Guns Because

[Jason]

Some people have never read Calvin and Hobbes.. or was it that other guy?

[JimC]

Some people have never read Calvin and Hobbes.. or was it that other guy?

"Nasty, brutish and short..."

A rather good description of one of my students, actually...

[Seth]

Wrong.

It's a natural right, as in nature.

That is about the most stupid thing you have said.

There is no 'natural right' to bear arms. Guns and firearms in general are hardly natural.

Horseshit. Guns are as natural as bear claws and rattlesnake venom. They are made from the products of nature (iron, carbon, wood, brass), and they are created by a natural creature: human beings.

You can argue that the right to self defense is a 'natural' right, but that is a totally different thing to this spurious "right to bear arms."

Yes, it is different. The difference is that the right to self defense is a natural right because it's a universal natural drive and behavior of every single living creature that has ever existed. That right is not granted by anyone or anything, it's a function of nature, in our case evolution.

The right to keep and bear arms is as natural to humans as spider's fangs are natural to them and leopard's claws are natural to the leopard.

The 2nd Amendment confers nothing. The rights exist as a function of nature. The law merely prohibits government from infringing upon those rights, specifically the right to keep and bear arms for self defense.

Nothing religious about it at all. Pure science and logic.

Human rights can be a wonderful thing, and I fully support those rights espoused by the United Nations. But there is nothing 'natural' about them, or inevitable. They are subjective and changeable. The 'rights' we enjoy today are very different to the 'rights' that were prevalent 1,000 years ago. What people consider to be 'rights' is something that changes from generation to generation, and even more over longer periods of time.

No, the rights exist as a function of our existence as living organisms and our ability to assert them. A "right" is nothing more or less than a freedom of action that may be defended against intrusion by others. I have the right to kill a rabbit for food because I have the ability to do it, the ability to overcome the rabbit, and the ability to defend that acquisition of resources necessary for survival from intrusion by others.

The law may change from time to time and culture to culture, as w see in your culture where the law forbids you to exercise the natural right of armed self defense. But in our culture, our law FORBIDS our government from infringing upon our pre-existing rights. It's a control and limitation on GOVERNMENT, nothing more or less. And since government itself has no rights, because it's not a living being, and because it is the creature and servant of human beings, the government cannot sua sponte control that which the human beings who are governed only by their consent have refused to authorized the government to control.

It is government that is the variable in the calculus of rights, not the rights themselves. Government cannot bestow something that it has neither been authorized to bestow or which it has never possessed in the first place, giving it ownership and possession of that thing. Government creates NOTHING, it is merely an abstract term for a series of social agreements between human beings that they abide by only by mutual agreement. Because no individual has the power to bestow a right on another person, because all rights are personal, not collective in nature, you can neither bestow nor remove my RKBA because my rights are not and were never in your possession or ownership so you have no claim upon them, much less any inherent authority to restrict or manage them. You may be elected to manage certain of my rights without having the authority to manage all of them. It's up to me to decide whether I want you managing my rights and to what extent...and me alone.

There are no 'inalienable' rights.

In the strictest sense you're right, because a person's rights may be alienated as punishment for antisocial acts and unlawful intrusions on the rights of others. But that's pettifoggery. Rights are "unalienable" in the sense that some ruler or government bestows or revokes them at its will. The concept of unalienable rights is an expression of the idea that the arbitrary exercise of power by humans against other humans without their consent is and has been a great evil and blight on humanity. Too often tyrants and despots have usurped power and determined that they are fit to bestow and remove rights at their whim and caprice. The concept of unalienable rights embodied in our Constitution refutes and denies that any man has any power to arbitrarily and without due process of law infringe upon or deny the fundamental and unalienable rights of another, because unlike the UK, we have no kings and no divine right of rule.

Rights may be alienated, but only for just cause, as applied to an individual not a group, for personal conduct or behavior that violates the rights of others, and only after due process of law and a trial of one's peers. Our founding document forbids the state from infringing upon or divesting the People as a whole or as individuals of their right to keep and bear arms. That's all it does. The rest is how we choose to govern ourselves, which is also our sovereign right as a nation.

That you misunderstand the concept of "unalienable rights" is unsurprising. Your knowledge of the concepts is abysmally deficient. You really ought to take a class or something before you make more of a fool of yourself.

