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January 1, 1970 (Vol. , No. )
Zachary N. N. Russ Bioengineering graduate student UC Berkeley
When you hear a politician talking about renewable energy and how it will remove dependence on foreign oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs, and reduce gas prices, what do you imagine? Do you think of the standard icons: gleaming solar panels, massive concrete dams, and wind turbines? Only biofuels can keep planes in the sky, and only organisms can efficiently make oils and polymers to supplant petroleum—so much for that foreign oil.
Nature remains a formidable carbon-fixer and biofuels require lots of localized refineries so biomass doesn't have to travel far for conversion—so greenhouse gases would be sustainably controlled, and local jobs would appear. Biofuels are the Girl Scout cookies of public policy—something everyone can agree on, with at least one flavor they can tolerate.
The federal government has been pumping extensive funding into biofuels research—from subsidies for cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel to Department of Energy grants, loans, and projects. The DOE spent some $391 million on biomass/biorefinery R&D in 2011 alone—that doesn't include subsidies on cellulosic ethanol, loan guarantees, purchasing by the Navy, and mandates to use 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2022 (of which 21 billion gallons must be advanced biofuels—derived from something other than corn).
The combination of public interest, rising oil prices, and subsidized R&D has supported the creation of several new companies focused on producing advanced biofuels. Unfortunately for them, commodity markets are unforgiving. If your product is fungible and easy to transport and store, then you absolutely, positively must win on price.
So, when producing biofuels, production yield, titers, and rates are everything. The more product you can make per unit of sugar, in higher concentrations, with shorter incubation times, the better. It doesn't help that many of these startups are using the same feedstocks as their corn and cane ethanol competitors, forcing them to compete with more established firms for raw materials as well as business. But they can always use partnerships with larger companies to account for that, leaving just one critical problem…
It Doesn't Scale!
With new technologies such as novel hybrid strains or different biochemical pathways the results in the lab bench can be very deceptive. The move from a 1 liter desktop fermenter to a 1,000 liter tank to a 100,000 liter plant usually entails several unforeseen difficulties—differences in pressure, mixing, heat dissipation, and plumbing abound.
While you can try to design for these contingencies, scale-up disappointments are a natural part of experimental chemistry—thankfully, no scale-up problems like the Oppau explosion (where small fragments of a stored ammonium nitrate block were safely broken with dynamite charges, but, when applied to the bigger chunk, some 80% of the town was obliterated).
Several biofuel companies have suffered from technical and financial scale-up troubles. Range Fuels went bankrupt trying to fix its process problems, KiOR is still getting loans to pay for its production facility, and Amyris (farnesene diesel) saw its stock price plummet after it had to drop its farnesene-production estimates. Companies such as Gevo also scaled back their technological expectations, focusing less on the use of cellulosic sources (grasses, etc.) and more on producing specialty fuels with common sugary feedstocks and retrofitted ethanol plants.
For Amyris, LS9 (diesel/jet fuel), Codexis (ethanol), and other synthetic biology-based biofuel companies, putting off the scale-up makes sense. Alternative products are where their platforms can truly shine: engineered organisms (or their enzyme products) are excellent at green chemistry and manufacture of commodity and specialty chemicals such as biodegradable plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and flavors/fragrances. Though the market value may be much smaller, so is the competition and the volume of product demanded.
Amyris is already partnered with the two largest flavors-and-fragrances companies, Givaudan and Firmenich, and is simultaneously producing the cosmetic base squalane. Solazyme (one of the many biofuel companies in jet fuels), Amyris, ZeaChem (cellulosic ethanol), and LS9 have all individually partnered with Procter & Gamble to produce commodity chemicals. Solazyme also has partnerships to sell both algae-derived skin-protecting cosmetics and nutritional products.
Codexis avoids direct contact with the fuels market, instead opting to design enzymes and license its technology to a Shell/Cosan partnership, while it's also working on intermediates and processes for pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Merck & Co., and Teva. This strategy has served Codexis well, keeping its revenue around $123.9 million (of which $49 million is products and $71.4 million is partnerships)—just a few million shy of breaking even.
Staying afloat during the long path to scaled-up production is tough, and these biorefineries can hardly afford to miss an opportunity to capitalize on their development along the way. Getting out of a titer bind is a little easier if you've left some financial room to maneuver
Curious about biorefinery programs? Check here (but note that opening refineries in Brazil is really popular).


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"We've optimized the team for extremely fast response time, so that the customer knows we're here for them when they need us, and quickly. "We lean on macros and text expanders to help make us more efficient, but we think about them more as a base for agents to build a response from that is human and not automatic."
- Morgan Wood
Head of Customer Happiness - GoFundMe
$5+ Billion
Campaign Funds Raised
Average Volume/Month
Average CSAT
Hurricanes at home and earthquakes abroad. Major illness, a friend or mentor who's passed on and deserves a worthy memorial. Events like these can be among life's most challenging. In such times, family and strangers alike tend to have the same question: How can I help?
Since 2010, GoFundMe has offered an answer, impacting 40 million people in 19 countries. All those helpful souls are not just reacting to tragedies, though. GoFundMe's customers also raise funds for school projects and to support acts of love and generosity—like fabric for the 95-year-old grandmother who sews blankets for rural health clinics in Kenya. There are also projects that reward quiet heroes like Goldin, founder of Get Focused, offering a literacy and fitness program in which kids can earn books through exercise.
