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It is a good day for Liberty

We have only a single month before Hilary Clinton begins her sprint to the White House.

I was preparing to attend a funeral when an old client came in with a question about a will. He had purchased a will form and filled in the blanks. He then tried to file the will at the courthouse and was confused when they refused to take it. I do not write wills, but even I know that these will forms are worse than useless. Lawbooks are filled with cases in which people have used will forms of this sort, and it was discovered that the form was defective or was filled out incorrectly, which made it invalid. Unfortunately, this discovery is always made when the author of the will is dead and unable to fix the defects. Dead people have voted in St. Louis, but there is no record of them correcting a will. It is irresponsible to sell such will forms. An accomplished, nationally known attorney is selling such forms on television. Shame on him. A person would not take drugs without seeing a doctor; he should not write a will without seeing a lawyer. In the long run it is much cheaper. A professionally written will can prevent arguments among family over the decedent’s property.

A family’s funeral preparations were delayed while searching for instructions the deceased had left for the occasion. I used to have my will framed on the wall of my office. Now it is in a file. Most will find a framed, if strategically folded will to be best.

I had an appointment at the immigration office in Phoenix, Arizona. The appointment was scheduled for 8:46 in the morning, not 8:45. Despite this precision in scheduling we did not see an officer until an hour and nine minutes later.

Coming back through the airport metal detectors I could not make the machine stop beeping and told the security officer that he’d have to show the metal to me. We finally discovered that I’d forgotten to take off my steel POW bracelet. I was startled that the officer did not know what a POW bracelet signified. On 24 March, 1967 Navy pilot Lt James E. Plowman was shot down over North Viet Nam. He was never accounted for and remains missing in action, but not forgotten. Now you know more than the Transportation Security Administration.

Missourians for Personal Safety, the grassroots umbrella group for gun owner rights, held an advocacy seminar on 3 November, 2007. Due to demands on activist time caused by the NRA convention we did not have a Rally Day this year. The efforts of Dan Smith of the Gateway Civil Liberties Alliance in organizing volunteers resulted in a glorious convention and influenced the NRA to bring the convention back to St. Louis in 2011 or 2012. Our bills enjoyed unprecedented success this year and we thought the sacrifice reasonable. The advocacy seminar was our substitute this year. As an inaugural effort, the attendance was limited. The objective was to teach a small group to effectively promote our bills in the legislature. It was well received. I learned from my attendance, not limited to the reports that I am flamboyant and have a “poker face.” I’m not sure how I pull off these aspects simultaneously. Nearly two decades of experience must have some effect.

The Activist Seminar reminded me of the beginning of our statewide organization in 1991. This effort was encouraged by the NRA-ILA representative who it must be pointed out, never told us what to do or financed the group. Tim Oliver remembers fifteen or so persons at the first meeting. I think we had 25, but Tim’s memory may be better than mine. Whatever the number, a show of hands proves that only four of us remain active. We need replacements and reinforcements. In the last sixteen years we have enjoyed high quality replacements. With the seminar we will now enjoy reinforcements as well. The students were enthusiastic and picked up the principles quickly. Tim Oliver’s expert organization pulled off a valuable class. We are likely to repeat the project in the future. The MPS effort was sponsored by the Missouri Sport Shooting Association, WMSA, GCLA and MissouriCarry.com.

A Missouri Supreme Court decision reveals that a woman decided to kill her ex-husband. This is not that unusual, but this woman was getting over $2,000 in alimony (now called maintenance) each month from the intended victim. Regardless, she hired a man to kill the goose that laid the monthly check, who turned out to be a police officer. She was convicted. The surprised and relieved husband, thinking himself triumphant asked the divorce court to cancel the payments. The Supreme Court of Missouri said no. Attempted murder is not a changed circumstance for the purpose of the divorce decree and that the remedy lay in the criminal courts and civil lawsuits. This teaches us that people are stupid, and courts make unexpectedly peculiar rulings. Justice Wolf of the Missouri Supreme Court spoke at the legal seminar at the NRA convention and confessed that he had written decisions with which he disagreed, but was convinced were required by the law. That is the best we can expect from judges. As the Great Second Amendment Case progresses through the United States Supreme Court we must consider that despite what the judges personally believe, they may find the law requires a different result. A ruling is expected next summer. We must be prepared to exploit or defend against the decision. The best way to take either action is to elect friendly politicians. If for no other reason, that makes the 2008 election cycle the most critical in our history and the most critical we are likely to have.

