It is appropriate to consider, ten years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, what has transpired and where we find ourselves.

A number of excellent writers have undertaken to do this, so I will not re-invent the wheel.  At the same time, however, there are a few points that seem to be missing from the analysis.

So, for example, Barry Rubin over at Pajamas Media has an article titled, “Ten Years After September 11: Who’s Really Winning The War On Terrorism?”  Rubin has an excellent summary of the Al Qaeda strategy and its place in the larger context of Islamic militancy:

Let’s be clear. Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon to achieve several goals:

–To become the leader in a worldwide jihad.

–To persuade Muslims that America is weak and can be defeated.

–To stir far more Muslims to jihad, that is a Holy War that today can be defined as an Islamist revolution.

–To mobilize forces in order to challenge and eventually to overthrow all of the existing regimes in the Sunni Muslim areas, replacing Arab nationalism in many of those countries with Islamism as the main ideological force.

I would suggest that al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks largely succeeded in three of those four goals. Only in the first did it fail, and for a very good reason. Precisely because it carried out the attacks, al-Qaeda became the main target for U.S. efforts and repression by leaders in Muslim-majority countries. Consequently, it has suffered greatly from losses.

By the same token, however, other Islamist forces have largely been left alone by the West or faced far less pressure. Such groups include the Muslim Brotherhood groups, Hamas, Hizballah, and the pro-Islamist regimes in Syria and Iran. In fact, Islamist groups and Islamism as an ideology have advanced impressively, especially in the last few years.

I would differ with Rubin that Al Qaeda did not succeed in becoming the leader in worldwide jihad.  Clearly, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, Al Qaeda was easily the most visible terror group and most heralded in the Islamist world.  The fact that Al Qaeda has suffered a disproportionate number of decapitation operations by the U.S. does not mean that it did not accomplish its goal of jihadi leadership. In fact, it could be argued that Al Qaeda has succeeded brilliantly in this regard to the extent that the U.S. has been distracted from fighting other no-less dangerous groups which share the wider goals of Islamist domination of the West.

Indeed, Rubin alludes to this as the very problem afflicting U.S. policy:

Where is terrorism weaker? Other than Algeria, where it was defeated in a bloody civil war, it is hard to find any such examples, though in other places  like Morocco and Saudi Arabia — terrorism has not made gains.

In many places in Europe, the Brotherhood and even more radical groups have made important strides in gaining hegemony in neighborhoods and over Muslim communities. Governments have not combatted this and even have encouraged it, arguing that the organizations are not presently using terrorism. But with growing radical Islamist ideas, the level of terrorism and intimidation also increases.

A key factor is the failure of the U.S. government, which basically defines anything that isn’t al-Qaeda as not being a threat. Within the United States, a major terrorist attack has been averted, though luck seems to play a role here (underpants bomber; Times Square bomber). At the same time there have been many more small-scale attacks. One way the U.S. government achieves positive statistics is to redefine specific events — a shooting at the El Al counter in Los Angeles, an attack on a Jewish community center in the Pacific Northwest, the murder of a military recruiter in Arkansas, and even the Ft. Hood killer — as non-terrorist, non-Islamist criminal acts.

So are things much better a decade after the September 11 attacks? Aside from the very important aspect of avoiding a huge successful terror attack on the United States, the answer is “no.”

Another PJM article by Raymond Ibrahim emphasizes this point as well.

The unfortunate fact is that, even if al-Qaeda were totally eradicated tomorrow, the terror threat to the West would hardly recede, since al-Qaeda has never been the source of the threat, but simply one of its manifestations. The AP report obliquely reflects this: “Senior al-Qaeda figures have been killed before, only to be replaced,” even as the Obama administration is optimistic that “victory” is at hand.

To get a better perspective on the overall significance of the latest killing of an al-Qaeda member, consider how at the turn of the 20^th century, the Islamic world was rushing to emulate the victorious and confident West — best exemplified by the Ottoman empire itself, the preserver and enforcer of Islam, rejecting its Muslim past and embracing secularism under Ataturk. Today, 100 years later, the Muslim world has largely rejected secularism and is reclaiming its Islamic — including jihadist — heritage, lashing out in a manifold of ways. Consider how many Islamist leaders, organizations, and terrorists have come and gone in the 20^th century alone — many killed like bin Laden — only for the conflict between Islam and the West to continue growing by the day.

