A: It’s a fair reading, yes.
Q: Why the emphases on the free flow of information?
A: Because what one does will always depend upon what one
knows. It would be more accurate to say “the full and accurate flow of
information.” Can I pick a bone with you on Jeremiah?
Q: Sure.
A: Jeremiah was repetitive because he had a positive genius
for getting quickly to the decisive point and, of course, repeating it, much to
the distress of the hypocritical whitened sepulchers in his audience. Someone –
I think it might have been me – once said that journalism was 20 percent
thought and 80 percent repetition. That is the nature of journalistic reporting
and commentary. Some themes are dearer to you, because they are more important
to you, than others, and so you inflict upon your readers the burden of
repetition. I’d like to try out on you an answer to the second part of your
question.
Q: Okay.
A: Legislators in the General Assembly are now finished with
their gun restriction bills. Remarking on the missing data that should have
driven their efforts, I said in one of the columns, all of which may be found
on a site called “Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State,” that
the bills were premature because the criminal investigation report was not due
to be completed until June, a date that has since been advanced. The General
Assembly produced its bill – a bipartisan measure, we were reminded often
enough by its architects – in the first week of April, about a month before the
criminal investigation report was due to be completed. I think I quoted the
Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carol’s “Through the Looking Glass” in the course of
that blog and column: “First the verdict,” said the imperious Queen, “then the
trial.”
Q: Well yes, but people were impatient to get something
done.
A: And their impatience had been stoked by politicians and
others interested mostly in bum-rushing legislation in advance of the data upon
which that legislation should have rested. Why is that?
Q: You had the families of the 26 victims in Sandy Hook
waiting patiently for legislation that would…
A: … insure that the slaughter at Sandy Hook would not be
repeated. There are so many assurances on this point from state and national
politicians, Democrats mostly, that it would be unnecessarily tedious to repeat
them here. The two U.S. Senators in Connecticut most voluble on this point were
Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy.
Q: Okay.
A: And how can you write such bills if you do not know what
happened at Sandy Hook? To be sure, there were reports in the media, many of
which relied upon heavily edited information from sources that may or may not
have been accurate. Some of the information in the polluted media stream was
partial or inaccurate enough to give credence to absurd conspiracy theories.
Very little of the information could be described as authoritative -- because
much of the information was in the custody of criminal investigators who were
determined to draw about the data an impenetrable iron curtain. Every time you
approached a data master with a question, you were told, “Sorry Bud, that
information is not available because of an ongoing criminal investigation.” To
some commentators, myself among them, the criminal investigation might have
been competed earlier, since the two people who might have been charged
criminally, Adam Lanza and the mother he murdered, were both dead, as were most
of the witnesses to the mass murder. And even if it had not been completed, the
General Assembly was poised to write a bill that would affect every gun owner
in the state. If the General Assembly needs information to write effective
bills, it should be given the information. Finally, as the General Assembly was
on the point of emitting bills, the carefully guarded bucket sprang a leak. A New
York Daily News reporter loosed upon the public some quarantined details that
came to him from a source who had attended a police convention in New Orleans,
after which it was decided to release police arrest warrants – be it noted, a
full month or more before the final criminal report was due.
Q: Which means what?
A: It means that the data in the arrest warrant could have
been release long before to legislators charged with shaping bills. Now, I may
say – without, I hope, drifting into the bog of conspiracy theory – that, as a
general rule, a political sequence occurs because politicians want things to
happen in a certain sequence. Even the data included in the arrest warrant was
by no means complete and definitive. Arrest warrants reveal only what police
are looking for and what they have found at the beginning of an investigation.
The General Assembly should have insisted, right from the get go, that all
information in the custody of investigators pertinent to the bill or bills the
legislators were constructing be made available to the relevant heads of
legislative committees – in camera,
if necessary. That did not happen. Connecticut’s very robust Freedom of
Information [FOI] law means, if it means anything at all, that the only thing
the general public need fear about the release of information is that
information necessary to a well ordered Republic will NOT be released. But what
happened in this instance goes far beyond FOI laws.
