Gun Control is a State's Rights Issue

 

Every time there is a mass shooting in America, the Federal Government makes another power grab in an effort to limit or restrict the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The problem with this is that the Second Amendment exists precisely as a limit on Federal Authority and efforts to undermine it are unconstitutional.

The text of the Second Amendment is as follows:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

At the time this amendment was penned, each state fielded its own militia, and it was these militias that waged war on England during the U.S. Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783). These militias were comprised largely of citizen volunteers, mainly farmers, who owned their own muskets and who were available at a moment's notice to rally to the defense of the fledgling nation.

It is precisely these citizen warriors, who served by authority of their own state's militia, that the Founding Fathers were thinking of when they penned "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The fear of the Founding Fathers was that a national army would come to replace the militia system and that the Federal Government would concentrate power and seek to confiscate weapons from the citizenry to prevent rebellion and insurrection. It is well documented that the formation of a standing army was one of the Founding Father's greatest fears. They believed that keeping a standing army at the ready in times of peace could only lead to mischief and to a loss of freedom generally.

Instead, they preferred the concept of state militias over that of a national standing army, to be regulated by each State's legislature. Basically, each state was to maintain its own militia to be organized (and armed) as that state saw fit, and that the new federal government must not take any action to disarm the citizens that comprise these militias.

However, the Founding Fathers did not want the nascent nation to devolve into the chaos of internecine violence. For this reason, they imagined (or hoped, really) that each state would field a "well regulated" militia, with proper discipline and training. They always felt that the right to keep and bear arms must be for a specific purpose, that being in support of the state militias in defense of each state and, by extension, the defense of the nation.

Therefore, the Constitution strictly outlaws the regulation of arms at the federal level, but not at the state level. In fact, the Constitution demands the regulation of arms at the state level. The problem we are facing as a nation is that too many states have failed to properly regulate their own citizens which has led to the chaos and internecine violence that the Founding Fathers feared could emerge.

The solution is for state legislatures to take up this matter and enact regulations that will make their states safer from gun violence. The Federal Government can enact legislation to help states fund these efforts, but they must not enact legislation that usurps this essential authority.

Split Afghanistan Across the Middle

The United States is attempting to broker a power-sharing arrangement between the secular government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, but it is not going to work. 

The Taliban have proven themselves to be too persistent and too durable, and the secular government too weak and too corrupt. 

And, perhaps more importantly, the vision that the Taliban has for the future of women in Afghanistan is incompatible with the secular model and will be impossible to reconcile. 

If the United States pulls out, the secular government will quickly fall and Afghan women and girls will lose their freedoms.

I propose dividing Afghanistan across the middle, along a line that is roughly defined by Herat in the West and Jalalabad in the East, making good use of the Koh-I-Baba mountain range that runs through the middle of the country as a natural border. The vast majority of the residents of the three cities that fall along this line, Herat, Kabul, and Jalalabad, are opposed to Taliban rule and so are automatic candidates for inclusion in a secular Afghanistan. Also, creating an international border between the southern and northern areas will help prevent the incursion of Taliban assassins and spies who have been responsible for such suffering amongst the educated class of Afghanistan.

The fine points of the geographical division can be left to the negotiators, but physically separating the two warring groups will present the best chance of a lasting peace and will make the work of defending the secular government much easier by keeping the NATO forces out of areas controlled by Taliban sympathizers.  

Lie to Yourself at Your Own Risk

 

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower Tours Taipei in 1960

After the People's Liberation Army ran Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters out of mainland China and onto Formosa Island in 1949 the U.S. made the stupid decision to only recognize Taiwan with only 0.3% of the landmass and 2% of the population of the People's Republic of China, and not the communist government led by Mao Tse Tung. This stupidity continued all the way to 1970 when the U.S. replaced one idiocy with another: to recognize the PRC as the legitimate Chinese government and to withdraw official recognition of Taiwan.

Neither decision was smart or forward-thinking. After the Chinese Civil War, it was clear that Chiang Kai-shek had zero chance of regaining control of China. Therefore, the immature denial of obvious facts created a tense and irrational dynamic.

The facts are obvious: the People's Republic of China is the legitimate government of China and the Republic of China (the official name of the Taiwanese government), is the legitimate government of Taiwan.

Instead of recognizing these facts for what they were, the U.S. and its allies lost the opportunity to officially end the Chinese Civil War and convince the PRC to recognize Taiwan, with disastrous consequences.

Now, Taiwan is probably going to be overrun by the People's Liberation Army, the U.S. is going to be chased out of the Pacific region and Japan is in serious danger, all because the U.S. and its allies perpetuated a foolish myth.

The United States should never again perpetuate a diplomatic policy that does not fully recognize the facts as they are and that respects the diplomatic rights of all parties. We should have recognized the PRC in 1949 and we should have never agreed to go along with the "One China" policy.