This is the essence of where we stand today.  By and large, the Obama Administration and its supporters on the Left refuse to face the fundamental nature of the conflict.   While it is true that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, those attacks were merely a manifestation of what has been a perpetual civilizational conflict between Islam and the West since the militant spread of Islam after 632 A.D.  The militant strain of Islam has always sought to expand and dominate non-muslim peoples and it always will.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson writes in Carnage and Culture:

In the century between [the death of Muhammad and the critical battle of Poitiers, France in 732 A.D. which stopped the incursion of Islam into Southern Europe], a small and rather impotent Arab people arose to conquer the Sassanid Persian Empire, wrest the entire Middle East and much of Asia Minor from the Byzantines, and establish a theocratic rule across North Africa…. [B]y the mid-eighth century, the suddenly ascendant kingdom of the Arabs controlled three continents and an area larger than the old Roman Empire itself.

The Arab conquests were a result of two phenomena: prior contact with Byzantines, from whom they borrowed, looted, and then adapted arms, armor, and some of their military organization; and the weakness of the [Persian Empire and remnants of barbarian conquests of Asia and North Africa].

***

[The conquests by early Islamic militants goes beyond adopted technologies and weak adversaries]. There was to be a novel connection between war and faith, creating a divine culture that might reward with paradise the slaying of the infidel and the looting of Christian cities.  Killing and pillaging were now in the proper context, acts of piety.

***

For the rest of the ninth through tenth centuries, the war between [Islam and the West] would break out in northern Spain, southern Italy, Sicily, and the other larger islands of the Mediterranean [which] became the new line of battle between the two entirely antithetical cultures.

(pages 146-149).

Although Hanson is commenting upon distant history, it is remarkable how applicable these observations remain today and how little the nature of Islam has changed in 1300 years.   Militant Islam in the 21st century still maintains the “novel connection between war and faith” and a “divine culture that might reward with paradise the slaying of the infidel.”   True, militant Islam has traded in the scimitar for  suicide bomber vests and I.E.D.s, but the subjugation of unbelievers remains the same.

We seem to be making a fundamental mistake in the West when we fail to see the broader context of the struggle.   September 11, 2001 was not a “tragedy” but an act of war.  A tactical strike by militant Islam at the financial, military and (it was hoped) political heart of the West.   And it was not the first such strike.  Militant Islam has been on the march in modern times since at least 1979 with the founding of the theocratic state of Iran.  As Mr. Ibrahim writes in his article, the muslim world is quickly turning (or, more exactly, re-turning) to militant Islam as a means of forcing an expansion of power, in the Middle East in the short term and in Europe and even North America in the long term.  This is not some new phenomenon to any student of history but a continuation of a struggle between two civilizations: one based upon Greek and Roman thoughts of law and liberty with Christian overlays (Western democracy) and one based upon the all-encompassing rule of the Koran which sublimates the individual in every aspect of life.   The two cultures are thoroughly incompatible and the history of the world has shown that peace has only, ever reigned between the two when Islam was too weak to force its will upon the West.

This, then, should be the take-away from 9-11:  we are in a desperate struggle for civilizational survival that is being fought on the battlefield, certainly, but also in the courtroom, in the media, in politically correct driven government policy and think tanks, and in the very essence of our culture— how we view our basic freedoms and the means we are willing to employ to cherish and defend them.

Sadly, I see little evidence, ten years after the attacks of 9-11, that America’s leaders are at all willing to face this larger context.  It is too frightening.  The risk of being called xenophobic, or Islamophobic or chauvinistic is too intimidating.   So we will fight where we find it convenient to fight.  Drone attacks that take out an Al Qaeda leader but leave in peace Iranian leaders  who have killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda or the Taliban.   We will look for the first opportunity to declare victory, as when Osama Bin Laden was killed, but ignore the mortal threats to peace and economic security posed by a nuclear Iran or a growing Hezbollah or Hamas.   We will sacrifice precious blood and treasure gaining great victories in Iraq and Afghanistan only to throw it away in hasty withdrawals under the smokescreen of “transition.”

Can the West recover in time?

Paul Krugman bears his soul to us on the events of 9/11 and thereafter.  He sets the framework for his short post with his title: The Years of Shame.