       There is some dispute as to whether “waterboarding” terrorist prisoners is torture. It is not a new technique. It involves strapping the prisoner to a board, placing a cloth over his mouth and nose, and dripping water on the cloth, or just pouring water over the face. It gives the sensation of slowly drowning. No one asks about the “bathtub treatment” in which a prisoner is held under water until he almost drowns, brought up, revived, asked a question, and then put under again. There is some danger of killing a prisoner using the bathtub treatment. I have not heard of people being killed by waterboarding, but see no reason why it could not happen. Ultimately the victim cannot breathe, and this is never life affirming. Anyone who has dived too deep, stayed down too long and scrambled for the surface while the lungs scream, ache and burn for oxygen will know that this is torture. Our friend “Bubba” Bechtel, a “redneck” comic who has frequently performed at NRA conventions has said that if torturing terrorists with electricity will save a single American life “All I have to say is, red is positive and black is negative!” I understand the attitude. If true, if results are the only the only factors to consider, then there is no reason to limit torture to electricity, waterboarding, thumbscrews (applied to various parts of the body), skulls placed in a vise, cages of starving rats locked around the head, or many more. I am not convinced that torture saves lives in the long run. I am convinced that people who torture prisoners get to like it. In Argentina the military began to torture terrorists. Initially these terrorists were horrible people who had abused, tortured and murdered. The military then went on to terrorists supporters, then sympathizers, then suspected sympathizers, then people they speculated might know something, then persons insufficiently pro-government. In the end it became difficult to be pro-government. The movie The Dancer Upstairs is a fictionalized account of the Peruvian government’s war against the truly vile Shining Path terrorist movement. The central character is a police detective. While the army tortures suspects for information, and makes more terrorists in the process, the detective sorts through the garbage on a street looking for the house a terrorist might be using. Sorting through garbage is an apt metaphor for fighting terrorism.

On the news I see Pakistani lawyers rioting against the imposition of martial law. It is interesting to watch men in suits and ties throwing rocks at riot police. It is interesting because these men spent their lives arguing law in court, but martial law affected their lives, and brought them out into the streets. I remember a proposed reorganization of the University of Missouri system in the early 70’s. Part of this reorganization would adversely impact the geology department. Walking to classes I passed a geology doctorate candidate passing out protest leaflets and muttering that he never thought he would be doing something like this. What causes people to become activists? When something is taken away certainly. In Missouri we have done the more difficult task of mobilizing the shooting community to restore rights lost before any of us were born. The support of the NRA has been invaluable. We have disagreed with the NRA at times, but on the final day we stood together to convince our people that regaining ancient rights is in their best interest. By pushing our own program, we have kept the opposition on the defensive and prevented them from pushing anti-gun laws.

WMSA celebrated its 18^th Birthday on 5 September, 2007. When we began we knew nothing but were offended by the attacks on our rights and insults against gun owners in the media. The attacks have slowed and the insults have slowed, but not because the opposition has seen the light. They have seen that they cannot get away with it. Our efforts to restore our rights have kept the opposition on the defensive. Our organization has demonstrated that we can turn out votes. This has made a difference. Today even anti-gun candidates must pretend that they are pro-gun. This is a different problem which we have addressed through our organization.

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has set up a table at gun shows to “inform” us what great work he has done in getting the Missouri LTC accepted in other states. Currently our LTC is accepted in 34 other states, but 28 or so of them recognized our LTC before the Attorney General started to work on the problem. Jay Nixon opposed LTC actively and passionately. Three days before the LTC case was heard before the Supreme Court Jay Nixon gave an interview in which he declared LTC to be a monstrous evil that would cause blood to run in the streets. This was three days before his own office defended the law before the Court. We were worried at the time that this might be a signal to the lawyers on the case not to give it their best. Fortunately they were professionals; we did not get all we should have, but we got enough. Now Jay Nixon is running for governor and he is using his office and staff to pretend that he is on our side.

Other nations have complained about the way the United States is controlling the internet. It is clear that it is not our control that is the problem; the problem they see is that we do not control it enough. Anybody can get any information he wants, even information the government does not want anyone to know. Anyone can post any information they want, even if critical of the government. The next American government will have the opportunity to decide if these other governments are right to worry.

Tim Oliver and I are putting out a DVD which covers the legal portion of the required License To Carry class. The DVD is designed to provide the weapons to defend oneself, in the aftermath of defending oneself. We hope to have them available by 1 December, in short for Christmas. There will be a web site to sell them and links from my web site www.KLJamisonLaw.com. It will be useful for instructors and valuable for individuals who want refreshers in light of changes in the law, or you could play the DVD and shoot spit wads at my picture, there’s a market for that too.

I was wandering through the neighborhood library looking for books heavy enough to serve as weapons (the library has “no guns” signs). I found a substantial arsenal. I also found a number of DVD’s on guns and hunting. I did not know that libraries had DVD’s much less ones for my people. When they start loaning out guns, well, that will be nice.

We shall overcome.

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