Handguns and the Supreme Court

In a recent case, Heller v. DC, the Court struck down the DC ban on handguns in the District. For all of the furor over the case, there is remarkably little case law on the 2nd amendment, and the Amendment itself is only a few phrases long: 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.

Of course, there is some odd phrasing. It starts by discussing a well regulated militia, but ends with the statement that the right shall not be infringed. In the end, the question was: does the 2nd Amendment speak of a literal militia, or is it more abstract?

Not suprisingly, the Court ruled that the right to bear arms was a personal right, one that exists apart from any regulation and/or milita. I say it's not surprising, because the court has consitently expanded and personalized the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Symbolic clothing is covered by the 1st Amendment, executing minors is cruel and unusual, and Miranda Warnings exist to assure that people aren't compelled to testify against themselves. Whether the original text only covered weapons that could overthrow the government or protect the homeland, or if instead it included hunting and self defense weapons seems a bit of an unnecessary discussion. Any weapon that can protect a home could help protect the nation, and historically and currently, the term militia includes both organized militias (the national guard) and "unorganized militias" (every able bodied male). There's a viable originalist argument (that the term militia meant the people who could fight), and it's an expansion of individual rights. It's win/win, right?

Unfortunatly, a law I thought would be struck down 9-0 was split on predictable lines, with the liberal wing voting to uphold the law. This isn't entirely hypocritical, for nearly a century the liberal wing has tended to uphold state action.... unless it conflicted with a constitutional right. Here, I think the liberals let a chance to solidify an increasingly shaky legal groundwork for the progressive movement (of which I'm a member, BTW). By voting to uphold this law, the liberal wing would show that it was not beholden to politcal agendas beyond the law and could add this to a list of personal rights that it's fought for over the last 50 some years. It's a lost opportunity.

This decision is particularly disheartening to myself because it's a reminder of the years and effort wasted by liberals and progressives in the gun debate. Somehow people that gleefully pointed out the failures of banning alchohol or illegal drugs thought that simply banning guns would end any problems. It was a mistake, and it made a lot of enemies out of people that should have been supportive of a progressive agenda.

Don't get me wrong, I'm equally upset at the conservative wing for cherry picking history in it's definition of militia. State and local militias actively drilled, even if informally. Nearly every man could fire a weapon (as could nearly every woman), and the threats facing the states and nation were much more immediate then they were now. Essentially, an informal if organized militia the time was useful when the threat were minor, whereas now the "militia" is utterly unorganized at a time when the nation faces massive and severe threats. On the other hand, perhaps the court simply thinks that registering each weapon is enough.

If I were in charge, I'd require at least a modicum of the "well regulated militia." Handguns are legal with a permit and a training class (AKA registering and drilling). It's a simple compromise that I think increases safety, allows personal rights, and conforms to the original meaning of the text.

Whatever happened to the Wallflowers?

I picked up a copy of the Wallflower's Bringing Down the Horse this weekend, and I've been listening to it for the first time since it came out. One Headlight and the Difference are clearly the stand out tracks, but the other singles were good, and the album as a whole is well crafted and coherent enough to classify the album as Very Good, If Not Quite Great. Jakob Dylan, the lead singer and songwriter for the Wallflowers is very famously Bob Dylan's son, and there at the time, many people assumed that the best songs were actually written by the elder Dylan, not Jakob. Both parties denied it, and at the time One Headlight was a chart hit, but not a cultural phenomenon.

As time passed, the success of Bringing Down the Horse, and One Headlight in particular, start to seem more suspicious. The band stopped recording for four years, and by the time their next album debuted I was in college and didn't even notice. The band still records to critical acclaim and modest commercial success (not unlike Bob Dylan himself). I'm still not certain, however, that the talent that could create One Headlight couldn't come up with another big hit.

Nobody is going to confuse One Headlight with, say, Satisfaction or Thriller or even Smells Like Teen Spirit as an "important" song. It didn't create or sustain a genre, it's not a particularly complex song, and it didn't really break new ground. It is, however, a perfectly crafted rock song, with wistful lyrics that are actually far more poignant than the sound at first. It's a sad song about a sad man, trapped by conditions not entirely of his own design. As a casual observer (and I'm nothing if not casual), it's hard to listen to this song and not expect to find a greatest hits disc full of such gems.

Of course, the reality is that creating a single great song is an incredible feat, even for the very gifted. Lyrics are simply poetry, and poetry depends on the poet, and success inevitably changes a person's life in so many ways that it's almost impossible not to have the art be changed in some way. It's not impossible to "go back to the well," it's just hard. Couple success with the inevitable maturation everybody goes through, and very few artists, of any media or genre, can create multiple masterpieces.

Breaking down Bringing down the Horse, the album tracks are good and just interesting enough to not skip, the minor hits are good, The Difference was a genuine hit while One Headlight is arguably one of the best songs of the 90's. Does this mean it's a product of genius that was spoiled by later success, or was it just lightning in a bottle? As a counterpoint, look at Stone Temple Pilots album Purple: Another candidate for best of the 90's in Interstate Love Song, a couple of solid hits, a catchy little minor hit. While the filler on Purple is pretty forgettable (STP are a candidate for greatest singles band of the 90s), the set up isn't all that different. Nobody would ever accuse Scott Wieland of being a genius, however he has the rock star persona that makes up for Jakob's superior pedigree.

Many critics have the knowledge and expertise to actually discuss the evolution of a genre or band, but I don't have the depth of experience to do that. Looking at records, I sometimes wonder if art isn't as evolutionary as people think: sure the flow causes one movement to mix with another and branch off, but when you look at individual bands, it's important to remember that each disc is a crystalline moment in time. Every rock historian has stories of great songs added to albums at the last minute, or nearly cut because of a crisis of confidence. I think there might be more fate or timing to the creation of music than we frequently think.

I started a blog a year ago?

For reasons I don't really feel like getting into, I was thinking about starting a blog, but discovered that I had started one already, and that I liked the name I picked better than the one I was going to use. So rather than rebooting or starting over, I figured I'd just post again. Odds are, this will be the only post for the next year or so anyway, so it's not like I should spend time worrying about a title or color scheme.