[William Tell]

robertpaulsen said: "The courts have ruled that the right to life is an inalienable, God-given right that man cannot take away."

You make the argument that some people (the insane, minors, etc.) are routinely denied the right to keep and bear arms and argue that this means that their unalienable rights do not include the right to a gun.

But in the quoted sentence above, you state that the right to life has been ruled an "inalienable, God-given right that man cannot take away".

Yet convicted murderers are routinely denied their right to life as a man-made consequence for anti-social behavior.

According to our Founders, unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator, they are not created by man. Whether the government infringes a right is irrelevant to the meaning and scope of the right.

YOU stated that my unalienable right to self-defense does not include a gun. What the courts or the government of the US or any other nation says about my unalienable right to self-defense is irrelevant.

The Constitution of Kalifornia states that they recognize my unalienable right to self-defense. That document does not mention guns. I want to know how YOU determined that my unalienable right to self-defense does not include use of a gun. Further, I have asked you to tell me what that right DOES include.

[robertpaulsen]

"Yet convicted murderers are routinely denied their right to life as a man-made consequence for anti-social behavior."

Yes, but only with individual due process -- a trial. An inalienable, God-given right cannot be taken away globally -- we can't pass a law and lock up, say, all foreign visitors.

"YOU stated that my unalienable right to self-defense does not include a gun."

Well, to be correct, society's protection of your right to self defense doesn't, by definition, extend to a gun. If you live above the tree line, no one cares what you use for self defense. You have the natural right to use whatever you wish.

But if you choose to live in a society, the society decides the weapons with which you may use to defend yourself. It may be a handgun, it may be a long gun, it may be neither, it may be both. Which answers your question.

[tpaine]

It is correctly stated that the right to life is an inalienable right that man cannot take away. The right to self defense is part of that inalienable right to life. Everyone has it. A four-year-old has it. A prisoner has it. An illegal alien has it. A foreign visitor has it. An insane person has it.

It is then argued that our inalienable right to self defense does not include using a gun because if it did, then the aforementioned group would have the right to use one and they don't; -- which is faulty logic.

If any of the above group use a weapon of any type in self defense, a fully informed jury, judging both the facts and the law of the case at hand [self defense] would be duty bound to rule the defendant innocent.

Case closed. [to those with logical, open minds]