Political Party: Libertarian

Office you are running for: State Senate

State: California

County: Alameda and Santa Clara

District: 10

1) Do you believe that the Second Amendment confirms the individual right of every American citizen to possess and use (update of keep and bear) militia/military weapons for individual self-defense, as well as for the defense of the State / National defense?

As a legal matter, the language of the Second Amendment is ambiguous and the courts have not clearly ruled.

As a political matter, we need constitutional protection (either via a Supreme Court ruling or a new amendment) for the individual right to keep and bear arms appropriate for self-defense. Handguns, rifles, and shotguns are all appropriate for such purposes. Weapons of mass destruction are not. I need to consider each weapon individually, but my rule of thumb is that a weapon that only harms the person it is intended to, and sequentially so, is okay. That is, if you have clear intent to pull the trigger while aiming at a given person, you should have that right of self-defense. Weapons with spillover effects that harm other people should not be available. The police should be similarly limited.

Additionally, there must be an efficacy test applied to the law itself. If a given law restricting some class of gun is justified in theory but fails in practice to actually produce any reduction in crime, the law should be repealed.

4 Points
 

2) If elected would you support legislation for the removal of firearm laws and regulations? If your answer is yes, and if you are elected, what specific legislation would you propose/support to ensure that this individual right is protected?  Which current laws which infringe upon this individual right would you seek to repeal?

The current morass is complicated. See my answer below to question 5 for the direction I want to go. Additionally, I would like to see consistent regulation and not have local jurisdictions creating trip wires for gun owners.

2 Points
 

3) What do you consider are "legitimate" reasons to own a firearm?
    Check as many as apply:
     [ ] Personal Defense
     [ ] Home Defense
     [ ] Defense of your country (Unorganized Militia)
     [ ] Hunting
     [ ] Farm Use
     [ ] Competitive Shooting
     [ ] Informal Sport Shooting
     [ ] Informal Target Practice and/or Plinking
     [ ] Collecting
     [ ] Constitutional Rights
     [ ] Other __________________________________
     [X] All of the above
     [ ] None of the above

10 Points
 

4) Would you support the banning of some firearms or ammunition? (IE: Saturday night specials, "assault weapons", Hollow points, and "Safety Slugs") Why and to what extent?

Discount weapons should be legal. Leaving the poor defenseless makes no sense. Many of the current models being classified as assault weapons should be left legal as simple semi-autos. The line as I would draw it is somewhere slightly above that.

The purpose of guns for self-defense is to stop the bad guy or create credible deterrence of the same, not just to make him mad. The evidence suggests that gun control increases crime by destroying parity and weakening deterrence. Leaving only guns legal that are not adequate will leave us worse off. Therefore, as surely as it is appropriate to permit lethal weapons (e.g. .38’s and not just .22’s) for self-defense it is appropriate to permit bullets adequate to the need. Again, there is some level of destructiveness that is unnecessary to the purpose of self-defense, but hollow points do not reach that threshold. The police themselves want hollow points bullets for public safety. The average gun owner should have them for the same reason.

7 Points

5) Do you believe that firearms and/or firearm owners should be registered? Which ones and why?

No and maybe.

The registration of firearms is a prelude to confiscation. We should not have firearm registration or tracking. Since that is probably impossible politically, I would support as a compromise a system where the records of sale must be kept by the seller but not made available to the police except on presentation of proper warrant. That is, once a crime occurs and a gun is confiscated the trail of custody could be tracked one person at a time.

As for owners, I take car licenses to be a reasonable metaphor. To operate something with inherent risk, you need to show some basic sensibility and some understanding of the law. In the case of firearms, it is appropriate that an owner must be aware of liability standards (for shooting in a crowded area, leaving a loaded gun in reach of a child, etc. things that would have legal remedies, perhaps civil, even in a purely libertarian society). Also, if you prove you are incapable of sensibly handling a gun, revoking the license may be appropriate. This is tricky because the government is currently expanding the category of “felon” to deny guns to people who have a need for them and have not shown any history of reckless or illegal use. If the government continues to abuse that authority, I would have to oppose licensing completely.

Again, such licensing should not be tied to any particular weapon or require the reporting of which, if any, weapons the licensee possesses. There must be no legal lever to permit confiscation.

4 Points
 

6) Do you support equal rights for all citizens of the United States regardless of the person's sexuality / orientation and / or gender identity/statement?

Absolutely, including all of the incidental benefits of marriage (e.g. tax breaks, insurance, medical decisions, default inheritance, immigration, right to sue, spousal immunity, gift tax exemptions) and equal opportunities for parenting, either by binding adoption agreements or equal access to the adoption system.

On “civil rights” (e.g. hiring quotas) the picture is murkier because it is impossible to have equal rights in a program that is inherently about granting favoritism (perhaps justifiably, perhaps not) to one group over another. My policy here is that gays and lesbians should have the same protections as racial minorities, even though I think some of those “protections” are ill conceived.

10 Points
 

7) Which of the following would you be willing to support in regards to same-gender and/or polyamorous marriages and/or civil unions?

    Check as many as apply:
     [ ] Domestic partnerships for same-sex couples
     [ ] Domestic partnerships for opposite-sex couples
     [ ] Domestic partnerships for polyamorous (more than two consenting adults)
     [ ] Same-sex marriages
     [ ] Opposite sex marriages (What we have now)
     [ ] Polyamarous marriages (between more than two consenting adults)
     [X] All of the above. Everyone should have equal rights under the law.
     [X] None of the above. Government has no role in defining a marriage. Leave it to the church.
     [ ]  Other

To the extent politically possible we should privatize the various aspects of marriage, and make the legal tools available to anyone for any reason on an equal access basis (i.e. no preferential defaults) or remove them completely. The law should neither endorse nor discriminate against committed couples (versus singles or open relationships), nor take any similar moral stance. The government simply should not be regulating our private lives, either overtly or indirectly with tax incentives. Private entities could offer any sort of marriage contract they wished.

Where privatization is not possible, we must have strict equality before the law giving gays and lesbians equal access to marriage (and not just civil unions).

10 Points
 

8) Do you support the right for people to act as they wish in a private setting, with other consenting adults?

Yes

10 Points
 

9) In July 2000 the Police Dept. of Attleboro Massachusetts entered a private party without a search warrant. The party was not open to the public or in the business to make a profit. Any donations given were used to pay rent. When the police entered, they arrested two people.  The first person who was arrested organized the event. The second person arrested was
arrested because she spanked her consenting adult partner with a wooden spoon. Do you support the actions of  the Attleboro police as given in this example? Why?

No. Subsumed under #8, consenting adults should be able to do anything they want (that doesn’t impose harm on someone else who is not consenting). Given the facts as stated above (and I am not familiar with the case), the whole case should be dismissed and the police penalized for failing to have a warrant. The “imminent harm” doctrine for allowing police intervention should not constitute grounds for a search and seizure beyond the immediately relevant problem (e.g. the police can ask the partiers to turn the stereo down if it’s blaring at 3AM, but that doesn’t generate grounds for a drug search).

10 Points
 

10) Do you support equal immigration rights for partners of US residents, regardless of their sexuality / orientation and / or gender identity/statement?

Yes

10 Points
 

Do you have an additional statement to make that is not covered by this questionnaire?  Use as much space as you wish.