For those raising funds, GoFundMe is simple to use: Create a campaign, share it, and accept donations. On the flip side, setting up shop in the online-fundraising space is also pretty simple, since all that's needed is a website, the right developer, and a suite of payment-related tools. That relatively low barrier to entry has been central to GoFundMe's five-year relationship with Zendesk. With the crowdfunding space so… crowded… how does a company differentiate itself?
GoFundMe knew that one way had to be to be through customer service. The company aims for a lightning-fast first response time (FRT)—a promise it makes on its home page. After all, explained Morgan Wood, head of customer happiness at GoFundMe, there's a good chance that you're somehow in a time of need if you're using GoFundMe. "We know you might be going through a very difficult time, and the last thing you need is to be waiting for a response from somebody," he said. "You want your problem or your question answered as fast as possible—in a human way."
That was unlikely to happen when the company was using Gmail for support. "Support was kind of rogue," said Wood of the early days. The Customer Happiness team moved to UserVoice, but found that it lacked sufficiently granular insights and the team was unsure that the tool could support their ambitious FRT goal, particularly during periods of rapid scale. As they looked for a replacement, they felt confident that Zendesk Support could meet their needs in terms of response time and scale. That the product also allowed for customization helped seal the decision.
GoFundMe offers 24/7 support every day of the year from the company's offices in San Diego, California and Dublin, Ireland. Between the two locales, Happiness agents are always available and provide support in six languages through email, Facebook Messenger, and a self-service help center. Powering these channels are Zendesk Support and Zendesk Guide. Additionally, GoFundMe's Trust and Safety team uses Zendesk Talk to connect by phone in situations that are better handled in person.
To prepare agents to handle sensitive issues, or customers facing challenging times, the Customer Happiness team undergoes a month of intensive customer support training. Mostly, however, customers typically reach out for troubleshooting and coaching on things like password resets, how to best share a campaign, about funds, or why a project isn't as successful as its organizer had hoped.
Each agent might work on 60 to 100 tickets a day, adding up to a team total of up to 50,000 tickets handled each month. To help meet the team's first response time, agents are backed by a workflow automation through the robust configuration of some 800 macros, a Chrome extension called Auto Text Expander, and a robust list of triggers and automations.
Ticket routing is a well-oiled machine that Wood and his team are constantly tweaking in support of that differentiating first-response time goal. Also integral to the team's workflow is a reliance on, and investment in, self-service—both through auto-replies outlining the next steps for support on Facebook Messenger, and by strategically directing customers through GoFundMe's help center.
For example, when a customer first clicks the help button on GoFundMe's website, they immediately reach the help center, which offers articles in six languages. If the customer continues to seek help, they engage with a sort of self-service triage: They select who they are—donor, campaign organizer, or beneficiary—and the nature of their question. Then there's what Wood calls a "last Hail Mary" of self-service: GoFundMe's partner Solvvy reads the text of a question and pulls information from the help center to try to solve the problem before a ticket is created.
Self-service is also emphasized on Facebook Messenger, which is fully integrated with Zendesk Support. Customers who use this channel are first met with an auto-reply directing them to the help center. Then, if the customer still needs help, they're prompted to respond with their e-mail address and a ticket is generated in the main queue.
Even when it's not possible to keep the aggressive first reply time goal, the Customer Happiness team is still able to respond faster by email than what customers are used to elsewhere online. And in the event of a natural disaster, or something else that sparks a sudden spike in campaigns that might cause slower responses, GoFundMe communicates response-time delays to users directly on the contact form.
The push for a rapid email response time has had what Wood calls a halo effect on the entire organization. To maintain the team's SLA, he said, they have to be "very, very tightly connected" to the product and engineering teams to understand what bugs are popping up and what friction points are causing customers to create tickets. "Pushing toward that goal helps to push the whole organization forward," said Wood. "For us to meet it, we must react swiftly to any issues that come along and constantly seek out ways to build in self-service and keep creating a better experience for our product."
All of these efforts show, as the team's CSAT rating is consistently over 90 percent. GoFundMe uses Zendesk to measure customer satisfaction on interactions, and also conducts two NPS® surveys per year to help gauge sentiment across all customers, not only those who submit tickets. In addition, the team reviews solved tickets per day as an output metric; how many replies agents are doing; the reply-to-ticket ratio, which indicates the efficiency of both the agent and the product; and also the number of new tickets created.
Wood and his team also lean on Zendesk from time to time for some customer service thought leadership. "The Zendesk blog and the resources you've provided throughout the years have been super-beneficial. The product is in a place where it works really well for us. We are stress-testing it—we use it in a unique way and it has worked very well for us," said Wood.
Net Promoter and NPS are registered U.S. trademarks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Data Protection Statement
The controller under data protection laws, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:
The President of the Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute,
Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute
Professor Folkhard Isermeyer
Bundesallee 50
38116 Braunschweig
Telephone +49 531 5961003
Your rights as a data subject
You can exercise the following rights at any time via the contact details for our data protection officer which are provided below:
- information concerning your data saved by us and its processing,
- rectification of incorrect personal data,
- erasure of your data which is saved by us,
- restriction of data processing should we not yet be permitted to erase your data due to legal obligations,
- objection to the processing of your data by us and
- data portability, should you have consented to the data processing or have concluded a contract with us.
