Day: July 2, 2001

Somehow I missed this, but Michigan’s concealed carry weapons law went into effect on Sunday, July 1. The law was passed months ago but a group had collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot in the Fall which would have suspended the bill from going into effect.

But on Friday the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the law was exempt from the referendum process (with reasoning which frankly made little sense) and so the law went into effect. People can begin apply for CCW permits today.

Before the new law, people could apply for a concealed weapons permit, but in all but one county you had to demonstrate a “need” for the permit. This effectively meant that unless you had political connections or were somebody important, you could forget about obtaining a permit.

The exception was Macomb county which four years ago began issuing CCW permits to almost all applicants who hadn’t been convicted of felonies and who didn’t have a history of mental illness. Macomb did occasionally weed out people its gun board thought weren’t mature enough to have a concealed weapon permit, but very rarely.

The bottom line results were amazing. Crime has been dropping quickly in Michigan just as it has around the country, but the crime rate in Macomb county dropped three times as fast as the rest of the state. This is very much in line with what John Lott outlines in his study of concealed carry laws, More Guns, Less Crime — crime has been dropping nationwide, buy it has dropped much further and faster in counties where concealed carry laws were liberalized.

Another annoying web design “error” that I still see a lot is where you have to click through three or four pages to accomplish a task that could easily be done with one page. Today’s offender is The Nation.

If you visit the main page, you’ll notice a little “Subscribe” link under their masthead. You would be incorrect, however, to assume that this will take you to a page where you can subscribe to the site. Instead it takes the viewer to a page explaining why the reader should subscribe. Natalie Merchant and Molly Ivins love The Nation, and so presumably will you too.

But at least there are links at the top and bottom saying, “Click here to subscribe now!” So, now we’re in business. Not quite. Rather than taking the viewer to the subscription page, now we see a completely map of the world where we’re asked to choose what part of the globe we’re from.

Finally, we’re staring at an order form. Why not just link the “Subscribe” link on the front page to this last page and put the “This form is for U.S. Residents only. Residents of Canada can click here to order, and all others can click here” in bold (or better yet, redesign the form so users pick their country as well).

I have a hard time taking technology commentary seriously from someone like David Coursey who actually claims that the coming fight over DVD standards is like VHS vs. Beta all over again, adding that, “After all, Betamax was the better format, but it still lost.”

This immediately suggests to me that Coursey has no clue about what counts as a “better format” for a consumer device.

Coursey goes on to make a number of other blunders such as claiming that, “Microsoft has said it will support FireWire but not USB 2.0, so until Microsoft changes its mind, I’ll be in the FireWire camp.” FireWire is clearly superior to USB 2.0, but all that Microsoft has said is that it likely won’t ship USB 2.0 drivers with Windows XP (largely because of foot dragging by the companies behind USB 2.0).

Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Washington) recently introduced a bill that would increase the potential sentences of environmentalist and animal rights extremists who engage in acts of violence, explicitly add such acts of terror to those punishable under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and provide funding for a national clearing house for law enforcement to track animal rights extremists. Of course animal rights activists who support such acts of terrorism, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘ Bruce Friedrich are expressing their outrage over the bill.

Demonstrating the sharply honed thinking that can be found in most PETA campaigns, Friedrich actually told United Press International,

To compare animal rights activists to terrorists like Tim McVeigh is scare mongering. Perhaps the most disturbing part is that the federal government would collect information on suspects, which denies the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Furthermore, threats, intimidation and property damage are already illegal so there is no need for it.

I’m not sure which fantasy world Friedrich is living in at the moment, but generally in order to catch crooks, police and government agencies have to collect information about suspects. And if it is absurd to compare activists to McVeigh, why was Friedrich widely reported comparing the Oklahoma City bomber to Gandhi and others for not selecting meat for his last meal? And lets not forget that Friedrich himself has written that burning down a research lab or trashing a McDonald’s is completely consistent with the philosophy of strategic nonviolence as outlined by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

In an extreme absurdity Friedrich compares this bill to McCarthyism saying, “The next thing you know they’ll be calling in artists, actors and anyone else they can think of to ask them, ‘are you now or have you ever been a vegetarian?'” But Friedrich seems to have things mixed up here, as it is the animal rights movement that has targeted its opponents for violence. You don’t see gangs of researchers running around burning down the homes of animal rights activists or targeting vegetarian business for violence.

Source:

Critics say eco-terrorism bill unwarranted. Kelly Hearn, United Press International, June 14, 2001.