From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 21:22:56 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Nov. 15 column - felons with guns
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From: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz)
Subject: Nov. 15 column - felons with guns
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    FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED NOV. 15, 1998
    THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
    On the selective doling out of 'constitutional rights'

    T.T. writes in, in response to the Nov. 5 column in which I admitted
being a one-issue voter, rejecting any politician who won't trust me with a
gun:

  "Thank you, Vin, for raising the issue which has been bothering me for
quite a while:  when I read through the Bill of Rights, I cannot understand
why a convicted felon WHO HAS SERVED HIS OR HER TIME is, under the present
selective 2nd Amendment rights-lifting, not automatically and permanently
stripped of ALL of his or her rights, and not just the Second, plus voting:

  "Felon = no free speech, freedom to assemble, or, as you say, freedom to
go to the church of choice; no 3rd Amendment protections ... hey, quarter
those soldiers at will in the forever-felon's house! ... no 4th Amendment
protections, or 5th, or 6th (as you point out) nor 7th or 8th.  And of
course, the 9th and 10th are moot, since they're long-gone anyway for
everyone, felon and misdemeanor and non-convicted alike.

  "But if the power-geeks were to do this, why, then it would be too
blatantly obvious what was really happening, wouldn't it?

  "Best wishes, and thanks for keeping the faith so eloquently."

  I responded:

    #    #   #


  Yes. Does a felon, once he has "done his time" and "paid his debt to
society," again become a member of "the people" to whom all the rights in
the Bill of Rights apply, or not?

  If NOT, then indeed any government agency should be able to arrest anyone
who has EVER been convicted of a felony -- even a 90-year-old guy who
tended bar in a speakeasy in 1930 -- hold him without bond and without
letting him confront his accusers, in some foreign jurisdiction, torture a
confession out of him, convict him without a jury trial, and then subject
him to a cruel and unusual execution, all in secret. No problem with the
Bill of Rights -- it DOESN'T APPLY.

  Needless to say, under this evil premise, the government should also be
able to deny such a person the right to attend church, the right to publish
a newspaper or magazine, the right to own property which cannot be seized
on a bureaucrat's whim without compensation, etc.

  On the other hand, if that is NOT the situation which does or should
prevail, then it seems to me any former felon who is no longer on "parole"
has a right to vote and bear arms, along with all his other pre-existing
rights ... which after all are only ACKNOWLEDGED by the Bill of Rights as
having been ordained by the Creator, not actually "granted" therein.

  This business of creating different classes of citizens, with different
degrees of legal "disability," is the basis for virtually ALL the invasions
of our privacy -- up to and including the police numbering system on our
cars -- so frequently justified as "allowing us to check and make sure
you're not an escaping felon."

  (Note what a police state South Africa became, based on the simple notion
that one should have to show one's "racial identity card" to any policeman
who asked, to determine whether one had a right to be on a given street at
a given hour of the day -- and the sad absurdities it created, as visiting
Japanese businessmen were given passports declaring they were "white" so
they wouldn't have to suffer the indignities visited on South Africa's
native east Indian merchants, who carried second-class INTERNAL passports
identifying them as inferior "Asians.")

  There should be no NEED for me to ever "submit to a background check" to
prove I'm "not a felon." Felons should be in prison, or in the graveyard.

  "Parole" is the French word for "promise." If you can't trust a convict
to keep his "promise" not to acquire and carry a gun until his sentence
expires, then don't let him out on "parole." It's not (start ital)I(end
ital) who should have to suffer inconvenience or indignity because the
government wardens can no longer tell the difference between me and all
these convicted thugs they're allowing to wander the streets in plain
clothes.

  Start repealing one law a day until you have enough jail cells to keep
those guilty of violating our REMAINING laws (you might want to to keep
murder, forcible rape, and armed robbery on the books, while tossing out
drug use, "money laundering," and failure to pay gun "transfer taxes") in
stir for their FULL SENTENCES.

  And set the rest of us free.


Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web
sites for the Suprynowicz column are at
http://www.infomagic.com/liberty/vinyard.htm, and
http://www.nguworld.com/vindex. The column is syndicated in the United
States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas
Nev. 89127.

***


Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
Hay, 1872

The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943

* * *

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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'