Good grief.  A columnist for the New York Times leaves a spelling error in his post, and the Times runs it anyway.  And Krugman doesn’t seem to care enough to correct it.  Is it me or do many bloggers care more about their prose than the New York Times, and isn’t this odd?  Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

But on to the main point.  Let’s do this thing about Iraq … one … more … time.  My own son did a combat tour of Iraq, so I have the right to say just about anything I want to concerning Operation Iraqi Freedom (though not as much right as those families who paid the ultimate sacrifice).  Knowing something about nuclear technology and thus knowing the kind of infrastructure it takes to accomplish enrichment, I was ambivalent about the invasion (we call this phase Operation Iraqi Freedom I).  With Michael Fumento and others, I know that chemical weapons are a poor substitute for military weapons (conventional ordnance is much more effective), and so that justification failed with me.

But whatever policy differences or questions I might have had with that phase of the campaign, there was no vacillation in my support for Operation Iraqi Freedom II (generally taken to be late 2003 – 2006) and III (2007 and on, i.e., surge and post-surge).  During the height of the conflict, eighty to one hundred foreign fighters per month crossed the Jordanian and [mainly] Syrian borders to fight the U.S. in Iraq.

Al Qaeda poured an immense amount of capital into the campaign in Iraq, including money, philosophical  underpinnings and personnel.  Their writers went to work trying to justify suicide as a legitimate form of jihad, they spent a large amount of the monies donated by wealthy Saudis on Iraq, and they lost thousands of fighters who would otherwise have been able to fight in Afghanistan or come to the shores of the U.S.  And I don’t buy the notion that Iraq was their raison d’être.  I believe that they would have fought us anyway, anywhere.

Iraq was a quagmire for al Qaeda.  It was a tremendous loss for them, regardless of the final disposition of the campaign for Iraq.  I am proud of the role played by the American Soldier in Iraq.  As a Marine father, I am proud of the role played by the U.S. Marines in the pacification of the Anbar Province.  The ridiculous notions of … flipping … a tribe, as if this is some sort of parlor game, is a poor excuse for explaining what happened there.  More than 1000 Marines perished in Iraq, and years of fighting set the preconditions for “flipping” those tribes.

I am proud of the first responders on 9/11.  I am proud of how our nation responded, and I am proud of the contribution our warriors have made and are making to Operation Enduring Freedom.  I am proud of the strengthening of our nation’s security apparatus since 9/11, and have noted that much more is needed.  I am particularly proud of God’s grace to this country in the days since 9/11.  Lastly, I am proud of the combat tour my son did in the U.S. Marines.

Isn’t it telling that Krugman is ashamed of the days since 9/11?  It demarcates world views, no?  Is it just me and is it odd that this seems more like Paul Krugman’s shame than America’s shame?  I don’t think it’s just me, and it really isn’t all that odd.

Unlike the coward Krugman, I’ll leave comments open on this post.

How bad have things gotten for President Obama?

So bad that even the slavish State Run Media are beginning to point out the obvious fibs and flaws in  Obama’s September 8th speech to Congress.

The Associated Press notes here at least four instances of fibbing by Obama in the speech.  The lede paragraph alone is something that we would not have seen even 10 months ago:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.

It will only be paid for if a committee he can’t control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future – the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals – don’t roll it back.

The AP article points out that Obama’s claim that his new calls for stimulus spending will be fully paid for is unlikely at best given the reliance on a future Congress and president to come up with the money and/or cuts.   Obama’s assertion that his proposals have all been supported by Republicans at one time or another is also a distortion that does not take into account the changed circumstances of the economy and the federal deficits, nor Republican opposition to these very proposals.   The AP correctly notes that Obama’s claim that the new stimulus measures “will not add to the deficit” is patently untrue: since federal revenues are completely absorbed by defense and entitlement spending, any additional spending on stimulus can only come from borrowed (i.e. deficit) funds.  Finally, the AP calls out Obama on his claim that the new stimulus will create immediate employment as several of the proposals, such as the “infrastructure bank,” will take months if not years to set up.

In addition, as we saw with Stimulus I, even Obama admitted that there were no “shovel ready jobs” as he expected.  Repairs of roads, bridges, highway projects all take time to plan and implement and, given the contraction in the construction industry over the last, few years, it is quite possible that any infrastructure jobs that are ready to implement now will be given to the few, remaining companies that have managed to stay alive.   And we can never discount the crony factor when huge amounts of federal dollars are being doled out.   Much of that money will wind up in the pockets of political supporters rather than creating any new jobs.

