Posted on 04/03/2008 6:22:53 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
Defining the Right to Keep and Bear Arms By Thomas A. Bowden FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, April 03, 2008
First, the robber hit Willie Lee Hill more than 50 times with a can of soda, knocking him unconscious. Later, the 93-year-old victim awakened, covered with blood, to find his 24-year-old assailant ransacking the bedroom. When Hill pulled out a .38-caliber handgun from near his bed, the robber lunged at him. Hill stopped his attacker with a single bullet to the throat. “I got what I deserved,” the robber told police afterward.
That episode happened in Arkansas last July, but similar acts of self-defense occur by the thousands all across America every year. Overwhelming historical evidence and common sense demonstrate that guns--often called the “great equalizer,” for obvious reasons--are a powerful method of self-defense in the precious minutes before police can arrive.
In the District of Columbia, however, citizens may not lawfully possess a handgun for self-defense, even in the home...at least, not yet. The Supreme Court has heard oral argument in D.C. v. Heller, which is expected to determine whether such a blanket ban violates the Second Amendment. But regardless of how the Court may interpret the Constitution, citizens deserve a legal right to own a handgun for self-defense.
As the Declaration of Independence recognizes, governments are created to protect our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right of self-defense is included and implied in the right to life. In forming a government, citizens delegate the task of defending themselves to the police. But to delegate is not to surrender. Each citizen retains the ultimate right to defend himself in emergencies when his appointed agents, the police, are not available to help.
But what constitutes an emergency? What acts of self-defense are permissible in such a situation? And what tools may private citizens own for emergency self-defense? The law’s task is to furnish objective answers to such questions, so that citizens may defend their lives without taking the law into their own hands.
An emergency, properly defined, arises from an objective threat of imminent bodily harm. The victim must summon police, if possible. An emergency ends when the threat ends, or as soon as police arrive and take charge. During that narrow emergency interval, a victim may defend himself, but only with the least degree of force necessary under the circumstances to repel his attacker. A victim who explodes in vengeance, using excessive force, exposes himself to criminal liability along with his assailant.
Many objects commonly owned for peaceful purposes can be pressed into service for emergency self-defense. But unlike kitchen knives or baseball bats, handguns have no peaceful purpose--they are designed to kill people. The same lethal power that makes handguns the most practical means of self-defense against robbers, rapists, and murderers, also makes handguns an essential tool of government force. Handguns are deadly force and nothing but--a fact that gives rise to legitimate concerns over their private ownership in a civilized society.
These concerns can be resolved only by laws carefully drawn to confine private use of handguns to emergency self-defense, as defined by objective law. Such laws must also prohibit all conduct by which handguns might present an objective threat to others, whether by intent or negligence.
Contrary to an often expressed worry, therefore, a right to keep and bear arms in no way implies that citizens may stockpile weaponry according to their arbitrary preferences. Cannons, tanks, and nuclear weapons have no legitimate use in a private emergency, and their very presence is a threat to peaceful neighbors.
If handguns are confined to emergency self-defense, no legitimate purpose is served by an outright ban such as the District of Columbia enacted. Even if such laws actually deprived criminals of guns (which they don’t), they would infringe upon a law-abiding citizen’s right in emergencies to repel attackers who are wielding knives, clubs, fists--or cans of soda.
With the aid of his handgun, Willie Lee Hill survived that violent home invasion last July. Self-defense was his right, as it is ours. A proper legal system recognizes and protects that right, by permitting private ownership of handguns under appropriate limits.
Thomas A. Bowden is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and the author of “The Enemies of Christopher Columbus.”
Actually they can.
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True.
But I think they will point to that and things like that and try to use them to constrain "the right to keep and bear arms" in a way that many will not like. They will claim that the constraints are not infringement because what they are constraining was not included in "the right to keep and bear arms" as it was understood at the time.
"That inalienable right presupposes the ability to possess the tools necessary to accomplish it." You can't have an "inalienable" right to self-defense without a corresponding inalienable right to possess the necessary tools to do so.