Q: You are not saying that people intentionally edited the
data you think necessary so that bills could be constructed as they wished, are
you?
A: Well, I do think there is a well-documented tendency
among politicians to use available laws and processes to advance a preferred
end. That’s politics. If the end they have in view is defective, or if the
process leads ineluctably to an end the consequences of which are destructive,
you must adjust the laws and processes. Politics, at its best, is the
legislative art that conveys us to an end result that increases liberty and justice
for all.
Q: But how much of what happened was purposeful?
A: All of it -- I hope. To suppose otherwise would be to
suppose that our legislators are either stupid or mad. You would have to go to
a different planet to find a convocation of reporters and commentators who did
NOT think that Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans wanted gun
restrictions, whatever the data suggested.
The data trap in Connecticut eased their way. But bad or sequestered data makes
for bad laws. If Republicans in Connecticut were not a bunch of obliging
go-alongs hanging by their torn fingernails to increasingly disappearing
legislative seats, they would insist on bills that break down Berlin Walls
intended to prevent the liberating and free flow of data. But look what happened:
As a result of Sandy Hook, a bill was produced in the General Assembly to
restrict information on death certificates.
Why? Because some legislators wished to spare the stricken parents of young
children murdered in Sandy Hook the resulting publicity that might occur should
FOI laws be rigorously enforced. Really? Death certificates, available for
centuries to the public, contain only general information. The certificate
requires a review of the cause of death by a medical examiner to determine the
presence or absence of foul play indicating that a murder may have been
committed. How can the general public
know that authorities responsible for apprehending and convicting murderers are
doing a proper job if information of this kind is not made available to them? Who
are the political beneficiaries of such a bill? Why, dear me, can’t we say it
plainly? The bill would largely benefit propagandist politicians whose efforts
would be furthered by any restriction that data-traps inconvenient truths and prevents
the free flow of information. You control the messenger – there are still in
Connecticut some alert reporters, a few brave Jonahs who have managed to escape
the maw of Leviathan – by controlling data. Throughout history, the upward
progress of politicians has been paved by the careful editing of information.
In constitutional republics, some subtlety that veils naked political purposes
may be necessary to sell such anti-democratic measures to an increasingly marginalized
public. We cannot wish to further wound stricken victims, can we? How could we
be so heartless? This is how the liberties of free men disappear, not through
honest battles waged on an open field but with a flick of the serpent’s tongue.
Q: Are you satisfied with the final bill signed into law by
Mr. Malloy?
A: No. the legislative product was shamelessly oversold by
demagogues. The passage of the bill here in Connecticut marked the boundary of
overheated rhetoric. Before passage, Connecticut politicians, mostly Democrats
driven by a script that bore the watermark of Washington D.C., were telling us
that the measures they preferred would make school children across the state
safe from the Adam Lanzas of the world. Suffering parents in Sandy Hook, perhaps
traumatized by the slaughter of their children, were used to prop up an
improbable theory: namely, that restrictions imposed on certain weapons –
indeed, the most popular and bestselling long rifle in the United States, the
AR15 – would render schoolchildren safe from attack. Even town administrators
in Newtown spurned that theory when the town fathers voted to appropriate money
to place armed guards in all their schools, including the three private schools
in town [Sandy Hook is a section of Newtown]. They knew from direct experience
that unarmed interveners however brave, could not stop a determined shooter.
