measures you take individually — because you can’t reassure everyone, and you’re not the only conceal and carry gun owner out there. We have to deal with this as a society, too.

You don’t have to do any more than the law compels you to do, and I believe the law should be concerned with safety, not reassurance. So we have this push and pull over laws restricting or relaxing rights where these concerns about safety and liberty play out.

Since I have the ball, I’m calling time out here. This is the first conversation I’ve had with a footnote! Let’s pick up the thread in a new post a few days from now.

On Taking and Giving.

The Web makes plagiarism easier than ever. You no longer have to laboriously dig for obscure but relevant passages and then copy someone's work letter by letter.

The Web also has the power to kill it. First, because the same tools that allow rampant stealing also enable detection. Second, because more readers are empowered to do the checking. And third, because it's so damn easy to attribute sources without cluttering up your prose or anchoring pages with footnotes.

Like this.

A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown newspaper resigned on Friday evening after admitting that he had repeatedly plagiarized from other writers.

I'm not going to use Tim Goeglein, who had been a Bush liaison to evangelicals and social conservatives, to make the claim that conservatives are more prone to plagiarism. But profiting from the work of others without sharing the wealth would certainly be consistent with the world view of the Bush White House. As for evangelicals, plagiarism could hardly exist, since they're already all reading from the same book.

*****

Speaking of giving proper credit, my brother-in-law retired yesterday after a 34-year career in law enforcement.

A man of few words, his brief speech concluded with "I wish I'd thought of this myself, but someone else said it — I'll miss the clowns, but I won't miss the circus."

Today, I wondered who did say it, but could only find one inverted version of the quote — from a retiring police sergeant from Johnson City, Tennessee. He gave credit to P.T. Barnum, but a search of Barnum quotes didn't turn it up.

It wouldn't be the first time Barnum got saddled with something he didn't say.

But then who originated such a fitting quip? Is it possible the words have just been passed from police department to sheriff's department around the country at retirement gatherings like this one?

Last night, Gerry and I sat drinking beers. You couldn't find two men much less alike politically, vocationally or recreationally, and we never would've met but for one thing — we both love my sister.

After meeting her, he did a very hard thing — especially for a man in his business. He packed up and left a job as a police chief in a small Vermont town to allow her to pursue her FBI career.

If you think you've had a tough time finding a suitable new job in your field, try that sometime. The conservative and naturally skeptical boards who review law enforcement candidates will doubt you can fit in working at a lower level — and wonder what's wrong with you and what the real story is.

His first job after turning in his chief's badge was as a security guard in a now defunct Denver mall, but he persisted and got back into police work. After another move, he found a position in the Mesa County Sheriff's Department, where he spent the last six years. In a classy move, the sheriff honored Gerry's long service as if he'd been at the department all along.

As we talked last night, Gerry wondered aloud about whether he'd taken the right road. It's a weird job, hard and thankless. A lot of cops don't make it 34 years and certainly don't leave ready to move on into an exciting new direction, as Gerry is about to do. It's got to be tough to look back and wonder what kind of dent you made in a world still so full of distress and dysfunction and the crime that comes with it.

But judging from all I know, there's an authentic P.T. Barnum quote I'd propose.

"We are all, no doubt, born for a wise purpose." And some of us, like Gerry, are fortunate to find it.