I Sometimes Wonder If I Just Don't Enjoy Amateur Astronomy Enough



Especially when I see an ad like this one:

am selling my DarkStar 22" f/4.5 Dobsonian telescope. She sets up with absolutely no tools or ladders whatsoever in less than 15 minutes. (Although you will need a ladder for viewing at zenith, as she is 8 foot high at the eyepiece!) Unlike other big dobs, she nests together for just one easy trip from the truck to the field. She comes with high resolution digital setting circles and hardware (bring your own computer), 6' wheel barrel handles, 10" tires, black rip-stop shroud, and a Telrad finder. Pegasus primary and secondary. $6000 US dollars, if using paypal, add the customary 3%. Scope is located halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor Michigan.



Before I get 100 emails asking, I have found a 30" dob, thus I must sell my baby to fund my further exploration of space.

Part of Why I'm Skeptical of the Claims Against John Lott's Work



It's because his opponents are clearly fierce anti-gun advocates, and not above a few tricks of their own. You read their work outside of the statistical area, and it's clear that the are either not very careful thinkers, or are playing fast and loose. As an example, consider this recent presentation by John J. Donohue III, one of Lott's strongest critics. The paper is ostensibly about the rise of non-discretionary concealed weapon permit laws (what Donohue calls "Right To Carry" or RTC). Donohue points to the recent example of actor Sean Penn, who has a California concealed weapon permit (apparently issued in violation of California law), and how two of his guns were stolen from his car. While Donohue acknowledges that Penn "succeeded in getting one of the relatively few gun permits in the non-RTC state of California," raising this issue as part of a discussion of RTC laws makes no sense at all.



Donohue also points to the now thoroughly discredited Violence Policy Center claim that in Texas, "41 permit holders were arrested for murder or attempted murder...." While admitting that some might have been falsely accused, Donohue never acknowledges that it is routine for Texas district attorneys to charge anyone engaged in a defensive shooting, and that many of these "arrests" never turn into criminal charges, because the grand jury refuses to indict. Donohue makes the claim,

During the first 5 and one-half years of the Texas RTC law, the Violence Policy Center was able to identify that 41 permit holders were arrested for murder or attempted murder (the number would be too low if the researchers didn’t capture every permit holder in their count or if some permit holders committed murder and didn’t get arrested, and would be too high if some were falsely accused). The Violence Policy Center, License to Kill IV (June 2002), http://www.vpc.org/studies/ltk4cont.htm. The current murder rate in the U.S. across all groups is roughly 5 per 100,000, so if one takes 150,000 as the average number of permits over the first five year period, one would expect roughly 7.5 murders per year from gun permit holders (if they killed at the same rate as the average American today), which totals 41 murders over the full period.

There are a number of misleading aspects to this statement. The VPC study claims 41 permit holders "arrested for murder or attempted murder" which Donohue then compares to "41 murders over the full period." Donohue's apples and oranges comparison is either a sign of carelessness, or dishonesty. Which does he want to cop to?



The VPC report also neglects to tell us how many of those murder and attempted murder charges involved guns. Doubtless, a majority, but what relevance would a murder committed with a knife, poison, or a blunt object have to the Texas concealed handgun license? Donohue has to know this. Where's the qualifying explanation?



Donohue acknowledges--parenthetically--that the VPC's number of murders and attempted murders "would be too high if some were falsely accused" but doesn't bother to look at the readily available evidence on this. Examining Texas statistics shows that as of May 17, 1999, there were 22 murder charges filed. Of these, 2 were convicted, and 4 were dismissed. The rest were still pending. Even making the unlikely assumption that every remaining charge would result in a conviction or guilty plea, this still means that VPC's "41" charges are going to be 33 or 34 convictions, and most likely, a good bit less than that. For the year 2001, there was one murder conviction of a licensee, and 157 convictions of non-licensees. This also suggests that the VPC's "41" charges overstates the actual number of murders and attempted murders committed by Texas licensees (unless, of course, 2001 was a very unusual year).



There are other problems with the VPC report that Donohue seems to have missed. The VPC report lists at least two murders that took place on the property of the killer (Jack Reynolds and Daniel Meehan)--where a concealed weapon permit makes no difference whatsoever.



The VPC also lists a kidnapping where no gun was involved, until the victim tried to get away from the kidnapper's home--at which point the kidnapper used a rifle. A license to carry made no difference in this case at all.