- If you have given us your consent, you can revoke this at any time with effect for the future.
You can contact your responsible supervisory authority at any time with any complaints. Your responsible supervisory authority depends on the German Federal State in which you reside, work or where the alleged breach has taken place. A list of the supervisory authorities (for the non-public sector) with addresses can be found here: https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Anschriften_Links/anschriften_links-node.html.
Purposes of the data processing by the controller and third parties
We only process your personal data for the purposes stated in this data protection statement. Your personal data will not be transmitted to third parties for purposes other than those stated below. We will disclose your personal data to third parties only if:
- you have given explicit consent to this,
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Erasure and blocking of data
We comply with the principles of data avoidance and data economy. Therefore, we only save your personal data for as long as is necessary in order to achieve the purposes named here or for the retention periods which have been prescribed by the legislator. Once the respective purpose no longer applies or following the expiry of the retention periods referred to above, the relevant data will be routinely blocked or erased in accordance with the legal regulations.
SSL encryption
In order to protect the security of your data during transfer, we use encryption procedures (for example SSL) via HTTPS which correspond to the current state of technology.
Getting in touch with us
Should you get in touch with us by email or via the contact form in case of any questions, you thereby voluntarily consent for us to contact you. For this purpose, a valid email address must be provided. The purpose of this is to allocate and respond to the query. The provision of additional data is voluntary. The information provided by you will be saved in order to process the query and for any follow-up questions. Once your query has been dealt with, the personal data will automatically be deleted.
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When you access our website, information of a general nature is automatically recorded with the assistance of a cookie. This information (server logfiles) contains the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your internet service provider and similar data. This is solely information which does not allow you personally to be traced.
This information is technically necessary in order to correctly deliver the information from websites which you have requested and is required when using the internet. It is processed for the following purposes in particular:
- to ensure a smooth connection to the website,
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The processing of personal data is based on our legitimate interest from the above-mentioned purposes of the data gathering. We do not use your data in order to trace you personally. The recipients of the data are only the controller and any order processors.
Anonymous data of this type may be statistically evaluated by us in order to optimise our online presence and the underlying technology.
As with many websites, we use so-called "cookies". Cookies are small text files which are transferred to your hard drive by a website server. By means of the cookies, we automatically receive certain data, such as the IP address, browser used, operating system in relation to your computer and connection to the internet.
Cookies cannot be used to launch programs or transfer viruses onto a computer. On the basis of the information contained in cookies, we can make navigation easier and enable the correct display of our websites.
Under no circumstances will the data gathered by us be passed on to third parties and no linkage with personal data will take place without your consent.
Naturally you can generally view our website without cookies. Most internet browsers are generally set to automatically accept cookies. You can deactivate the use of cookies at any time via your browser settings. Please use the help function of your browser to find out how to alter these settings. Please bear in mind that individual functions of our website may not work if you deactivate the cookies.
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This website uses Matomo (formerly Piwik), an open source software which statistically analyses visits to the website. Matomo uses cookies, text files which stored on your computer, which enable an analysis of your use of the website.
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The IP address will be anonymised immediately after processing and before it is saved. You can prevent the installation of cookies by changing the settings in your browser software. We wish to inform you that should you change your browser setting in this way, certain functions of this website may no longer be available.
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We reserve the right to amend this data protection statement so that it always fulfils the current legal requirements or in order to implement changes to our services in the data protection statement, for example the introduction of new services. The next time you visit, the new data protection statement will then apply.
Questions for the data protection officer
Should you have any questions relating to data protection, please send us an email or contact the person at our organisation who is responsible for data protection directly:
Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute
Data Protection Officer
Bundesallee 50
38116 Braunschweig
Telephone +49 531 5961218
Use of font libraries
Adobe Typekit
We use Adobe Typekit in order to visually display our website. Typekit is a service of Adobe Systems Software Ireland Ltd which grants us access to a font library. In order to include these fonts, your browser must establish a connection to an Adobe server in the USA and download the font which is required for our website. By means of the above, Adobe is informed that your IP address has accessed our website. Further information concerning Adobe Typekit can be found in Adobe's data protection notices, which can be accessed here: www.adobe.com/privacy/typekit.html
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The OpenStreetMaps are integrated with the assistance of the Javascript library leaflet.
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On some of our websites, we integrate graphics of the Highcharts Cloud platform from the provider Highcharts AS, Sentrumsgata 44, 6893 VIK I SOGN, Norway. Datenschutzerklärung.
The data protection statement was created using the activeMind AG data protection statement generator and was adapted by us.


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I have for some time now heard about a very tasty white chocolate fondant that Jennifer Dontz makes on one of her dvds. The white chocolate fondant should be really good to work with and who would not like that? There is nothing worse than a rolled fondant that tear and crack when you cover a cake.
I had to order the Merckens chocolate as we can not get that here. Luckily does my supermarket have an "american food" aisle. So there was no problems in getting the corn syrup. I did already have a few pounds of Pettinice fondant in stock.
Not only was the white chocolate fondant easy to make, it taste delicious too. Now I only need a cake, so that I can try how it is to work with. That will be my next mission….
Happy Caking!


text:
Heartbreaking photo shows fallen officer's K9 partner
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — A new photo posted on the Ohio Going Blue Facebook page shows the K9 belonging to one of two Westerville police officers shot and killed in the line of duty.
