No, “natural rights” implies something something more lofty than “people should have the right to speak freely”; what andros said sounds more like Benthamite Utilitarianism: freedom of speech, and liberty in general, is good because it tends to be most conducive to human happiness. Society, therefore, should endeavor to protect the “right” to free speech. Of course, if one believes that freedom of speech is non-conducive to happiness, than that right disappears.
Natural rights, conversely, are things that are either granted by god or are axiomatically (note: may not be a real word) part of man’s natural condition. Of course, different people have different opinions about what man’s natural condition is (and what rights god grants, for that matter), so that’s tough to go by.
Anyway, you really can’t say that gun ownership is a natural right – and it’s awfully tough to compare gun registration with suppresion of free speech. That having been said, one can of course make the argument that the right to gun-ownership is conducive to happiness. I think you’d have a difficult time with that using traditional Benthamite methods, but you can still argue from Utilitarianism.
VarlosZ, I’m not the biggest Bentham fan, but for my purposes here, it’ll do just fine.
Crafter, you say:
No. I think that every society should allow everyone to speak freely, to a degree at least. But I do not in any way consider speech to be a “natural” right. I think it would be nice. I do not think it is inherent in the human condition.
We have not “recognized” a preexisting right, we have decided that it is a right that all people should have. Other cultures and societies (groups of people, and don’t you just love how I keep coming back to that) believe differently.
And VarlosZ is quite correct–it’s really hard to justify gun ownership as a “natural right” from a Lockean perspective, or even a Jeffersonian one. (Modern Libertarian thought, of course, holds that the concept of ownership is paramount, and can be used as a basis for arguing that possession of anything is a fundamental right. I don’t buy that either, personally, but to each her own.)
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Anyway, you really can’t say that gun ownership is a natural right – and it’s awfully tough to compare gun registration with suppresion of free speech
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Are you arguing strictly philosophically, guys, or are you arguing on constitutional grounds?
Seems to me that if constitutional rights can be dismantled by adopting a certain utilitarian perspective, then it is not worth much as a governing document. My Understanding was that it protects our Natural Rights.
Assuming for the moment that that’s the case, it doesn’t mean that all rights established in the Constitution are “natural” rights, does it? I mean, not everyone in the world has the “right” to be the US President, for example. And I wouldn’t think that voting at age 18 is a “natural” right.
No, I wouldn’t argue that everything in the Constitution guarantees a *natural *right. But I would argue that the Framers did think that the Second does.
There are no restrictions on owning knives, crossbows, swords, chainsaws, nailguns, etc., but yet, can they all be used as lethal weapons? Yes. One can own as many as they want with no waiting period or any kind of background check. Yet, they are all deadly. Does that mean whoever owns them can kill others without being punished? Of course not.
The same concept can be applied to firearms. Just because there would be no restrictions on owning firearms, that would not give you the right to kill others freely. Remember, ownership of the firearm is different than the use of the firearm.
There may be no restrictions on owning knives, crossbows, and swords, but there are restrictions on bearing them. They are considered weapons. But chainsaws and nailguns are considered tools so they are not restricted. I am just nit-picking. I do agree with your point, of course.
When you say, “register”, I assume it means you are a gun-owner. An armed civilian not recently escaped from prison. Am I right? As such, you are a member of the militia, per the Militia Act of 1792.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 16:
The Congress shall have Power
I think this clause is just as important as any other section of the Constitution, notwithstanding the unwillingness of any gun-rights absolutist that I have ever debated to address it.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia” (all the armed citizens). How are they supposed to call you out if they don’t know who you are? Could they, maybe, write your name down on a list of gun-owners? Not (and correct me if I’m wrong) according to you.
Some more fuel for the fire:
"If a well regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the natural security."
--- [Federalist Paper #29](http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed29.htm).
To sum up, I am quite familiar with what is expressed in the OP: an absolutist notion of gun rights, totally free from the responsibilities of militia membership. It is obvious that many Americans today feel that the government has no right to regulate or organize gun-owners. It is also patently obvious that the framers did not share this belief; on the contrary the framers felt and stated that the government has the obligation to communicate with, mandate training for, and discipline individual militia members. QED
Whether the right to bear arms is a natural one, who exactly has endowed us with it, is less the issue for me (though it’s interesting) than whether or not this right ought to be absolute. No right in the constitution is absolute, I don’t think. The right to free speech, as has often been pointed out, does not allow you to libel with impunity, for example, or shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Whoever gave us our rights, and whether or not they were supposed to be absolute, that ain’t how it works right now and that’s not likely to change any time soon (nor should it, in my mind).
Does the right to bear arms permit you to have ICBMs on your lawn? To sit on your porch training a load rifle at passersby in case any of them dash onto your property to do something dangerous? To construct bombs in your basement powerful enough to take out the block should something go wrong? Is there really no line that can be drawn in the interest of public safety (or some other compelling interest)?
I’m not trying to establish where this line resides, merely that it exists. And that, if it does, then it is NOT at all unseemly to discuss things like registration or gun locks or whatever.
This is not to say I’m for or against any of those things. I agree that often the types of remedies proposed do nothing but make the proposer feel good that they’re addressing something that makes us all uneasy. What will registration accomplish, for example, as opposed to say “child-proofing” pistols where there is at least an arguable effect? But the point is, the debate should not be dismissed out of hand in the interest of preserving some absolute right that does not, and should not, exist.
