Odds and Ends

When I was in Massachusetts I had extensive dealings with the Department of Public Health, and I even had a friend who worked at the state lab, at that time at least a division of DPH. They did things like test bats for rabies, test mosquitoes for arthropod borne viruses, do blood lead tests and all that sort of thing. What I didn't know, and I think my friend was barely aware of it either, was that the lab also had the responsibility of testing samples of substances taken from people arrested for illicit drugs. 

 

It turns out that  one of the chemists, named Annie Dookhan, wasn't even bothering to test the samples, she'd just declare them positive and go testify. Apparently she thought it was her job to help the police out. When she got caught, among other massive repercussions was the the Commissioner of Public Health, an energetic and progressive leader, got canned. I think he also was at most vaguely aware that the state lab had this responsibility and he certainly didn't pay attention to it, but the captain goes down with the ship. Anyway,, between that and another chemist who was apparently stealing the drugs, 30,000 people had their convictions vacated. (yes, 30,000) and now the state has agreed to reimburse them for their legal expenses.  The fact is, of course, that most of them undoubtedly really did have illicit drugs but this is still good news because possession and even sale of small amounts of "drugs" should not be a crime in the first place. More and more states are coming around to this view and in fact I'll be evaluator for a pre-trial diversion program in my state, in which people can have their arrest records expunged if they agree to services. It's all good.

On another matter, I've discussed this here many times, but the Second Amendment absolutely was not intended to confer an individual right to own and bear firearms. That's obviously not what it says, if you read the whole thing. The amendment was a compromise with anti-federalists who were afraid of a federal standing army and it protects the institution of the state militia, which is now the National Guard. Nobody thought otherwise until the 1970s (and nobody particularly cared either).

 

Finally, we're starting to hear this weird claim that AR-15 style rifles are not actually "weapons of war." Of course they are! That was the only reason they were developed in the first place, to sell to the U.S. military as a standard infantry rifle to replace the M-4. The only difference is that the civilian version does not have a fully automatic setting, but in fact the army advises to use semi-automatic whenever possible, because you can shoot more accurately and its more effective. The linked article discusses how the military version, the M-16, did not function well in Vietnam because of quality control problems. (This article doesn't mention that at that time it also used a different ammunition than the original design which caused a lot of the problems.) 

These weapons are designed for one purpose only, and that is to kill Homo sapiens. The combination of very high muzzle velocity and a light, .223 caliber bullet does the job, because perhaps counterintuitively, the lighter bullet tumbles when it hits flesh and blows big holes in people, whereas heavier bullets go right through with much less damage. They actually account for a small share of gun violence in the U.S., but I would say they are culturally obnoxious. They're no good for hunting, by the way. My view is that there is no reason for civilians to own any form of semi-automatic weapon, but I'll take what I can get.