Op-Ed: Is Arizona legislature taking tips from the Nazis, or are they just trying to get the feds' attention?

Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles says it's the former, comparing the recently passed Senate Bill 1070 in Arizona to the requirements by the Third Reich for Jews to carry around identification documents and wear the Star of David on all of their clothes.

Understating it, SB1070 is a controversial bill, as it is the strictest and most open-ended immigration law to be passed on US soil in many years.  Formed as a means to identify and deport illegal immigrants, the law was signed into passing by Republican Governor Janet Brewer on April 23rd in spite of strong criticism from President Obama and many other groups whose cries of 'foul' seem to be clamoring louder everyday, involving everyone from Cardinal Mahoney to Major League Baseball players.

Needless to say, immigration reform is way overdue and needs to be given high priority by the federal government.  Issues have arisen far too often but nothing concrete has yet been done to address the problem and fix yet another broken system.  The fact that such a controversial law as SB1070 has been passed is evidence that the federal government's failure to act on the issue is making it necessary for state governments to act on their own.  Maybe SB1070 was exactly what was needed for Arizona to get the federal government to pay attention.

Aside from the necessity of comprehensive reform, just as important is the way in which such reform takes place, which is the real problem with SB1070.  Although it's great that Arizona is trying to do something about immigration, this is an inappropriate and inadequate solution to the problem, only addressing symptoms, not root causes.

Among the largest criticism of SB1070 is that it "makes racial profiling legal."  This accusation itself is enough to get people riled up and speak out against the bill - how could the Arizona legislature be so hateful?  It's almost surprising how many people have joined together to speak out against SB1070; if Americans feel this strongly about the issue, then obviously something needs to be done about it.  Yet for all of the support immigrants are receiving from some groups, there are not nearly as many cases of actual interaction between regular Americans and immigrants - they're still isolated and misunderstood.

More than any solidarity with immigrants, perhaps it's just that Americans are put on high alert by an issue that skirts as close to racism as racial profiling does.  Such a strong reaction to the possibility of legalized racism sends people into a frenzy that has caused them to quickly isolate the state of Arizona, calling it a "police state" or a "Nazi Outpost."  Yet it's quite disappointing how quickly people are willing to ostracize and label Arizona with so many hateful names, boycotting its businesses and withdrawing students from its universities, without making it clear that it is not the people of Arizona who are to blame, but the state legislature and the governor who passed the law.  How often do states in the Union effectively boycott other states because of their local laws?  Is boycotting really going to get the Arizona government to pay attention or is it only going to exacerbate the problem in Arizona even further?

This situation draws parallels with the debate in International Relations studies about the efficacy of imposing sanctions on a foreign country to get it to comply with demands - is it the people in power who are actually affected or is it the people under them who suffer?

So, does SB1070 actually legalize racial profiling?  SB1070 requires Arizona law enforcement officers to investigate under "reasonable suspicion" those people they suspect of being undocumented immigrants, to prosecute them and deport them if they are proven to be illegal.  Critics complain that racial profiling is inevitable since how are you supposed to tell if someone is illegal or not just by looking at them?  Are officers going to go around and detain everyone who appears to be of Hispanic origin, or who can't speak English?  Even people who are found accompanying illegal immigrants can potentially be arrested under SB1070.

Critics are right that such a wide-sweeping law should not rely upon something as arbitrary as "reasonable suspicion" - there are too many possibilities of abuse of this law.  And yet on the other hand, if people are worried that officers will abuse this law, doesn't that reveal a need to crack down on an irresponsible law enforcement system too?  If people believe that police officers will racially profile, given the chance under law, that reveals a lack of trust in the moral character of law enforcement.  SB1070 contains manifold problems and has holes in it at multiple levels.  Even long time citizens will now have to carry their identification papers with them at all times for fear of being investigated at a time when they are without one.  This creates a fear of law enforcement which should not exist, as well as creates more work for law enforcement officers that will distract them from the more dangerous drug lords and criminals who do get through the border.

Although SB1070 does not blatantly legalize racial profiling, it does open up more possibilities in which it can take place.  Police officers are still subject to federal law that makes racial profiling illegal - state law does not supersede federal law, and any violations of the 4th Amendment's protections against unreasonable search without probable cause will still be prosecuted according to federal law.  Criticism of the law should not be primarily based on conjecture as has been the case here.  Proper criticism must include a thorough analysis of the actual text of the law as well as acknowledgement of the defense given by those who helped write the law.  If someone is so willing to speak out against SB1070, they ought to at least make sure they know what it says, so that there are no false assumptions made.  Then, rather than stopping at being upset about Arizona's laws, there needs to be better alternatives put forth, as was recently done by a group of Democrats in Washington.  For an issue which potentially affects the entire country, immigration must be dealt with by the federal government, not the states themselves.  Let's hope that despite the elections coming at the end of the year, immigration will be given its deserved attention by Washington.

