Freedom means…

While doing my weekly cleaning this morning I listened to two episodes of Radiolab’s series More Perfect. This is from the second season of the series of stories of important Supreme Court cases.

The first case, described in a 21 minute episode, is one currently before the Supremes. The title is “Who’s Gerry and Why Is He So Bad at Drawing Maps?” Yes, the subject is gerrymandering, something I’m quite involved with at the moment with the campaign to end the practice in Michigan. The particular case before the Supremes is Gill v. Whitford and is about gerrymandering in Wisconsin.

In a previous case Vieth v. Jubelirer in 2004 the justices said gerrymandering is really bad, but we have no way to measure whether it actually happens. Yeah, that was Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote. The current case now comes with a mathematical formula called the efficiency gap. I describe it here.

The episode also mentions another measuring tool that will please my mathematical friend and debate partner. Computers, using Big Data, construct a huge number of possible maps. The maps are rated across a bell curve continuum. The map being reviewed by the courts is also placed on this continuum to see if it is near the center (and thus represents the overall population) or towards the edges (and thus discriminatory). In a 20 minute program they don’t get into how the maps are constructed or rated. One of the related links may have more details.

Along the way they discuss the “earmuff” district in Illinois. Two separate Latino neighborhoods near (maybe in) Chicago are joined into one district. This allows them to have a strong influence on one representative which they wouldn’t have if the two neighborhoods were in two districts. This is a good use of weird shaped districts.

On to the second episode, “The Gun Show.” For about 130 years the Second Amendment was rarely mentioned in any federal court documents. Cases related to gun ownership simply didn’t happen. Now it is one of the most talked about amendments, one that divides the nation, and one that some people say makes all the others possible. The 72 minute episode tells the story in 3 chapters.

In chapter 1 we hear about Bobby Seale who helped found the Black Panthers in 1966. They were fed up with police violence in Oakland, CA. Their solution was to obviously arm themselves and observe the police. Seale recounts one incident where police stopped a black person and the Panthers lined up on the other side of the street and watched. This freaked out the police who wanted to confiscate their guns – black men aren’t supposed to have guns. Another scene was at the California Capitol and featured Ronald Reagan, then Governor. Laws were quickly passed to disarm the populace. Yes, this is very much about racism.

Chapter 2: But that upset white gun owners. And we hear about the National Rifle Association, who for a hundred years (started in the 1870s) were very much non-political. Their mission was gun safety and helping young men be comfortable around guns so they knew how to use them when the next war came around. We hear about the NRA meeting in the mid 1970s where one faction, who very much wanted to be political, overthrew the existing leadership, creating the NRA we know today.

The third chapter is about the 2008 Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, the case that proclaimed that gun ownership is an individual right, though there are cases where it is appropriate for a society to refuse to let certain people (such as convicted criminals) own guns. The NRA trumpets the first half of the ruling and ignores the second.

The program lets plaintiff Dick Heller speak. I was reminded of a couple things I hear a lot from him and his brethren.

* Freedom means the government cannot restrict what Heller can do, very much including his right to discriminate against other people. Freedom means the ability to enforce his ranking over others.

* Freedom is not for these people wishing to live without discrimination and oppression.