Sam was the K9 partner of Officer Eric Joering. According to the post, the dog was in Joering's cruiser when the deadly shooting happened.
Officer Joering, 39, and Anthony Morelli, 54, were shot and killed Saturday while responding to a 911 hang-up call.
Officer Morelli grew up in Massillon.
According to the post, Joering's dog is staying with his original trainer.
"He says Sam is doing ok," the post said. "But his heart is broken too."
According to WCMH in Columbus, Officer Joering's family can choose to keep Sam.


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M2TF is a project-based Learning initiative for high school students and teachers.
Message to the Future Foundation's purpose is to bring awareness of the importance to protect scenic landscapes.
We accomplish this in the classroom in partnership with Teachers Ignite, LLC as we provide teachers, high school students, and organizations with project-based learning tools and activities that not only help our mission, but also at the same time develop important skills students need to succeed in our twenty-first century work place.
We Want You Inspired To Preserve Our Scenic Landscapes.
Take Initiative! Introduce This School Project and Watch What Happens!
- Get credit for doing a community service project
- Accumulate Community Service Hours
- Help to protect the scenery, it's your community! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
- Learn important skills you'd need in the workplace like communication, team building and problem solving
- Inspire your teacher to teach in a way that lets you be the leader!
Getting Started with Project Based Learning:
- See the brief 3-minute video by Edutopia for a great "Introduction to Project Based Learning." It will help you better explain to your teacher(s) what you want to do and why it is a great way to learn!
- Don't miss viewing the section M2tf Flagship Project below.
- The Teacher Tool Kit is worth a look too - See below under Teacher Resources
Get ready to watch your students engage
as they discover they CAN make a difference
in their own community!
Project Based Learning empowers teachers and students to bring relevance from the workplace into the classroom. Teachers connect with their students as a coach, moving away from a lecture style of teaching allowing them to learn by doing. Done easily as we will show you, the students will learn important skills highly desired by employers including communication, team building, timelines, and problem solving. This project is aligned to Common Core State Standards and aided by our partnership with Teacher's Ignite.
- Getting Started with Project Based Learning:
- Watch the first video below - "Introduction to Project Based Learning
- Watch the short 10 min. "how to" video by Anne which roughly outlines what to do to engage students in PBL – NOW!
- Don't miss the M2tf Flagship Project videos and information provided below.
- Inspire your teacher to teach in a way that lets you be the leader!
Project Based Learning when students are behind the project is a huge win. OURS WORKS! We simply empower the notion that keeping their community scenic is a good idea. We have created a "Tool Kit for Teachers" that makes Project Based Learning (PBL) easy!
Please give us any helpful ideas to make this website better.
Thirty-two students and 3 teachers recently embarked on this project where the students
Be Sure To Watch The Videos And Download The Toolkit! We've provided the actual student work, and interviewed the teachers and students for you to hear first-hand their advice and feedback from their experience! Included in the downloadable PDF "Teacher Tool Kit" is also an Ignite Curriculum Guide for you to read that has the entire project aligned to Common Core State Standards.
- Formed their own committees (art ,technology and marketing)
- Created artworks depicting natural places in their community and a video
- Invited Mayor Teresa Tomlinson to a public presentation of their project. Their artwork now hangs in City Hall, their video is featured on the City of Columbus' Facebook page, and subsequently made another presentation to City Hall.
- Received a local TV Station "Green Award"
Two ways to get a project started in your town as follows:
- Create your own "Kick Starter" Project (http://www.kickstarter.com)
- Send a note to us at firstname.lastname@example.com to see if a grant would be available to cover some of your expenses. We'd like to hear your ideas!
Keep What Is Beautiful Looking That Way!
Support our work! Our goal is simple -- we want students to be the voice of all that we do to make sure the leaders in our towns, cities, and states think carefully when they consider land development – and keep what is beautiful looking that Keep what is scenic scenic!
Your tax deductible supports our efforts to get the word out about this project.
To learn more about this project and other ways Teacher's Ignite may be able to assist you and your school, contact them directly at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Teachers Ignite and the Teachers Ignite Dynamic Starburst logo are registered trademarks of Teachers Ignite, LLC, and are used here with permission.
All video content and curriculum guides here are the sole property of Teachers Ignite, LLC and are used under license by M2TF.
All rights to video and curriculum guide content are reserved by Teachers Ignite, LLC. © @2013.


text:
"Reading will always accompany the meals of the brothers. The reader should not be the one who just happens to pick up the book, but someone who will read for a whole week, beginning on Sunday. Let there be complete silence. No whispering, no speaking–only the reader's voice should be heard there." – The Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 38
This category is devoted to the books that are currently read in the refectory at Clear Creek Abbey, as well as those that have been read in the past.


text:
By Sarah Brenner, JD
IRA Analyst
I am aware of the IRA one-rollover-per-year rule. What I can't find is if a married couple that files jointly violates the rule if they each do a rollover from their own individual IRAs?
For example: One person has an IRA in their name and takes a distribution and rolls it over within the 60-day limit avoiding the taxable distribution. Now, can the other spouse also take a distribution from their own IRA and do the same without incurring a taxable distribution?
Thanks so much.
