Monkeyfist.com: The Strange Values of President Bush

Oct. 25, 2002 5:50 pm

A piece I wrote this week while trying to decide why Bush
opposes ballistic fingerprinting.


Monkeyfist.com

The Strange Values of President Bush

   by [1]Kendall CLARK
   
   Thursday, 24 October 2002
   
   .....
   
   Responding to suggestions that ballistic fingerprinting would aid
   police in catching the DC sniper, the White House recently said that
   
     the real issue is values, and that's what is at stake here. These
     are the acts of a depraved killer who has broken and will continue
     to break laws. And so the question is not new laws; the question is
     the actions here represent values in our society.
     
   Let's take the Bush Administration at its word and ask some hard
   questions about values. First, what values does Bush espouse when he
   refuses to support ballistic fingerprinting? Second, what values does
   Bush's inconsistent defense of civil liberties reflect?
   
   First, President Bush's opposition to ballistic fingerprinting
   suggests that he values public safety less than other things. A
   ballistic fingerprinting law would require every new gun to be
   test-fired before it's sold, presumably by the manufacturer or by some
   federal or state agency, so that its unique characteristics -- how the
   gun marks both the shell casing and the slug -- and its provenance can
   be stored in a federal or state database. When a crime is committed
   and shell casings or slugs are recovered, their unique characteristics
   can be searched against the database. Even without tracking every sale
   of the gun after the initial sale, having some place to start would
   assist police. That database search could lead either to the present
   owner of the gun or give police a place to start in finding its
   present owner.
   
   The White House has offered two objections to ballistic
   fingerprinting. The first is that ballistic fingerprinting isn't an
   accurate system. If that is really the case, someone should tell all
   the ballistic experts who testify in state courts around the country
   every day as to the identifying marks left by a particular gun on
   particular shell casings or slugs. We can set aside the White House's
   accuracy objection without further comment.
   
   The second objection, one which is more vague than the first, is that
   ballistic fingerprinting violates the rights of gun owners. This
   objection amounts to the claim that people have a right to own guns
   secretly -- that the government has no right to associate a gun with
   its owner.
   
   As the White House put it,
   
     There are law-abiding Americans and then there are criminals. And
     just as if you were to fingerprint every single law-abiding
     American, it might give you a helpful clue to determine who engaged
     in a robbery or in a theft. Do you want to apply that across the
     board for every instance?
     
   The analogy between one's right of privacy and one's right to own a
   gun privately fails miserably. People can avoid having their (sense
   of) privacy violated under a ballistic fingerprinting schema by not
   buying a gun. In the White House's attempt to analogize to a human
   fingerprinting scheme, there is no way to opt out; the violation is
   unavoidable.
   
   People have a presumptive, but not absolute right of privacy. We often
   voluntarily reconfigure our privacy expectations and demands in
   exchange for concessions from the state. For example, in order to
   maintain public safety, we're expected to relinquish some privacy by
   allowing the state to associate them with vehicle ownership, track
   their address, physical characteristics, identity, and so on. Very few
   people make a principled objection to this tradeoff. And even fewer
   people suggest that this tradeoff is impermissible because it
   constitutes a step on the slope toward vehicle confiscation, despite
   the fact that motor vehicles kill more people every year than guns.
   The obvious objection to the analogy between guns and cars is that the
   Constitution establishes an individual right to own guns, not to own
   cars. But the meaning of the 2nd amendment is a disputed question;
   that it establishes an absolute right to gun ownership is not. The
   argument is about the boundaries of a disputed, relative right.
   
   Either Bush is unwilling or afraid to oppose the NRA, particularly its
   power to influence races in the "red states", or he is simply a
   right-wing ideologue, prioritizing the rights of a small special
   interest group over the safety of everyone else.
   
   Bush's disdain for public safety becomes obvious when you recall that
   he is willing to trade civil liberties for public safety of a sort.
   Bush's administration has suggested since September 2001 that all
   citizens have to be prepared to trade rights for safety. And the
   rights which are being violated include those at the core of
   democratic citizenship: free expression and assembly, habeas corpus,
   the right to counsel, the right to avoid self-incrimination, the right
   to a fair and speedy trial. And the likelihood that diminishing these
   rights will result in increased safety against future terrorist
   attacks is very low. It's unclear that the full implementation of the
   US Patriot Act, for example, will increase the safety of a single
   American from terrorist attack.
   
   Why is Bush willing to trade the undisputed core of civil liberties
   for an uncertain increase in safety, but unwilling to trade the
   disputed individual right to own a gun for a much more likely increase
   in safety? Even if ballistic fingerprinting were a violation of one's
   right to own a gun, it would have a reasonably high chance of reducing
   the epidemic of gun violence in the US. It's a better bet than trading
   core civil liberties for dubious safety from terrorists. He has no
   grounds upon which to insist that citizens cannot be forced to trade
   civil liberties, even the sacred right-wing cow of gun ownership, for
   enhanced public safety. That's Bush's game, and he should be made to
   play it fairly.
   
   One set of facts is undisputed. According to the Centers for Disease
   Control, during the period 1993 to 1998, about 115,000 firearm-related
   injuries occurred every year. Of those 115,000 about 32,000 were
   firearm deaths. That's equal to one WTC terrorist attack every month
   for six years. Sixty times more people were killed by firearms during
   that period than were killed by terrorists on September 11th.
   Ballistic fingerprinting wouldn't be relevant to all of these deaths,
   but it would be to many. The majority of deaths in the age range 15 to
   44 were the result of interpersonal violence.
   
   Are we sure Bush understands or even cares which is the greater threat
   to public safety? The White House was right when it said that social
   values matter. But it had the wrong set of values in mind. Bush's
   hypocrisy is more dangerous to more Americans than any crazy sniper
   will ever be.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   This is The Strange Values of President Bush
   <[2]http://monkeyfist.com/articles/826>
   
   © Copyright 1999-2002 The Monkeyfist Collective

References

   1. mailto:kendall-4GNy1lrxftmrG/[email protected]?subject=The%20Strange%20Values%20of%20President%20Bush
   2. http://monkeyfist.com/articles/826