The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School stopped when armed first
responders appeared in the school. After the bill in Connecticut had passed,
U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Governor Dannel Malloy took
their show to Washington D.C., where a national gun bill, much more pallid that
the Connecticut version, was up for consideration. Here at home, legislators
who had championed “the toughest gun laws in the nation,”
perhaps with a cautious eye focused on reality, began a tactical retreat from
their overblown rhetoric: True, the bill wasn’t perfect, but we should never
allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Vice President Joe Biden said
at one point that if national gun legislation saved but one life, it would be
worth it, which is simply another way of saying that Mr. Biden regards human
life as precious. Well, of course he does. All the old canards were trotted out
and dangled before an aroused but doubtful public. A rhetorical mountain had
been made of a mole hill, and now politicians were concerned with reducing
their overinflated mountain of promises so that, when lives once again were
lost in what should properly be regarded for purposes of punishment as a
terrorist act, politicians who had overpromised in their legislation would not
be held to account. Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy both come from a state that
had recently abolished a death penalty following a horrific multiple murder in
Cheshire committed by two newly released prisoners on parole. Their crime was
spectacularly heinous. They broke into a house, beat the male householder with
a bat, tied him up in the basement, assaulted three women in the house
upstairs, forced a mother to go to a bank and withdraw money, raped two
daughters and set fire to the house, killing all the women. That incident
sparked massive purchases of guns in Connecticut -- most especially in rural
areas, where the response time from police is necessarily longer. Now, if Adam
Lanza had survived his attack on Sandy Hook Elementary school, he could not
have been executed in Connecticut for having murdered his mother, 20 children
and 6 brave faculty members of the school because, largely owing to politicians
like Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy, the state, for humane reasons, had deprived
itself of a punishment tool. Had Mr. Lanza survived, the political play we are
now witnessing would not be the same. We have to begin to focus on the criminal
misuse of weapons. In the week prior to passage of the gun restriction law in
Connecticut, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell noted in one of his columns,
there were three handgun murders in Hartford alone. “Some of the shots fired
there,” Mr. Powell wrote, “may have been audible from the Capitol grounds, at
least with those with ears to hear. No one in authority seems to know what to
do about such murders, and over the course of a year, such murders in Connecticut’s
disintegrating cities will be far more numerous than the murders in Newtown,
but nobody has to know or even pretend
to know because that part of Connecticut – the part where mayhem is ordinary
and daily, not a freak event such as Newtown – can be written off politically.
Murder victims in the cities long ago ceased being cute.” Unfortunately, not as
many people are like to have read Mr. Powell’s column as those who read Mr.
Murphy’s maiden speech in the U.S. Senate on gun violence in the course of
which Mr. Murphy pointed out, quite correctly, that guns in the hands of
criminals are more lethal than knives. He might have done better had he read
Mr. Powell’s column into the legislative record.
Q: In an interview following passage of the gun restriction
bill, Senator Dick Blumenthal doubted that the bill would drive gun
manufacturers out of the state. He was quoted by the Business Insider as having said, "Gun manufacturers are like other
businesses in looking for the highest quality workforce, the best business
environment in terms of transportation and taxes and other features unrelated
to any regulatory action. Their markets are national. What happens in
Connecticut affects only purchases here."
A: Mr. Blumenthal
was warned, both before and after passage of the bill, that some manufacturers
in his state – called “the constitution state” because Connecticut operated
under the New World’s first constitution, the so call “Fundamental Orders,” and
the “Provision State” because, since the American Revolution onwards,
Connecticut had provided war material and provisions to the federal government
– had their eyes cocked on the exit signs. Gun manufacturers were treated
shamelessly by the state. Their input on a bill chiefly affecting their
business was spurned by a Democratic controlled General Assembly that wanted to
add restrictions to gun laws already considered among the strongest in the
nation. It was politically convenient for Democrats, as well as the Republicans
who joined them in supporting the final product, to come down on the side of
gun restrictions. When in doubt, put the gun on public trial. Mr. Blumenthal was
wrong. In mid-June, the rumbustious Governor of Texas Rick Perry visited the
state, hoping to convince gun manufacturers, among other businesses, to move to
no tax regulatory light Texas. But it was South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who scooped up PTR, a
Bristol-based semi-automatic weapons manufacturer. Most of the younger machinists who work for PTR
will relocate to South Carolina, a shattering disappointment no doubt to Mr.
