strapped

Last December my wife received a notice from the City of Fort Worth, Texas that she was the target of a red light camera civil violation. The notice was printed 91 days after the alleged violation (the City municipal law only allows for notices to be sent within 30 days), and only allowed a few days for a response.

Her options were simple: she could either pay the fine or request something called  an “adjudicative hearing.” Since the civil penalty had been imposed in a manner contrary to the City’s own laws, she could not possibly choose to pay the fine. That the money would be spent on further red light camera programs, which have been repeatedly proven to endanger the public, gave her little choice but to contest the violation.

An adjudicative hearing is not the same as court. There are no judges or lawyers, but rather City employees making determinations of guilt or innocence based on a lacking and biased sense of the law as explained by individuals committed more to revenue generation than civil rights. Rather than subject herself to such a kangaroo court, my wife demanded that her Texas Constitution Article I, Section 15 right to a trial by jury be recognized.

Article I, Section 15. The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate. The Legislature shall pass such laws as may be needed to regulate the same, and to maintain its purity and efficiency.

We had to pay extra shipping to ensure that her letter was delivered by the “due date” on the ticket, so late was the City in sending it to her.

Instead of impaneling the jury, the only legitimate course of action available to the City of Fort Worth, they awarded themselves a default win in her case. Her penalty rose from $75.00 to $100.00, and the City is now considering turning her account over to a collections agency.

My wife and I have both spent countless hours on the telephone with City attorneys and employees, explaining to them that municipal code cannot possibly hold precedence over the Texas Constitution’s Bill of Rights. As of today the City has chosen to ignore its lawful mandate and to end its communication with us on the matter. Fort Worth Deputy City Attorney Gerald Pruitt made this clear just before hanging up on me earlier this afternoon.

What concerns us even more is that the Fort Worth Star Telegram seems to be taking its cues from the City in this case. I originally wrote a long and detailed account of this matter to be published as a letter to the editor, which editor Paul K. Harral then requested that I shorten for publication. After limiting my statement to fewer than 300 words, Mr. Harral contacted me again to inform me that he was going to “try for the focus letter position” with my editorial. Three hours later I received another note from Mr. Harral, this time rescinding his promise to publish the letter and instead prompting my wife to simply accept the adjudicative hearing as offered by the City and repeat her request for her constitutionally inviolate right to a jury trial from the City during that hearing. What happened between 7:30 and 10:30 this morning that would convince Mr. Harrel to decide not to publish an editorial critical of the City of Fort Worth? Only he knows. Whatever responsibility he might have had to promoting dissenting opinins, a fundamental charge of a free press, went out the window in those three hours.

Mr. Harrel did point out that “there are all sorts of examples in law – medical malpractice for example – that require a hearing before proceeding to trial,” as well as trotting out a lot of the same arguments, largely verbatim, that the City has been using to give us the runaround. Of course he’s right about the medical malpractice suits, but what he fails to recognize is that in these cases the individuals signed contracts requiring them to submit to arbitration or hearings prior to trial as conditions of their employment. My wife is a not a contract employe, but a citizen, and as such is not bound to follow any municipal code which violates her civil rights. Were we to begin allowing municipalities to determine by decree which cases may be heard in front of a judge and jury, our future as Texans and as Americans would indeed be bleak. By accepting the City’s hearing my wife would in fact be waiving her right to a real trial, placing the decision into the hands of a system which is clearly operating outside of its mandate. That Mr. Harrel, a journalist, would so blindly follow the lead of a City in this matter gives us grave concerns about the legitimacy of his newspaper and his capacity as a journalist.

At this point the City of Fort Worth is unlawfully exercising compelling force against my wife by refusing to register her vehicle, and will soon be committing outright criminal acts by attempting to force a collection through punitive measures. She has repeatedly and lawfully demanded a legitimate trial, and has been denied at every turn by the City.

This is why we carry. This is why we protect ourselves. It is not always going to be a home invasion, carjacking, robbery, or any other sort of violent crime. It may instead be a City attempting to ensure a revenue stream that is clearly unconstitutional and dangerous to the public health. When we stand up for our rights we often place ourselves in the unenviable position of being whipping posts for unelected and unaccountable lawyers such as Gerald Pruitt who are more committed to the rule of revenue than the rule of law.

