Fair Warning

The Atlanta Declaration: "Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission."
-- L. Neil Smith

Yep. Thanks for the reminder, Bill. :)

Does having a category titled "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" spare me from the wrath of Sunni? Heh, that sounds like a title for a bad movie about terrorism.

Eric wrote: Heh, that sounds like a title for a bad movie about terrorism.

Mark, thanks for the laugh! I needed that ...

Eric, you're spared on the RKBA issue ... but I can't say that it was pleasant to read a couple of your recent posts wherein you seemed to use the word "extremist" as a pejorative. I am a radical and an extremist for freedom, and proud of it.

Gleep! I hope you weren't referring to my recent blog posting on a "Safe 4th" - that was supposed to be satricial, Sunni. Really! And some of my best extremists are friends. Honest! :O

Right on Sunni. Because it isn't only about guns, its about freedom.

I don't think that there should even be a need for a "right" to bear arms.

The bloody right to property, whatever effin property you choose, should be a "right enough" to own whatever you want, and bear it whenever you want.

I'm wondering if it was not unfortunate that this "right to bear arms" was included as a separte right to the right to property. If the right to property, and to do with it however you choose, bearing in mind other's right to life, liberty and property, why did there ever need to be a new "right" regarding arms?

But then hell.. I live in Canada.. and I have to hide my unregistered arms, and tell anyone that I am lying on blogs when I say that I might have them.. and if I DO have them, I cannot even keep them on my property, as the suspicion of owning them is enough for the police to come and search all of my house.

It's a fucked up world we live in.

Nathan, I wasn't referring to you ... your blog had been updated so infrequently I'd forgotten to check it. Ya got an RSS feed going for it? :)

Ian, there are good reasons why the 2nd amendment was specifically included in our bill of rights. Unfortunately, it was unnecessarily wordy (IMO), and between that and the changed meanings of some of the terms in the preliminary clause, its meaning has become muddled for many.

Sunni, I consider myself a radical as well. See this post, for a discussion of that. Being a radical or an extremist is not inherently good, or bad. I think you misread my posts. I wasn't attacking extremism, in general, but rather specific extremist beliefs that are anti-liberty.

That’s an interesting concept of Ian’s. Property rights itself may even be a social construct. (“MAY be”, I said, not “is” -- but it’s worth thinking about.)

Most *individuals* know what belongs to them; only in society, in relationships, do we become concerned about what is mine and what is yours. “Finders keepers” is one rule we have developed to establish ownership; another is “I built it/thought of it first, so it’s mine” (which touches on the argument of patents and copyrights, intellectual as well as physical); a third rule covers trespassing; a fourth, covetousness; a fifth homesteading; a sixth the need for fences making good neighbors; and so on.

But all of these rules are only applicable in a /social/ setting. The man who lives on a desert island has no need to worry about what belongs to him, he has no competition, he KNOWS what is his or not: what he wants is his; what he doesn’t want or can’t use, is rejected. (Whether it works or not is a different matter. There he is guided by reality.)

We early on had need of guns: they served the same purpose as spears and bows and arrows, for food and for clothing -- and for fighting. The spear that was used for food, also prevented another man from stealing that food. From there, it became obvious that the same spear that prevented theft could be used to initiate theft -- by individuals or by a tribe (society). Thus greed (and war) was born.

We need guns now for the same reasons (and we have the same “right” to keep them): to prevent theft, to prevent society or individuals from taking what is “ours” -- and especially from taking the guns themselves, which would drasticially limit our ability to defend life and liberty, as well as property.

An interesting idea of Ian’s. I plan to pursue the thought, whatever conclusion I reach.

The Bill of Rights, in the eyes of Madison and some other Federalists, was a major mistake because it would be construed as the people only holding certain rights and privileges. The Constitution had been written exactly the other way around, that the government was limited and the people were not.

So, now Madison is shown to be right. The Second Amendment, which was intended to explicitly set the right of citizens to own weapons in the Cosntitution has, instead, had the opposite effect. It is now held, as a matter of course, that citizens have a limited right to own weapons BECAUSE it was explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.

I can’t agree with Ian, though, that guns were such a separate, isolated property right.

The Bill of Rights was designed to list a number of wants and needs that a people should have in order to live freely, and maintain that freedom in the future. (NOT coincidentally they were the same reasons these people came to North America in the first place.)

Freedom of religion... freedom to speak out (assembly) and write (the press) what they believed... freedom from harrassment... unfair trials... arbitrary imprisonment... quartering of soldiers... etc; the absence of all was specific to slave-citizens everywhere.

AND, if and when this new government got heavy-handed, the most basic right of physical self-defence -- guns -- was all an individual had to protect himself. Guns happened to be a tangible item of property.

But life (both body and mind), and liberty (the natural extension of being an individual) are intangible properties as well. Without the freedom to be oneself, to live for oneself, each of us becomes someone else’s property.

The “life and liberty” part is what government conveniently wants us to forget. It emphasizes the tangibles (guns, land, material possessions) so we are unable to concentrate on the intangibles (life and liberty) as they slip away from us.
The Bill of Rights was written to keep both types of property in mind, and to remind us to act on them when necessary.

Thanks for the clarification, Eric. Guess I did misinterpret what you were saying ... is it any consolation that you weren't the only person I was referring to with my snark?

Ian and Pat, thanks for your thoughtful contributions to the conversation.

Hey Sunni, no harm, no foul. I've done such things myself. Especially when I've read a lot of things I didn't like and then ran into something that touched hot buttons (maybe the word choice, for example). And the particular topic I was tackling, which is specifically Iraq and how we are dealing with it, is a tough one for me. In so many areas my position on something is very clear cut, but not on this one.

No problems on the "snark", none at all. Some folks have recently bothered me a lot with some very statist positions.

And, if I do say something that you don't agree with, call me on it. I like to hear things like that, it gets me thinking.

Ian and Pat had some great comments, didn't they?

Eric wrote: The Bill of Rights, in the eyes of Madison and some other Federalists, was a major mistake because it would be construed as the people only holding certain rights and privileges. The Constitution had been written exactly the other way around, that the government was limited and the people were not.

Additional background on this point.

Good for u, Sunni.

You'll never see me
support any form of
gun control except
hitting the target,
but keep looking.

Hey Mark, aside from Madison's own historical comments on the topic, I was thinking quite specifically of Griswold also. I just didn't have the link handy, thanks for that.

And, as Madison correctly pointed out, people have done exactly what was feared and decided that rights not protected explicitly in the bill of rights are not rights held by the people. They've gone even further, and decided that the constitution gives those powers not granted to the states or the people explicitly to the federal government, even if it is not explicitly stated in the constitution that the fed holds those powers. In other words, rather than a constitution that denies the government all powers it has not been explicitly granted (original intent), we have reversed that and given the government all powers that it has not been explicitly denied. This was the very thing that, at root, caused the Revolution.

Hmmmmmm.

I don't have a blog or website, except for my increasingly infrequent articles on TLE. However, you will NEVER hear me advocating any restriction on the ownership, use, possession or carrying of personal arms!

Ron