Rights
By Mitch Berg
I’m not going to talk politics, here. I’m going to talk morality and ethics.
First: as a general rule, it’s considered immoral to make someone accountable and responsible for something, but to withhold the rights needed to carry that responsibility out. It’d be wrong to say “raise this kid!” without giving someone the rights to, y’know, raise the kid.
Right?
Second: If someone said to you “I have the right not to be hit by a tornado”, you’d think they were nuts – right? Your rights don’t affect nature – do they?
Likewise, if someone said “I have a right not to get hurt while driving”, you’d likely respond “there is no “right” to be exempt from bad luck, equipment failure, or even human negligence – your own, or someone else’s”.
No – in both cases, you have the *responsibilty* to protect yourself, and especially your family, from these dangers that nature, technology and human nature throw at you. You listen to the sirens and haul the kids down to the basement; you check your tires, you make sure your kids are belted in, and yourself to boot; you watch for drivers who seem impaired or reckless, and drive defensively. You have the *right* to take action to meet your responsibility to *avoid* having human nature, mechanical nature, or Mother Nature harm you and yours.
So in this past week and a half, since the atrocity in Orlando, a lot of people have been arguing about the Second Amendment. One line I’ve heard a lot is “your Second Amendment right doesn’t trump my right not to get shot!”, usually from people who think they’re making a show-stopper point.
They’re half right; the Second Amendment trumps nothing. Literally. Because there *is* no “right not to get shot”. There is only a responsibility to try to deter, deflect or end threats to your community, to you, and your family.
Like Mother Nature, human nature is full of ugly surprises and perversions; people who want to take what’s not theirs (criminals), people who think that violence is a means to a political end (terrorists), some who think killing is their ticket to immortality (rampage killers) and, every so often, someone who thinks their will to power is more important than your life, liberty and happiness; none of them have the “right” to do any of it, but that doesn’t prevent them from doing it anyway.
Do you have a “right” not to be affected by the worst human nature has to offer? In an abstract sense, maybe – but discussions of “rights” with criminals, terrorists, madmen and tyrants are about as useful as discussions with tornados and flat tires.
You don’t have a “right” not to be affected by perversions of human nature, any more than you have a right not to be affected by tornados, earthquakes or blowouts. But you do have that responsibility.
To meet that responsibility, you have rights; the right to take actions that protect everyone; you don’t need a permit to check your tires, to take your kids to the basement when the sirens go off [1]…
…and the *right* to defend you and yours from the worst of human nature with a firearm (among many, many other options – from speech, peer pressure and dogs, to locked doors and motion lights, through restraining orders, police calls and the like). The Second Amendment doesn’t grant this right; our creator did, just like our rights to speak, worship, publish, and so on. To try to suppress that right – the right to uphold that responsibility to protect ones self, community and family – is as immoral as giving people any other responsibility without rights.
There is no more “right not to get shot” than there is a “right to shoot people” [2].
——
OK, I lied. There’s some politics in here too.
Some people who should know better have been given to stroking their chins and intoning “y’know, the 2nd Amendment exists and is a right – but we’ve rolled back other rights, like the right to own slaves”.
Sure – we’ve changed the Constitution. The 13th Amendment abolished the “right” to own other humans – an institution that was morally repugnant BECAUSE it stripped away the other human’s rights. Basic principle, here: one person’s rights can not infringe other peoples’ rights.
But abolishing the Second Amendment – or more likely, trying to ban a class of firearms – has less in common with the 13th Amendment than the 18th, which banned alcohol. Like Prohibition, the gun grabbers believe that if they just regulate what people can get their hands on, they can repeal human nature itself!
Prohibition made everything that it was trying to help, even worse, and had unintended consequences that were far worse than the original problem (all-time high crime rates, ballooning government spending, contempt for the law).
Naturally, this’ll be different.
Anyway – you don’t, ever, get more freedom by taking other peoples’ freedom away.
[1] although don’t give the Saint Paul DFL any ideas
[2] other than in self-defense, naturally
June 28th, 2016 at 11:48 am
Gosnell’s behavior was terribly wrong. But there is no reason to believe that an extra layer of regulation would have affected that behavior. Determined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing statutes and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations.
~ Justice Steven Breyer 6/27/2016
June 28th, 2016 at 12:29 pm
Depends on the cause celebre, swiftee… depends on the cause… You can write off the Judicial branch. No logic, morality or common sense left on that bench (save for 3). Judicial activism at its worst.
June 28th, 2016 at 1:53 pm
Just think how much happier the gun controllers would be if Mateen had simply barricaded the doors to Pulse, set a fire, and burned them all alive!
June 28th, 2016 at 3:04 pm
Breyer has a point–Gosnell’s behavior wasn’t because there were no regulations, but because many had decided not to enforce them.
June 28th, 2016 at 3:06 pm
So, we should let people have biological weapons because after all, you don’t get any additional liberty by taking another’s away. That little sound-bite is meaningless pabulum. Do you think you should let the insane have nerve agent?
Saw there was an attack at Attaturk airport. Armed police attempted to stop it and were blown up… why didn’t guns stop that attack, Mitch?