Hi Maggie,
Good news for married couples! While the once-per-year rule is strict and limits an IRA owner to rolling over only one IRA distribution in a 365-day period, this rule applies per person, not per couple. In your example, each spouse could do a rollover within the same 365-day period without concern about the once-per-year rule.
I am 71 years old as of March 2020. Does the SECURE Act permit me to open a new spousal IRA account this year?
Hi Steve,
The SECURE Act does away with the age limit for IRA contributions for contributions made for 2020 or later. This would include spousal contributions. So, if you file jointly and your spouse has enough earned income to cover your contribution, you can make spousal contribution to your IRA for 2020 regardless of your age.


text:
Clayton E. Cramer argues that the historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws and that throughout much of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics "in their place."
The historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws -- and not in any subtle way. Throughout much of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics "in their place," and to quiet the racial fears of whites. This paper is intended to provide a brief summary of this unholy alliance of gun control and racism, and to suggest that gun control laws should be regarded as "suspect ideas," analogous to the "suspect classifications" theory of discrimination already part of the American legal system.
Racist arms laws predate the establishment of the United States. Starting in 1751, the French Black Code required Louisiana colonists to stop any blacks, and if necessary, beat "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane." If a black refused to stop on demand, and was on horseback, the colonist was authorized to "shoot to kill."[1] Slave possession of firearms was a necessity at times in a frontier society, yet laws continued to be passed in an attempt to prohibit slaves or free blacks from possessing firearms, except under very restrictively controlled conditions.[2] Similarly, in the sixteenth century the colony of New Spain, terrified of black slave revolts, prohibited all blacks, free and slave, from carrying arms.[3]
In the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the slave population successfully threw off their French masters, but the Revolution degenerated into a race war, aggravating existing fears in the French Louisiana colony, and among whites in the slave states of the United States. When the first U. S. official arrived in New Orleans in 1803 to take charge of this new American possession, the planters sought to have the existing free black militia disarmed, and otherwise exclude "free blacks from positions in which they were required to bear arms," including such non-military functions as slave-catching crews. The New Orleans city government also stopped whites from teaching fencing to free blacks, and then, when free blacks sought to teach fencing, similarly prohibited their efforts as well.[4]
It is not surprising that the first North American English colonies, then the states of the new republic, remained in dread fear of armed blacks, for slave revolts against slave owners often degenerated into less selective forms of racial warfare. The perception that free blacks were sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved brothers, and the dangerous example that "a Negro could be free" also caused the slave states to pass laws designed to disarm all blacks, both slave and free. Unlike the gun control laws passed after the Civil War, these antebellum statutes were for blacks alone. In Maryland, these prohibitions went so far as to prohibit free blacks from owning dogs without a license, and authorizing any white to kill an unlicensed dog owned by a free black, for fear that blacks would use dogs as weapons. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any ownership of a dog by a black person.[5]
Understandably, restrictions on slave possession of arms go back a very long way. While arms restrictions on free blacks predate it, these restrictions increased dramatically after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, a revolt that caused the South to become increasingly irrational in its fears.[6] Virginia's response to Turner's Rebellion prohibited free blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead …" The existing laws under which free blacks were occasionally licensed to possess or carry arms was also repealed, making arms possession completely illegal for free blacks.[7] But even before this action by the Virginia Legislature, in the aftermath of Turner's Rebellion, the discovery that a free black family possessed lead shot for use as scale weights, without powder or weapon in which to fire it, was considered sufficient reason for a frenzied mob to discuss summary execution of the owner.[8] The analogy to the current hysteria where mere possession of ammunition in some states without a firearms license may lead to jail time, should be obvious.
One example of the increasing fear of armed blacks is the 1834 change to the Tennessee Constitution, where Article XI, 26 of the 1796 Tennessee Constitution was revised from: "That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence,"[9] to: "That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence."[10] [emphasis added] It is not clear what motivated this change, other than Turner's bloody insurrection. The year before, the Tennessee Supreme Court had recognized the right to bear arms as an individual guarantee, but there is nothing in that decision that touches on the subject of race.[11]
Other decisions during the antebellum period were unambiguous about the importance of race. In State v. Huntly (1843), the North Carolina Supreme Court had recognized that there was a right to carry arms guaranteed under the North Carolina Constitution, as long as such arms were carried in a manner not likely to frighten people.[12] The following year, the North Carolina Supreme Court made one of those decisions whose full significance would not appear until after the Civil War and passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. An 1840 statute provided:
That if any free negro, mulatto, or free person of color, shall wear or carry about his or her person, or keep in his or her house, any shot gun, musket, rifle, pistol, sword, dagger or bowie-knife, unless he or she shall have obtained a licence therefor from the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of his or her county, within one year preceding the wearing, keeping or carrying therefor, he or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be indicted therefor.[13]
Elijah Newsom, "a free person of color," was indicted in Cumberland County in June of 1843 for carrying a shotgun without a license -- at the very time the North Carolina Supreme Court was deciding Huntly. Newsom was convicted by a jury; but the trial judge directed a not guilty verdict, and the state appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court. Newsom's attorney argued that the statute requiring free blacks to obtain a license to "keep and bear arms" was in violation of both the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, and the North Carolina Constitution's similar guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms.[14] The North Carolina Supreme Court refused to accept that the Second Amendment was a limitation on state laws, but had to deal with the problem of the state constitutional guarantees, which had been used in the Huntly decision, the year before.