Some of the cases that the VPC points to seem to have left no tracks after the arrest. They list a Randy Phil Allen II who was arrested in 1999 for a 1988 murder (which would have been before the Texas RTC law took effect). But whatever happened? There is a Randy Phil Allen II who lives in Texas, but while he responded to my email, he refuses to answer my email inquiry if he is the same Randy Phil Allen II arrested in 1999.



1. It seems a bit hard to believe that this exact match of name is a coincidence.



2. If it is a coincidence, and he is not the guy who was arrested in 1999, why not respond with, "No, I am not the same guy."



3. If this is the same Randy Phil Allen II who was arrested in 1999, he clearly could not have been convicted, or he wouldn't be out of prison already.



If the claim is that John Lott has violated professional standards in how he has presented his information, Donohue is in no position to cast any stones. Using VPC's information, while not discussing its serious shortcomings, is clearly misleading. To quote Donohue:

It is also important for the political and scholarly audiences to be sensitive to signs of over-zealousness on the part of researchers as this may give clues that something more than the search for truth is motivating the research.

Vatican Set Policy on Secrecy Concerning Sexual Abuse by Priests?

This report from CBS News quotes from a 1962 document written in the Vatican, and claims that the document outlines a strategy for keeping sexual abuse by priests secret, under threat of excommunication from the Catholic Church.

The document, once "stored in the secret archives" of the Vatican, focuses on crimes initiated as part of the confessional relationship and what it calls the "worst crime": sexual assault committed by a priest" or "attempted by him with youths of either sex or with brute animals."

Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases "in the most secretive way...restrained by a perpetual silence...and everyone {including the alleged victim) ...is to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office...under the penalty of excommunication."

Larry Drivon, a lawyer who represents alleged victims, said, “This document is significant because it's a blueprint for deception.”

Drivon said the document proves what he has alleged on behalf of victims in priest-abuse lawsuits: that the church engaged in Mafia-style behavior -- racketeering.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am not impressed with the Catholic Church's behavior in this area; it is something of a toss-up as to which organization has done more damage to children: the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or the Catholic Church's cover-up of child molesting priests. No, I'm not being flippant when I write this. NAMBLA is pure evil, but their numbers are small; the Catholic Church's perpetually pederastic priests seem to be legion (I picked that word "legion" for a reason), and they have been abusing children for at least decades in North America.

Nonetheless, reading this news report, and what it quotes from the 1962 document, I don't see the smoking gun that the report suggests. I can imagine several other contexts for the quoted text that are far less damaging. The Catholic Church should release the entire document in question, immediately, for independent evaluation.

UPDATE: As I said above, it doesn't sound the 1962 document says quite was CBS says it says. Here is an alternative explanation that suggests CBS's problem was a bit more serious than just careless reading.

Need A #4-40 Thumbscrew



No, not the medieval torture instrument. There is a little set screw that holds eyepieces in place on my telescope. It's about 1/4-1/2 inch long, with a knurled head that makes it easy to tighten down on an eyepiece. A few months back, this little thumbscrew fell in the deep grass in my back yard, and has been MIA ever since. I am using a #4-40 screw as a replacement, but it's not quite as convenient. Unfortunately, local hardware stores don't carry anything quite this small with a knurled ending, or any other sort of easy to turn head on it. If you have one that fits this description sitting around your workshop--or can tell me where to buy one--I would very much appreciate it.

Police Corruption Isn't Just Bribes on Speeding Tickets



This disturbing article reminds me of the scandal that brought down the government in Belgium a few years ago. The opening of the story captures the weirdness of this well:

France's latest public scandal reads like a cheap Hollywood thriller - except it's much more difficult to believe.



This real-life potboiler comes out of the southern city of Toulouse and involves a serial killer, allegations of corruption and perversion by cops, judges and other high officials, sado-masochistic sex parties in an elegant chateau and shocking revelations on prime-time television.

If the claims that are being tossed around are correct, a kinky serial killer received police protection because so many high officials were involved with him. This wouldn't be the first time; Henry Mayhew exposed the involvement of London police in Victorian England in ignoring child prostitution, kidnapping, etc., and the response of the larger society was to be outraged at Mayhew for bringing this to their attention. There have been a number of embarrassing examples in recent times in the U.S. such as Hollywood Division of LAPD in the 1980s, or NYPD (I think, any year).



