Militias or Personal Arms?

This post is just a footnote to the latest round of gun debates touched off by the recent murders at Umpqua Community College, near Roseburg, Oregan. I don't believe I can add anything to the debate without considerable research. I've long been interested in the history of the second amendment. That's what this post is about.

The story starts with confusion and a question. Why's the second amendment so weirdly written? Don't tell me you've never noticed. Have a look:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Groups like to chop this up for various political reasons, but that's the whole thing as it's written in the second amendment. It's oddly written. The odd wording makes it ambiguous. Does it enshrine a personal right or the right of states to maintain militias? (Incidentally, I have questions about grammar and usage in that amendment. I'm researching them and hope to publish about that sometime in the future.)

An avenue of investigation was suggested by a comment in one of Steven Pinker's books. Vague lines in legal documents are often the result of parties who can't agree. They write language that either side can interpret as they wish, with the hopes that a real consensus can be reached later. If this were the case with the second amendment, where could I find material relevant to the theory? I looked at writings published about the constitution at the it was created.

Pennsylvania ratified the constitution on December 12, 1787 by a vote of 46 to 23. Nearly a week later, 21 of the dissenters published in several newspapers a position paper titled, "The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania to their Constituents." It contains two relevant statements.

First...

"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence (sic) of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals."

and...

"That the power of organizing, arming and disciplining the militia (the manner of disciplining the militia to be prescribed by Congress) remain with the individual states."

So there it is. At least some of our founders wanted to enshrine both an individual right to bear arms and a state's right to organize militias.

Early the following summer, Virginia proposed a bill of rights. Their paper contains this line:

"The people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence (sic) of a free State."

(I wasn't able to find an online version of this document; however, it is available in this book by Signet Classic.)

Though it's better worded than our second amendment the Virginia language, had it been adopted, would likely have suffered from the same disagreement as our second amendment. Does it assert an Individual right, or only put the militias under the control of the states?

Both interpretations would agree with the dissenters in Pennsylvania. Why then is that position, whatever it was, not stated more explicitly in the bill of rights? Clearly there's more to this story than I've learned so far.

A friend guessed at a piece of the puzzle that my gut tells me is right on the mark. If the Virginia proposal excluded an individual right, there's a historically plausible reason. The powers in Virginia, and all southern states for that matter, probably didn't want firearms laying around, arms that might land in the hands of slaves.

You Can't Get There from Here, Part II

It takes me a while to write one of these posts. If I published what came off the top of my head, it would be easy. I want to make sure I can back up anything I say and that takes time.  That path was my choice, so I'm not complaining.

There is a bramble in the path that I will complain about: access to research. Here's a case in point. The American Journal of Public Health released a study on Friday reporting a link between areas of high gun ownership and police deaths. Even before it's out, it's a political football. I want to evaluate it for myself. I don't want to read any of the million opinion pieces saying why it's a good study or why it's a bad study. I want to see the study.

In particular, I want to see the data. One site has helpfully provided a graph of the data. But I don't know anything about this site. Statistics aren't necessarily lies as the popular meme started by Benjamin Disraeli would have it. They're forms of communication. They can be lies or they can be the truth. This news site is new to me. I don't know if they've reproduced this graph straight out of the study or if they've shaded it in some way. If I could see the data, I could reproduce the graph, including the regression line. It's easy to do in Google Spreadsheets or Microsoft Outlook. Reproducing it would allow me to figure out what if anything they had done to shade it. 

Can I get to the study or any of its data? If I follow one of the many links to the study, I get this, a request for money (top image):

This is actually an improvement over what I would have gotten five or ten years ago. News sites wouldn't link to studies. Often they wouldn't even provide the name of the paper. If I wanted to find it, I'd need to search through a dozen articles, hoping someone would provide the study's name. Or I'd need to search on the study's subject along with the organization that published it. 

This particular site wants $22 just for the article. That's a bargain. I've seen sites that want north of $30 per paper.

So, I can view the opinions of thousands, even tens of thousands of blowhards for free, but I have to pay to see the work of people who do real research? "But!", I can hear you asking, "you're not a an expert in this field. You're not qualified to judge the veracity of the research." But I know people who are. I could ask them to fact check my posts. Better yet, I could ask them to write a piece for my blog. 

We live in an era that is increasingly anti-science. While bloviators proliferate, the way research is published hamstrings the voices of knowledgeable people. What if all qualified professionals could view this study for free? We'd potentially have an army of qualified debaters for every comment thread, every family gathering, every city council meeting. That's not to say we would have this in every case. But it would be better than what we've got.

You Can't Get There From Here

A few days after posting History On Line more items showed up in my news reader describing online archives of various flavors. I started thinking about problems I've had with other online archives. Rather than explain it, I'm going to ask you to do it.

Let's start with the Dead Sea Scrolls archive, a web site containing images of the scrolls put up by he Israeli Antiquities Authority.  Go to the archive and search on the "The Damascus Document".  Let's pretend you can actually read the text on the photos of these ancient documents. Why? Because the relevant portion of this discussion isn't nearly as cool as Dead Sea Scrolls.  I"ll get to that in a minute.

