RECENT MASS KILLINGS

[Comment posted on The New York Times Website 9/24/13:]

I have yet to hear anyone propose a likely solution to the problem of mass killings.  I listened to President Obama's agonized paw-wringing on September 23, but I didn't hear him propose any likely solutions.  Obama's speech was just a reproach of our culture's apparent disregard for violence.  Moralistic, holier-than-thou reproach is not going to fix the problem!  Telling us how much he UNDERSTANDS the problem is not a solution.

How do we ensure that someone with access to guns will not go off his/her rocker?  How do we predict IN ADVANCE which persons those will be?  It is not enough to ban those with certain mental diagnoses, even if it were legal, which I question.  Many of those who have committed these horrible acts were utterly "below the radar"!  I don't have any ready answers, either.

President Obama said Americans are not any more violent than other cultures.  I beg to differ.  I think one of the main reasons there is so much violence (not just with guns) among us is precisely because American culture IS excessively violent, and it has been thus for a very long time.

Gun-purchase limits, magazine-capacity limits and background checks are all reasonable.  We can and should implement those now.  The Second Amendment OBVIOUSLY protects an individual RIGHT to "keep and bear" arms, but not to "buy or sell" them, so commercial restraints are surely legal.

I doubt that any of that will prevent future mass killings, though.

(I AM now skeptical about “background checks.”  I think that concept is too vague to be properly enforceable for a host of reasons.  What, exactly, are we looking FOR?  Who gets notice that their “background” does not “check.” and what is their remedy, if any?  Does it not matter if it’s WRONG?)

LEGALIZED EXTORTIONS

[The following was posted 9/20/13 on the "Free Enterprise Forum" Website, Charlottesville, Va.]

Proffers are legalized extortion.  The fiction that they are "voluntary" demonstrates the extent to which we lie to ourselves to justify the unjustifiable.  The General Assembly should quickly move to revoke the proffer system statewide.

Proffers were smugly dreamed up as a "punishment" on "greedy developers," but developers don't pay those proffers!  They are passed through by developers to the individual purchasers of the properties subject to the proffers.  They also amount to an (intentional) "entry fee" to discourage newcomers from moving into a subject area, and that is downright un-American!

Most of us living in established homes did not have to pay extra for the roads, schools or sewers we use nor for any other "public" amenity built with revenues from prior taxpayers.  That so many "public" amenities have now been conditioned upon the payment of "user fees" is ludicrous.  Such amenities are supposed to be "public" for a reason, that government SHOULD furnish some things to everyone via taxation.  Taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society.

So, let's get civilized and get rid of proffers!