There are only subjective decisions by those in power as to what privileges they will permit the citizenry, and those decisions are based on political expedience.

In slave societies where leaders claim a divine, or not-so-divine right to decide for you how and when you may exercise your rights that's functionally true. But you still have a natural, unalienable right to keep and bear arms for self defense and defense of your community even if you have forfeited the ability to exercise that right and have abdicated your defense to the state. That's your choice to make. But you cannot make that choice for anyone else, especially Americans. We choose to keep our government on a tight leash and under our control, as our servant not our master.

Some of those 'rights' granted by those in power are wonderful things, but they are not of divine origin. They come from what politicians find convenient.

Politicians have nothing that is not granted to them by the People, which means that the People hold all the power to begin with. Their power derives from their inherent unalienable rights and from nowhere else.

[Blind groper]

Obviously, hard won 'rights' are of great value. But we should not mistake those rights for divine or nature endowed gifts. Rights are 100% of fallible human origin, and are modified over time to suit society better.

The so-called "right to bear arms" is ridiculous. The right to self defense has validity, but not a right to play with lethal toys, with the result of having 4 times the murder rate of other western democracies.

To Seth

Your claim that some things are 'rights' because we choose and are able to do them is also ridiculous. Otherwise I could claim to have the 'right' to kill my neighbor simply because I can do it.

Practically, what we have as rights are those things that our government permits. You have the spurious 'right to bear arms' because your government so permits. No other reason. That also gives you the 'right to be murdered' at a rate 4 or more times that of more civilised nations.

[Seth]

Obviously, hard won 'rights' are of great value. But we should not mistake those rights for divine or nature endowed gifts. Rights are 100% of fallible human origin, and are modified over time to suit society better.

The so-called "right to bear arms" is ridiculous. The right to self defense has validity, but not a right to play with lethal toys, with the result of having 4 times the murder rate of other western democracies.

To Seth

Your claim that some things are 'rights' because we choose and are able to do them is also ridiculous. Otherwise I could claim to have the 'right' to kill my neighbor simply because I can do it.

You do. And he has the right to use force to prevent it, and society has the power to punish you for doing so. But you have that right because you are capable of exercising it. Whether you choose to do so, and whether society will acknowledge and respect that exercise of that right under those circumstances is yet another matter entirely.

If your neighbor is about to set fire to your house or rape your daughter, why then you DO have a right to kill him, don't you? The right does not appear because your neighbor does something or because society grants it to you, it exists as a function of your nature as a human being. In a state of nature, ie; without any laws, you will exercise your right to defend yourself as it becomes necessary to do so, and no one can gainsay that decision unless they have the power to overcome your exercise of your rights. In other words, in a state of nature, it's survival of the fittest, the Law of the Jungle, red in tooth and claw.

Laws are just sophisticated forms of non-lethal combat waged with the intellect and social agreement, but the underlying rights exist independent of the social order or rules. Only the adjudication and partitioning of the exercise of those rights is subject to regulation, not the existence of them.

Practically, what we have as rights are those things that our government permits.

It is for you. Not so much for us.

You have the spurious 'right to bear arms' because your government so permits. No other reason.

Wrong. We have the right to keep and bear arms because we claim it as a right and we choose to exercise it. Our government does not "permit" us to keep and bear arms, it is only FORBIDDEN to interfere with or infringe upon that right. I don't need a permit from the government to keep and bear arms, I may do so at my whim and caprice. Government however is strictly limited in how it's allowed to regulate my exercise of that right. It neither grants nor permits anything, it only regulates.

That also gives you the 'right to be murdered' at a rate 4 or more times that of more civilised nations.

Better that than chance another Holocaust or Rawandan genocide.

[MrJonno]

The right to self defense has validity

Why a right?, limited self defence may have some value to society in general, but as some sort of natural right its meaningless. It's a legal defence which if you admit to killing someone you have to prove but the idea you can go around prepared to kill just in case is psychopathic

[Collector1337]

Society is not my master.

You are replacing what used to be a religious rational to rule, with "society," or whatever the mob wants you must comply with, because somehow it is inherently right and infallible.

I am not at the mercy of the whims of "society."

[MrJonno]

Society is not my master.

You are replacing what used to be a religious rational to rule, with "society," or whatever the mob wants you must comply with, because somehow it is inherently right and infallible.

