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triumphguy
Guest
Is the right to bear arms “God given?”
What argument/evidence do you have to back that up?
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What argument/evidence do you have to back that up?
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Eddie_Mac
Guest
If not God, who? Rights by their nature are God given. No man can grant rights. Man can grant privilege. Who gave you your right to free speech? Right to exercise your religion?
The foundation of our freedoms are that they are given by God.
Do you think that the government grants you rights?
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triumphguy
Guest
Having a Law degree I would have to say yes.
However, some rights are innate to being human - rights of free speech, freedom of association, the right to bodily integrity (habeus corpus), to right to form a family, the right to bring up our own children, to right form a community. And being innate to the human they come from the Creator.
Bearing arms is not innate to being human, it is a result of our fallen nature, and therefore NOT God given.
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Mongo
Guest
I saw a show on discovery channel about a blind kid who could detect where things were and the general shape and size of things by clicking his tongue. Pretty interesting.
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otjm
Guest
However, you are quoting selectively.
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otjm
Guest
Please - do us all a favor and go tell the families of the 9 dead that statement.
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otjm
Guest
You only carry a knife for defense if you are willing to “get wet” with someone, and it requires being within about 2 feet of the perpetrator - a distance that is extremely unlikely if the perp is armed with a pistol or revolver.I’ve only one time in my life been around a person who was openly carrying a handgun on his belt. It was in a grocery store, about a year and a half ago, right around the time there was a big gun control push at the federal level.
Gotta say, it made me feel very uneasy. But that might be because it was the first time. I might have a different feeling if I lived in Texas.
My wife had a classmate in graduate school who carried a gun in his backpack. Gotta say, it made me a little uneasy. It was before we were married. She was pro-gun control at the time, then started talking to him, maybe he could walk her to her car if they were working late, he could give her advice about buying a gun, personal safety, yada yada yada and my reaction was, :ehh:…:dts: I wasn’t about to let him step onto my turf, so to speak.
I had a friend who carried a ka-bar knife in his backpack. He was a U.S. Marine reservist. I felt safe around him.
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otjm
Guest
There have been community programs, education and jobs for decades, and the prisons keep getting fuller and fuller. I don’t mean any disrespect, but you need to get an street education about criminals, crime, recidivism, gangs and what the real world is about. There isn’t a police department worth continuing in existence that isn’t trying to resolve gang problems, and the gangs just keep on keeping on.
Where do you think gang members come from? Thin air? Try broken families, kids whose parents don’t keep them on a short leash (that is, they don’t intervene when the kid starts hanging around with the wrong crowd), and illegals coming into the country intent on either joining a gang, or are already a member. How long have the Crips and the Bloods been around? You think the police, and the social service agencies have not tried their almightiest to separate convicts from those groups? They get out of prison, and they are right back; and if they give any sign of wavering while in jail, they get “corrected”, or dead. The gangs are extremely active within the prison, and they control others who might try to go straight.
Get rid of youth unemployment? Get real - we can’t get rid of adult unemployment, and youth who join gangs are joining in middle school age, not employment age.
If you don’t understand the problem, then proposing solutions to it is just idle talk.
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Eddie_Mac
Guest
Sorry. Not buying it. No wonder the world is in the mess it is if lawyers think governments grant rights.
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GEddie
Guest
Some rights come with human life (for example, life). Others are granted by government (ie, voting).
The question is whether being armed – ie, assured killing ability within the society – falls into the first or second category. I’d argue for the second, but that’s just me.
ICXC NIKA
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triumphguy
Guest
By the ad hominem obviously you didn’t read the rest of my post.
So here it is:
However, some rights are innate to being human - rights of free speech, freedom of association, the right to bodily integrity (habeus corpus), to right to form a family, the right to bring up our own children, to right form a community. And being innate to the human they come from the Creator.
Bearing arms is not innate to being human, it is a result of our fallen nature, and therefore NOT God given.
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Eddie_Mac
Guest
The right to arm and defend oneself and others is an innate right too. It just so happens that in this day and time we have firearms.
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Brendan
Guest
OK, let’s discuss the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, where the Jews in Warsaw took arms to defend themselves against the Nazi’s
Was that a legitimate use of arms by the Jews?
If so, where did they get the right, the legitimacy, to use arms, was it from the civil law or the natural moral law?
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Tomdstone
Guest
I would say it was from the natural moral law.
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otjm
Guest
If the right to life is God given, then the right to defend that life from an aggressor is not a right granted by the government, but rather is a right that flows from the original right - the right to life.
It is essentially meaningless to say that one has the right to life, but not the right to defend it.
It is essentially meaningless to say that one has the right to life, but not the right to defend it.
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Brendan
Guest
Exactly, and God being the author of the Natural Moral Law, the right is God Given.
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LongingSoul
Guest
Are you saying that all those many, many, many countries that ban the trade in self defense weaponry… are flouting a god given right of human beings?
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Gorgias
Guest
The place where reasonable debate might be engaged, it seems, is whether the right to bear arms is a necessary part of the right to self-defense. If your answer is ‘no’, then it would seem reasonable to ask what ‘self-defense’ means – either on a personal / individual level, or on the level of self-defense against a tyranny – in the context of a world in which firearms exist.
(NB: this is a separate discussion from the one in which the implications of enshrining arms ownership as a basic right in the founding documents of the U.S.A.)
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Brendan
Guest
You tell me, where did the Jews get the legitimacy to use arms in self defense, what legio or law gave them that right?
Was it the civil law, or the natural law.
Or is it your premise that the Jewish civilians had no legitimate right to use arms, after all, the use of arms was banned by the civil law in force at the time.
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Thomas_White
Guest
Yes, or sometimes anyway. Been there, done that. On those occasions many years ago, most everyone had an M16 handy and a few openly carried the .45 1911 ACP. But, hey, the dress code was olive drab, and it wasn’t even St. Patrick’s Day. Father never mentioned it.
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