That "Macho Democrat" Thing
David Weigel | January 10, 2007, 2:40pm
Former congressional candidate Paul Hackett, whose near-miss loss in a safe GOP seat hinted at the Democratic wave to come, is
under investigation for chasing down men who crashed a car into his property.
The incident happened around 4:30 a.m. Nov. 19. Police were called to Hackett's Indian Hill house after Fee failed to make a curve and ran into a fence at the home on Given Road, according to the police report.
When [Ranger Paul] White arrived at the house, Hackett's wife, Suzi, told him that her husband had called her to say he had stopped the men on Keller Road.
White called for backup. He arrived at a driveway in the 8700 block of Keller Road to find the three men lying face down near their small, black car and Hackett's pickup truck. With a flashlight, White saw a strap on Hackett's right shoulder and "what appeared to be an assault rifle hanging along his right side," White's report said.
White told Hackett to put away the rifle and "not take things into his own hands."
This is the most interesting part, or at least the part most open to interpretation:
"He told the boys to 'Get the ---- out of the car and get on the ground.' ... He said he did not touch the vehicle with the rifle and maintained his distance. 'I knew they saw I was armed,' he said. He said he had done this about 200 times in Iraq, but this time there was not a translation problem," the Indian Hill police report said.
Macho Democrat explanation here.
Captain Holly | January 10, 2007, 5:05pm | #
I can't believe that John is the voice of reason here.
I can't believe that John, joe, and I all agree on a subject. Planetary alignment, indeed. Time to drive to Wendover and try my hand at the blackjack tables.
I've been a Utah concealed weapon permittee for over 10 years now, and even in gun-loving Utah this conduct would be considered improper and excessive, if not outright illegal.
State laws may vary, but I cannot believe that Ohio law would authorize a private citizen
who does not face an imminent threat to life or limb to arm himself and apprehend three suspects of what would be considered to be misdemeanor hit-and-run (as opposed to the more serious
Reason kind...okay, I won't quit my day job, but I
will be here all week).
When you draw your gun as a citizen in Utah you only are authorized to do so in order to prevent death or serious bodily injury to yourself or someone else, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. Three kids running over your fence wouldn't authorize it in Utah, and I highly doubt Ohio would be more liberal in that regard.
Perhaps that is why this incident was being heard by a grand jury in the first place, and why Hackett was described to be upset by the leak: He might be the target of the criminal investigation.
Philosophically speaking, I don't have much heartburn with his actions. But the law is the law, and if your average Joe (not our joe; he's certainly not average) can't chase down yahoos who scrape the paint on his double-wide, then upper-class political candidates shouldn't be able to either.
VM | January 10, 2007, 5:32pm | #
"Paul Hackett has a right to own an assault rifle to shoot animals "
I find your phrasing there to be interesting, "an assault rifle". Not a gun, nor a rifle, but an assault rifle.
Was that a deliberate use, a naive use, or just random use?
But then, if I understand your larger point, is that you're concerned that people will draw and shoot over an incident that back in the day you'd call 'em a name over or give 'em the finger. Is that correct? It is a reasonable position, and I can certainly understand where you're coming from.
In states with concealed carry, was there an increase in this type of violence after the law went into effect? Or, would it be if you're carrying an illegal weapon to begin with, then it'd be more likely to be used?
In other words, taking into account joe's point about "government selection bias" and your concerns about the violence in Philly, are there grounds for such suspicions?
Even if there isn't, the tone on this thread, surprisingly, has been quite good - so maybe this application of the precautionary principle could get fleshed out a bit more.
Kap | January 10, 2007, 6:18pm | #
dhex: CHLs in TX are 75% male and skew older than the general population. That accounts for the higher than average indecency with a child. That's an "old guy" crime. Harassment is maybe the same, maybe a plea down from brandishing?
I'm of the impression that several CHL states have conviction-rate reporting requirements similar to Texas'. I would guess that these are riders attached to the CHL bills by opponents who realize they are going to loose, but figure that the reporting requirements will at least arm them with statistical ammunition to use in their attempts at repealing the law later down the line. To my understanding several states have shown CHL holders to be more law-abiding than the general public, and none have shown them to be worse.
Keeping in mind that the CHL population is typically half-again as male as the rest of society and - let's be honest here - most crimes are committed by men, the disparity is perhaps even greater than the raw numbers you saw. To be honest though, you would need to compare a (21+ years of age, no nontrivial prior criminal convictions) sample with the CHL population to have a true apples-to-apples comparison, perhaps the lower rate is a function of that selection criteria rather than CHL holders' collective personality traits.
Either way though it would support the view that crime isn't a function of the firearm but of the person wielding it, i.e. if you haven't become a criminal by age 21 you likely won't ever become one, and the corollary that 90-whatever percent of crimes are committed by 10-whatever percent of the people. It's a software, not hardware problem, per what Zach just said.
Having said that, I'm a CHL holder in Texas, carry frequently, and have been in a few decision point situations, and I think what Hackett did was out of line and stupid. He'll be lucky to get out of this with only a 4-5 figure sum in lawyer's bills.
(Also, in Texas you
can use deadly force to protect property, although even here I think his actions wouldn't fly. I'll look through my CHL class stuff tonight and post the relevant section.)
tarran | January 11, 2007, 9:41am | #
These governments get their authority - the authority to engage in behaviors, and the authority to forbid individuals from engaging in them - from the consent of we, the people. Not from God, not from their ability to grab and hold power, not from tradition, but from the people.
What do you mean, "we the people". I haven't given my consent. Which "we" are you talking about?
The people who wrote the Massachusetts state constitution are long dead and rotted. I don't think any more than a few thousand residents actually know what's in the Mass Constitution. Are those the "we" you are talking about?
Now, the way constitutions are supposed to get their legitemacy is that groups of people choose representatives, and that these representatives then draft the document. But the mechanics of it show it is hardly some consensual act. Since not everyone is allowed to go or select a representative tha tis pleasing to him, some people are either unrepresented, or have a person claiming to represent them who does not act the way they would want them to. Then, when these "representatives" convene, they don't all agree. So naturally to produce a document, rules are drafted, wherein a majority or a supermajority can override the will of a minority. So some of these "representatives" find that the constitution they helped draft contains clauses that they don't agree with.
In the end, a constitution is a document produced by a subset of a subset of a large group of people. The organization dewscribed then imposes the will of of this tiny sliver of people on everyone else.
Why should this sliver of the population be allowed to claim a monopoly on the use of deadly force, whereas anothe sliver of people are denied to even have the right to do so? What imbues these constitutional conventions which such awesome power which is supposedly denied to aotheer slivers of the population, say the shareholders of IBM or the residents of Concord Ave?
Of course this is all arguing theology - in the reality based world, constitutions are usually window dressings to legitimize a change that has already taken place.
The way an organization becomes a government is that it seizes power, usually violently. Then over time its rule comes to be accepted as being part of tradition. Here I am going to quote Hayes:
"Nowadays the individual is born into the State [as versus the Church], and the secular registration of birth is the national rite of baptism. With tender solicitude the State follows the individual through life, teaching him in patriotic schools the national catechism, and commemorating his vital crises by formal registration not only of his birth, but likewise of his marriage, of the birth of his children, and of his death. And the death of national potentates and heroes is celebrated by patriotic pomp and circumstance that make the obsequies of a mediæval bishop seem drab.... Every national State has a 'theology--a more or less systematised body of official doctrines which have been deduced from the precepts of the 'Fathers' and from admonitions of the national scriptures, and which reflect the 'genius of the people' and constitute a guid