And sometimes these people can be dangerous. Sometimes the protection of a City revenue stream is such that the unlawful use of compelling force becomes the dangerous use of police force. I don’t truly believe that this is one of those circumstances, and I have no reason whatsoever to suspect that Mr. Pruitt or any of his colleagues would ever do something so sinister as asking any individual or force to take unlawful action against us. But the possibility exists, and it’s the same sort of possibility which exists each and every time we walk out our doors. To stand for liberty is to stand against tyranny. Mr. Pruitt and his colleagues are, whether they know and accept it or not, agents of tyranny, and as such are not to be trusted in any capacity.

Always remember, enemies foreign and domestic.

Technorati Tags: civil rights, red light enforcement, revenue, unamerican

Filed under : Living the Life, Ruminations

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I am the most prepared person on my block. I am easily among the most prepared in my zip code. At my current pace, I am likely to join the ranks of the most prepared in my state very soon. I have food, water, gasoline, maps, medicine, bullets, batteries, blankets, alcohol, bartering items, and the means to move it all rapidly. I also have a plan. Several of them, actually.

The question I’m most often asked is “why?” Why do I take preparation so seriously? Why am I so concerned about being able to survive any situation? Why do I carry a gun everywhere I go? Why can I quote the Bills of Rights of both Texas and the United States? There are a lot of answers to those questions, but one single idea lies at the root of all of them. I am prepared to defend myself and everyone around me from any wrongdoing, foreign or domestic, because the vast majority of you are not willing to defend yourself. In fact, as far as I can see society has gotten too stupid to defend itself from much at all anymore.

Seriously, when was the last time you looked around and took a rational accounting of what you’re living in? Right now we’re being told to believe that the two most capable people to lead the country are Barack Obama and John McCain. In an even more bizarre twist of stupidity, most of us believe that those two people are our only choices!

The current government has failed at literally everything it has ever done in our lives. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, and every other program currently administered by the federal government are complete disasters. There is no competition, and the one invariable fact of business is that an organization which exists with no competition will not only fail its customers, but will do so in the most spectacular fashion possible. There is not an American alive who believes that his or her tax money is being spent wisely. Everyone in the country knows that we continue to elect people who rob us, cheat us, and are even willing to see us die for profit, or even worse, vanity.

So many of us stand around and talk about how messed up it all is every day. We complain that Obama wants to spend too much of our money or that McCain wants to send all of our kids off to die. We whine about our taxes, warrantless snooping, and even torture. Seriously, here we all are, Americans, and somehow we haven’t gotten it across that it is not okay to torture our fellow human beings under any circumstances.

We must seriously be the single stupidest collection of people on the planet. Somehow, despite knowing for a fact that the people that we’re electing are criminals who would quite literally be working in telemarketing call centers if we hadn’t somehow allowed their families to get into politics, we still allow them to represent us. For some unknown reason we’ve all decided to look the other way when logic and reason call, preferring to ignore the very reality of the truth that if we continue electing these people to our highest offices they will eventually kill every last one of us through sheer incompetence.

So why do I prepare for anything? Because I look around and I see the real world. I see a bunch of people who don’t value human life at all, and they’re the ones with the keys to the bombs. I see a federal government that has long since stopped caring that its sole function is to protect the very rights that it has taken from us. Most importantly, I see a bunch of people who are not only too stupid not to notice that it’s their own damn fault that things are so bad, but are so dense as to fail to realize that they’re all doing the most terrible things that they could possibly be doing for the future of our nation and for their very survival by continuing to believe a single word from the federal government and by continuing to elect from the pools of criminals we call the Republican and Democratic parties.

What’s that? Oh, you see that too? Yeah, what are you doing about it? Voting for McCain? Obama?

Let me offer you another solution. Go buy some tuna and canned peaches. Get bullets, at least one good assault rifle, and flashlights. Make sure you know where you’ll go if martial law is declared. Make sure you know where you go if there is no longer any gasoline in America. Because if you can look around the country and see the shape we’re in and not see clearly that the absolute root of every single problem that we currently have, have ever had, or will ever have in this country is because of our ever-growing and overwhelmingly incompetent federal government, then you are the reason I am preparing. You are the one running us into the ground by believing that men like Barack Obama or John McCain could really bring about fiscal responsibility – the real kind, not the delusional, self-serving criminal kind that you’re probably thinking of. You are the one who buys into the absolute nonsense of global terrorist conspiracies and the need for a multi-trillion dollar war against enemies that might someday pose a threat if the people you continue electing insist on repeatedly poking them with their enormous egos.

Look around and ask yourself: are we really this stupid?

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, federal government, incompetence, John McCain

Filed under : Ruminations

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I’ve been slow in writing this, but it’s something important to me.

