[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
My argument is that infringing upon your rights to gun ownership and acquisition supersedes the right itself if it proves to be a better form of self-defense.
I argue this because, in my opinion, the right to self-defense is necessarily superior to the right to own and use a gun. I further argue that this point is obviously, blatantly clear. Gun ownership is a species of self-defense, self-defense being its genus but also a species of Natural Rights.
If the limitation of gun ownership, jumping through hoops, infringing, whatever, can be shown to be a better form of self-defense against gun violence than putting MORE guns into people’s hands, then there is no reason to continue pandering to your side of the argument.
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This is the craziest notion I’ve ever encountered on this subject. It’s Orwellian doublespeak. Demented even. Pittbullian?
I, Bert the Mighty, do hereby decree that we can remove all firearms from society without violating the Constitution or natural law if we can convince (dupe) the folks into thinking it is a superior form of self-defense.
Good grief.
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If you don’t understand the point I am making from a purely logical standpoint, I’m not sure if it serves any further purpose to continue here.
My point is this: Natural Rights>>>>>self-defense>>>>>>gun control.
You and I are certainly in agreement that Natural Rights are superior to all other rights, correct? Certainly, they are FAR superior to political rights.
Natural Rights, as a genus, has several species underneath it. Life, liberty, estate, and the right to defend such things serve as species of Natural Rights.
Life essentially needs no further categorization, certainly not for the purpose of this thread.
Liberty is a vague enough notion as is, so let’s also set that one aside as well.
Property as a right has never been construed to be limited strictly to physical possessions. Madison makes the point in Federalist #10 that the final end of gov’t is to protect man’s ability to acquire property of any and all kinds. By applying the same rules/protection to everyone, and given that everyone has unequal faculties when it comes to acquiring property, the equal protection of the law must necessarily lead to unequal results. It’s the same point that Cicero and others have made, that to strive for perfect equality in society is itself unequal since it requires equal results from people of unequal merit. #10 also essentially serves as an extremely clairvoyant and increasingly relevant argument against socialism in all of its forms. But I digress.
The right to self-defense is also a Natural Right, and it has many different species. Just like there are all sorts of different forms of liberty (such as free speech, religious freedom, etc.) and each form has species underneath it, so, too, does self-defense have many species.
James Madison would have argued that the best form of self-defense for the nation as a whole was the United States itself. The lessons of the Achaean or Amphyctionic League were not lost on him.
To Madison and many of the other Enlightenment thinkers from whom your rationale is derived, the republican form of gov’t was an excellent form of self-defense.
Perhaps you missed my thinly veiled borrowing of an excerpt from #51. Madison makes the point crystal fucking clear that the danger in pursuing the Articles of Confederation necessarily means that anti-Federalists are placing more importance on the form of gov’t than the liberty for which they had fought. Madison’s entire argument can basically be summed up as such: liberty itself is more important than any form of gov’t, and as such, the final end should always be the form of gov’t that protects liberty, even if it means the decidedly less libertarian form of gov’t that exists under the Constitution than under the Articles of Confederation.
The point I am making is very similar to Madison’s, that you are placing the form of protection above that which guns purportedly protect. Gun rights are protected not for the sake of owning guns, but as a further deterrent to a loss of life, liberty, and property. If another form of self-defense can be shown to be superior to the protection of gun rights, then there is no logical reason for gun rights to supersede this other theoretical form.[/quote]
At first glance you seem to be advocating for the interests of the collective above that of the individual, i.e., if the collective can make the case that no arms for anyone is more self-defensive than every man with a weapon then wham-bam thank-you-maam, we have ourselves a trump card. No?
I’m going to go deadlift then return and read The Federalist No. 51 and get back to you.
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I accidentally typed the wrong one. It’s #45, although #51 is about as good as anything in the collection, short of #10.
Majority Law wins every time, unless it conflicts with the concept of Natural Rights. That is the essence of #10 and the republican form of gov’t, including all of the successive filters represented by the separation and overlapping of the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial. The rights of the people include the rights to self-determination, participation in the legislative process, etc.
But that right is superseded by Natural Rights in general. No one has the right, even with 100% of the vote, to violate the Natural Rights of others.
And I’m not arguing for the collective making any sort of case. I am saying that if it can be shown–if it IS and not if it SHOULD BE–that making it increasingly difficult for criminally-minded people to get weapons is a legitimate form of self-defense, then it may indeed supersede gun rights.
If doing so finds itself in conflict with your allegedly unassailable right to purchase any gun you want, sorry, but you lose. Your right to swing your arms around just stopped at the tip of someone else’s nose.
This is where the logic side of things come in. I am simply arguing that your form of self-defense only has more veracity than another if it is the MORE EFFECTIVE way of defending one’s self. It sounds to me that you are arguing that gun rights and the right to self-defense are one and the same, as if the terms “car” and “Corvette” are one and the same. Either that, or that gun rights somehow supersede the right to self-defense.