That may make sense if you don’t think about the analogy and how it doesn’t make sense at all. In the cannon example, the army never intended to fire the cannon and never intended to hit a house. In the gun confiscation example, the state has setup a system specifically to confiscate weapons, and in fact did so intentionally, in exactly the manner you said doesn’t ever happen.
Most of the people that they confiscate from are probably justified in that they are prohibited. That doesn’t change the fact that they have made at least one mistake and intentionally confiscated someone’s gun in a way you said never happens. In fact, it did happen and you were wrong. Yes it was an error, but not an error of intent - the error was in record keeping. Can this happen again? Almost certainly because humans make mistakes and there is a system established to go door to door, with a list, and confiscate weapons.
If I said, cops never search a person’s house without a warrant or exigent circumstances that would be wrong - they do. Sometimes in violation of people’s rights, and sometimes by mistake. It does happen though.
It’s unfortunate you don’t seem to want to acknowledge your mistake.
So your argument is that there shouldn’t be a change to the system because people make mistakes. Forgive me if I don’t find that compelling in the slightest.
It’s just a re-interpretation of the old argument that I’ve seen trotted out with many iterations: “If regulations can’t be perfect, or perfectly enforced with 100% success, then why bother having them at all?”
Reasonable people could enact some form of compensation for someone wrongly denied the opportunity to have a weapon. Approach is important too, one should not be harshly demanding, as that arouses enmity. Better to be polite, deferential and disarming.
I don’t even support gun control in the same sense that most liberals do, but this strikes me as a really bogus, nitpicky, and borderline desperate argument. A real stretch.
It is nitpicky, which I acknowledged. It’s also a correction of a factual error. It’s kind of what is normal on this board. Except when it comes to issues relating to guns. In those cases, sloppiness is par for the course and given a pass.
I actually have no objection to the program in CA in principle. But when they make mistakes through poor procedures or sloppiness it should be acknowledged. And when errors are made so should they. A cite that contradicts and assertion should yield a restatement, YMMV.
It has nothing to do with pro or con gun control. You made a factual error. I’m not arguing in favor or against anything here other than for accuracy. Your statement, “not ever”, was wrong.
Well allow me to take you at face value because I live in Canada (or Soviet Canuckistan as you may know it) and we have gun laws. We still have gun violence here, absolutely. Some nutcase got all the way into the Centre Block of Parliament before he was stopped by a man wielding a gun. The US equivalent would be someone making it into the West Wing of the White House before getting gunned down by Secret Service. But we don’t need no secret service, we’ve got Kevin Vickers.
In any case, I have made the supposition that the POTUS is essentially powerless in the gun debate. You think I am wrong. Please elaborate. I feel that if Obama had the power to lay down some laws he would have done so already. I know he’s tried with some executive orders and I feel fairly certain that those executive orders have already been overturned by the courts. But I am happy to admit I could be wrong and I appreciate you educating me on this subject. So please, do tell. What can Obama do and most importantly, why isn’t he doing it?
You’re saying that the Supreme Court could declare that certain, limited gun control laws are constitutional. Therefore no rights will have been violated.
I’ve said here before that the entire 20th century history of the Supreme Court can be summarized as reversing every earlier case they had decided. I have no doubt that the 21st century will continue that trend. I know that both sides score decisions as wins or losses and right or wrong. Either way, our “rights” are what the latest Supreme Court decision determines them to be. There is no Platonic set of RIGHT*S in a golden bowl high in the sky.
And the President does not have and will not have the ability to take away peoples’ gun rights, no matter how you twist your logic.
Do you think that SCOTUS could theoretically rule any direction on any issue without violating a person’s rights? I don’t. I think their ruling would be consistent with our system of government and such ruling would be definitionally constitutional, but a person’s rights could still be violated. What do you think?
Do I personally think that rights have been violated by laws upheld by the Supreme Court? Sure. Do I think that all those reversed decisions I mentioned undid some of the damage? Sure. Do I think you would agree with me on every case? Of course not.
And that’s where it ends. As soon as you try to claim there is one higher version of RIGHT*S that everybody acknowledges, your whole edifice comes crashing down. I don’t define rights as you do. I claim that things you deem to be rights are no such thing.
That’s fine here on a message board, but the country can have only one legal definition at a time. If that definition were obvious and accepted by all, then the Supreme Court would never have to rule on any cases to begin with. Heck, four people actually on the Supreme Court disagreed with your definition of rights in the Heller case. It’s all arbitrary lines drawn through grayness. And the grayness changes over time along with the sentiment of the American people.
They deal with it by voting. Congress changes. The President changes. The legal world changes along with them.
But the President never grabs guns. Never. You can’t make that case believable.
I’ll note that Exapno Mapcase’s view on rights appears broadly consistent with that of Bricker, who pushes this POV with some level of contained exasperation.
As a formerly active member of Amnesty International, I’d like to qualify that. I do think there are universal human rights: those are human rights that are… universal. In other words, no non-trivial set of politicians are willing to stand up and say, no, this is not a right. By that definition and awkwardly, the 2nd amendment may be a right, but it is not a universal right. Because most democratic countries don’t recognize it as such. “The right to bear arms makes about as much sense as the right to arm bears”, according to this view, common in most parts of the world.
Furthermore, I do think that moral rights are coherent concept, independent of legal rights. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or (not) be in certain states.”
I add, by way of defining my terms: those who abridge moral rights can be morally condemned. Yes, that is tautological: it’s a part of a definition. Responsibilities are the flip side of rights, because rights involve the responsibility not to infringe on the rights of others.
Exapno Mapcase could reply that there’s a lot of grey area and room for debate. I don’t dispute that. I’m just saying that the concept of rights is a coherent one in a non-legal context. I furthermore add that it’s not merely a matter of taste, like the preference for color is. It can be discussed.