Guns

The tragic shooting of schoolchildren in Connecticut has led to a significant call for more gun laws, including the absurd trial balloon floated by Joe Biden that president Obama can take some sort of action by Executive order.  Such a call shows contempt for the constitution these men are sworn to defend.

Once again, as has happened so often in the past, emotions are set forth as arguments while reason and principle are smothered.  (More)

In the country I once knew, there was a belief in the concept of inalienable rights - life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  The word "inalienable" means that those rights cannot ever justly be subverted - and these amendments were written by men who believed they had escaped tyranny to found a nation with a limited government.

The 2nd Amendment was written in the context of these rights to life, liberty, property.  The right to self defense is inalienable because the right to life is inalienable. 

By extension, the right to life is protected at various times by the militia, by the military, by police and the necessary evil of the use of force.  Self defense has been a valid legal defense for the entire history of our country and goes back to the Old Testament law itself.  Moral thinkers have usually allowed that self defense is valid justification for the use of force and that idea, self defense as part of the inalienable right to life, is connected to the second amendment.   To defend against assault by a weapon, individuals have a right to weapons.

But sloppy thinking and possibly intentional misdirection focus not on the larger principal but on the individual tragedies and abuses of freedom that occur, to call for greater limitations on an armed citizenry.

Mass murders occur for reasons that generally go beyond sudden crimes of passion.  The legal issue of how weapons are obtained is immaterial - a man who plans for days, weeks, months or years to commit mass murder will not be stopped by stricter laws.  Weapons of mass murder have included guns, both legal and illegal, but also explosives, knives, chemicals and airplanes.  More gun laws will not put an end to mass murder.  The oft cited mantra "...so that this will never happen again" is a false Utopian sentiment that reveals a failure to understand human nature.  It sounds good to an unthinking public, but is a dangerous door to a greater loss of freedom.

Worse, the 2nd amendment includes by implication the idea that an armed citizenry may be necessary to protect the citizens from their own government.  Disarming the populace has repeatedly been a precursor to tyranny.  Alexander Hamilton put it this way in the Federalist Papers:  "If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens...who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.

To defend their own rights.  That is the purpose of the second amendment.  Yet the hue and cry of so many is to erode, limit or do away with the provision of self-defense.

While we are all shocked and saddened that a disturbed young man slaughtered school children, calls for the curbing of a constitutional right should be resisted on principle.  The right of self defense is implied in the inalienable right to life and as such it "must not be abridged", period.