Playing the Devil's Advocate: WBC at The Arizona Funerals

"Good." That was my wife's first response to the news article. Admittedly, mine as well. I must say I have no respect whatsoever for Westboro Baptist's Church's habit of protesting funerals. I believe firmly that theirs is a strategy of repeated attempted self-martyrdom. So far they have failed, thankfully, but I fear one day they'll succeed in eliciting a much deserved violent response at one of their protests.

I thought for a moment about ending the previous paragraph with protests in scare quotes. "Protests". It makes a point I suppose, but not the one I'm aiming for. Technically, Westboro's actions have qualified as protests. They assemble, they form lines, they hold signs, they probably sing and do chants, catchy, cheezy and shudder-inducing rhymes... they've never gotten violent, unless you personify your sensibilities, and from what I can tell they've never violated a law.

If, however, they attend the upcoming funerals for those who died at the hands of deranged spree killer Jared Lee Loughner in their typical fasion they will be violating the law. Today the Arizona legislature unanimously passed legislation that will bar members of Westboro Baptist Church from protesting at the shooting victims' funerals.

Earlier in the day, the state legislature passed the measure, which targets a Kansas church whose members announced they plan to picket the funerals of the victims of Saturday's shootings in Tucson.

WBC protestors, should they attend and protest would not have to adjust their methods in order to be in violation of the new law. The very act of protesting, when and where they normally do has now been made illegal by emergency action of the Arizona state legislature.

"Good." It was my first inclination as well.

But that't not how we play when we're playing the Devil's Advocate. I'm inclined to do a little thought exercise that I often do when there is any action that seems to be supported by a majority of any group and especially when that action has the wholesale endorsement of aparently everyone, everywhere. "What's wrong with this?" I ask myself. "There's got to be something."

Perhaps there is.

This week, in Arizona we have the confluence of two completely crazy forces - one that's absolutely certifiably insane, and one who may not fit the clinical diagnosis but is far enough out of whack with the mainstream plus whatever amount of margin you care to pad it with to certainly warrant at least an unofficial diagnosis. Two crazy forces that have come together to do something that rarely ever happens - create a situation where partisanship can be put, not only aisde, but be put in a drawer, in the back under a whole bunch of junk, such that unanimous agreement on a bill just introduced can pass, and be immediately signed into law.

Not even the most powerful political action committee, with the most donations from the most corporations, in our nation could dream of the success that these two crazy forces have had in their commingling this week, in Arizona.

Think about that for a moment. Not even the most powerful lobbying group could have this kind of success and it could be argued that it will, in some small way, nullify at least a part of the first amendment of our Constitution. Not the second, oh the much protected second, nor the eighth, nor any other amendment that should I list it here most would have to do a quick google search to even know with what it pertains. The amendment that guarantees and protects the rights that, without question are the most important to all Americans, because of two stark raving mad entities, will lose a bit of it's bite, perhaps, this week, in Arizona.

This is about the time that one has to reinforce his ideals because for some readers they may become somewhat indistinct. I do not like Westboro Baptist Church. I think their actions are corrupt perversions of those of true Christians. They represent an ideal that likely couldn't even be effectively skewered by satire due to their already over-the-top bastardizations of philosophy - not even a supernatural conflux of the greatest satirical minds to ever live both past and present - Twain, Chevy Chase, The Onion's writing staff - not even they could effectively find even a tenuous foothold of obscene overbearing liberty with which to satirically exploit the nature of the actions of the members of Westboro Baptist Church. Not even the top writers for Cracked.com could do such, therefore they hold no shelter with me, not a single leaf's worth of shade against the blinding, burning, cancer causing sunlight of all that is right could they find with me.

Yet, a tiny, loud, nagging part of me is screaming, from it's pearch on the beanbag chair of my brain, it's screaming "hey, aren't their rights being violated here?"

The, perhaps more reasoned part of my conscious self argues back "Why shouldn't their rights be violated? Aren't they assholes?"

"Aren't you?" my annoying component questions back. It's a rhetorical question, of course I am. I know this, though I'm sure I'll be told. We, each and every single one of us, are desperate recipients of each liberty guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Whether or not we know it. While I suppose it's very much preferable that it is two entities whose addresses have zip codes far within the boundaries of the lunatic fringe that have made such an historic legislative anomaly materialize, as opposed to the highest paid corporate lobbyists in Washington an ever growing portion of myself hopes that this new Arizona law is struck down.