But the Associated Press is not alone.

The New York Times and CNBC are pointing out the inherent weakness in Obama’s plan to jump start the economy.   CNBC reprints an article from the NYT printed September 10, 2011 titled, “Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Hiring Spur.”

The dismal state of the economy is the main reason many companies are reluctant to hire workers, and few executives are saying that President Obama’s jobs plan — while welcomed — will change their minds any time soon.

That sentiment was echoed across numerous industries by executives in companies big and small on Friday, underscoring the challenge for the Obama administration as it tries to encourage hiring and perk up the moribund economy.

The plan failed to generate any optimism on Wall Street as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average each fell about 2.7 percent.

As President Obama faced an uphill battle in Congress to win support even for portions of the plan, many employers dismissed the notion that any particular tax break or incentive would be persuasive. Instead, they said they tended to hire more workers or expand when the economy improved.

This is such a fundamental concept of business that it amazes me that a president of the United States could not grasp it.  As a small business owner myself, I can attest to the fact that no amount of payroll tax breaks or tax credits would induce me to hire an employee that I do not need.  In a business that is functioning normally — i.e., not skewed by cronyism, subsidies or other factors that distort profit-loss considerations– hiring is driven by demand for products or services that cannot be met with current staffing.  A tax break or credit, particularly one that is temporary, is not a reason to hire.

So this is the tectonic divide between the Obamas of the world and The Rest of Us.   In Obama’s unshakeable faith in the Keynesian Religion, the only answer, always and forever, is stimulus.   He simply cannot see that the biggest obstacle to hiring is the very government action to which he is irrevocably committed. For The Rest of Us, a government that is imposing a huge, yet-to-be understood healthcare mandate, spending us and the next 3 generations into debt oblivion, corrupting the natural order of free markets in competition for customers and innovation, and going out of its way to demonize the “rich,” punish them and redistribute wealth to the unproductive class of society is ample reason to hunker down, save up your cash (or convert to hard assets), hire no one you will have to be regulated for, and wait out the storm of insanity that is Washington, D.C. right now.

Allow me to suggest two actions the government could take that could produce dramatic effects on the economy:  repealing Obamacare (or at least waiving its effects for all 50 states as suggested by Romney), and lifting most of the federal restrictions and bans on domestic energy production.   On this second point, the economic impact of oil and gas production (to say nothing of coal and nuclear) is astounding: both Texas and North Dakota (North Dakota!) have seen huge increases in employment due to a booming oil and gas industry exploiting both old wells and new ones with the process of hydraulic fracturing.

And to show that this boom is not limited to what we think of as the typical oil and gas states like Texas, there is this article from The Dayton Daily News that sketches the outlines of just how vast the natural gas reserves in Ohio might be:

DAYTON — Ohio appears on the cusp of a 21st-century oil and gas boom that could net tens of thousands of new jobs and perhaps build a foundation for new industry, proponents say. The source is natural gas-rich shale rock beneath three-quarters of the state.

***

The Utica Shale, which geologists say has yet to be fully analyzed, extends westward across three-quarters of the state from Ohio’s eastern border, state estimates show. It also lies under New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

It could extend to Montgomery County, but drilling potential remains unknown. Chesapeake said it will increase drilling rigs in the Utica to 20 by the end of 2012 and 40 by 2014.

This year, the state opened up parks and other public land to drilling over opposition from environmentalists.

It might seem a stretch that Ohio could profit from a boom based on oil and gas, an industry with roots here that date to the 19th century. But a new boom appears possible if Pennsylvania’s recent experience with new drilling in another formation, the Marcellus Shale, is any guide. The Marcellus has a smaller footprint in Ohio than the Utica and lies beneath Ohio’s easternmost counties.

Pennsylvania is weathering an iffy economy well, with an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent. Its share of the Marcellus is helping. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry issued its estimate this month that natural-gas and crude oil extraction and related industries created 72,000 new hires from the fourth quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2011.

It’s too tricky to attribute all the hires to new drilling, said Tim McElhinny, an analyst with the department. But there are so many new hires that a portion must be due to the Marcellus. Those jobs include well drilling, engineering, trucking, highway and bridge building, testing, metal fabrication and new government hires.

The jump in employment in the core gas industries — extraction, drilling and pipeline work — is smaller but nevertheless doubled to 18,837 from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2010.

