The Meaning of Rights

[Lindy]

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[NW Backpacker]

Exactly right.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,...."

Declaration of Independence:
https://www.constitution.org/us_doi.pdf

Constitution (2A appears on page 12):
https://constitutioncenter.org/media/files/constitution.pdf

Excellent and entertaining video: "The History of the Second Amendment"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhBwHiLcTG8

 

[Zathras]

It's important to know the difference between a right and a privilege (government or other group doles it out or otherwise bestows it upon you). This is especially true in this day and age where the word "right" is attached to everything people want, regardless if government should be involved at all. It's heavily abused and the lines have blurred for most citizens today, especially amongst our youth. They are indoctrinated in a failed education system and not corrected by their parents with any supplemental instruction, mostly because their parents also do not understand the difference or feel it's not their responsibility (ie. education "rights" are owed to their kids by the government...).

Given the thinking, it's not a big leap to get to some of the popular media-reinforced notions that we see today, applied to gun owners: "You don't *need* that type of firearm". If you have the same blurry understanding of all this, then you're ok with being quite discriminating on what the government grants you and how it is weighed in terms of society's 'needs' vs. your 'wants'. These false choices continue to baffle our 'educated' college kids as well. In the corporate world, even with some life experience under people's belts, they do not get it.

I had people asking me (in the workplace, so they were too timid to actually engage in real-time - merely electronically judging me, as per usual) why my 'want' to have a firearm was more important than their kid's life and "How could you? You have kids!", and so forth. Explaining that it's not a "Bill of Needs or Wants" didn't seem to register, and neither did the fact that the government doesn't 'bestow' anything upon me in this case. To the contrary the government has agreed, in hallowed writing, specifically *not* to do anything to prevent me from exercising the right to bear arms or many other Constitutionally recognized - *not given* - rights (ie. what the original post stated, albeit mine was admittedly not as succinct as your post).

 

[ma96782]

But, but, but.......


And......



Aloha, Mark

 

[donniele]

Amen that.

 

[tac]

YOU don't have to ask anybody for permission to own a gun - it's a RIGHT.

Here in yUK we have to ask for permission to own a gun - it's a PRIVILEGE.

The United States of America remains the only nation on earth where the law-abiding citizen has the RIGHT, protected by the constitution, to own a firearm.

I'm talking here, of course, about civilised nations, and not the dingbat nightie-wearing mobs of itinerant snack-barists and their odd world-view.

 

[whitney]

Some interesting reading regarding rights from the CATO Institute.

What the Second Amendment Permits
Read the Washington post article with CATO chairman Robert Levy.

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads/kolbe_cert-stage.pdf

Brief filed by CATO in the case of Warman v. Healey This is the case of the Massachusetts AG creating an assault weapon ban.

This "fight for rights" is a marathon my friends.

~Whitney