Hoplophobia? Gun Laws

A recent New York Times article mentions a push to expand gun rights in some state legislation, including in Virginia where a bill was passed to allow the carrying of concealed weapons in bars and restaurants where alcohol is served.  Such a push seems odd in a state like Virginia not too many years after the Virginia Tech shootings.  The article seems to suggest that gun-rights supporters have been making significant progress in part due to a lot of silence on the issue by the Obama administration.  But gun-rights advocates don’t trust Obama, who mentioned during his election campaign that he would work to impose stricter gun-control laws.

“The watchword for gun owners is stay ready,” said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association. “We have had some successes, but we know that the first chance Obama gets, he will pounce on us.”

The Brady Campaign, a group working for better gun control laws, has published a report grading Obama’s first year in office, giving him an overall ‘F’ for working to prevent gun violence.  The report contains a shocking statement that in only one year Obama has repealed more federal gun control laws than George W. Bush in all eight of his years in office.  Usually it’s the Republicans pushing for looser gun regulation, so this is a puzzling statement.  Now, of course, Obama has a mountain of issues to tackle, including the health care debate and Afghanistan, and gun-control seems to be one of those issues that has been debated over ever since the writing of the Constitution, but this can only somewhat excuse negligence over the issue, not negative progress.  Even if Obama hasn’t been able to focus on fulfilling his promises to enforce stricter laws, why has he then allowed a loosening of those laws at the same time?

Getting deeper into the issue, I keep asking myself why people even want to own guns so much.  Are some gun-lovers just so attached to a romanticized Wild West notion of the US that they stubbornly (pun intended) stick to their guns and fight for their 2^nd Amendment right?  Although I don't see this as an extremely pressing issue, I do find it interesting that it's still a matter of such contention in the US, albeit though national attention to it ebbs and flows. Why does the Republican Party hold so tightly to this?  Is it just niche-diplomacy as a way to get more votes?

In general, there are a couple of areas which both sides of the debate continue to bring up, namely gun use for self-defense, recreation/hunting, possession by armed forces’ reserves, as a way to resist tyranny, and cases of domestic violence.  As far as hunting goes, of course some states are more rural than others and hunting is more common in such places (like Palin’s beloved Alaska where Moose hunting seems to be a local pastime) - I see no need to take guns away from hunters (though PETA might disagree).  But when open carry gun-rights supporters flock to Starbucks with pistols strapped to their hips and intimidating (purposefully or not) less-zealous customers, I wonder just how far the 2^nd Amendment should apply.  “A right unexercised is a right lost!” as the Open Carry organization insists on their website.  However, wouldn’t keeping your licensed gun in your house, out of the reach of children be just as much an exercise of that right?  Rights are meant to protect people from intrusions on their freedom, not meant to create opportunities for people to use that liberty to interfere with other people’s lives.  I mean I don’t run around yelling at US soldiers that they aren’t allowed in my house, and just because I have a right to the freedom of speech doesn’t mean that I have to tell everyone what my political opinions are every time I see someone I don’t know – there’s just no reason to and I’m not worried that just because I’m not trying to say something controversial my freedom of speech will be taken away.  Why make a statement about it even if it is in the constitution?  Today there are few uses for guns outside of law enforcement, military, and criminal realms, so why carry a gun unless you belong to one of those categories?  It seems about as ridiculous as the huge pick-up trucks with giant testicles attached to the tow hitch but with far more dangerous consequences than offending all the old ladies on the road.

If hunting for sport or target practice are your thing, then there are plenty of alternatives for recreational use of less lethal guns such as BB guns, air soft, or paintball guns.  Throughout my childhood my dad used his BB gun to deal with the pigeons that pooped all over his office building, and I too owned a BB gun which I did target practice with in the back yard; it's fun – maybe just a guy thing. But the times when I actually shot and killed even just a bird, I felt guilty and regretted it immediately. Sure there can be recreational use, but I see no need for anything stronger than a BB gun unless you live in a rural area where you need protection from wild animals or if you live near a war-zone where a weapon means life or death; I see very little need for guns in 'civilized' America, especially in urban areas.