For the immediate future, it looks like the eastern third of Ohio and the Marcellus Shale is where the action will occur. But longer term, besides offering job opportunities to out-of-work or underemployed residents, low-cost natural gas from the Utica could fuel industrial redevelopment in Ohio, propoponents say.

The U.S. Geological Survey in August updated its estimates for the Marcellus Shale region underlying New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, saying it contains 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas, vastly more than thought nearly a decade ago in large part because of new drilling and extraction technology. The last government assessment in 2002 suggested about 2 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas.

The Utica Shale, some experts believe, could be bigger still. Tom Stewart, executive vice president for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, said more drilling and analysis is needed to fully comprehend the Utica.

Consider for a moment the vast increase of estimated gas reserves cited above:  from 2 trillion in 2002 to 84 trillion as of August 2011.  This is only covering the Marcellus Shale formation.  The Utica Shale formation “could be bigger still.”

And lest anyone think that the impact of these dramatic discoveries is limited to the energy industry, the article notes:

Also promising have been expressions of interest by the chemical industry about locating close to a rich supply of low-cost, natural gas. New Ohio natural gas could be a key feedstock of chemical production, Stewart said. That could prove a rich spin-off from the finds, he said.

Natural gas has been touted by some as a potential transitional energy source to renewables because it’s a cleaner fuel than coal and has reduced impact on climate change.

Ignore the bit about “climate change” which is bunk.  Nonetheless, few people in the U.S. today realize that our economic salvation is at hand.  I hope to post an article in the near future on the amazing energy wealth that has been discovered in the U.S., but for now it is enough to say that the advances in technology hold out the very real potential to revolutionize our economy with cheap and abundant oil and natural gas.   Beyond the huge number of new jobs in the industry itself nationwide, estimated by some at 1 million in the next seven years, imagine the many ripple effects.   Even the very announcement of a new policy to fully tap into our energy resources is enough to significantly affect the global price of oil and bring down U.S. energy costs, effectively pumping billions of dollars into the economy.   As the price of oil goes down, the money flowing to fascist states like Iran is severely restricted.   Want to bring down the tyrants in Tehran?  Bring the price of oil down to even $60 per barrel and the Mullahs’ economy crashes and burns.

Of course, this kind of commitment to energy independence is not going to happen under this Administration.  Nor is any, other sensible plan going to emerge that would free up private enterprise and restore the shaky nerves of consumers.   So, barring a dramatic change at the White House, it is time to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm.   We will all have to wait until November 7, 2012, the day after the national elections.   Assuming that the American people come to their senses and reject Obama for a second term, I am officially putting on my Nostradamus hat and predicting, here and now, that the economy will begin a dramatic comeback from that point onward.

In the Southern district of New York, Judge Cathy Seibel has taken draconian action regarding second amendment rights, but before we get to that, let’s briefly rehearse just where the decisions in Heller and McDonald have left us.

In Revisiting the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms, we discussed how state judges in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York have ruled recently that there is no constitutional right to carry a loaded gun for self-defense. And in Virginia, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal conviction of a man who fell asleep in his car near Washington’s Reagan National Airport with a loaded gun.  This last case of falling asleep in a car is the case of Sean Masciandaro, who was on National Park land and didn’t remove ammunition from his weapon and move it from the proximity of his weapon (e.g., place it in a remote location such as the trunk).  In the Petition for Write of Certiorari to the Supreme Court on his behalf, it is observed that:

Heller and McDonald left open important questions regarding the scope of the self-defense right beyond the home and the appropriate method for evaluating government regulations affecting it. The lower courts have struggled mightily with these issues. See, e.g., Masciandaro, 638 F.3d at 467 (“But a considerable degree of uncertainty remains as to the scope of that right beyond the home and the standards for determining whether and how the right can be burdened by governmental regulation.”); United States v. Skoien, 614 F.3d 638, 640 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc) (“Skoien II”) (Heller creates an individual right that includes keeping operable handguns at home for self-defense but “[w]hat other entitlements the Second Amendment creates, and what regulations legislatures may establish, were left open.”), cert. denied, 131 S. Ct. 1674 (2011).