Though I will not shed even a single tear if the repeal is "delayed" until the funerals for those brutally murdered Saturday has safely and uneventfully passed.

New Group

I've decided to start a new group. This is nothing new for me, I've started a few groups before, mostly just to be funny, like Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job: Sucks Ass and We Think Lazy People Who Use Mart Carts Suck. In the past it's always been a rather trivial thing. Something would happen one day and knowing that there are already millions of facebook groups out there for practically everything, I would search for it, and if I couldn't find it I would make it happen. In most cases a small cadre of my friends and maybe second and third-order friends would join and I would probably never actually update it ever.

There are even times that I would stumble across posts made months ago that I was completely unaware of. On my own group. That shows you how disinterested in most of that kind of thing I've been. Always a spur-of-the-moment gag and then I'm onto the next one.

Over the moths and years I've been vaguely compelled to create something a bit more meaningful. One issue that I've always felt very strongly about, an issue that's withstood the various ebbs and flows of my own political self-adjustments, is that of personal ownership of firearms. Yes guns.

Cute, but I'd like to know she's taken a gun safety class.

Let me get one thing out in the open: I am not an extremist. I'm not a kook or a reclusive weirdo or an aspiring terrorist or a lock-step follower of everything else that a significant percentage of people might think when they notice that I'm a gun enthusiast.

That being said, I feel ill-represented. Not necessarily by my elected officials (here and there maybe) but by the groups and organizations that mostly currently exist to encompass gun owners. Notably, the NRA, but there are other groups. Nearly all of which are political action committees first and representatives of gun owners a sometimes distant second.

I fell prey to a system in which, like many divisive issues, my interest was used to keep me neatly segregated into a distinct, purportedly homogenous political group by convincing me that the only other option was a distinct homogenous political group that believed the exact opposite of everything I did.

• They hate your race, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your diet, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your marriage, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your heritage, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your religion, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your income level, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your mode of transportation, and they hate your guns.
• They hate your opinions, and they hate your guns.

They hate everything about you that you care about, in some form or another and they want to take everything from you, AND they want to take your guns. In many arguments, your gun is all that keeps them from taking everything else. They often run the gamut from petty criminals all the way up to the federal government itself, or various incarnations of a proposed "new world order" global government. For a while, growing up, at some point after I had been successfully convinced that there was no boogeyman, I was re-introduced to the concept in a new form. They are the new boogeyman, one that adults aren't embarrassed to admit to believing in. I believed in the new boogeymen for a while and then I learned something shocking.

They don't exist.

That's not some sort of nihilistic exploration of the nature of reality or anything, merely an observation. They don't exist as a proper they, not a homogenous powerful group hell-bent on stealing away all that you hold dear and leaving you both broke, dead and without a family (but remember, they want to still be able to tax you!). Sure there are individuals who can be found that hate everything about a given person in some form or another. If you find someone who actually, honestly hates more than about 3 of those things on that list about you, and they hate it so much they want to do something about any of it, at all, you've actually found the next Jared Lee Loughner. Not the next Nancy Pelosi. Not the next Barack Obama. You've found a psychopath, not a politician. Regardless of how you have felt about any politician, from whatever political party ever, it's extremely uncharacteristic for the psychotic ones to receive sufficient votes to take office.

Ah, but Matt, there IS a gun control lobby and they do have an agenda. Yes, yes made-up internet contrarian, they exist, and yes, they want things. Take a moment to actually dissect what you believe to be the modern gun control movement. What are their goals? Is it an outright ban on all firearms, or a ban on semi-automatics? Well, both actually. How about a ban on rifles with barrels of a given length, or firearms that have magazine capacities in excess of a specific number of rounds? Both of those too. There are groups who feel that hadguns should be banned and there are groups that feel that the only legitimate use for firearms are for home defense. Some groups even are permissive when it comes to hunting firearms and many support bans for only certain citizens, be they regular joes, or just civilians, or maybe just felons or those who have been convicted of violent crime.

I've got to point out, if you've been following along and you're turning those various groups over in your head then you've already violated one of the governing principles of effective special interest groups. You've inadvertently acknowledged that there are differing schools of thought, many of which are incompatible in one way or another from the others. They are not an homogenous or single-minded entity.

This fact alone deprives them of so much potential power. "But," you, the conceptualized internet contrarian interject, "what if they all got together?" To that I say, fine, be my guest. Let's round up a person in favor of a total firearms ban and someone who would ban only non-hunting firearms and let's get them to agree. Perhaps they could come to a consensus. A compromise! It could be possible!