Until recently I was working at a major telecommunications company as a systems engineer responsible for building servers and processes for large and complex projects. I took the job knowing that telecom companies had been in the hot seat regarding snooping, and that there was a possibility that I might be around some of the technology, projects, or people responsible. I rationalized my concerns by promising myself that if I ever found myself breaking the law or violating the Constitution at the request of the company I’d blow the whistle.

The job was fantastic, the people were all great, and with the lone exception of the building being short on space to house the many employees and contractors, everything was perfect. I was working with state-of-the-art technology, and was managed by a  fellow who seemed content to let me be the best technical guy I could be.

One of the many projects to which I was assigned involved moving some old server hardware to a different location. As a first step I attempted to locate the original hardware, which was operational and responding to pings, but which I couldn’t physically locate in the data center. I asked a couple of colleagues for help and one of them began running on about the “other room.” We had to borrow a badge and go through several levels of coded door to get to it, but on the other end of the facility we found the alternate server room. It was smaller and had less gear, but was obviously separated from the primary applications. We couldn’t find the server I was looking for there either, so I began to ask if there were even more server rooms.

And there were. Several more, in fact. Each successive room could only be entered by navigating and passing the security of the previous room, and the rooms eventually became just a few huge machines and massive routers locked behind a chain-link fence in the corner of another room. I never actually made it into the the chain-linked area, and could only access the immediate rooms before it by having my manager accompany me to see an old, grisly-looking dude, who then had to stay with both of us beyond a certain point.

I started talking to my colleagues in hushed tones, asking them about these rooms and what purpose the served. The details were sketchy, and I never received a good answer because no one had a good answer to give. For a few weeks I struggled with the knowledge that secret rooms were buried in the building, wondering endlessly why the core engineering team did not even know their purpose.

Then, on July 10th, Bush signed FISA, complete with retroactive immunity for telecoms.

I can’t remember exactly how long I waited to submit my resignation, but it wasn’t more than a few days. I had not been asked to do anything illegal or unconstitutional, and still hadn’t even determined what the back rooms contained. I just knew that something was wrong, and that I could not be a part of whatever it was. I still gave a proper 2-week notice, and I still worked diligently on my project load, but for a while I secretly wondered if I was doing the right thing. Maybe those rooms just held core routers or time servers or something else critical. It was possible, even probable, that I was leaving a fantastic job over nothing.

With a few days to go I sat down with my manager, who had been pretty quiet during the run-up to my departure. He knew my reasons for leaving, and hadn’t commented to that point. We sat down in a little room and began to talk. I opened by quoting the 4th Amendment, and explained that with the passage of FISA and the concern over what telecom companies were being asked to do – and being retroactively immunized after having allegedly done – I was not a good fit for the position. Had I been asked to do something illegal or unconstitutonal, I explained, I wouldn’t have even been able to give them the two-week notice.

Then he said something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and which marked a turning point in my understanding of liberty and freedom.

“When the men in black suits come and ask you to do something, you know, there’s just not much you can do.”

Leaving that place was the single best decision of my professional life.

Technorati Tags: black suits, Constitution, fisa, telecom, warrant, wiretap

Filed under : Ruminations

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What if I told you that I have an alien species living in my backyard, shielded from sight by a hand-stitched quilt? Would you find this statement to be completely unbelievable? Delusional, perhaps? Why?

A reasonable person would compare what they know of the world to be true with the proposal I’ve put forth. They would examine the possibility of an alien species living in my backyard in the light of their world. They would ask themselves whether or not they’d ever heard of an alien species or an invisibility quilt, and when my claim could not be reconciled with reality would conclude that they have not.

Now what if I tried to prove the existence of my alien species by making their society more complex, detailing the most minute elements of the world only I can see? What if I told you of their seven-legged pets? Does my depth of knowledge somehow validate my claim of their existence? Is any description of anything in my backyard rendered moot by the fact that its very existence is based on a complete delusion? A reasonable person might believe so. Seven-legged pets are not even worthy of consideration in a world which does not exist.

This is how I feel about the majority of the anti-gun arguments I hear. Any argument put forth which relies on the very first supposition being completely delusional cannot coexist with reality. More specifically, any gun control effort which begins with the complete removal of firearms from the entirety of the population cannot be taken seriously because it is based on the presupposition that all guns could be removed from the population. A reasonable person has to examine that against what they know of the world.