I am not at the mercy of the whims of "society."

My existence is only possible due to society, so yes it is at the whims of society. An individual alone is a completely useless animal that can achieve absolutely nothing.

No government = death of 99% of the human race and I'm not stupid enough to think I'm in the 1 %

[Blind groper]

If your neighbor is about to set fire to your house or rape your daughter, why then you DO have a right to kill him, don't you? The right does not appear because your neighbor does something or because society grants it to you, it exists as a function of your nature as a human being.

Actually no.

A behavior that is punished by society (or by the courts) is not a right. By definition, it is a crime. If I kill my neighbor for reasons that seem good to me, the laws of the land may still define that killing as murder, and the courts may act to lock me up for life. The kind of situation that would permit me to kill my neighbor without legal sanctions would be very limited, and very closely restricted by law. Simply because I think it right does not make it so.

In the case above, if I have a good alternative to stop my neighbor setting fire to my house and raping my daughter, then I am obliged to use that alternative rather than committing a killing.

Rights are, in essence, no different to laws. They are things written down by the legislature. They can be, and are, changed when they are no longer appropriate. Like laws, rights can be good or bad. A right giving me freedom of speech is (IMHO) good. A right giving me freedom to drive while intoxicated is bad, because it results in innocent people being killed. The right to bear arms also results in innocent people being killed, and is bad for exactly the same reason.

[Collector1337]

Society is not my master.

You are replacing what used to be a religious rational to rule, with "society," or whatever the mob wants you must comply with, because somehow it is inherently right and infallible.

I am not at the mercy of the whims of "society."

My existence is only possible due to society, so yes it is at the whims of society. An individual alone is a completely useless animal that can achieve absolutely nothing.

No government = death of 99% of the human race and I'm not stupid enough to think I'm in the 1 %

It appears that you have no need for religion because you seem to worship society and government.

[Blind groper]

It appears that you have no need for religion because you seem to worship society and government.

Mocking Mr. Jonno over this is not appropriate because he is quite right.

Prof. Steven Pinker made a detailed study of violence in society, and he found that nationhood and a strong state reduced violence, and made it much less likely that any specific person would die early due to violence.

Violence in the USA, and lethal violence especially, is still higher than it should be, due to guns and gun culture. There is much room for making America a safer place.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

...Better that than chance another Holocaust or Rawandan genocide...

What is utterly weird to me is your view that such things are real possibilities in current western democracies (including the US), and that, in the remote chance of them occurring, armed civilians would have a hope of preventing it. A real military, operating with no holds barred, would just roll over you, leaving scorched earth behind...

There seems to be this romantic fantasy at the heart of this delusion, with its roots in a rosy vision of American revolutionaries taking pot-shots at redcoats with long rifles...

[Collector1337]

Seth wrote:

...Better that than chance another Holocaust or Rawandan genocide...

What is utterly weird to me is your view that such things are real possibilities in current western democracies (including the US), and that, in the remote chance of them occurring, armed civilians would have a hope of preventing it. A real military, operating with no holds barred, would just roll over you, leaving scorched earth behind...

There seems to be this romantic fantasy at the heart of this delusion, with its roots in a rosy vision of American revolutionaries taking pot-shots at redcoats with long rifles...

Not true. As if you can predict the future.

Manpower is more important than hardware. America is also a pretty huge place. Even with the biggest military in the world, that might not want to turn on its own citizens, drones, and satellites, you can't cover the whole thing with so many millions of armed citizens.

[JimC]

Collector1337 wrote:

...that might not want to turn on its own citizens...

That would almost certainly not turn on its own citizens...

That, in fact, is at the heart of my point. You and Seth are worried about defeating a hypothetical tyrannical police state that is just not going to happen...

[Collector1337]

It appears that you have no need for religion because you seem to worship society and government.

Mocking Mr. Jonno over this is not appropriate because he is quite right.

Prof. Steven Pinker made a detailed study of violence in society, and he found that nationhood and a strong state reduced violence, and made it much less likely that any specific person would die early due to violence.

Violence in the USA, and lethal violence especially, is still higher than it should be, due to guns and gun culture. There is much room for making America a safer place.

You worship it even more. "Making America a safer place" is not your concern. Gun culture is American culture. It's not going anywhere. Get used to it.