June 28th, 2016 at 3:12 pm
Pen,
So many logical fallacies. So little time – and, as it happens, so little need for time, since they’re pretty rudimentary:
So, we should let people have biological weapons because after all, you don’t get any additional liberty by taking another’s away.
Strawman. Nobody’s called for radically changing the types of firearms available to civilians. You’re trying to drag the argument off on a tangent.
Do you think you should let the insane have nerve agent?
I’ve been pretty consistent in wanting the violent insane to not be armed at all. You keep missing that.
Saw there was an attack at Attaturk airport.
Ataturk.
Armed police attempted to stop it and were blown up… why didn’t guns stop that attack, Mitch?
Let’s leave aside the fact that you don’t know what happened yet; perhaps if they’d gotten there a second or two earlier, they would have? We don’t know, and that means you don’t know either.
But with that aside? Who said the right to keep and bear arms was a guarantee against every possible manifestation of evil?
If you have car insurance, does it guarantee you’ll never slide off the road during a snowstorm?
June 28th, 2016 at 3:53 pm
Your right to vote doesn’t trump my right not to have Mark Dayton as my governor.
June 28th, 2016 at 4:04 pm
lets cut through what you think is clever reasoning peev,
if you can’t buy a gun because you’re on at least one of many terrorist watch lists, you should not be able to vote. In fact voter registration should be contingent upon a clean bill of health from NICS and Homeland Security, and CIA, NSA, etc
June 28th, 2016 at 4:34 pm
Y’know, Peev, I wonder why you are so obsessed with guns and the 2nd amendment rights of law abiding American. The proximate cause of the deaths at the Pulse nightclub was not the Mateen’s possession of an assault rifle. Legal scholars determine proximate cause by the use a “but for” test. You can’t say “but for the possession of an assault rifle, Mateen would not have murdered 49 people at the nightclub.” His intent was to kill as many people as possible, using whatever means was available. You can, however, say “but for Mateen’s allegiance to ISIS, he would not have murdered 49 people at the nightclub.”
June 28th, 2016 at 4:59 pm
Pen,
Well, there you go; one of the policeman managed to delay one of the explosions by shooting the suicide bomber; the shock of the impact and of the resistance appears to have delayed the bomber long enough to save many lives (including that of the policeman).
This jibes with the research I’ve been writing about here for years; since Columbine, law enforcement has come about to the idea that the best way to deal with spree killers is to interrupt their reverie (they usually plan these attacks in a fantasy world) by putting fire on target. And while law-enforcement doesn’t advertise it, it really doesn’t matter if the shooter has a badge or not.
That’s not even debateable.
June 28th, 2016 at 6:11 pm
I’ve thought about visiting Penigma to drop a little reality in their comment box. But you’re required to register in order to comment, and I’ve heard that web masters can use your registration information to track your location, learn your real identity, publish it on their website, urge their readers to call your employer to get you fired or call SWAT to get you killed.
I have no fear of Mitch doing that to me.
I’m not willing to take a risk on Dog Gone.
Since I can’t safely comment on their idiocy at their site, I feel no need to comment on their idiocy on this site. I no longer will feed these trolls.
June 28th, 2016 at 6:18 pm
That little sound bite is called “precedent” you mumbling twit. Remember it, it’s coming to a decision near you.
June 28th, 2016 at 6:28 pm
“web masters can use your registration information to track your location, learn your real identity, publish it on their website, urge their readers to call your employer to get you fired ”
Which is exactly what DG did to K-Rod after he posted a couple of intemperate (nothing as bad as what DG posts) comments on her site early on.
Agreed, neither peev nor DG is trustworthy.
June 28th, 2016 at 7:18 pm
You’ve all probably seen this already elsewhere, but Scott Adams, I think, perfectly addresses the myopia of Pen. Per Adams, (a Democrat):
“But we do know that race and poverty are correlated. And we know that poverty and crime are correlated. And we know that race and political affiliation are correlated. Therefore, my team (Clinton) is more likely to use guns to shoot innocent people, whereas the other team (Trump) is more likely to use guns for sporting and defense…So it seems to me that gun control can’t be solved because Democrats are using guns to kill each other – and want it to stop – whereas Republicans are using guns to defend against Democrats. Psychologically, those are different risk profiles. And you can’t reconcile those interests, except on the margins. For example, both sides might agree that rocket launchers are a step too far. But Democrats are unlikely to talk Republicans out of gun ownership because it comes off as “Put down your gun so I can shoot you.”
June 28th, 2016 at 7:24 pm
NW,
I had plans of posting a link to that piece later this week or maybe early next (because there’s no shortage of material…)
June 28th, 2016 at 11:44 pm
I think the Democrats also want guns to defend themselves against Democrats.
June 29th, 2016 at 9:40 am
It boggles the mind that Adams doesn’t clue in to what he’s just said and change his politics to the safer, self-defense side. I love his logic, but it’s sad he doesn’t act on it.
June 29th, 2016 at 10:17 am
He mentions in the piece that he has a gun.