I’ve been very pissed off and political lately. All the morality and hypocrisy I’ve been swallowing in AZ’s DUI and pot laws has made me pay a lot of attention to gun laws, since their regulation (or lack-of) is zealously defended on the basis of personal freedom, and this eye on freedom seems to have been put out when it comes to drinking and driving.   You can get a DUI in AZ by having your keys within 50 feet of your car.   Go to a bar, call a cab, fetch your laptop from your car, go to jail.   Move car seats around in your driveway with the front doors closed and the back doors and trunk open and your keys on the ground and a beer on the roof, go to jail.   Yet at the same time we are considering a law in AZ to do away with all licensing requirements for a CCW.     Just last week there was an article in the Republic about a guy who brought one to India, and then was dumbfounded when he got busted.

I can’t get behind the NRA zealots since their arguments are almost all about philosophy without any nod toward the reality of guns in society.   Too many of them sound like they have never read the Constitution, and just want to blow shit up.     Too many of the anti-gun people cite only crime stats without any respect for the idea of a free society.   They ignore stats that suggest violent crimes are worse when outlawing guns leaves only guns in the hands of outlaws.   I spent some time reading some websites on either side of the debate, and all I can conclude is that both sides are completely and totally full of shit.   What none of them seemed to provide is an analysis of the situation in a technical and economic context, prior to getting all wrapped up in morality.

When I did stand-up a long time ago I had a pretty funny bit about how the Founding Fathers wrote the 2nd Amendment when the only gun was a ball-and-powder musket, and I’d do a little move where I pretend to shoot, then use the mic stand as a prop to imitate packing the powder back down as your prepared to reload.   Hilarity ensued.   The technical limitations and lack of range and accuracy made a musket a very poor choice for an offensive weapon.   It was probably among the most expensive possessions a man owned, right up there with his horse and saddle.   People lived in filth, guns jammed, powder didn’t light, the bullet store was half a day’s ride into town or something you made in your barn smelting metal from old nails you pulled out of a horseshoe and burned over a fire lit by a tree you chopped.   That’s the baseline of the 2nd Amendment.

A bit of research online suggests that in 1875 a Colt Peacemaker cost about 1 month’s wages for the average man.   It may have been better maintained and better manufactured, but I would think the average cowboy riding around on dirt roads and frontier kicked it full of dust while it was strapped to his waist or saddle all day long.   To tolerate the conditions it had to operate in, the gun must have sacrificed range and accuracy, and you still hear how guns regularly jammed.   My camera spends one day at the beach and a little piece of grit gets trapped in a small ratcheting mechanism and destroys it.   My bike in the back of my truck travelling 10 miles down a dirt road needs a wipe down.   8 hours of riding and my drivetrain ghosts shifts mercilessly.   The conditions had to affect the gun’s use, and while 6 shots and a better rifles certainly become more offensive in function, you also hear about people barely hitting 50 yards.   Lack of sights and well made bullets etc all realistically were limits.   I am no expert, and will not pretend to be one, but it seems a no-brainer the average use was not in an ideal laboratory setting.

As per wikipedia and the 2005 census, the average male income in the US was $39,400.   2 minutes shopping online found an AK47 for $1000, AR-15 for $1200, and a 9mm for $300.   In real dollar terms, you can get the 15 shot 9mm with better accuracy and firepower for 1/10th the cost of the 1875 Peacemaker. Factor in the ease of obtaining guns and supplies, cleaner conditions and ease of service, and the gun today is a totally different tool than the gun of the Revolutionary War.

As a libertarian i think guns should be legal, but the data argues in favor intelligent, evolving regulation that balances the goal of freedom with the reality of modern society.

and now for the obligatory “why do you hate America?”

Cafe society shudders!   George Braque laughs! Museum curators gnash their teeth since they must now display that picture of the dogs playing poker!   Chollaball wallows in his overpriced liberal arts education!   This was a tragic loss to the art world, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Why do you write or paint or create, if you are not getting paid?   For yourself? For attention and self-esteem?   The inevitable answer is some of both, otherwise why bother having a website when you could just have a diary?

