Seems like ONE court disagrees, and 4 courts that agree. Be interesting to see what happens in any case.
But if that starts happening, the NRA will step up and defend those minority males who are simply exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. Right?
By that logic, I could go out and murder someone, because I have that right to, because sometime in the future, some court may rule that murder is legal.
Even though I may be jailed for doing so, the right was always there.
You have said that abortion rights are made up out of whole cloth, but that is because you are looking at it backwards. The constituion doe not guarantee a right to an abortion, this is true. However, the constituion also does not give the states the right to regulate the reproductive choices of its citizens.
I see it as less of a matter of what a citizen can do, and more a matter of what the state is allowed to prohibit, than a right that is created out of whole cloth. The issues was settled, I believe, on the issue of privacy and govt intrusion.
Now, as to “natural rights”. What is a natural right? The only definition I can think of is a right that nature (or a creator or something) gives you. And if the universe itself has given you this right, then it will enforce it.
As an example, if you are playing a computer game like World of Warcraft. If you are in a non-PVP zone, you have the natural right to not be attacked by enemies. It is not understood or enforced by players, it is enforced by the universe itself. There are no punishments for violating a natural right, it is simply impossible to do.
Any right that is protected by the universe is a natural right. That gives you the right to gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force, and anything else in there we have not yet discovered. If we discover a new force, that would be scientists uncovering a new natural right, but they would not say they are creating a new one, they would say that it was always there.
Any other rights are social rights. They are rights that we respect in others because we wish them to respect them in us. We have the “right” to life, because we agree to respect other people’s right to life. If you had a natural right to life, then it would be impossible to kill you. If gun rights were natural rights, then it would be impossible for you to be disarmed.
It was said in this thread that conservatives believe that natural rights come from the universe, and liberals feel it comes from the govt. Neither of those is true. Rights come from society, from civilization, from people deciding that other people should have those rights, and a govt is there to ensure that those rights are protected. Though I will say that it makes more sense to say that rights come from the govt, as it actually works to protect those rights, than to say that they come from god or the universe or nature, as none of those entities bothers to lift a finger to protect them.
Proof? This is a few paragraphs long Op/Ed piece on an anti-gun website that offers 0 data to back up their claims. In fact, it’s typically misinformed and misleading.
More like a joke…
Lets look at their claims regarding TX, my home state.
FTA:
“CCW license holders were arrested for 5314 crimes…”
During that time span only 808 license holders were convicted for any crime per the state of TX.
That number of convictions, in relation to the rest of the TX population that doesn’t have a CCW, amounts to 0.3701% of the total number of convictions statewide.
“Thousands of CCW holders have been arrested”? Well, over a span of 20 years there probably have been just over 2000 convicted, of some crime, but again, in relation to the general population, where there were close to 800,000 convictions, it pales in comparison. Intentionally misleading.
CCW holders are among the most law abiding demographic in the state. And that mirrors in all other states as well.
I’ve provided a link for you to check my statement. No Op/Ed pieces involved.
You’re wrong.
From Bo’s cite:
What is “intentionally misleading” about noting that there is a higher arrest rate for CCW holders on weapons charges?
That’s not reflected in the states information. See the link I provided.
If both sets of data are correct :dubious:, I would say that in Texas they arrest a good number of CCW holders on weapons charges, then release them without a conviction. Which makes sense, since if they dont have their CCW permit on them, they could be arrested then charges dropped when they bring in the permit.
Hardly a violent crime way amoung CCW holders. In any case, over all data indicates that CCW holders have a lower crime rate.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/8255/report-concealed-carry-permit-holders-are-most-law-aaron-bandler#
*A newly-released report suggests that concealed carry permit holders are the most law-abiding citizens in the U.S.
The report, written by Crime Prevention Research Center president John Lott, notes that it is “very rare for permit holders to violate the law” and compares the crimes committed by permit holders to police officers and the general population. The police committed 103 crimes per 100,000 officers, while the general population committed 3,813 per 100,000 people, 37 times as much as the police crime rate.
And yet, the same metric shows an even lower crime rate for permit holders.
“Combining the data for Florida and Texas data, we find that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth the rate for police officers,” Lott writes. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000.10 That is just 1/7th of the rate for police officers. But there’s no need to focus on Texas and Florida — the data are similar in other states.”
The report found that while concealed carry-permits have surged since 1999, the murder rates have declined:*
The solution seems clear. Give everyone a CCW permit, and watch crime rates drop to near zero!
I think that I could allow myself to be convinced that having a limited number of responsible people carrying in public may make the public safer.
If on average, any particular venue has around one CCW’er with the training and skills to respond effectively and safely to a threat, then those venues *may *be safer places than they would be without that.
The people with CCW’s now are the low hanging fruit. Adding in more CCW’ers, making it easier to get one, encouraging people to get one and to carry, increases the number of people carrying guns in public, but does not necessarily increase the number of responsible people carrying in public that have the training and skills to make the public safer.