Somewhere around half of the households in America have at least one gun in them. There are roughly as many guns as there are Americans, if not more. Of all Americans, let’s say 60% are adults. Of them, 5% are felons. America would fight her second Civil War, short and bloody as the full weight of the U.S. Armed Forces would be brought to bear against her own, should we choose to take that path. The criminals would hide their guns though. Many decent, ordinary people would do the same. Gangs would start bringing them across our absurdly loose borders.

The people least likely to commit a crime would be the very people turning in the their guns without incident. We would criminalize the exercise of self-defense while allowing those who acquiesce to a dangerous law to be killed needlessly by thugs working with virtual impunity.

A reasonable person would look at the War on Drugs and conclude that its promises are delusional because there are still drugs. The War On Terror cannot reasonably be won until there are no more terrorists, which is a fallacy in the real world as well. A War on Guns would naturally be the same. It cannot and will not be won, because there will always be guns available, regardless of the restrictions and penalties placed on their ownership. To suggest otherwise would be to deny reality itself.

It is for this reason that I refuse to consider any gun control argument which begins with “if there were no guns.” It is not possible to have an America with no guns, just as it is not possible to have an America with no cheeseburgers, no Viagra, and no delusional maniacs.

Making suppositions based on a delusion cannot be reconciled with reality. I agree that the world would be a far better place if human beings did not have the capability of killing one another with such ease, but we cannot seek solutions based on such reason. We live in the real world. Sometimes people get messed up in the head and walk into a school with a rifle. The world would be better if no one ever did anything of the sort. Taking guns away from everyone would never solve that problem though. There will always be firearms available, some as easily obtained as a bag of marijuana. Millions of Americans handle firearms daily. They occasionally make a mistake, and it is occasionally tragic. Reasonable people will consider this against what they know the world. Drivers, scientists, and doctors occasionally make mistakes too, and sometimes the results are equally tragic. The fact that something which exists ubiquitously within society is dangerous is not a valid reason to secure its removal.

The point I’m trying to make is that reason and delusion cannot coexist. One cannot propose a delusional solution to a real problem. It’s irresponsible and only makes the problem worse.

I’m not denying that we do have an obstacle to overcome in America when it comes to guns. There are some people who are sick, and they crack up violently sometimes. There is always room to take steps to protect America against these types of things. All citizens deserve the very best solutions available, and that requires reasonable people thinking rationally. We should make it more difficult for sick people to obtain guns. We should take every step possible to protect students and families. We should impose strict sentences for those caught with illegal weapons. Not even a hardened gun guy will disagree with those things. But we have to do it without shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot. It’s delusional to think that we can start by getting all of the guns out of the hands of Americans, and further leads to the loss of more life by wasting critical resources arguing about something tantamount to the existence of seven-legged pets in an alien colony shrouded by the magical power of a hand-stitched quilt in my backyard.

I’m not going to tell you that the only option is more guns, because that argument is also based on a delusion. There are not enough people willing to take upon themselves the responsibility required for carrying a firearm. Even with increased numbers we might stop or mitigate one in ten mass shootings, but that still doesn’t solve the problem. Moreover, the argument that an armed citizen might inadvertently hurt an innocent person can be considered reasonable. People react strangely in tense situations, and the possibility for error will always exist. Some reasonable gun owners will recognize this and will train themselves, occasionally even better than law enforcement. Most will not. More armed individuals will help the problem by reducing the number of victims, but at the expense of a stray victim now and again. It simply isn’t an ideal solution.

Unfortunately we find ourselves as a nation posed with a very difficult problem. We know that mass murder is happening in our midst, but we do not have a solution which will guarantee the relief we seek. While we bicker and complain about delusional solutions, human beings die. We are failing them. We are failing ourselves. There is a gap and no one will fill it. The police cannot protect everyone all the time. There aren’t enough responsible gun carriers to take up the slack. If you’re reading this, and you aren’t delusional, then by now you should have come to this conclusion: you alone are capable of filling that gap.

Someday we may grow intelligent enough to eliminate all firearm-related deaths in the United States, but it will not be through campaigns such as Brady, nor will it be through arming every adult with a high school diploma. Today, however, we do not have the ideas, the means, or even the spirit to enact such sweeping change. We must live in reality, where reason dictates that each and every one of us will probably face a point in our lives where our defense falls upon us alone. We must be prepared to defend ourselves should no one be available to guarantee our safety. It’s not about machismo or fear. It is about reason. It is about recognizing that bad things happen to normal people like you and me, and understanding that sometimes the police just aren’t close enough to bail you out. It is about respect for yourself and your family. It is about respect for your fellow man. It is the same reason that you carry car insurance, your doctor carries malpractice insurance, and your cruise line makes you sign a waiver.

