Guns, The Constitution and Tyranny of the Strong

Comments by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, claiming that militia members “had better equipment than our State Police”—and that their weapons prevented law enforcement from imposing order and protecting peaceful protesters, go to the heart of why Second Amendment proponents arguing gun rights in the name of liberty miss the danger of their argument. 

It's been said countless times that total freedom leads to anarchy, and anarchy leads to tyranny of the strong. We saw that principle at work in Charlottesville last week, where there was no law, only anger and emotion, rendered unstoppable because many involved were invoking their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms - and someone died because of the lawlessness that ensued. I fear we've not seen the last of such episodes. 

Sadly, too many view the lamentation of the Virginia governor as precisely how the Second Amendment is meant to work, as a protection against an overbearing government. That government forces were outmatched in armaments is viewed as a good thing. 

It is not. Our forefathers wisely stated that a well-regulated militia is necessary to secure a free state. They did not state that a well-armed, unruly mob is necessary to secure a free state. Every loosening of limits on guns increases the odds that events like that which took place in Charlottesville will become armed conflict. It may be those on the right who are most adamant about the Second Amendment guaranteeing unfettered access to firearms, but that right is not exclusive to them. It extends to all. We should not be surprised, therefore, when members of an undefined, anarchic group like Antifa exercises their Constitutionally protected right to arm themselves in anticipation of their next confrontation with the hate groups of Charlottesville. What transpires then will not be classified as terrorism, but civil war. 

God help us then.

The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword

I've long believed the First Amendment precedes the Second for a reason (beyond numeracy), namely that our founding fathers knew that the pen is mightier than the sword. More importantly, they understood that without principles of liberty in the First Amendment to defend, the guns protected in the Second Amendment defend nothing. 

Our current obsession with gun rights reminds me of the joke I've shared before about the construction worker who left work every day with a wheelbarrow filled with sawdust. Every day his foreman would search the sawdust for pilfered materials, but found nothing. After years of this, the worker arrived one day driving a new Mercedes. The foreman shouted, "I know you were stealing something! What was it?"

The worker replied, "A wheelbarrow a day." 

I often think the folks obsessed with the Second Amendment are unwittingly leading to a similar sleight of hand, wherein the First Amendment liberties we take for granted are being pilfered while we laser focus on protecting our right to keep and bear arms, A misguided focus, to be sure.

Thank You, Senator McCain

 It’s rare that Senate votes carry the same tension as a March Madness game that goes down to the wire, but that is what happened when Senator John McCain courageously broke with his party to give a final thumbs down to the GOP’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. But unlike March Madness, where joy and disappointment are split between winners and losers, we should all breathe a sigh of relief that the attempt to repeal failed for several reasons.

The first is that this was not the Repeal and Replace that President Trump promised throughout his campaign. Instead, it was simply the first half of that promise - the easy half - which would have wreaked havoc on those who have come to depend upon the marketplace options offered through the ACA. Without a replacement, the market would have quickly reverted to the pre-ACA reality where those with pre-existing conditions would have been forced into high-risk pools, which carry far higher premiums that often price such folks out of the market. 

Furthermore, elimination of the individual mandate would have induced many healthy folks to forego insurance altogether. Without their premiums, the rates for those remaining were sure to rise. That is because premiums are priced based upon the total amount anticipated to be needed to pay expected claims. If healthy people drop out, there is obviously less revenue from premiums to pay claims, but since it is healthy people most likely to drop out, the cost of paying the claims of those remaining remains nearly, though not entirely, the same, leading to a shortfall that must be made up by charging higher premiums for those remaining.

This leads to what is known as the premium death spiral, where higher premiums force people who can’t afford them out of the market, leaving even fewer premiums to cover the cost of those remaining, forcing premiums even higher. It becomes a vicious cycle that leaves only the sickest (one hopes, for their sake) or the most well-off who are willing and able to pay such premiums covered (note that employer group health plans operate outside this specific market dynamic, a discussion for another time).

As it is, the Congressional Budget Office projected that as many as 17 million Americans would lose or forego coverage in the first year of repeal alone, with that number nearly doubling to 32 million by 2026.

Now, an argument can be made that it is unfair that healthy people should be forced to subsidize the premiums of those with serious health issues, but in a sense, that is what insurance is all about - the pooling of risk, where all pay in to protect against the unexpected. And while one may be healthy today, there is no guarantee that will remain true tomorrow. An auto accident or unexpected illness may arise at any time. In fact, that very thing happened to an uninsured family member of ours, who was seriously injured in a car crash while in his twenties, requiring air care and more than a week in the ICU. He ended up paying less than 10% of his total charges, the balance of which were covered implicitly in the future healthcare costs the rest of us paid. The individual mandate exists to ensure there are no such free rides, which is what one is getting when they play this game of health insurance roulette.

It should be noted that even F.A. Hayek, the grandfather of free-market economics, wrote in support of government-organized health insurance in his ground-breaking work, The Road to Serfdom. Providing the type of coverage available via the ACA, which isn’t even government health insurance, is hardly anathema to our free market system, which still largely relies upon private health insurers.

If anyone is to blame for the failure of this measure, a strong argument can be made that it is Donald Trump, who consistently promised a better plan but never produced one, leaving us to debate whether his was really better or simply nonexistent (I lean towards the latter). It was the lack of that replacement that Senator McCain cited when explaining his vote. So, while many in the GOP are calling John McCain a traitor, those same folks may want to look up Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol Building towards the White House, in seeking a culprit to blame. Meanwhile, the rest of us - and especially those who have come to rely on the ACA to protect themselves and their families - should say a little prayer of thanks that John McCain, suffering from a terminal illness himself, found both the courage and the empathy to act in the best interest of those who need it most.