You’ll notice the above text does not appear in the body of the Constitution. Neither does the phrase “well-regulated Religion” occur in the First Amendment. Why the difference in the framers’ treatment of the right to bear arms and the right to worship? Neither of them, as Bob Cos points out, can be considered an absolute right by any stretch of the imagination (well, maybe some people’s imagination). Human sacrifice is in an integral part of many historical religions; perform one of those under a claim of First Amendment protections and you’ll be laughed at all the way to the penitentiary.
Still, there is another difference between the right to bear arms and freedom of religion. Freedom of religion (and press, speech, security against arbitrary search and seizure, and a bunch of other stuff) is an end in itself. Keeping and bearing arms may be an end in itself to some people, but all the important texts treat it as means to securing a free state. The idea that a responsible militiaman has an inalienable right to hide from, organize against, and ignore the training mandates of, a government (local, state or federal) is laughable. And I would be laughing if I hadn’t heard arguments to this effect more times than I could count.
I take issue with this statement on several levels. First and foremost, there’s no such thing as “natural rights”. There are natural laws. These laws may enable a species like a human to master the art of speaking. They do not guarantee this, as demonstrated by people that are born mute. In fact, speech is a learned behavior - not something that humans are born with. As we teach humans how to speak, we also teach them when to speak. You believe that you have an inalienable natural right to free speech. However, let me remind you that even in the US where this right is probably the most liberal, you are not granted this right without some restriction. As a child you may be told to keep quiet in school. Your parents may prevent you from speaking freely during dinner. Societal pressures prevent you from speaking in a derogatory manner about a deceased at his funeral. Common sense may tend to deter you from slinging racial slurs in a predominantly black environment. You may find yourself in a lot of trouble if you make jokes about bombs or firearms in an airport or federal courthouse. There are countless examples of situations where you are not allowed to speak freely due to social, economic, or legal pressures and are likely to have your right to free speech sumarily taken away from you if you choose to go against the grain.
The most telling thing about your statement is that you use the phrase “philosophy of natural rights”. The use of the word “philosophy” indicates to me that you recognize that these rights are neither natural or inalienable.
The point that I was getting at and ( I believe ) basicly what the last few posters are alluding to is that simply stating that you have a Right is not a strong enough argument for a debate. You must also show that your Right should not be limited in this situation.
On the difference between natural and positive rights, from Jay L. Garfield, of the School of Cognitive Science and Cultural Studies, Hampshire College:
And from our old friend, Prez Numero Dos, John Adams:
“Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.”
— John Adams, Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1763
Yes, there are rights that all humans have, not contingent upon government decree. Self-defense is one of them. A government that acts contrary to these rights ceases to be a legitimate government of the people. If y’all disagree, I’d REALLY like to hear your reasoning.
I wouldn’t call self-defense a right. It is a natural animal behavior. If you’re going to call self-defense a right, then you have to call things like urinating and sneezing rights. Also, I don’t think anyone would suggest that people should not practice self-defense. The question of handguns for self-defense is this: Is the pill possibly worse than the disease?
Imagine a drug that could cure cancer. There are only two problems with this drug. (1) You have to take it before the cancer develops for it to be effective and (2) The drug can be fatal to some people. The number of fatalities caused by the drug are approximately the same as the cancer death rate. There have been studies but it’s so easy to lie with statistics that no one is sure which is higher. The only thing we know for sure is that large numbers of people die from both cancer and the cancer drug.
Do you think such a drug should be approved by the FDA? Do you think it should be an additive to public water supplies so that nearly everyone is exposed to it?
On the previous page, someone pointed out that indeed, the rights to live, to free speech, etc., are alienable. Now, some of you may disagree with that contention, but isn’t an alienable right synonymous with a privilege?
Let’s just say, for the purpose of argument, that there is some omnipotent, omnisceint deity, or being doling out “rights” to all humanity. We’re all lucky enough to be granted the right to live. One of us is killed by a fellow member of our particular society. Why hasn’t the deceased individual’s right to life been removed? If life is something ordained by a supreme power, why does one individual have the ability to remove it?
We all know that people are killed by others. Thus, their “right” to live has been removed, otherwise they would still be alive. A privilege, by definition is “a special right, favor, etc., granted to some person or group” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1982). A right, according to the same source, is “a power or privilege granted by law.”
A right is a privilege, a privilege is a right. Neat, huh?
Well, we were just waiting to try and squeeze that one in, weren’t we. Perhaps you missed my point. I was saying that if the solution is as bad as the problem, we need to rethink the solution. My point was not about disease, as such.
Just so you don’t accuse me of missing your point, however… There are a bazillion things in the universe that were not designed to kill, however do, on occasion. We cannot and should not try to regulate these. I really can’t give your reasoning any credence.
While I think we should have stronger controls on smoking and drinking because they negatively affect others. The real issue here is about design.
Tobacco products, alcohol, and fatty foods were designed primarily to give pleasure to the receipient. Sure we can argue about the relative effectiveness of these designs, but this was the intent. Guns were designed primarily to kill. We don’t need to argue about their relative effectiveness.
Side note: Contrary to public opinion, diets high in fat are not necessarily a cause of heart disease. There are many cultures whose natural diets are much higher in fat than the American diet (the French for instance) and have a much lower rate of heart disease. The French are big consumers of tobacco and alcohol products, for that matter.
