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Comment by richmarr | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if you meant to imply that the 2nd amendment is a fundamental human right but if so I think that's a bit of a stretch.

'Fundamental rights' (under US law) I think is defensible as fundamental is treated as an alias for constitutional so guns are in.

'Fundamental human rights' to me implies broad and fundamental applicability, i.e. the UN declarations and covenants on human rights, which don't iterate guns as a right.

Case in point, when non-US countries talk about human rights, none of them are talking about guns.

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I'd argue that fundamental human rights means rights that exist inherently regardless of whether the UN or any given country recognizes them.

My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in the united states.

self defense is a human right only in a lawless society. The existence of the state makes it necessary for it to have the monopoly of the application of force, and all matters should be resolved in a civil court of law. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense. Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law). I get it, guns are fun. But a human right? Definitely not

You're quite incorrect. The state properly has a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force (and none other) under objective laws and legal processes. But self-defense is an emergency, and there is no rational argument to claim that one may not protect oneself, one's family, or one's property against beasts or thugs. On the other hand, if you kill someone in self-defense, you had better be prepared to explain how necessary it was, in the court of law; which is exactly how things work in the USA.

If one is so depraved as to argue that self-defense is unacceptable as such, then one should be prepared to live and die as a slave to the first thug or dictator who walks by one's neighborhood or country.

> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.

Really? Your profile was created 15 minutes ago, and this seems like an absurd statement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide

This strikes me as a trolling comment. But if you're serious, and if you can pull the idea that the state owns all manifestations of the application of force out of thin air, then there is no limit to how many of your other human rights that state will take away from you. By giving up the right to self defense, something so fundamental to all living things, you effectively chain yourself in irons and tell your masters to do with you as they will. That's basically North Korea today.

That's an incredible amount of trust to have in the state. Have governments shown to be infallible or incapable of abuse of power? You can argue guns aren't essential to protect yourself but I don't think you can argue that protecting yourself isn't an innate human right.

I can only reply to myself (low score?) but my point was not that self defense is not justifiable in extreme cases (though I made that point. I didn't choose my words wisely). What I mean is that by no means is the citizen expected to engage in vigilante justice or apply force against the state. That leads to lawlessness and was kind of hinted by the parent comment. The state should have the monopoly of force _to apply in a lawful manner and mantain the rule of law_

The state decides what a lawful manner is, thats about as useful a statement as "it's not illegal when the president does it". The states only rules as long as a certain X% of the populace agress with it. The second amendment tries to balance that X so that it doesn't become something like o ly 1% of the populace needs to agree with the government for it to maintain power.

There's arguments to be made as to what percentage of the populace needs to agree for a stable society to be formed. Both extremes of 100% and 0% are obviously bad as you either get no agreement or total dictatorship.

Just saying that you should listen to the government though ignores the majority of the history of governments

Vigilantism isn't self defense. Even in states with the strongest self defense laws (e.g. stand your ground laws), you can only use force to defend yourself (and I think also your family or immediate companions) when you are threatened. You can't just prowl around shooting suspected drug dealers.

> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.

I think you are wrong. At least in Norway where I've lived for the last few decades I'm pretty certain people are found not guilty because of self defense.

> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law).

Persecuting minorities where completely lawful in nazi Germany.

I guess you should be looking for another word because as much as I'm against lawlessness that doesn't cut it here IMO.

> Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense.

If that's the case, I don't want to live anywhere else. If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, they pose a deadly threat to my family. In what country would you not feel the same way?

> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.

Not all states are benevolent, nor are they guaranteed to stay benevolent. Many Americans are wary of our gov't (and IMO rightly so.)

You make a great point. Police forces have been sued for responding slowly or not at all to threats on lives and found to have no responsibility to respond to a particular crime.

Many people don’t actually know this, but police has “no duty to protect”, meaning that they can perfectly legally not Intervene even if they know with 100% certainty people are being hurt or murdered. Look up “no duty to protect”.

I know this from personal experience to be fact.

Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.

Because you have no way of knowing, beforehand, an intruder's exact intentions.

>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

They have the option of wearing a bullet proof vest or use trained monkeys to do their bidding.

Because a man's home is his castle.

> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Nope, some of us citizens believe that the US military ranks will by and large not obey unlawful/unconstitutional orders to attack its own citizenry on our soil. If they choose to do so anyway - good luck, there's more of us than there are of them.

> Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

The loss of property, and the violation of one's home and sense of security are real harms. But the point is not to make the violator pay, so much as it is to merely prevent an injustice.

And many (I believe most) defensive gun uses involve merely brandishing the weapon. Most people do not relish the thought of taking another's life.

> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.

It makes more sense when you realize that there is significant overlap between "gun owners" and "past or present military service".

If u intend to "brandish" a gun and you are not prepared to use it. Then you are the person who needs to be afraid for their life .

As I agree with your statement, I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at. One can be under threat, prepared to use a weapon, brandish it, and yet not actually use it. Discipline and restraint are import aspects of firearm training.

>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Well, yeah.

There are no illusions that a group of people with dubious levels of training could square off against the government and come out on top. However, you can certainly raise the cost of occupation _significantly_.

Despite the US rolling into the middle east with all of its technological might, planes, helicopters, and modern armor, its still bands of people with guns and bombs who, years after "mission accomplished", drag the conflict onward.

People seem pretty ignorant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

Who is the threat to invade the United States? Last time I checked, Canada and Mexico are pretty peaceful Nations and Russia is in charge of our current president.

>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

They shouldn't. But what guarantee does someone have that the intruder won't harm them?

> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Note that the US military is sworn to the constitution, not to any current administration. When anti-citizen measures are proposed, the military aligns with the citizens.

>Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be. I'm not going to wait and find out if you would attempt to kill me as a result of discovering you are burglarizing my home.

>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Nobody is under any illusions that the US military could roll through with tanks and cluster bombs and annihilate any opposition, but I doubt the government is particularly keen on ruling over a pile of ruined infrastructure. If that's the case, they instead have to deal with a large population of armed guerillas, which the Mid-East conflicts have proven the US is rather poor at dealing with. To say nothing of the fact that a large portion of the US military would defect upon being told to fire upon the people they've signed up to defend. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to deter the government from using overt force.

To jump from

> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.

to shooting someone would in most countries be considered a illogical and reckless act.

I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.

>I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.

Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.

People have been murdered by burglars many times so you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend that's not an outcome.

In your ideal world, do you prefer that the victims allow the burglar to eliminate them as a witness?

> Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.

That is assuming a lot of thinking from a scenario that started as:

> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.

Even assuming what you said, the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.

> ... the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.

The right to kill in self defense exists in many countries but I belive in most countries it will result in an investigation and you'll probably have to go to court to convince a judge that you had

1. Reason to fear for your or someone elses life

2. considered (and if possible: tried) other reasonable options.

I think it would be extremely cruel to punish someone for defending themselves or someone else.

Also keep in mind that stopping an attacker without the option of hurting them seriously is way harder than if you are allowed to use any means.

Committing a home invasion, whether to steal, to harm, or something else, is a dangerous, immoral, illogical and reckless act. Lethal force is a justified response, period.

Proportional response is a thing, and the state having a monopoly on deadly force is a good thing IMO.

Using deadly force to counter a purely material crime is madness.

Deadly force IS a proportional response to a home invasion - in both the moral and legal sense.

Its not the victim's obligation to quiz the home invader on their intentions before they act to protect themselves, their family and/or their property. A person knowingly and foreseeably puts their own life up for forfeit by invading another's home... and for what - a material crime, as you say? (But I hope we all acknowledge that the stakes are often far more serious and irrevocable than having your ipad stolen while you sleep).

The big open secret here is, no government today or in the past has had a monopoly on deadly force (nor will they ever). They only have a monopoly on punishing deadly force via the judicial system.

Deadly force can be legally prohibited and morally justified. It can be legally justified and morally abhorrent.

> Why must an intruder, who may be there just to steal something and not harm others, immediately have to pay for their actions with their life?

Why would a guy who grabs a cop's gun and waves it around pointing it at people for a thrill have to pay with the actions of their life when another cop shoots them?

>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?

Do you really think gun owners would line up on the field to take on the military in the open? Ruling over a country where half of the people are supporters and the other half are armed dissidents would be impossible regardless of military strength. Just look at the failures of the last Iraq war to see how a tiny fraction of the population was able to throw off the whole thing.

Crypto is a human right only in a lawless society. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to complete privacy even from the govrenment.

