Kopel's Corner weblog archive 2005

On this date in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist. As detailed by University of Hawaii political science professor R.J. Rummel on his website "Powerkills", the 20th century was humanity's worst century of genocide and democide (the latter including mass killings not based on religion, race, or ethnicity). By far the greatest perpetrators of genocide were Communist regimes. Although a few of the Communist genocide perpetrators eventually developed hostile relations with the U.S.S.R., none of the Communist regimes would ever have come to power without the support of the Evil Empire that arose in October 1917, and which began styling itself as the "U.S.S.R." in 1922.

Rummel's website provides excellent quantitative data on genocide/democide all over the world. You might also want to check out Rummel's fine weblog "Democratic Peace."

A retrospective article on the Heritage Foundation website reminds us how bitterly President Reagan was attacked for his magnificent speech at Westminster in 1982. Reagan was mocked as a deluded idealist by so-called "pragmatists" who thought they knew better. Yet Reagan was right when he declared:

The collapse of the Evil Empire came sooner than even Reagan had hoped. The Cuban efforts to impose new dictatorships on Nicaragua and El Salvador failed completely. Solidarity became the elected government of Poland, and later yielded power to another government following a free election. The Warsaw Pact is now nothing more than a scrap of paper, and all the countries which suffered under its jackboots are making their way--some faster than others--towards stable and democratic government.

Within the former U.S.S.R. itself, the Baltic Republics are making great progress, while Central Asia languishes under tyranny, and Russia itself is retrogressing into dictatorship. Dictators still oppress many hundreds of millions of people, and are still perpetrating genocide and promoting terrorism.

Today's anniversary, however, should remind us that the true pragmatists are those who recognize that totalitarianism is in constant danger of collapse because of its own internal contradictions, and that if free nations remain strong and resolute, they can bring down a superpower.

In a January 1976 article in Commentary, titled "The Return of Islam," Bernard Lewis wrote, "In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous phrase was sometimes heard, 'First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.'"

Today, on many pro-Israel websites and blogs, there are claims that the phrase is common in Arab graffiti, or as a placard in street demonstrations. I am curious about whether these claims are correct, or whether they might be recycled versions of Lewis's statement about 1967.

If you have information about the subject, please supply it in the comments. (Or e-mail it to me from the e-mail link on www.davekopel.org, if you prefer.) Comments are open only for the purpose of information about the quote "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people." If you have personally seen such graffiti, or know of sources which have seen such graffiti, please supply the information. Conversely, if you have actual knowledge that the phrase is rare or non-existent in the Arab areas (particularly, areas near Israel) about which you have first-hand knowledge, please supply that information.

Letterman would seem to fall squarely within the prohibition. The TRO states that must not "harm" or "threaten" the plaintiff. Likewise, Letterman is ordered not to block plaintiff in public places or roads. The order against harming the plaintiff would seem to be encompassed within the statutory language about any order against "engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury."

The second question is whether Letterman is an "intimate partner" of the complainant. According to the motion for the TRO--which the judge apparently considered credible enough to merit issuance of a TRO--Letterman has asked the complainant to marry him, and communicates with her constantly. The complainant alleges a long-standing relationship, with frequent communication, and Letterman being so intimate with her as to demand that she shut off all contact with other people. Such conduct, if it really took place, could arguably make Letterman an "intimate partner" of the complainant.

The federal gun prohibition statute contains an exception:

The TRO does not explicitly state that it is issued ex parte, but it does contain a finding that no notice to the defendant is required. The application for the TRO contains no evidence of service. So if Letterman never was properly served with the application, he's off the hook, and can still possess a gun. If we hypothesize that Letterman had been properly served (if that Letterman fails to comply with the court order to appear at the hearing in 10 days, to determine whether to make the TRO permanent, and the court does make the order permanent), there is one other statutory requirement. The court order must be one which:

The TRO contains no finding that Letterman is a threat to the complainant, so prong (i) does not apply. The TRO does, however, prohibit Letterman from harming or threatening the complainant, which would seem to fall within prong (ii), which requires that the court order explicitly prohibit physical force or the threat thereof against the intimate partner.