We see these accidents that people have while carrying in public all the time, now that’s not a reflection upon the responsible gun owners, but it does raise the question of whether we want to make it easier and more acceptable for even more people, people with less training and skills, to also be carrying in public.
I call those people “cops”.
Sure, because the more people legally carrying guns in public there are, the safer we all are. 
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go in that direction, but left it open.
But even then, we do see that even with the training that they are given, they sometimes still make mistakes.
For the purpose of this discussion, we’ll assume the people we are talking about are not currently LEO’s.
And that is my concern there. Even if they are responsible and trained and skilled, they are not a team. If you have a bunch of cops thwart a threat, they have worked together, they know how to take commands, they are aware of a chain of command, they know who is the bad guy.
Without that training together, having multiple good guys with a gun respond to a threat can create a situation that makes things more dangerous for the public, rather than less.
How is state information on convictions relevant to the rate of arrests?
Here was the original statement that was being responded to:
This is the part that is quoted from the linked document that is addressing the permit holders portion of the statement:
Here’s a few points about this snippet. First, it’s not possible to get back to the source data so the method by which the 81% figure is calculated is suspect. When looking for the source, the first link goes back to a VPC link here:
Footnote 12 there states:
(my bold)
I can recalculate the 38,830/13,586,575 to come up with the 285.8 per 100K figure. However, the document doesn’t list the source for the number of permit holders over the same comparison period, nor does it indicate if the previous figures were inclusive of the subset calculation. So difficult to verify. Even still, the date range throughout the document is not consistent - going from January 1, 1996, to August 31, 2001 and then in other parts From 1996 to 2000 with no months indicated. Given Texas publishes the conviction statistics which are easy to verify, and show an opposite conclusion, the VPC and Giffords presentation is suspect.
Second, it identifies the figure 5,314 arrests and includes a partial listing of violent or weapon related crimes, but then when it references the 81% figure, it’s comparing all arrests, not just those that are weapon related. To do this without indicating the different comparisons within the same paragraph is misleading. Of the 5,314, 1,272 were weapon related. There are other violent crimes that are outside the weapon related category, like manslaughter, murder, rape as well. If those are included, then the total is greater depending on how it’s aggregated. But the 5,314 figure includes at least 1,800 incidents that are drug or vehicle related like 1,315 incidents of DWI. DWI is terrible, but it’s misleading to include that adjacent to the rest of the incidents that were violent especially when the issue is concealed weapons.
Third, the original point that was being responded to was the criteria “more dangerous”, not arrests, and not convictions. It’s a small leap to assert that even if there were more arrests per capita, that arrests were a proxy for the “more dangerous” criteria. If choosing between arrests and convictions to determine which is a more relevant proxy, I’d go with convictions, but that’s debatable.
And fourth:
This isn’t supported by the data that was presented.
So that’s why it’s misleading.
I think it’s an ignorant distinction altogether. It shouldn’t be illegal for a concealed carrier to adjust his tie or something in such a way that his jacket opens and others get a brief glimpse of his concealed firearm. Furthermore, it shouldn’t be illegal for an open carrier to, say, wear a coat in the winter that hangs over his outside-the-belt holster, temporarily concealing his weapon. Both of these scenarios, in my opinion, are infringements on the right to bear arms. Carrying is carrying, and differing regulations on “concealed” versus “open” and on where and when either are allowed are just pointless hurdles thrown in the faces of innocent people to discourage the practice entirely.
I don’t particularly see the difference either. But it seems to be it would be kind of hard to say “Not allowing concealed carry is an infringement on my rights” when open carry is allowed. Or vice-versa.
Ok, that’s fair. Can you show me the data on arrests? Because it wasn’t included in that Op/Ed piece.
And let me ask you this. What difference does it make if someone is arrested but not convicted?
Innocent until proven guilty and all that…
It is also a really easy way to get harassed by the cops for “brandishing”
Open carry is technically legal in Virginia but it is de facto prohibited in the suburbs of Northern Virginia because some shithead will call 911 that some guy with a gun is in the 7-11 and that he gestured towards his open carry gun (brandishing) in a threatening manner.
hunh, they do that where you live too?
AKA you beat me to it.
States have long had the right to pass any laws not specifically prohibited by the constitution. So what part of the constitution prohibits the state from regulating medical practice? What part of the constitution prohibits the state from preventing the homicide of an unborn child (if that is how the state views the fetus)?
The Constitution does not affirmatively give the several states ANY powers. It just prohibits their ability to exercise their powers in a way that violates the constitution.
And where is that in the constitution? The court had to create the concept of “penumbra rights” Rights that are not in the constitution but are IMPLIED by the constitution. Gun rights on the other hand are second on the list.
When I say weapons charges, what sort of cries flash through your head?
Is it leaving your wallet in your car with your CCW license? Or is it waving a gun at people?
When the article says that 5,000 people out of 200k+ people are arrested for crimes including murder and rape, how many of those 5000 arrests do you think were for murder and rape?