The 17th article of the 1776 North Carolina Constitution declared:
That the people have a right to bear arms, for the defence of the State; and, as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.[15]
The Court asserted that: "We cannot see that the act of 1840 is in conflict with it … The defendant is not indicted for carrying arms in defence of the State, nor does the act of 1840 prohibit him from so doing."[16] But in Huntly, the Court had acknowledged that the restrictive language "for the defence of the State" did not preclude an individual right.[17] The Court then attempted to justify the necessity of this law:
Its only object is to preserve the peace and safety of the community from being disturbed by an indiscriminate use, on ordinary occasions, by free men of color, of fire arms or other arms of an offensive character. Self preservation is the first law of nations, as it is of individuals.[18]
The North Carolina Supreme Court also sought to repudiate the idea that free blacks were protected by the North Carolina Constitution's Bill of Rights by pointing out that the Constitution excluded free blacks from voting, and therefore free blacks were not citizens. Unlike a number of other state constitutions with right to keep and bear arms provisions that limited this right only to citizens,[19] Article 17 guaranteed this right to the people -- and try as hard as they might, it was difficult to argue that a "free person of color," in the words of the Court, was not one of "the people."
It is one of the great ironies that, in much the same way that the North Carolina Supreme Court recognized a right to bear arms in 1843 -- then a year later declared that free blacks were not included -- the Georgia Supreme Court did likewise before the 1840s were out. The Georgia Supreme Court found in Nunn v. State (1846) that a statute prohibiting the sale of concealable handguns, sword-canes, and daggers violated the Second Amendment:
The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all of this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, reestablished by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta! And Lexington, Concord, Camden, River Raisin, Sandusky, and the laurel-crowned field of New Orleans, plead eloquently for this interpretation![20]
Finally, after this paean to liberty -- in a state where much of the population remained enslaved, forbidden by law to possess arms of any sort -- the Court defined the valid limits of laws restricting the bearing of arms:
We are of the opinion, then, that so far as the act of 1837 seeks to suppress the practice of carrying certain weapons secretly, that it is valid, inasmuch as it does not deprive the citizen of his natural right of self- defence, or of his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But that so much of it, as contains a prohibition against bearing arms openly, is in conflict with the Constitution, and void …[21]
"Citizen"? Within a single page, the Court had gone from "right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys" to the much more narrowly restrictive right of a "citizen." The motivation for this sudden narrowing of the right appeared two years later.
The decision Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah (1848) was not, principally, a right to keep and bear arms case. In 1839, the city of Savannah, Georgia, in an admitted effort "to prevent the increase of free persons of color in our city," had established a $100 per year tax on free blacks moving into Savannah from other parts of Georgia. Samuel Cooper and Hamilton Worsham, two "free persons of color," were convicted of failing to pay the tax, and were jailed.[22] On appeal, counsel for Cooper and Worsham argued that the ordinance establishing the tax was deficient in a number of technical areas; the assertion of most interest to us is, "In Georgia, free persons of color have constitutional rights …" Cooper and Worsham's counsel argued that these rights included writ of habeas corpus, right to own real estate, to be "subject to taxation," "[t]hey may sue and be sued," and cited a number of precedents under Georgia law in defense of their position.[23]
Justice Warner delivered the Court's opinion, most of which is irrelevant to the right to keep and bear arms, but one portion shows the fundamental relationship between citizenship, arms, and elections, and why gun control laws were an essential part of defining blacks as "non-citizens": "Free persons of color have never been recognized here as citizens; they are not entitled to bear arms, vote for members of the legislature, or to hold any civil office."[24] The Georgia Supreme Court did agree that the ordinance jailing Cooper and Worsham for non-payment was illegal, and ordered their release, but the comments of the Court made it clear that their brave words in Nunn v. State (1846) about "the right of the people," really only meant white people.
While settled parts of the South were in great fear of armed blacks, on the frontier, the concerns about Indian attack often forced relaxation of these rules. The 1798 Kentucky Comprehensive Act allowed slaves and free blacks on frontier plantations "to keep and use guns, powder, shot, and weapons, offensive and defensive." Unlike whites, however, a license was required for free blacks or slaves to carry weapons.[25]
The need for blacks to carry arms for self-defense included not only the problem of Indian attack, and the normal criminal attacks that anyone might worry about, but the additional hazard that free blacks were in danger of being kidnapped and sold into slavery.[26] A number of states, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, passed laws specifically to prohibit kidnapping of free blacks, out of concern that the federal Fugitive Slave Laws would be used as cover for re-enslavement.[27]
The end of slavery in 1865 did not eliminate the problems of racist gun control laws; the various Black Codes adopted after the Civil War required blacks to obtain a license before carrying or possessing firearms or Bowie knives; these are sufficiently well-known that any reasonably complete history of the Reconstruction period mentions them. These restrictive gun laws played a part in the efforts of the Republicans to get the Fourteenth Amendment ratified, because it was difficult for night riders to generate the correct level of terror in a victim who was returning fire.[28] It does appear, however, that the requirement to treat blacks and whites equally before the law led to the adoption of restrictive firearms laws in the South that were equal in the letter of the law, but unequally enforced. It is clear that the vagrancy statutes adopted at roughly the same time, in 1866, were intended to be used against blacks, even though the language was race-neutral.[29]
The former states of the Confederacy, many of which had recognized the right to carry arms openly before the Civil War, developed a very sudden willingness to qualify that right. One especially absurd example, and one that includes strong evidence of the racist intentions behind gun control laws, is Texas.