Unsurprisingly, liberal gun control advocates get very upset when you point these depressing reminders of how widespread police corruption is, because being liberals, they know that we are right, but being gun control advocates (which is the larger motivator for them), they don't want to admit that limiting gun ownership to the police means that crooked cops have little to fear.

Deleting Bellesiles From Reinhardt's Decision Doesn't Solve the Problem



As several bloggers have pointed out, Michael Bellesiles has been deleted from Judge Reinhardt's Silveira decision. But after reviewing the changes, Judge Reinhardt seems to have done himself in. What the decision said before was:

During the period that the Articles were in effect, both George Washington and Henry Knox, who was to become the nation’s first Secretary of War in the Washington Administration, urged the creation of a standing national military force, to no avail. H. Richard Uviller & William G. Merkel, The Second Amendment in Context: The Case of the Vanishing Predicate, 76 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 403, 411-13 (2000). Washington in particular felt that the need was acute; in 1783 he wrote a document entitled Sentiments On A Peace Establishment, in which he recommended establishing a national militia that would exist along with those maintained by the individual states. Subsequently, he wrote to John Adams in the wake of Shays’s Rebellion that because of the lack of a unified national military force, “[w]e are fast verging to anarchy and confusion!” Letter from George Washington to James Madison (Nov. 5, 1786), in 29 THE WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1745-1799, at 51 (John Clement Fitzpatrick ed., 1931) (quoted in Michael A. Bellesiles, The Second Amendment in Action, 76 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 61, 65 (2000)).

All that Reinhardt has done on this footnote is delete

(quoted in Michael A. Bellesiles, The Second Amendment in Action, 76 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 61, 65 (2000)).

Reinhardt hasn't made any other changes, and as I pointed out a few weeks ago, the problem is that the claim "because of the lack of a unified national military force" is not strongly supported by the context of that quote. Before, at least, Reinhardt could at least say, "Well, I was relying on Michael Bellesiles, who made that claim." Now he has deleted Bellesiles, and is asserting that the letter from Washington to Madison makes this claim. As I wrote here,

Now, Washington certainly mentions the Shays's Rebellion in this letter--after discussing "anarchy and confusion!" But there isn't any discussion of "because of the lack of a unified national military force." One might at least as fairly assume that Washington was referring to the problems of finances and the previous inability of Congress to vote for a "paper emission." Washington was definitely a supporter of a standing army, having found militias to be a "week reed" upon which to rely. But this letter is quite a bit more ambiguous than either Bellesiles's representation of it, or Reinhardt's representation of Bellesiles.

Reinhardt can't even blame this on Bellesiles now. He needs to either remove this very questionable claim about why Washington said what he said, or admit that he is making a highly arguable assumption. Of course, this level of intellectual integrity would destroy the rest of Reinhardt's decision--which cites a decision that argues that only weapons of "civilized warfare" are constitutionally protected as proof that military style weapons are not constitutionally protected.

The Ninth Circus Court of Appeals Once Again Demonstrates Its Scholarship



SILVEIRA v. LOCKYER, in which a suit against California's assault weapons law asserted that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. Judge Reinhardt's opinion is one that only a gun control advocate could have written.

Despite the increased attention by commentators and political interest groups to the question of what exactly the Second Amendment protects, with the sole exception of the Fifth Circuit’s Emerson decision there exists no thorough judicial examination of the amendment’s meaning.

Except, of course, that this is incorrect. There is an extensive set of decisions which examine the meaning of the Second Amendment, some in considerable detail, but these decisions have been overwhelmingly in state supreme courts.



The following is a list of state supreme court decisions that have, when an individual appealed to the Second Amendment's protections, the court, rather than deny an individual right was protected, did one of the following:



1. Struck down a gun control law;



2. Claimed that the Second Amendment was only was a limitation on the federal government with respect to individual rights, but did not restrict state laws;



3. Claimed the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government, but struck down a law based on a state RKBA provision;



4. Found some other basis for upholding a law, without denying the claim that the Second Amendment protected an individual right;



5. Found that the Second Amendment protected an individual right, but found some method to harmonize a gun control law based on the idea that this was "reasonable regulation," or that the weapons regulated were not protected.



In short, these decisions refused to make this silly claim that the Second Amendment doesn't protect an individual right.