The highest state courts that have considered the issue unanimously decided that the Second Amendment right is limited to the home. Maryland, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Kansas have all limited Heller to its holding. 9 For example, the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld Maryland’s firearm permitting statute, concluding that the right is unavailable outside the home. Williams v. State, 417 Md. 479, 496 (Md. 2011) (stating that “[i]f the Supreme Court, in this [Heller] dicta, meant its holding to extend beyond home possession, it will need to say so more plainly”), petition for cert. filed, 79 U.S.L.W. 3594 (Apr. 5, 2011). That court noted that Illinois, the District of Columbia, and California also limited the right in similar cases. Id. at 496-99. Given this trend, state courts that confront Second Amendment issues in the future will likely limit its protection to the home.

Other state and federal courts have held that even if the right might exist outside the home, it is substantially weaker than the right enjoyed in the home.

But if the stolid state courts believe personal possession (outside of your domicile) is an open question in the wake of Heller and McDonald, Judge Cathy Seibel has gotten rather assertive concerning what she believes concerning our rights.

In a precedent setting case, a federal judge has ruled that individuals do not have a constitutional right to carry a concealed handgun in public.

The decision was rendered in the case of Kachalsky, et.al v. Cacace, et.al in the Southern District of New York.

The Attorney General’s office represented four state court judges who had been named as defendants in the case. who also serve as “licensing officers” under the New York statute.

Five individual plaintiffs residing in Westchester County, and one organization, the Second Amendment Foundation Inc., argued that the “proper cause” provision of the New York law governing the issuance of licenses to carry concealed handguns in public violates their rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as defined in two recent landmark decisions by the United States Supreme Court, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago.

The “proper cause” provision requires a license applicant to show “a special need for self protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession.”

The Attorney General’s office argued that the “proper cause” provision of the New York law did not violate the Second Amendment as described by the Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald.

Judge Cathy Seibel agreed, ruling that the Second Amendment provides the right to keep arms for the purpose of self defense in the home, but does not extend to a right to carry concealed handguns in public.

The judge further ruled that even if the Second Amendment were read to cover such a right, the New York”proper cause” provision passes constitutional muster under the Heller and McDonald rulings because the law is substantially related to important governmental interests, namely the promotion of public safety and the prevention of crimes perpetrated with concealed handguns.

Possession of firearms isn’t a right, it’s a privilege granted by state review of your specific need.  The combination of progressive judges, the failure of the public to assert constitutional rights, and muddled, short-sighted decisions by the Supreme Court has led us to a state of near anarchy in lower court decisions concerning the second amendment.  The need of hour is for citizens to be diligent, and for the Supreme Court to be clear in their next ruling on the second amendment.

Daniel Hammarberg, writing at American Daily Herald, gives us an absolutely must-read article and commentary on Swedish gun control, its laws, the evolution of the thinking behind Swedish gun control, and lastly, a serious warning.  After outlining the recent history of the laws, Hammarberg discusses the push for still stricter controls.

Though most people would consider these laws outright draconian, there are plenty of calls for even more strict legislation; something that just as in the USA also takes place in Sweden when there’s a tragedy involving guns, such as the recent massacre by Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. On the 9th of August, an opinion piece by a child physician published in one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, called for a complete ban even on pistols. Measures such as these have strong support in the country’s medical community and among the political establishment. After another man had gone on a shooting spree last year in Malmö, with five attempted murders and one actual homicide, there was a complete media frenzy, and Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask took the opportunity to present her view on how one could come to terms with the problem of gun violence.

“Beatrice Ask also feels that an overhaul has to be made of the weapons regulations, that gun permits for example have to be subject to inspection and review.”

The health authorities also added their two cents:

“The National Board of Health and Welfare has previously forwarded requests both for review of gun permits and that everyone applying for one shall also have to present a doctor’s certificate. There the Minister feels that mental illness is a factor that shall mean that you’re denied a gun permit.”

Following this, on 16 November, Ask also announced before the parliament that a new, stricter weapons law was in the works. To quote:

“The police shall also be able to request a statement from the social welfare board and the prison service along with a doctor’s certificate to determine whether someone is fit to own firearms.”

Hence, what this means is that you might have to show your criminal record sheet, whatever journal notes the social services has kept on you (and they play a significant role in Swedish society), as well as produce a certificate from a psychiatrist that you are indeed mentally competent (guilty until proven innocent).

