confusion

Unfortunately I still can’t convince my wife to name our children after long dead kings of biblical era empires. I tried to convince her to name our first child “Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Fertile Crescent” [wikipedia.org] but she didn’t like it. A good thing in the end I guess as it turned out the baby was a girl, and Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Fertile Crescent is a bit odd for a girl. For our second child I was hoping for a less well-known dead king — one “Suppiluliuma, Lord of Anatolia” [wikipedia.org] for a boy or “Gassulawiya, Tawananna of the Hittites” [wikipedia.org]” for a girl. For some reason my wife is less than inclined to let me name the kids.

The shootings in Aurora, Colorado [wikipedia.org] at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie seem, at least from Singapore, to have failed to spark any significant new debate on using ar 15 parts and accessories and gun control in the US. Here in Singapore, on the other hand, it is the first question any non-American asks me about the thing, something that seems to happen every time there is a shooting of any number of people in the US. The Second Amendment [wikipeida.org] is nearly impossible to explain to non-Americans. The issue, for me, is how do you balance the rights guaranteed in The Second Amendment with the need to protect people and the crazy advances in arms technology (Aside: remember the amendment says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is guaranteed but guns are not the only “arms”. Can everyone own nuclear arms? Chemical? Biological?)

How do you balance these things? I think the best suggestion I have come across is somewhere between the “no guns, for anyone, any time” and the “all the guns, for everyone, all the time” camps. The idea is that small magazine, non-automatic guns for hunting should be legal similar to how they are today and that all other guns should be legal under one restriction: that they must be purchased via and permanently stored in the facilities of a licensed gun range. So anyone, with basic checks, probably less invasive than today’s checks, could buy crazy high-powered, ludicrous firing rate bazookas but they would have to purchase the gun through a licensed gun range and it would have to be stored in the licensed facility at all times. There would be various strict regulations about storage of guns and ammo in the facility and regular inspections or audits. But gun owners could visit the range, retrieve and shoot their gun at any time, on the premises. The last bit of this idea is how to move from the current state to this end state? There would need to be some sort of window of time to allow the setup of the regulation system, registration and creation of licensed gun ranges and a major effort to get people to register their guns and house them in a gun range. Anyone found with one of these guns outside the gun range regulation system after the window closes should face very, very severe penalties — like the forfeiture of the right to own any gun from then on. The punishment must be severe to push reluctant people to register their guns during the registration window.

To me, someone who is fully in the “no guns” mindset, but also believes in the art of compromise, this seems a very logical solution. I can’t imagine it would be meet with less than vitriolic derision from the hardcore gun enthusiasts and the NRA but I wouldn’t expect any less in the current religiously polarized political climate in the US.

August 9th is Singapore National day. Combine that with the generally increasing level of xenophobia (xenophobia has gone from a joke to a serious national issue in the time I’ve been here) and a crazy law and you get this:

The reader said, “I was shocked this morning to see among all the flags celebrating our National Day, this British flag hanging out at a condo at 99 Jervois Road.”

He added, “Is the owner of the apartment trying to be funny? If this person is not Singaporean, he or she should show more respect (to Singapore).”

from British flag found displaying at Casa Jervois Condo [tremeritus.com]

The article then goes on to note that it is most likely illegal to display a flag this way; based on a law called the National Emblems (Control of Display) Act [statues.agc.gov.sg]. (interestingly my reading of the statue is that displaying any flag, foreign or Singaporean, would be illegal…).

But the most interesting part of all this are some of the comments on the article. The one that makes the most sense to me:

…If overseas Singaporeans decide to display the Singapore flag to celebrate National Day or to celebrate other national achievements and festivals, I doubt that the citizens of their host countries would complain about the display of the Singapore flag.

Big Yawn [tremeritus.com]

But Big Yawn is the exception, this seems to be more the consensus view:

…displaying their OWN country’s fla[g] is BLATANT disrespect to your host…

I am DAFT so WHAT ! [tremeritus.com]

This is an incomprehensible view to me; given that in America people can, and most certainly do display the flags of their nation of birth, even if they have become US Citizens. Many people even love to display the flags of their parents or grand-parents birth country that they may have never been to, everywhere and anywhere they can, from bumper stickers to cloths. The US is, like Singapore, a nation of immigrants and the US is currently in a deep xenophobic state over the more recent large-scale immigration from central and south america, but no one would arrest a legal immigrant for displaying the flag of his birth nation. We are a nation of Mexican-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, German-Americans, African-Americas and numerous others. You don’t have to forget where you came from to appreciate where you are.