Sure. Yeah. I can see that happening. Oh, wait, a new episode of Knight Rider is coming on in my mind's eye. And it's a good episode even.

No. None of what just happened in the two prior paragraphs has any possibility of becoming reality. They even tried to bring back Knight Rider, but it wasn't good.

I'm going to do something that all those extremist whackos that I keep reading about do from time to time and I'll quote Sun Tsu's The Art of War:

"It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal,engage them; if fewer, be able to evade them; if weaker, be able to avoid them."

That gem is where we get the modern simplification "divide and conquer". I don't subscribe to the notion that any backwoods good-ol-boy with an SKS and two loaded 30 round magazines could take on (and win against) the bulk of the ill-directed United States military in some sort of American Revolution II (this time, it's personal) scenario, so don't worry. This doctrine, however, does bear out in so many situations in which the conflict is something at least in broad strokes, comparable to war. Even in our most eager competitions (no, not the Super Bowl), the Presidential election, we can see this principle in play. In recent memory, even, some credit Bill Clinton's victory against Bob Dole in the 1996 Presidential Election as being evidence of such (even though Ross Perot received 0 electoral votes, carried 0 states and took only a tiny fraction of the popular vote, that doesn't count anyway).

The enemies of the gun lobby are divided. They're all over the map and they are not making any compromises anytime soon.

This just goes to address the direct competition that our pro-gun special interest groups have with anti-gun special interest groups. You'll find that as varied as the gun control lobby is, the people are even more varied, if they would just care to get out of the compartment they've been sorted into and allowed their actual opinions to be known.

The world is full of people who all have a little bit different take on things. Thanks to Saturday's events, we know who's WAY out there now, and we should now at least be able to acknowledge (even if you can't do it out loud right now, it's OK) that even our least favorite political figure ISN'T psychotic.

We encourage our children, nay, we demand that they respect those of differing races, backgrounds, interests and so forth. Then as adults we grow up and allow ourselves to be divided and compartmentalized so that we can be effectively milked for PAC donations and keep progress to a minimum. When we teach our children tolerance and respect for others do we mean it, or are we just giving hollow lip-service to the idea just so we won't have to attend another conference with the principal?

So, back to the group, what's this all about anyway and why did you just read a 5-page introduction to the ultimate subject of this admittedly long winded (and some may call pompous) post? I once felt that political organizations could only exist to divide people. I've become aware of a growing movement toward a more meaningful dialog, free of hyperbole and outright misinformation so common among most groups today and I decided that it's time. It's time for a new direction for gun owners:

Responsible Gun Owners of America

This is meant as a sort of a reboot of gun organizations. I want to get back to basics in terms of gun ownership with an emphasis on safety and responsibility and with a no-tinted-glasses policy when approaching legislation, news and rumors. This group is going to encompass all those who believe that no true freedom with firearms can exist without some sort of governance, and that no matter how hard the PACs want us to believe in boogeymen, the only people who come close are those in charge of the PACs themselves (though, they don't even really rank).

The group is now in it's infancy, I'm looking for writers and contributors and it's a strictly non-profit entity at this time. Certain mechanisms will be put in place and donations may even be solicited to help defray the operating costs so, at least presently only members and volunteer writers of all political affiliations and backgrounds are desired. I am to create a great resource for gun owners that's packed full of useful product reviews, stories of interest to hunters and target shooters, collectors and other owners. Whether you have an arsenal that requires a special government permit, or you only own a small revolver for self defense, or if you don't even own a firearm but believe in the principles of responsibility concerning them, you're invited read and contribute.

Yeah, what's this, #6 or so for me? No idea. This will be a kind of nexus for my blog posts though. I plan on taking my favorite posts from all my other attempts at blogging through the ages and put them here.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Matt, are you off your nut? You're running WordPress at home. On your awesome web server. That you personally administer yourself. Why on earth are you here mucking about with Blogger of all things?"

That's actually a good question, nonexistent internet reader who I just made up, I'll tell you:

I'm a masochist.

Well, no, not really. Truth is, Blogger is the platform where MOST of my previous blogs live, or have lived. I probably WILL end up transitioning to my own hosted blogging platform, but until I've at least complied my previous posts into this blog I'll leave it here.

So, no comments from the nonexistant peanut gallery that exists in my head, this is a work in progress...

It begins again...