In doing a little research on reasons people should be allowed to carry guns, I came across an article by an outspoken gun-rights advocate named David Kopel.  In this article, Kopel presents a rather far-fetched argument to blame gun-control laws as one of the reasons why Hitler was able to kill so many people during the Holocaust.  Making such a large connection as this seems very ludicrous to me.  Though Kopel makes some good points that the Nazis did indeed disarm Jews, making it easier to carry out the genocide, but Kopel’s conclusion is a huge stretch in logic, that because racially biased gun-control laws were imposed upon the victims of the Holocaust, gun-control laws in the US should be questioned as well.  Surely other factors such as racism and a power-abusing regime are far more to blame for the Holocaust than whether the Jews had a hand gun in their closet.  If you don't trust your government enough and suspect that they want to disarm you so they can more easily kill you off, maybe you have bigger issues to worry about than whether you're allowed to carry guns. And even if there had been no gun-control laws carried out, wouldn't it have only turned into small-scale shoot-outs between the Jews and Nazis, assuming those Jews who were in possession of firearms resisted the Nazis when they came to take them?  I think there would only have been so much they could have done when faced with heavily armed and trained SS troops with strict orders.  I understand Kopel's reasoning that:

One never knows if one will need a fire extinguisher. Many people go their whole lives without needing to use a fire extinguisher, and most people never need firearms to resist genocide. But if you don't prepare to have a life-saving tool on hand during an unexpected emergency, then you and your family may not survive.

But as he admits, those are very rare emergencies, and if something as dire as a state-led genocide program comes knocking on your door, I hardly think having a few guns on hand will save you from death in the long run.  The solution to preventing war and genocide doesn't lie in increasing weapons possession, but in changing people’s mindsets and core beliefs about the morality of violence.  Just look at Japan for an example of a state where, although there are fairly strict gun-control laws in name, they are not enforced very strictly and the people are not fighting for stronger rights to bear arms – Japanese society is very pacifist and using firearms is not only legally unacceptable but socially unthinkable as well.  Japan also happens to have one of the lowest crime rates in the developed world.

Other than referencing the Holocaust, in Kopel’s article he also mentions Zimbabwe and the Mugabe regime as being potential African Hitlers. Having grown up in Zimbabwe myself, I was confident I'd understand the context of Kopel's argument much better, so I read another of his articles on Zimbabwe. Although Kopel does a good job of describing the situation as it was in Zimbabwe (the article is old - from 2001), again he fails to make a logical connection between the tragedy of genocide and the US campaign for gun-rights. The ending paragraphs to Kopel's article are:

…But are we Americans truly serious about ending the epidemic of genocide? Are we no longer willing to watch from the sidelines as another century rolls by, and witness thousands or millions more innocent victims killed by their own government? 

If we really mean "never again," then the solution is rather obvious: ensure that the potential victims of genocide are never disarmed.

I almost fell off my chair when I read this, I was so surprised at this guy’s complete lack of logical sense (IOW he was a moron!).  Is the solution really that obvious!? I fail to see how this argument follows that the best way to prevent genocide is to keep guns in more people's hands. In both of his articles mentioned above, what Kopel fails to account for are the real possibilities of widespread conflict should both sides be armed; increasing the amount of weapons only makes conflict more likely.  And firearms are not the only weapons used in genocide, though Kopel seems to think that genocide victims will be safe if they have firearms.  What if they’re attacked by artillery shells or burned in their houses?  What about the Rwandan genocide where most of the people were killed by hand with simple machetes?   Should there be machete-carrying rights as well?  Or should there be machete-control laws instead?

Now genocide, politicide, any type of government-sanctioned or widespread killing is appalling and I don't discount that whatsoever. But don't go and exploit the suffering of people in foreign countries as a way to garner sympathy for gun-rights campaigns in a peaceful land like the US. You have to account for far more than material realities and consider psychological and social factors as well.

This is a complicated issue at hand, and I’ve only scratched the surface, but I’ll end this post with a reiteration of the cliché that it’s not the guns that are evil, but the people who choose to use them in an evil manner that are.  The problem is the increased likelihood of someone being harmed when weapons are more prevalent, not to mention the increased fear of harm that accompanies the presence of such weapons.  As Martin Luther King said,

By our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim...we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.

Are gun rights really necessary or do they do more harm than preventing it, and how important is it that Obama follow through on his campaign promises regarding this issue?

UPDATE:

Here is a post from a fellow blogger who advocates for the right to bare arms.  My thoughts on his article can be found in its comments (Nanashi).