Now go to Google and search for "Dead Sea Scrolls."  Notice that the archive we just looked at is the second result, right under the Wikipedia article on the same.

Finally, do a Google search for "The Damascus Document."  Notice what you didn't find.  The Israeli archive is nowhere to be seen.  I clicked through five pages of search results and never found the Israeli archive.  I don't know if Google's results are the same at all times and all places, so your results may vary. I think my results demonstrate the point.

I put a premium on source materials. I hope I don't need to explain why. Even in the age of Google, you may not find source materials unless you can guess what web site might have it. This problem isn't confined to databases of ancient history.  More often than I'd like, finding the right answer to something means finding the right database.

Let me give you some every day examples. Who owns the derelict property down the street? Turns out, it's owned by a paper corporation.  Who really owns the paper corporation? Can I do a background check on someone without paying for it? Maybe. Do you have time to find all the databases you need to check in all fifty states, then check all those databases individually? (On reflection, this last example might be a good thing. It keeps casual snoopers from poking around my records.)

The phenomenon I demonstrated with the Dead Sea Scrolls archive is one I first observed while searching property records and doing background checks. To find what I was looking for I had to first find the correct database.  Expand this to anything you want to learn or prove.  Want to show, for example, the religious beliefs of the founding fathers? You need their actualy writings.  An article by a historian, or worse, a blow-hard pundit isn't enough. 

What would be nice would be to search engine that find repositories rather than text strings.

The State's Right to What?

"What was the civil war about?"

"It was about state's rights."

"The state's right to do what?"

"..."

"I'm sorry. What was that?"

"..."

"You don't have an answer?"

My hypothetical debate opponent is now trying to conjure an answer. Try using this line of argument yourself to see how many people can give you an answer.

The state's right to do what? It's the obvious next question. If southern states were willing to go to war over state's rights, there must have been specific rights at issue, something that set them off, something they felt the Federal government was taking away from them.

Even as silence drains the room of energy, I'll bet everyone is thinking the same answer: slavery. It's not too hard to find support for that thought. Try this on:

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

This also turns out to be problematic for the state's rights argument. More about that in a moment.

The quote is from the confederate constitution, specifically, Section 9, Article 4. It lays bare something the state's rights argument deftly avoids. The existence of the Confederate States of America meant the continuation of slavery. Once the blood of northern youths was spilled in opposition, any victory that excluded abolition was a hollow victory.

But why is this problematic for the state's rights view? I have to thank historian James Loewen in his recent Salon interview for drawing my attention to this. The confederacy denied its own states the right to decide against slavery.

Adam Savage Meets the Martian

If you haven't heard of Andy Weir's novel "The Martian". This hard science fiction novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars has impressed even NASA astronauts and JPL engineers with its technical accuracy. Besides that, it's just an engaging read. If you like to read books before their movie adaptations, you only have until October 2.

Courtesy of tested.com, Adam Savage brings us an hour-long interview with Andy Weir. Savage's gift of gab combines with his interest space exploration and a genuine love of the book to make for a good interview.

The Coriolis Effect

You've heard this, no doubt. Toilets, and drains in general, empty in opposite directions in the northern and southern hemisphere. There's at least one reputable science channel on YouTube that says this is nonsense. Yet it's an undeniable fact hat hurricanes rotate in opposite directions in Earth's two hemispheres.

Two YouTube channels on science, Smarter Every Day and Veritasium, have teamed up to perform a controlled experiment. Performing the same procedure at the same latitude in both hemispheres, they demonstrate that the Coriolis effect is real and explain why the results in your toilets and sinks might vary.

Northern Hemisphere by Smarter Every Day

Southern Hemisphere by Veritasium

Why Report this Way?

This has bothered me for a while now. Why does the media report monthly fluctuations in the economic numbers? For example, Bloomberg recently told us that jobless claims rose from 264,00 to 274,000 That's a 1.04% increase. This is just noise.

There have been much larger increases from month to month, even while the overall trend was downward. There have been equally large month-to-month decreases while the overall trend was upward. Such fluctuations are part of any statistical data set. I can't speak to most media, but if there’s any of them I would expect to know this, it would be Bloomberg. If they didn't, they wouldn't be qualified to report on economics. Why then do they report noise as news?

The measurement interval itself is a matter of convenience. We have to choose a sample rate and months are a unit we're all familiar with. But a month's just a collection of days, which means that 1.04% increase is an average. It masks its own ups and downs.

What if I picked a different interval, say the 15th of one month to the 14th of the next? That suggestion isn't as far as out as it might seem. Consider that many companies have fiscal years that're different from the calendar year. A company could chose July 1 to June 30 as its fiscal year, for example. I'm proposing as a thought experiment a "fiscal month", in this case from from the 15th to the 14th. Now I have a different set of data points, and a different average.

I don't mean to pick on Bloomberg or make a point about jobless numbers. This is an example of what seems to be generally true of media report on any economic indicator.

Starting Again

Last year, it turns out, was a tough year for trying to start a blog. The details aren't important. I has given me some time to rethink. I don't seem to have the time to write the long, well thought, and polished blog entries that I aspire to. Since this is nominally a blog about, well, anything that sparks my interest, perhaps I should make it as much about my research as it is about the result.