Malloy, Gun Manufacturers And The Public Good

Guns are highly regulated in Connecticut, which means that gun manufacturers must satisfy two kinds of clients: those who buy guns and state regulators.

Before Connecticut passed its latest gun regulations, it was possible for gun manufacturers in the state to submit to the State Police finished prototypes for products so that the manufacturer could receive a nod of consent before the company invested money in producing the product.

The arrangement was a happy one for manufacturers, the General Assembly and Connecticut’s governors. Governors and state legislators charged with protecting the public – presumably from criminals rather than law abiding owners of guns -- were given a veto over products before they appeared in the marketplace; manufacturers were assured before production that their product either was or was not legally compliant; and because many regulations and laws are necessarily ambiguous and opened to reasonable interpretation, lawyers with tiger’s teeth, ever on the prowl for deep pocket industrialists who run afoul of the law, were kept at bay. Everyone was happy with the arrangement.

A worm has now crept into Eden’s apple.

“I was told to get a lawyer, figure it out and if I’m wrong I’m going to have to deal with it,” Stag Arms owner and President Mark Malkowski confided to a reporter. “It’s my responsibility to interpret…I was told we were no longer allowed to bring prototypes in.”

Over at the Hartford Courant, a left of center paper, business reporter Dan Haar –not a member in good standing, one supposes, of the local branch of the Tea Party movement – lodged a reasonable objection:

“That means Stag, and any other manufacturer seeking to design a rifle within the rules, and any retailer who offers that product in Connecticut, must take a risk when it comes to figuring out a regulation — a high risk, since selling assault weapons could be viewed as a crime.

“It seems reasonable to ask a law enforcement agency to tell citizens what is and is not legal. We expect that of town building departments, tax authorities and countless other local, state and federal offices.”

Mr. Haar wonders whether the new policy might have drifted down to the state police  from the Malloy administration “since it’s no secret that Malloy and many legislators are in a running tiff with the gunmakers, and some resented Stag’s efforts to design a new AR-15,” so that the new design might conform to new legislative strictures.

The inevitable consequence of the new procedure will be to drive cost conscious gun manufacturers in Connecticut, already skittish and eyeing exit signs, away from Connecticut into the arms of such business poachers as Texas Governor Rick Perry. One manufacturer, PTR, already has pulled up roots and moved to South Carolina.

Now then, the operative rule in any politics worthy of the name is that things happen in a certain way because politicians WANT things to happen in a certain way. In states like Connecticut in which a single party is dominant and political resistance is not a practical option, the path to political success is made straight by the use of power rather than persuasion. In such a regime, every effective bar to political force – the resistance of an opposing party, the opposition of a critical media, constitutional prescriptions, the consent of the governed, the opposition of an informed and aroused citizenry -- is dangerously lowered to facilitate the refashioning of the state in the mode of a permanent political oligarchy based on ideological presumptions rather than class or wealth. Such political reinventions are rolling stones that eventually flatten what Edmond Burke called in his “Reflections on the French Revolution” the indispensable platoons of democracy:

“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.”

Under such a reinvented system, ambitious and arrogant ideological oligarchs are permitted a free hand to reshape states according to their own ideological preferences. The mark of the true ideologue is his disposition to reinvent the multifaceted social wheel, the intricate and self-reinforcing substructures of a society that promotes prosperity and democracy.

At some point, citizens of Connecticut may find it necessary to reject a paternalistic government that subtly subverts such platoons of democracy as a viable two party system, constitutional prescriptions that advance the liberties of the governed rather than the liberties of politicians, independent legislatures and judicial departments, a tripartite system of governance in which the centralization of all governing authority is tempered by a necessary deference of government to a rule that maximizes individual liberties, free churches, strong family units, the upward mobility of an economic system made possible by the creative choices of a moderately and fairly regulated free enterprise system.

If “government is force” – as George Washington said – it must be used sparingly to support the public good, which often is inversely related to the “good of politicians” disposed to use force for the advancement of their own narrow political ambitions.

The Democratic Partisan Backroom

Begin with the assumption, common among most journalists, that the principal purpose of the media is to provide people with the data necessary to form right political judgments, a theme that runs like a hot wire though most classic defenses of freedom of the press, including John Milton’s Areopagetica, a speech addressed by Milton to the English parliament subtitled “For the Liberty of UNLICENC'D PRINTING,
To the PARLAMENT of ENGLAND.”

“This is true Liberty when free born men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise,
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a State than this?”

Milton’s speech was ignored by the parliament of his day but later made its way through the schools as a classic defense of free speech rights. It may still be taught in journalism classes; but if not, inquiring minds may pick it up on the internet.

What we might call the letter and spirit of the Areopagetica, one of the first and most vigorous defenses of free speech in the English speaking world, is often frustrated by political regimes for obvious reasons. The operative principle of most governing authorities – Yes, Virginia, even in the case of democracies – is this: That government governs best that governs in secret. All governments TEND towards secrecy. There are corollaries to this general tendency: In a democracy in which a free press has not been wholly co-opted by the governing authority, secrecy can only prosper with the willing acquiescence of journalists.

The governing authority in a democracy prefers to conduct its business in private back rooms because governing in the open is extremely difficult. Authoritarian democrats want to give the public an opportunity to ratify their decisions, but the public must be denied input while deliberations are in process. The United States, after all, is not a pure democracy but a republic, and it is the duty of every republican, as Edmund Burke once said, to exercise while in office one’s informed representative judgment.

In his “Speech to the Electors at Bristol, Burke said:

“Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

The judgments made by republican legislators, Burke goes on to declare, cannot be a mere matter of will and inclination, and he warned specifically against what we might call the “politics of interests.”

Parliamentarians and congressmen are not “ambassadors from different and hostile interests” but “parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.”

Connecticut’s final gun bill, the most restrictive in the nation, was not exposed to a public hearing before passage; Republicans consistently have been barred from budget deliberations; the independence of various watchdog commissions has been compromised; and – this is but a partial listing – the oversight responsibilities of the Freedom of Information Commission could only be diminished by proposed legislation  that removes from the purview of the FOI law information that for decades has been available for public inspection. Windows are closed, doors are slammed shut. These are the marks of a state that, fearful of the public notice, is steadily drifting towards a ruinous paternalistic solicitude, the enemy of democratic self-sufficiency. 

Temperamentally at least, most journalists are opposed to the iron curtain many politicians cannot resist drawing down upon their deliberations – especially when journalists sense that congress itself has become an ideological assembly devoted to the interest of self-maintenance, a prospect much more likely in a one party state. Connecticut is tending towards a one party state, and in the unitary state, the broad and general good of the people is the first sacrifice to the interests of the ruling party.