Accordingly, if the complainant has simply bothered to hire a New York process server to serve Letterman with a copy of the complaint, it would now be illegal for him to possess a firearm. If the court properly sent Letterman an order to appear at the hearing for making the TRO permanent, and Letterman fails to do so, and the court makes the restraining order permanent, then Letterman will be committing a federal felony if he every holds gun in his hands.

For years the feminist community has been exhorting the authorities always to "believe the victim" who complains of intimate partner abuse. Clearly their message has been heard in the First Judicial District Court of the state of New Mexico.

Professor Eric Reeves of Smith College is indefatigable in his determination to try to stop the genocide in Sudan. The SudanReeves website is an outstanding source of information. His latest posts detail how the situation in Darfur has gotten even worse in recent months, and how the African Union "peacekeeping" force (which is only supposed to protect foreigners, not Darfuris) is an abysmal failure even in its limited mission. The Khartoum dictatorship has been perpetrating genocide since 1992--first in the Nuba Mountains, then in south Sudan, and now in Darfur. Reeves predicts that the next target will the oil-rich eastern Sudan.

In the book "Darfur: Genocide Before Our Eyes" (published by the Institute for the Study of Genocide), Reeves makes the case for military intervention by NATO to stop the genocide. Military intervention would be a wonderful idea, and, indeed, there is a good international law argument that every NATO country is legally bound to intervene, since every NATO country is a signatory to the Genocide Convention, which imposes an affirmitive duty to "prevent" genocide.

But the prospects of NATO intervention are, unfortunately, nil. Among NATO governments, only the United States has even used the word "genocide" about the genocide in Darfur. At StrategyPage noted long ago, even a NATO-imposed "No-Fly Zone" in Darfur would do tremendous good, since it would prevent the Sudanese Air Force from supporting the ground attacks of the Arab janjaweed. But there is no indication that NATO will do anything more than continue to provide airlifts to the incompetent African Union forces.

In a forthcoming article in the Notre Dame Law Review, Paul Gallant, Joanne Eisen and I examine the Darfur genocide, and other genocides, and conclude that under existing international law, the victims of an on-going genocide have an over-riding right to acquire and possess defensive arms, notwithstanding any contrary national or international laws on the subject.

The Islamist terrorists in Iraq are "freedom fighters" declares Cindy Sheehan. The September 11 terrorist attacks were entirely legitimate, according to Italian playwright Dario Fo, who shortly after September 11 wrote: "The great speculators wallow in an economy that every years kills tens of millions of people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre, this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation."

Fo, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, is also well-known for criticizing the Italian Communist Party for being too right-wing.

Now, the two famous admirers of terrorism have come together, in a new play by Fo, based on the life of Cindy Sheehan. "Peace Mom" stars Frances de la Tour, who recently portrayed the giantess Madame Maxime in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

Personally, although I believe that Leni Riefenstahl was a very talented actress, her participation in any movie subsequent to "Triumph of the Will" would have made me enjoy the movie less. Likewise, although I enjoy the Harry Potter movies from Warner Brothers, I will enjoy future installments less if they include Ms. de la Tour, who, like Ms. Riefenstahl, has chosen to devote her considerable talents to promoting advocates of terrorism and mass murder.

On August 26, 2004, Canada's Commissioner of Firearms spoke at the annual meeting of the Canadian Professional Police Association. He declared: "For years, firearm owners have expressed fears regarding the confiscation of firearms. This is a concern I heard loud and clear when we held consultations with firearms organizations last fall. But, in fact, those fears have not materialized."

In a 1976, interview in the New Yorker, the late Nelson Shields, who was then the head of the group which is now known as the Brady Campaign, explained registration's purpose:

(Richard Harris, "A Reporter at Large: Handguns," New Yorker, July 26, 1976, p. 58.)

Brady Bill Anniversary:

On this day in 1993, President Clinton signed the "Brady Bill." The bill did not accomplish its original objective, as introduced in previous Congresses, of restricting private, non-commercial sales of handguns. Nor was the enacted bill structured, as previous versions had been, so that a police chief could indefinitely delay a handgun purchase.

Much of the support for the "Brady Bill" came from the claim--which was demonstrably false--that the bill would have prevented John Hinckley from buying the guns he used to shoot President Reagan and Press Secretary Jim Brady.