We do not live in a perfect world. Utopia is a delusion. We must live in the world we have, not the one we wish we had.

Technorati Tags: concealed carry, gun control, handguns, second amendment, self defense

Filed under : Living the Life, Ruminations

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A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my Dad, who is a hunting manager on a large ranch. I can’t recall exactly how we got on the topic, but our conversation turned to guns, and I praised and thanked him for having exposed me to them as a young boy and for having instilled in me the basic code of conduct around firearms. We laughed a bit, both telling stories of people we’d come across recently without a lot of training or safety awareness, and then he said something to me which stuck. Young kids, he explained, should be exposed to guns so that later in their lives they aren’t mysterious and interesting toys to be handled.

I’d never really considered it like that. It’s truly profound when you think about it. My brother and I both began shooting at a pretty young age under his supervision. We learned safety, accuracy, and indeed how fun it could be to spend the afternoon with a brick of .22 and a couple of Coke cans. We spent virtually every weekend during deer season at the lease, plinking away and becoming more comfortable around firearms.

Some years later, when I was a young teenager, I was spending the night at a friend’s house just down the road. Late in the evening he and I crept into the master bathroom while his parents were out, where he produced a hammerless revolver. It was fascinating to him, the wonder and amazement in his eyes betraying his lack of understanding of the seriousness of his discovery. He pointed the gun at me and mocked firing a round. Because his parents had never taken him shooting the gun was a source of mystery and fantasy. He was not comfortable with it; the pistol was special and coveted. He wanted to carry it out with him. What he intended to do with it I cannot claim to know.

I talked him down and convinced him to put the pistol away. It was nothing special to me, I’d handled many firearms before and already had several that were unofficially classified as my own. I never really told anyone about the matter of the pistol until years later, but the memory has stayed with me. When my dad made his point a couple of weeks ago it really hit me. Kids who find unlocked firearms and shoot themselves or their friends do so because they are fascinated by the taboo nature of guns. It’s the same reason teenagers have sex at a young age, do drugs, or race their cars on Friday nights. It’s dangerous and exciting, and unfortunately it also leads to tragic accidents.

Many schools used to have shooting clubs. Summer camps for children stocked .22 rifles and paper targets, and the Boy Scouts taught firearm safety and handling to all who put on the uniform. The rule used to be guns in and around the schools, and yet there were no incidents of mass murder on our campuses. There was a time in America when we were reasonable, understanding that children who grew up shielded from something would seek out whatever was new and taboo at their earliest opportunity. Human beings haven’t changed, but our social awareness has. Today we “protect” our children from exposure to firearms, not recognizing that our ill-fated efforts are quite probably the very reason that so many teenagers still pull unsecured guns from dresser drawers and shoot their friends. If guns weren’t new and exciting, they’d be largely left alone.

I carry a pistol on my person anytime I’m legally allowed to do so today, with literally no exceptions. In the office or in a government building, where carry is restricted, I feel naked without the weight of my comfortable holster and pistol on my belt. A gun itself is nothing special to me, save for the fact that I do regularly carry a pretty amazing model. It’s just a gun in the end, really no different than those I was exposed to in my youth. I’m not going to brandish it to prove anything, not inclined to use it at the earliest possible opportunity, and certainly not going to claim it to be something unique and special. It’s only a gun. I’ve been around them for as long as I can remember. It is a tool, just like a pocketknife or a flashlight or a combustion engine. It has a purpose and requires care, and if not treated with the proper respect might be dangerous.

That is why I thank my dad now and again for exposing me as a young boy to the reality of firearms. It does no good to simply pretend they don’t exist or to villainize them, and more often than not leads to the worst possible outcome. People with no exposure to guns have a difficult time understanding and accepting the basic safety and use rules when they come across them later in life. It’s easy to train these things when a person is young. It’s tougher when they come in late, trained by Hollywood.

My wife was shooting even younger than I was, and today is a better shot than me in many cases. Although she does not carry regularly and does not visit the range as often as I do, she still understands and practices safety at all times, and is mature enough to respect firearms. We don’t intend on having kids anytime soon, but it’s reassuring to know that if we did, they would be exposed to the proper use and maintenance of guns at a very young age.

Being exposed very likely saved my life once. I wonder what our country would be like if everyone was taught to respect and understand guns.

Technorati Tags: 2nd amendment, gun control, gun education, second amendment

Filed under : Living the Life, Ruminations

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