any man's death diminishes me

21 deaths in the month of August. 21 living, breathing human beings turned into insensate lumps of cooling flesh through the violence of others. On Sunday, the Star took the time to write about them as a group, and try to draw statistics together with portraits of the victims.

I wasn't one of them. Nobody who looks much like me was in the group.

21 bodies, and not one of them was a middle-aged Caucasian. Sure, lots of middle-aged Caucasians died during the month of August, but we died from stuff like heart attacks and car wrecks. Hot lead doesn't go ripping through our bodies.

Does that lessen the impact of crime on our community? Would we be handling things differently if half the victims were middle-aged whites? What would we do?

Does Funkhouser Know What He's Doing?

A while back, I read a quotation something like "If a person tells you that 2 + 2 = 5, that's a mistake, but if a person tells you that 2 + 2 = 7,264, that's not a mistake, that's a different system."

One of the basic rules of politics is that you make certain you get complete credit for whatever good that you do. Politicians treat credit like a zero-sum resource - the more you get, the better. That's why ribbon-cuttings and award dinners are the favored activities of so many politicians.

Yesterday, Mayor Mark Funkhouser appeared to have forgotten that rule. In announcing his intention to join the National Coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, he unnecessarily diluted the focus on himself and shared the stage with Councilmember Cathy Jolly, Chair of the Public Safety and Neighborhoods Committee, head cop Jim Corwin, and mayors who are already members of the coalition, such as Mayor Joe Reardon of Kansas City, Kansas; Mayor William Rodgers of Edwardsville, Kansas; and Mayor Carl Wilkes of Merriam, Kansas. Not only did he share credit within the city - he brought along living proof that this move is neither unique nor novel.

And it gets worse! He didn't even take the opportunity to whip out a quill pen and sign a parchment scroll, or any other publicity stunt to make his statesmanship the focus of the event. Instead, the only real visual image from the event was a pile of dangerous weapons - he focused attention on the seriousness of the problem instead of the "brilliance" of his "solution".

And, yes, it gets even worse than that! He didn't even have the political skills to sign the statement of principles of the organization! Instead, he will be introducing a resolution to the entire council that will direct him to join the coalition by signing its principles. And he's even doing that through co-sponsorship with Cathy Jolly!

Any moron can see that the proper way to do this was to have a huge press conference with a brass band and a huge gold pen emblazoned with MAYOR.

Instead, Funkhouser is sharing credit for a good thing, and getting the entire council on board for it. He's focusing on the problem rather than on himself.

Perhaps that's not a mistake. Perhaps that's a different system.

What Makes an Opinion Important?

In the comments to my brief piece about the Heller decision ("Probably the Correct Ruling on Guns"), Missouri's finest Libertarian candidate (which I mean as a sincere compliment, though I acknowledge it may be viewed as damned faint praise) agrees with the astonishing statement that "It is not hyperbole to describe today’s decision in Heller as the most significant opinion of this century, and likely, of the last two generations."

Really?! An opinion that stands for the wishy-washy common-sense virtually status-quo proposition that the feds can regulate but not ban individual ownership of guns is the most significant opinion of the last two generations?

Perhaps so. Perhaps there really was a national consensus gathering in favor of banning all handguns, and confiscating deer rifles. Alternatively, perhaps in light of the Heller opinion's recognition that I have a right to own a gun, all restrictions on arms will be legislatively repealed, and soon our neighbor's Fourth of July celebration will feature SAMs and tank rides.

While it would be fun to engage in paragraphs of mockery of the hyperbole which knows not what it is, the question then arises, what IS the most significant opinion of the last two generations? Roe v. Wade? Bush v. Gore (certainly, in terms of tragic and unforeseen though not unforeseeable results)? Lawrence v Texas?

Here's a list of important Supreme Court cases since 1989, if you care to limit yourself to one generation . . .

Probably the Correct Ruling on Guns

Given my prior criticism of the Second Amendment ("18th Century Wisdom in the 21st Century") it would be reasonable to assume I'm aghast at the Supreme Court's decision striking down a handgun ban and a requirement for trigger locks. While I haven't read through all the opinions in detail yet, though, I think it was probably a reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment. I've never denied that the Second Amendment exists, nor do I believe in simply ignoring the Amendments that are inconvenient (see, for example, DUI checkpoints).

Now that the field has been somewhat defined by the Supreme Court, the battle can begin in earnest in our legislatures to define what regulations we, as a society, think are appropriate. Banning is out of the question. Rendering the guns unavailable for self-defense is off the table. But even Scalia acknowledges some restrictions are okay.

Before yesterday's decision, the extremists on both sides were in a black and white world. Some thought that total banning was constitutional, some thought that any restrictions at all was unconstitutional. We're all in a gray world, now, and much work remains to be done.