The creative undertaking must be personal, but the appreciation and attention adds to the satisfaction for me, not because I need validation, but because the idea becomes more powerful when its appreciated by others like-minded. The audience, even if anonymous and never encountered, inspires me to surround the kernel of creativity with rigor and discipline and honesty, to make the glimmer of a good idea into a nice piece of work, to achieve by the struggle for quality the genuine catharsis we seek when we create.

Recently I have written some fantastic posts, and kept them private.   The writing and research and sincerity are among the best I’ve ever done.   Its been essential to keeping me from totally losing my shit.   And I want to share it. Some things however, shouldn’t be public. This is not my day job, and often on the internet there is nothing to gain and much to lose.

After he became wildly successful, did Picasso need an audience? Maybe his puppy was all the audience he needed.

This post is a proxy for those I can not publish.

If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory.

Man could never do without blood, torture, and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself; the most dreadful sacrifices and pledges…all this has its origin in the instinct that realized that pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics.

The severity of the penal code provides an especially significant measure of the degree of effort needed to overcome forgetfulness and to impose a few primitive demands of social existence.

–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, 2nd essay, section 3

The other day G put her stuffed animal in the sink, after Beckie told her not to.   Then I told her not to, and she did it to another one.   So I scolded her and shrugged her off.   She threw a fit and cried with shame for 5-10 minutes.   Beckie tried to calm her, and that usually works but this time did not, until finally I told her it was ok just don’t do it again.   Then she chilled.

I knew this wait was making her upset, but its just like teaching her to climb the monkeybars, she has to take some hits to learn. Punishment to a child, where it can be infused with an emotional connection, can be tempered.   The feelings G has to the victim — in this case, me — internalizes the sense of wrong and enhances the impact of the punishment such that it need not be extreme.   A society, however, can only offer a conceptual and anonymous connection to the victims of most crimes.   For its punishments to be effective as revenge and deterrent, it must inculcate in the perpetrator an appreciation for an abstract wrong and an abstract victim.   It must replace emotions and empathy with common currencies – time, money, and most of all cruelty – to develop a notion of right and wrong.

The average person who has no experience with the criminal justice system and its role of building deterrents out of abstractions may be unmoved by the idea of penalties, and they do not understand their full severity until the weight of the law is upon them.   By then the deterrent is only useful for future violations.   What remains is vengeance, and a brutal, blunt, yet effective means of establishing a morality.

I think of this every time I think of getting busted. I had no appreciation for Arizona’s status as the toughest state in the nation on DUI, the mandatory minimums, or their role in crafting a behavioral model for society. I think how minor my transgression really was, how close I was to home, how quiet the street was at midnight, how i was not reckless, and how I was cooperative and polite with the cops.

My lawyer wrote me: “Both Officers indicated that you were incredibly polite and both were impressed with how honest you were with them in every aspect of your case. Unfortunately, the City of Mesa prosecutors will not give any weight to this information.”

I wasn’t blowing a .20 and driving a boat home from the lake on a holiday weekend. I got caught by a fluke, no one was close to harmed, and had things been just a bit different I might have been let go. The cops kinda felt bad about busting me, were as easy on me as i was on them, and wished me well with my new daughter.

Singular, monolithic, uncompromising. Systematic.

Its unfair, overkill, and impossible to separate the motivations for reform and revenge from the cash cow its become.   But it is effective.   I will never drink and drive again.   The punishments are too severe to ever risk it, and their punitive effects go far beyond what is listed on paper.   Each one comes with so much overhead and bullshit that the reality of its impact far exceeds its description.

Thank gawd my suspension started at the end of April instead of the end of June, I was on my bike so much. My knees ached, my back was sore, and I was unable to get to regular yoga classes or my chiropractor.   My license is also maxed out on points for 2 years, so any minor moving violation during that window and I’m handed another suspension. After my conviction, I received another notice that my license was being suspended, but DMV just made a mistake on this one triggered by Mesa’s resolution to my case. Yay, process! I rode my bike to the DMV after my 30 days were up to get my restricted license enabled, to find the next day that they had automatically mailed it to me anyway.    The   DMV is quite good at handling this since they do it so often.   Mornings lost with Genevieve, love lost for my bikes, any ability to contribute outside the house. I tried to go shopping with the bike trailer, things melted, and fell out. Beckie showed infinite patience, due to her getting a DUI 15 years earlier.