NOTE BENE: I do NOT claim that every decision on the list below found an absolute right to keep and bear arms, or an unlimited right. In some of the decisions, the court has clearly found a way to avoid directly striking down a law by one of the items listed 2-5 above.



I have also excluded a number of appellate court decisions -- but about as many from all three lists below. I also haven't included any of the federal decisions, most of which acknowledge explicitly or implicitly that the Second Amendment protects an individual right.



Aymette v. State, 2 Hump. (21 Tenn.) 154 (1840)

State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250 (1844)

Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243 (1846)

State v. Chandler, 5 La. An. 489 (1850)

Smith v. State, 11 La. An. 633 (1856)

State v. Jumel, 13 La. An. 399 (1858)

Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394 (1859)

Andrews v. State, 3 Heisk. (50 Tenn.) 165 (1871)

Fife v. State, 31 Ark. 455, 25 Am. Rep. 556 (1876)

English v. State, 35 Tex. 473 (1872)

State v. Duke, 42 Tex. 455 (1875)

State v. Hill, 53 Ga. 472 (1874)

State v. Wilforth, 74 Mo. 528 (1881)

State v. Workman, 35 W.Va. 367 (1891)

In Re Brickey, 8 Ida. 597, 70 Pac. 609, 101 Am. St. Rep. 215 (1902)

Strickland v. State, 137 Ga. 1, 72 S.E. 260 (1911)

People v. Persce, 204 N.Y. 397 (1912)

State v. Keet, 269 Mo. 206, 190 S.W. 573 (1916)

State v. Kerner, 181 N.C. 574, 107 S.E. 222 (1921)

State v. Nieto, 101 Ohio St. 409, 130 N.E. 663 (1920)

State v. Woodward, 58 Ida. 385, 74 P.2d 92 (1937)

State v. Hart, 66 Ida. 217, 157 P.2d 72 (1945)

Watson V. Stone, 4 So.2d 700 (Fla. 1941)

People v. Liss, 406 Ill. 419, 94 N.E.2d 320 (1950)

State v. Nickerson, 126 Mont. 157 (1952)

In re Rameriz, 193 Cal. 633, 226 P. 914 (1924)

Application of Grauling, 17 Misc.2d 215, 183 N.Y.S.2d 654 (1959)

Burton v. Sills, 99 N.J.Super. 459 (1968)

Grimm v. City of New York, 56 Misc.2d 525, 289 N.Y.S.2d 358 (1968)

Guida v. Dier, 84 Misc.2d 110, 375 N.Y.S.2d 826 (1975)

Rinzler v. Carson, 262 So.2d 661 (Fla. 1972)

Mosher v. City of Dayton, 48 Ohio St.2d 243, 358 N.E.2d 540 (1976)

Kellogg v. City of Gary, 462 N.E.2d 685 (Ind. 1990)

State v. Kessler, 289 Or. 359 (1980)

City Of Princeton v. Buckner, 377 S.E.2d 139, 142, 143 (W.Va. 1988)



The following decisions strongly implied that an individual right was

protected by the Second Amendment:



State v. Angelo, 3 N.J.Misc. 1014, 130 A. 458 (1925)

State v. Sanne, 116 N.H. 583, 364 A.2d 630 (1976)

Rabbitt v. Leonard, 36 Conn. Sup. 108 (1979)



The following state supreme court decisons have denied the Second

Amendment protects an individual right:



State v. Buzzard, 4 Ark. 18 (1842)

Harris v. State, 432 P.2d 929 (Nev. 1967)

State v. Vlacil, 645 P.2d 677 (Utah 1982) (but see Justice Oaks' concurring opinion)

Commonwealth v. Davis, 343 N.E.2d 847 (Mass. 1976)

Application of Atkinson, 291 N.W.2d 396 (Minn. 1980)



Unsurprisingly, Reinhardt quotes at length from the one-sided Chicago-Kent Law Review symposium issue published two years ago in which only those opposed to the individual rights view were invited--and paid for their articles. (This is almost unheard in scholarly publications.) Of course, Reinhardt cites the well-known soon-to-be former Professor Michael Bellesiles for support for the collective rights view, apparently unaware or unconcerned about Bellesiles's scholarly integrity problem.



This is the sort of decision I expect from the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals: long on verbal sleight of hand, short on examination of original sources, very trusting of gun control advocate opinions.