In Cockrum v. State (1859), the Texas Supreme Court had recognized that there was a right to carry defensive arms, and that this right was protected under both the Second Amendment, and section 13 of the Texas Bill of Rights. The outer limit of the state's authority (in this case, attempting to discourage the carrying of Bowie knives), was that it could provide an enhanced penalty for manslaughters committed with Bowie knives.[30] Yet, by 1872, the Texas Supreme Court denied that there was any right to carry any weapon for self-defense under either the state or federal constitutions -- and made no attempt to explain or justify why the Cockrum decision was no longer valid.[31]
What caused the dramatic change? The following excerpt from that same decision -- so offensive that no one would dare make such an argument today -- sheds some light on the racism that apparently caused the sudden perspective change:
The law under consideration has been attacked upon the ground that it was contrary to public policy, and deprived the people of the necessary means of self- defense; that it was an innovation upon the customs and habits of the people, to which they would not peaceably submit … We will not say to what extent the early customs and habits of the people of this state should be respected and accommodated, where they may come in conflict with the ideas of intelligent and well-meaning legislators. A portion of our system of laws, as well as our public morality, is derived from a people the most peculiar perhaps of any other in the history and derivation of its own system. Spain, at different periods of the world, was dominated over by the Carthagenians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Snovi, the Allani, the Visigoths, and Arabs; and to this day there are found in the Spanish codes traces of the laws and customs of each of these nations blended together in a system by no means to be compared with the sound philosophy and pure morality of the common law.[32] [emphasis added]
This particular decision is more open than most as to its motivations, but throughout the South during this period, the existing precedents that recognized a right to open carry under state constitutional provisions were being narrowed, or simply ignored. Nor was the reasoning that led to these changes lost on judges in the North. In 1920, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Mexican for concealed carry of a handgun--while asleep in his own bed. Justice Wanamaker's scathing dissent criticized the precedents cited by the majority in defense of this absurdity:
I desire to give some special attention to some of the authorities cited, supreme court decisions from Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, and one or two inferior court decisions from New York, which are given in support of the doctrines upheld by this court. The southern states have very largely furnished the precedents. It is only necessary to observe that the race issue there has extremely intensified a decisive purpose to entirely disarm the negro, and this policy is evident upon reading the opinions.[33]
While not relevant to the issue of racism, Justice Wanamaker's closing paragraphs capture well the biting wit and intelligence of this jurist, who was unfortunately, outnumbered on the bench:
I hold that the laws of the state of Ohio should be so applied and so interpreted as to favor the law-abiding rather than the law-violating people. If this decision shall stand as the law of Ohio, a very large percentage of the good people of Ohio to-day are criminals, because they are daily committing criminal acts by having these weapons in their own homes for their own defense. The only safe course for them to pursue, instead of having the weapon concealed on or about their person, or under their pillow at night, is to hang the revolver on the wall and put below it a large placard with these words inscribed:
"The Ohio supreme court having decided that it is a crime to carry a concealed weapon on one's person in one's home, even in one's bed or bunk, this weapon is hung upon the wall that you may see it, and before you commit any burglary or assault, please, Mr. Burglar, hand me my gun."[34]
There are other examples of remarkable honesty from the state supreme courts on this subject, of which the finest is probably Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford's concurring opinion in Watson v. Stone (1941), in which a conviction for carrying a handgun without a permit was overturned, because the handgun was in the glove compartment of a car:
I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied.[35]
Today is not 1893, and when proponents of restrictive gun control insist that their motivations are color-blind, there is a possibility that they are telling the truth. Nonetheless, there are some rather interesting questions that should be asked today. The most obvious question is, "Why should a police chief or sheriff have any discretion in issuing a concealed handgun permit?" Here in California, even the state legislature's research arm--hardly a nest of pro-gunners--has admitted that the vast majority of permits to carry concealed handguns in California are issued to white males.[36] Even if overt racism is not an issue, an official may simply have more empathy with an applicant of a similar cultural background, and consequently be more able to relate to the applicant's concerns. As my wife pointedly reminded a police official when we applied for concealed weapon permits, "If more police chiefs were women, a lot more women would get permits, and be able to defend themselves from rapists."
Gun control advocates today are not so foolish as to openly promote racist laws, and so the question might be asked what relevance the racist past of gun control laws has. One concern is that the motivations for disarming blacks in the past are really not so different from the motivations for disarming law-abiding citizens today. In the last century, the official rhetoric in support of such laws was that "they" were too violent, too untrustworthy, to be allowed weapons. Today, the same elitist rhetoric regards law-abiding Americans in the same way, as child-like creatures in need of guidance from the government. In the last century, while never openly admitted, one of the goals of disarming blacks was to make them more willing to accept various forms of economic oppression, including the sharecropping system, in which free blacks were reduced to an economic state not dramatically superior to the conditions of slavery.