Obviously, you think you can. I think that's absurd.
So I don't understand how you can say that we have to protect the right of a foreign visitor to a weapon for self defense?
Well, we don't. If they choose to come here without the protection of that right, legally, that's their choice. Morally, however, they have the right to possess any tool required to defend themselves, in my opinion.
8 year-olds are like prisoners or the insane: their protection is legally the responsibility of someone else. An adult who keeps firearms in his house can leave them available for his minor children to use, unless you think that should be restricted, also.
In the first post of yours to which I responded, you said:
The right of self-defense with a weapon, however, is regulated by each state as to 1) who may keep a weapon for self defense
So, can each state decide that 86 y.o. grandmothers have to use knife skills or stick-fighting techniques to defend themselves? The fact that not even DC goes that far is not an answer.
Can you please take the time to make a point? I do. For you to respond with simply a link tells me nothing. Am I supposed to guess then respond to that?
And let me clarify. I meant, "It's foolish to think that states can succesfully regulate gun traffic without federal involvement.
Baloney. You can have an "inalienable" right to life without a corresponding inalienable right to possess necessary tools to do so, like food. You're not entitled to food. The law says you have to pay for it.
You're not entitled to a weapon for self defense. The law says who may have a weapon for self defense. And the type of weapon. And when you may use that weapon and when you may not use that weapon. You can't shoot everyone who threatens you.
"So, can each state decide that 86 y.o. grandmothers have to use knife skills or stick-fighting techniques to defend "
CAN they? Well, of course they CAN, if their state constitution allows it. But I'm not aware of any state which has such a ridiculous law. You must, since you brought it up. Which state does that?
If you read all of Federalist 46, he says no such thing.
"This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence."
The population of the United States in 1788 was around 3 million people. Madison envisioned a militia of 500,000 armed citizens. This is less than 20% of the population, hardly everyone.
LOL! WOW! You've gone off the deep end with this one. It was bound to happen.
Have a nice day, you really cheered me up, stuck at home with the flu.
Then the right cannot be inalienable. By definition, inalienable rights "refers to a theoretical set of human rights that by their nature cannot be transferred from one person to another".
Why’d you ping him?!
So is the M4A1 and Ma Deuce.
It stops when we say “enough.”
When that is though, I won’t hold my breath.
Ah. Well, that explains how I was able to run circles around you today. I thought it was just too easy to totally decimate your arguments, leaving you with nothing to support your statements of fantasy.
Yep. Now it all makes sense.
(A little light ribbing.)
I’m adding a few words to this:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right, it is the Duty of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
I think that carries more weight.
Seriously, reconcile "You have an inalienable right to self-defense, but you will only be allowed to possess ping-pong balls and a tube of wheel bearing grease with which to exercise that right." And again, that fact that "even DC doesn't go that far" is not an answer.
If someone is denied from possessing the most efficacious tool to defend themselves, their right to self defense has been abrogated, and thus, it is not "inalienable."
Collectives, such as a "majority" don't have rights, they have powers. It should be obvious even to you that such powers are not unlimited. Individual rights have to do with the limits of such powers.
If you intend to use the word "rights" differently, it might be useful to hear you expound on what you mean.
If the residents of DC don’t want something, they don’t have to get/keep it.
Apparently some residents of DC _DO_ want certain tools, so your “the residents of DC don’t want them” line is demonstrably false. Some residents want them, others want to prevent those residents from having them - that’s very different from “the residents of DC don’t want them”.
They required permission from Congress to seek out and destroy British ships. They didn’t need permission to set up targets and practice firing on them.
Once again you attempt to use exceptions to justify infringement.
A person has no "right" to do anything in a place in which they have no right to be.
YOU have a right to keep and bear arms. Exercise it inside my house without permission and you will get your right to life infringed.
Eight-year-olds, prisoners, and the insane all have guardians who are responsible for their protection. Their incapacity to perform their own self-defense has no bearing on MY right to defend myself.
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