Blumenthal. Gun manufacturers in the state had been able to submit gun designs
to the state police for approval prior to the manufacture of a specific model.
After the gun restriction bill had been passed, this business friendly process
was rescinded: In the future, gun manufacturers must produce their product and then,
AFTER PRODUCTION, the state police will declare the weapon legal or illegal.
This is a forthright invitation to gun manufacturers to quit the state. If Mr.
Blumenthal does not know this, he should not be serving in the greatest
deliberative body in the modern world. Connecticut’s state police will
themselves be burdened with the task of enforcing the new sometimes confusing regulations.
Even before the bill had been passed, there was a backlog of gun permit cases
waiting approval. Enforcement of gun regulations – assuming the new law was not
intended merely as a campaign ploy – is labor intensive. It is not certain at
this point that the same General Assembly that added the new labor processes
will also finance the increased regulation by hiring new state troopers to oversee
the execution of the terms of the bill, and state troopers who will in the
future be expending their efforts to regulate non-criminal gun owners will have
less time to chase down criminals who use weapons purchased on the black
market.
Q: At the end of
June, some of Adam Lanza’s medical reports and school records fell into the
hands of reporters at the Hartford Courant. The documents, which include a
medical summary of a visit by Lanza and his mother to Danbury Hospital, “span
Lanza’s life from birth to age 18,” according to the exclusive report.
A: … exclusive
because no one but the Courant – including the legislators who wrote the gun
regulation bill – had the advantage of considering the information in the acquired
reports.
Q: And that troubles
you?
A: Of course it
does. Listen, everybody who pushed that
bill did so because – as numerous political actors said, numerous times – they wished to
prevent such mass murders as had occurred at Sandy Hook. Writing such a
bill without knowing the medical history of Lanza is comparable to writing a
history of the Elizabethan age in England without once mentioning Queen
Elizabeth. The information provided by the Courant suggests that Adam Lanza had
few problems in school, was not bullied and was not separated out from other
pupils for special classes. The paper said it was in receipt of medical
information that covered a period in Lanza life from age 8 to 18. Nothing in
the information it acquired suggests he was taking psychotropic drugs and, apart from a
sensory problem, his performance in school was more than adequate. The
legislation produced by the General Assembly was driven by the supposition that Lanza
was mentally defective. That may not be true. No information necessary to the
creation of legislation should be withheld FOR ANY REASON from legislators
creating a bill that advances the public good. This means that exceptions must
be made in, say, HIPAA regulations -- or any regulations and procedures that
prevent the free flow of information to legislators creating bills such as the
gun restriction measure passed by Connecticut’s General Assembly. Legislative
committees can receive and consider information in camera. Connecticut’s General Assembly needed information from a
much delayed criminal investigation report and health records to write a comprehensive
bill that would fulfill the stated intent of those leaders in the General
Assembly who were pushing for a quick response to the mass murder of school
children in Sandy Hook – and that information should have been made available
to appropriate committees in the General Assembly before the bill was
finalized. The final bill should have been subjected to a public hearing. It
was smuggled through the legislature by means of a questionable emergency
certification process, which was blasted by the Connecticut Law Tribune, among others. Gun manufacturers should have
been used as a proper resource in the construction of the final bill. Breast
beating politicians in the state should have been far more modest in their
ambitions. Recently – one supposes through fatigue – Newtown’s First Selectman Patricia Llodra publically called for an end to outside intervention in her
town: “the Town will
respectfully decline any further special events not currently scheduled by the
Town or currently being planned for July/August … We are hopeful that everyone
understands the need for us to move into a quieter period.” People in Newtown – harried by reporters,
hustled to Washington D.C. by Connecticut’s Congressional Delegation to promote
national gun restriction legislation that Majority Leader of the Senate Harry
Reid twice failed to deliver, still wracked with private sorrows – should be
afforded a private space in which time and silent prayer may help to close
their open wounds. She is right.
Comments
I can't think of any other reason to delay the report except that it will point to some government failure which would overshadow the desired gun control agenda