At the signing ceremony, President Clinton emotionally told the story of a friend of his who was an Arkansas gun dealer. The gun dealer sold a firearm to an escaped mental patient, who then murdered six people.

"My friend is not over it to this day," said the President, as the crowd applauded. "Don't tell me this bill will not make a difference. That is not true. That is not true."

"Not true" turned out to be a pretty good summation of the President's story, which he had throughout the 1992 campaign.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock) tried to track down the origin of the tale. Back in 1984, an Arkansas man named Wayne Lee Crossley used a .45 pistol and a shotgun to murder four people in a bar. Contrary to the Clinton story, Crossley did not buy the guns himself; he convinced a woman friend to buy the guns for him. The Brady Bill did nothing to prevent people with clean records from buying guns for anyone they want.

When the media started asking for substantiation of Clinton's story the White House stonewalled. But before the no-answers rule was put in force, one White House staffer admitted that the man might just have been treated at a mental institution, rather than having "escaped from a mental hospital." Simply having undergone mental therapy does not legally disqualify a person from owning a gun, under federal law.

While the President spoke movingly about how his "friend is not over it to this day," the dealer/"friend" who sold the guns died several years before Clinton spoke. (Timothy Clifford, "Clinton's Gun Story is a Murder Mystery," (New York) Daily News, Dec. 3, 1993.)

The Brady Bill imposed a five-government-working-day waiting period, during which local law enforcement could check the background of a handgun buyer. In 1998, the waiting period sunset, and was replaced by the National Instant Check System for all retail firearms sales. In 2004, Congress corrected a NICS administrative abuse which had been invented by the Clinton Administration. The "Tiahart Amendment" outlawed the Clinton practice (which had been administratively ended by the Bush administration) of using NICS to compile a national registration database of gun owners.

After the Brady waiting period was passed in 1993 (and set for expiration in 1998), gun prohibition lobbyists in 1994 successfully pushed for a federal ban on so-called "assault weapons" (which expired in 2004).

Almost immediately after passage of the "assault weapon" ban, Handgun Control, Inc. (which later renamed itself "the Brady Campaign"), announced "Brady II." Brady II would make permanent the handgun purchase waiting period which was set to expire in 1998, and would limits handgun purchases to one per month. The bill would also require all states to set up handgun licensing systems, with possession of a handgun permitted only to persons who pass federally-mandated safety training. All handgun transfers would be registered with the government.

Brady II would require every owner of a "large" ammunition clip to be licensed the same way that the federal government licenses machine gun owners. Simply to retain the magazines currently owned, a person would have to be fingerprinted, and pay heavy federal taxes. Brady II would also lower the ten-round limit to six rounds. As a result, the owner of a Colt .45 pistol and the standard seven-round magazine for the gun would need to go through the federal machinegun licensing system.

Under Brady II, anyone who owned at least twenty guns or 1,000 rounds of ammunition would be required to obtain a federal "arsenal" license. Licensees would be subjected to three unannounced police inspections per year. Persons who were required to have a license but did not obtain one would of course be subject to whatever enforcement action the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms deemed appropriate.

For purposes of defining an "arsenal," firearms, firearms parts, and ammunition clips would all count as a "firearm." In other words, if a person owned three rifles, three handguns, two ammunition clips for each gun, and set of disassembled spare parts for the rifles and the handguns, he would have an "arsenal" consisting of at least 20 "guns." A thousand rounds of ammunition also count as a so-called "arsenal." So the hundreds of thousands of target shooters who pick up a pair of bricks of rimfire ammunition for $15 every few months would also become the owners of "arsenals."

Today, the Brady Bill is only a memory, and Brady II is so unfeasible as national legislation that it has not been re-introduced. Various components of Brady II, however, are still being pursued at the state and local level, sometimes successfully.

The Nobel Committee has an interesting database of all the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize from 1901 to 1951. Nominations are kept secret for 50 years. Nominees who, like unrepentant multiple murderer Stanley Williams, do not appear to have deserved the nomination include:

And with the Alliance for Justice, the American Conservative Union Foundation, and 31 other non-profit organizations. We're all members of a coalition which filed an amicus brief in the upcoming January Supreme Court case of Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission. The brief argues that the censorship provisions of the

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