Interlock, day in jail, lawyer, courts, paperwork, fines, counseling, fees, insurance, police profiling and shame for about $10,000. Every time I get mad, I struggle to point my anger back at myself:   I was the one who fucked up, no one else.   But its really hard to acknowledge one’s guilt and mistakes when the penalties and consequences are so out-of-line with the effects.   What choice do I have?   The only good to come out of this is if it never happens again.

Would I be so motivated to never let this happen again if it only cost me 1k, some points on my license, and a 30-day suspension?   Honestly, no.   Would I have been motivated enough…yes, probably.   Having no car and 2 little kids for a month in summer in AZ, then paranoia that every time I do take them to daycare might be construed as a violation of my restricted license, has quite an effect on your attitude.   Having tasted the sample, the serving for a second offense is more than enough to deter me.

One has only to look at our former codes of punishment to understand what effort it costs on this earth to breed a “nation of thinkers.”   — Friedrich Nietzsche

Angry and scared with some new-found knowledge of AZ’s “Zero Tolerance Per Se” and “Impaired to the Slightest Degree” laws, I wrote this letter to Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Hello Dr. Nadelmann and Team,

I am sure you do not remember me, but I was an undergrad student of yours at Princeton in 1992.   Your class was one of the best I attended, and I have followed the DPA closely for almost 5 years.

I recently learned about a law in Arizona (where I’ve lived for almost 15 years) that merits re-evaluation.   If a person is found with any metabolite of marijuana in their system while driving, they can be convicted of DUI.   The drug could have been active weeks before.   The law is documented below in Arizona Revised Statute 28-1381:

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/28/01381.htm

My nightmare scenario is this: I get rear-ended with my kids in the car.   The officer runs my record, sees I have a ticket for running a red-light (AZ also leads the nation in photo-enforcement cameras), profiles me as a problem driver and orders a blood test due to the accident.   It comes up positive due to pot smoked weeks prior, and now I face felony DUI for being under the influence with minors in the car.

I am opposed to driving under the influence.   But this law is practically carte blanche to turn usage into DUI.   AZ has the toughest DUI laws in the country and a very red\Mormon\family-values population that makes a jury trial a very scary proposition.

I have written my representatives about this law.   But the political climate in AZ is not friendly towards any easing of DUI or marijuana laws.   Unfortunately, most of us only find out about these laws after attending Traffic School due to photo enforcement, and by then we are labeled as criminals in denial.

I hope this unfair and punitive law gets the attention of your organization, and would appreciate any suggestions for raising awareness and opposition to it.

Keep up the good work!

I also wrote to State Senator Chuck Gray and Representatives Kirk Adams and Rich Crandall.

I’ve lived in District 19 for 9 years, and recently attended Traffic Survival School due to a photo-enforcement ticket for running a red light. I learned some great lessons about becoming a better driver and the tremendous harms DUI causes on our roads. I am now more firmly than ever opposed to DUI. But I disagree with ARS 28-1381, sections A-1 and A-3. These clauses make it a criminal DUI if one is impaired to the slightest degree, or one has any metabolite of a restricted substance in one’s system. Again, I am completely opposed to DUI, but these laws are too restrictive to personal freedom and turn sensible law-abiding people into criminals. The notion that a .01 BAC due to one beer during an hour-long dinner, or a vicodin weeks earlier from a dentist appointment could result in a DUI is very unsettling. Responsible consumption and responsible use of prescription drugs is legal and should not put a law-abiding person at risk for the tremendous penalties of DUI comparable to someone with a BAC of .14.

Please continue to support laws that vigorously deter and penalize DUI, but remain sensible about turning ordinary responsible people into criminals.

Didn’t get a response, no surprise. Mesa is a very Mormon city, in a very conservative state. There is inevitable crossover between personal beliefs  and legislating morality. On the one hand that is democracy in action, but I still get cranky when Rs (or in other places, Dems) run unopposed since it drives extremist politics and laws that simply go too far.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a response from Dr. Nadelmann, in which he described work DPA did opposing a similar law in Ohio.   He forwarded my information to members of the organization in Ohio and New Mexico, as well as representatives for NORML.   Unfortunately, a Senior Policy Analyst from NORML also replied, saying that AZ’s law was among the first and toughest in the nation, and there is little to believe there is a receptive legislative climate for change, citing our state’s regulartory history.   Yeah, I figured that out too.