In the seventeenth century, the aristocratic power structure of colonial Virginia found itself confronting a similar challenge from lower class whites. These poor whites resented how the men who controlled the government used that power to concentrate wealth into a small number of hands. These wealthy feeders at the government trough would have disarmed poor whites if they could, but the threat of both Indian and pirate attack made this impractical; for all white men "were armed and had to be armed …" Instead, blacks, who had occupied a poorly defined status between indentured servant and slave, were reduced to hereditary chattel slavery, so that poor whites could be economically advantaged, without the upper class having to give up its privileges.[37]
Today, the forces that push for gun control seem to be heavily (though not exclusively) allied with political factions that are committed to dramatic increases in taxation on the middle class. While it would be hyperbole to compare higher taxes on the middle class to the suffering and deprivation of sharecropping or slavery, the analogy of disarming those whom you wish to economically disadvantage, has a certain worrisome validity to it.
Another point to consider is that in the American legal system, certain classifications of governmental discrimination are considered constitutionally suspect, and these "suspect classifications" (usually considered to be race and religion) come to a court hearing under a strong presumption of invalidity. The reason for these "suspect classifications" is because of the long history of governmental discrimination based on these classifications, and because these classifications often impinge on fundamental rights.[38]
In much the same way, gun control has historically been a tool of racism, and associated with racist attitudes about black violence. Similarly, many gun control laws impinge on that most fundamental of rights: self-defense. Racism is so intimately tied to the history of gun control in America that we should regard gun control aimed at law-abiding people as a "suspect idea," and require that the courts use the same demanding standards when reviewing the constitutionality of a gun control law, that they would use with respect to a law that discriminated based on race.
1. Thomas N. Ingersoll, "Free Blacks in a Slave Society: New Orleans, 1718-1812", William And Mary Quarterly, 48:2 [April, 1991], 178-79.
2. Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783, (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 139, 165, 187.
3. Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, The Course of Mexican History, 4th ed., (New York, Oxford University Press: 1991), 216.
4. Ingersoll, 192-200. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America, 3rd ed., (New York, Macmillan Publishing: 1987), 81.
5. Theodore Brantner Wilson, The Black Codes of the South (University of Alabama Press: 1965), 26-30.
6. Stanley Elkins, Slavery, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1968), 220.
7. Eric Foner, ed., Nat Turner, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall: 1971), 115.
8. Harriet Jacobs [Linda Brant], Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, (Boston: 1861), in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., The Classic Slave Narratives, (New York, Penguin Books: 1987), 395-396.
9. Francis Newton Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming The United States of America, (Washington, Government Printing Office: 1909), reprinted (Grosse Pointe, Mich., Scholarly Press: n.d.), 6:3424.
10. Thorpe, 6:3428.
11. Simpson v. State, 5 Yerg. 356 (Tenn. 1833).
12. State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418, 422, 423 (N.C. 1843).
13. State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250 (1844).
14. State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250, 251 (1844).
15. Thorpe, 5:2788.
16. State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250, 254 (1844).
17. State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418, 422 (N.C. 1843).
18. State v. Newsom, 5 Iredell 181, 27 N.C. 250, 254 (1844).
19. Early state constitutions limiting the right to bear arms to citizens: Connecticut (1818), Kentucky (1792 & 1799), Maine (1819), Mississippi (1817), Pennsylvania (1790 -- but not the 1776 constitution), Republic of Texas (1838), State of Texas (1845).
20. Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 250, 251 (1846).
21. Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 250, 251 (1846).
22. Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 69 (1848).
23. Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 70, 71 (1848).
24. Cooper and Worsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68, 72 (1848).
25. Juliet E. K. Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier, (Lexington, KY, University Press of Kentucky: 1983), 21. This is an inspiring biography of a slave who, through hard work moonlighting in the production of saltpeter (a basic ingredient of black powder) and land surveying, saved enough money to buy his wife, himself, and eventually all of his children and grandchildren out of slavery -- while fighting against oppressive laws and vigorous racism. Most impressive of all, is that he did it without ever learning to read or write.
26. Walker, 73.
27. Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest: A Documentary History, (Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press: 1993), 27-32, 227-240, 309-314, 353-357, 403-404.
28. Michael Les Benedict, The Fruits of Victory: Alternatives to Restoring the Union, 1865-1877, (New York, J.B. Lippincott Co.: 1975), 87. Francis L. Broderick, Reconstruction and the American Negro, 1865-1900, (London, Macmillan Co.: 1969), 21. Dan T. Carter, When The War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865- 1867, (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press: 1985), 219-221. Eric Foner, Reconstruction, (New York, Harper & Row: 1988), 258-259.
29. Foner, Reconstruction, 200-201.
30. Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, 401, 402, 403 (1859).
31. English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 475 (1872).
32. English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 479, 480 (1872).
33. State v. Nieto, 101 Ohio St. 409, 430, 130 N.E. 663 (1920).
34. State v. Nieto, 101 Ohio St. 409, 436, 130 N.E. 663 (1920).
35. Watson v. Stone, 4 So.2d 700, 703 (Fla. 1941).
36. Assembly Office of Research, Smoking Gun: The Case For Concealed Weapon Permit Reform, (Sacramento, State of California: 1986), 5.
37. Edmund S. Morgan, "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox," in Stanley N. Katz, John M. Murrin, and Douglas Greenberg, ed., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, 4th ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1993), 280.
38. Thomas G. Walker, "Suspect Classifications", Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, (New York, Oxford University Press: 1992), 848.