In order to obtain a Concealed Handgun Permit in my home state of North Carolina, a background check was conducted, and I had to sign over rights to my medical records to the Sheriff of my county.  Any history of substance abuse or mental illness would have disqualified me.  Of course, there were no problems and I have the permit, but this is really beyond agreeable limits as far as I am concerned.  It places the decision-making for suitableness to carry a weapon for self defense in the hands of someone who may adjudicate the matter based on subjective feelings, variable rules for mental health from county to county or state to state, or for any number of other non-scientific, non-quantifiable reasons.  Yet, Sweden now requires a psychiatric evaluation, and without clearer opinions from the Supreme Court, the U.S. may be headed there.  Continuing with Hammarberg’s analysis (and this is the important part).

In spite of the tyrannical control of firearms, this has had little effect on the explosion in the violent crime rate the country has been suffering from during the last couple of decades, with a homicide rate that’s now at an historic all-time high, with 333 reported cases during 2010, or about 2/3 of the American rate; rape and assault rates are over twice as high as the American ones (Editorial note: Gun control never really accomplishes the stated justification of reducing violence; this is always a veneer or pretense for the laws).

And whilst the government has always attempted to tighten the noose around legal gun owners after every incident of this sort, the vast majority of violent crimes are committed through the use of illicit weapons. The control of these illicit weapons isn’t nearly as successful as the one of their legal counterparts, as admitted in a police interview from 2005. To quote:

“The police estimate that thousands of firearms are smuggled into Sweden ever year. Every day on average, three serious crimes are committed with illicit firearms. Yet Customs has a hard time intercepting the gun smugglers. During 2003 and 2004, fewer than twenty firearms were seized by Swedish Customs workers.”

One of the most publicized shooting sprees in Swedish history, during which a man in mass media labeled Lasermannen — “The Laser Man” – shot at eleven immigrants and killed one of them, was also committed with an illicit weapon, and hence would not have been affected by these control efforts. This doesn’t seem to bother the police though — somehow everything becomes a matter of preventing any sort of unlicensed gun ownership:

“According to Sonny Björk at the Stockholm county police, the cooperation is necessary. But he also feels the law needs to change to get at the growing smuggling.

“We have to up the sentencing guidelines for illicit weapons ownership so it doesn’t become appealing carrying a firearm. Today you gladly accept a prison sentence for the advantage of owning a firearm, Sonny Björk says.”

One thing you can count on never hearing in the public debate is criticism of the gun laws in place here. There is lamentation over that big crazy country in the west, however, where the people own all of these guns. In an editorial in Sydsvenskan shortly after Seung-Hui Cho shot up Virginia Tech, Lennart Pehrson expresses his grievances over what he believes is essentially unrestricted gun ownership in the USA. Sweden is also the country where the infamous Michael Moore is hailed as a truth-teller and a hero, where the state-TV is always keen on showing his documentaries repeatedly, and with Bowling for Columbine being one of the movies promoted on its web page.

Hammarberg then warns about Swedish style gun control laws coming to the shores of America.  There are various commentaries asserting the need for ratification of the coming U.S. arms control treaty, some of them simply indignant and insulting.  But here is a fact that none of the advocates of the U.S. arms treaty will admit.  In order to interdict illegal arms sales and control proliferation of arms into second and third world countries, they do not need for the U.S. government to know the location of and register every serial number for every weapon in the U.S.  It’s simply an unnecessary intrusion into U.S. constitutional protections.  A national register is a possible first step towards confiscation, and the U.N. doesn’t actually need any other information or controls in the U.S. to accomplish their stated goals.  The U.S. is not the problem.

Confiscation.  Could such a think happen?  Would such a thing happen?  Well, it’s important to realize where we are.  The lower courts have piled on the SCOTUS for failure to explain the extent to which ownership of a firearm is legal and constitutional beyond the confines of one’s domicile.  According to the lower courts, all the decisions in Heller and McDonald accomplished was to justify ownership of a weapon within your own home, not outside the home – not anywhere – not anytime – not for any reason whatsoever.

And these decisions passed by a bare 5-4 vote.  Note.  Four justices on the U.S. Supreme Court (and that tally will probably hold with Kagan’s history of disrespect for the second amendment) do not even believe that U.S. citizens have a right to own a weapon within their own home.  Within their own home.

We truly are one vote away from loss of the second amendment.  No further intrusions by the U.N. are needed.  The U.N. should concern itself with … oh, I don’t know … underwater basket weaving or something to occupy its time so that it won’t be a hazard to the balance of the world.