No Justice, No Peace

Democrats in Missouri have proposed a bill that would force gun owners to surrender their weapons or destroy them according to Townhall.com's Leah Barkoukis. While we have known, and reported to you the real goals of the gun grabbers, such legislation clearly shows for it for anyone willing to look. Meanwhile the Colorado House of Representatives passed four gun control measures including a measure to ban concealed carry on public college campuses. Of course, the fall out from the passage in New York State of an expanded "assault weapon" ban making magazines with a capacity of more than seven rounds illegal has many people in that State vowing to ignore the bill. As the letter from the Saratoga County Deputy Sheriffs Police Benevolent Association states, this law, passed in the dark of night without public hearings or input from anyone else, makes instant criminals of ordinary peaceable citizens.

Indeed, the criminalization of ordinary, peaceful armed citizens who have had nothing to do with any of the gun violence supposedly being stopped by these laws is one of the injustices delivered by those supposedly making society better.  Yes, some who still have respect, even for laws they know the State has no right to passes, will obey.  But such people have never been the problem.  Meanwhile, if a person has decided to commit armed robbery, rape or murder, or to invade houses and take whatever they want, such people are hardly likely to surrender the tools of the trade just because someone in the State capitol wrote some magical incantation on a page somewhere.  But of course, these people are the problem.  I recommend you read the letter.  It is long, six pages, but there is a lot of valuable information there.

Meanwhile, the problem of over criminalization got a boost recently when Glenn Reynolds, Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, and the Instapundit, published a paper entitled Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process when Everything is a Crime. Prof. Reynolds illustrates the problem of over criminalization by telling about a game prosecutors in the U. S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York:

As Tim Wu recounted in 2007, a popular game in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York was to name a famous person – Mother Teresa, or John Lennon -­‐-­‐ and decide how they could be prosecuted.:

It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you'd see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like "false statements" (a felony, up to five years), "obstructing the mails" (five years), or "false pretenses on the high seas" (also five years). The trick and the skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The, result, however, was inevitable: "prison time."6

The law has become so complex, so convoluted, and in many cases so obscure, that nobody, including lawyers, can be expected to know every law for which one might be charged. This has resulted in lawyers specializing in certain phases of the law. It is humorous to discover that your lawyer, who does wills and handles estate matters can not effectively represent you in a criminal case. But it also become tragic when an ordinary citizen, going about his business trips over one of these laws. In May, 2010, the Dollarhites tripped over one such law when the USDA accused them of selling more that the law allowed of bunnies for pets. It turns out you don't need a license to sell rabbit meat, but there are strict limits on the number of bunnies you may sell in a year without obtaining a license. If this makes sense at some level, I can not for the life of me see why. Even more tragic is that the Dollarhites were hit with a $4 million fine, while only selling $5K worth of rabbits. So is this justice?

More and more Americans are becoming aware of the long train of abuses that have built up throughout the "Progressive" era.  The Democrats seeming do not care about the Constitution, which they refer to only with contempt.  The Republicans give it lip service only when they want to calm people on their side of the aisle.  The lawless President continues to grab for power and shred the Constitution, while the Supreme Court shirks its duty to the People under a Constitutional Republic.  History has shown that sooner or later, the people will begin to say where there is no justice, there can be no peace.