Even more, many think they should be able to hide their actions from the state...that is the definition of a lawless society.

I get it, HTTPS is fun. But a human right? Definitely not.

It would appear that your sarcasm went undetected.

The Catholic Church teaches that killing in self-defense in self defense is legitimate. In fact, it can even be a grave duty. So that means this is hardly just an American idea.

Self defense should definitely be a right, and I'm not American - I'm Swedish. There's a big difference between responding with full force, or as Swedish law allows, responding with reasonable force proportional to the harm that you're at risk of.

Any limits to the right to intervene should not go further than what the state can fill in for. Since the police is not everpresent in our lives (and shouldn't be!), there will inevitably be situations where you need to fend for yourself, since you can't always just wait for police to arrive.

You can put this through some translation software of your choice;

http://www.domarbloggen.se/sodertorns-tingsratt/ansvarsfrihe...

..only in a lawless society?

Nazi Germany was a country full of laws. (I realize I am Godwin’s law-ing, but the parent implied that self-defense ought not be a right in a society with legal institutions and laws; Nazi Germany is a perfect counter example of how “laws” aren’t always just and that a fear of government is a legitimate concern.)

The existence of the state makes it necessary for it to have the monopoly of the application of force

Note that like most other points made in discussions involving "rights," this is an opinion, presented as if it were an objective fact.

Another opinion is that you have only the rights that you can defend. That one, at least, has some empirical proof behind it.

Why do you pay your taxes? Is it altruism on your part, or fear of retaliation if you don´t? What happens if you were more powerful than the IRS (or whatever force the IRS might send your way to coerce you into paying your debts)? How can a state impose a law on criminals if criminals are stronger than itself? See mexico for example, where drug cartels are arguably stronger than the state in certain parts they control. Or brasilian favelas. This part is not an opinion my friend. Also I don´t claim to have invented this concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

> lawless society

Things aren't black and white. Every country is lawless to a certain degree. Otherwise there wouldn't be any robberies in countries that aren't "lawless" (whatever that means). One difference between EU and US is that a robber has a decent chance of being shot in US and not in EU meaning you become a sitting duck the moment you stop living the socialist life that state deems appropriate.

I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate?

For every right that most people hold evident, you'll find people who disagree. This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.

I agree, and will expand with this:

Codified rights are effectively statements of belief of a government, to which they are binding themselves. As a statement of belief, there's no legal structures or arguments upholding them. They are simply installed by declaration (either dictatorially or by some measure of consensus) as an official part of the government's world view.

> I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate?

The US was built upon the idea that rights are inherent and not granted to citizens by a government.

"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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Which was exactly what the parent had said. i.e.

> This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.

Which is what the US Constitution is. (Just because the say "We hold these truths to be self-evident" doesn't mean that they are)

Mind blown huh?

That's what they believed, but it isn't necessary. It's easier to see these arising out of very fundamental parts of human nature.

Simply put, those who are attacked will fight back. Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.

Therein you have a basis for the first and second amendment, i.e. freedom to think and freedom to defend yourself.

> Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.

Curious wording. The vast majority of even modern human history seems to provide an incredible amount of contradictory evidence—at least if you’ll grant that “forced” can also mean socialized into a certain cultural and ideological narrative from birth. Sure, there are notable moments when resistance forms quietly, and perhaps even makes its way into the public sphere. However, resistance does not appear to me to be a default human trait. That’s usually only found in a smaller portion of what is typically non-boat-rocking humanity—those who hope to convince their fellow citizens to join them. The majority of humans appear to rarely make it habit to question anything at all.

Well, that's the interesting thing, isn't it? We only resist ideas that appear to be forced on us and there are plenty of sneaky ways around that.

I’m saying the vast majority of humans don’t even recognize when ideas are forced on them.

> Simply put, those who are attacked will fight back.

Well not that I'm Christian, but Christian teaching is basically the opposite of this (Matthew 5:39 - i.e. turn the other cheek). And Gandhi's resistance was also an example of the opposite. In fact the opposite is the only way to deescalate a fight (or, as the US chooses to do, create the biggest weapons, but isn't that then affecting the rights of the people on the other side of the argument?)

> Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.

Really? Advertising, religion, nation states, even your belief that these are "natural" laws are examples of your inherent bias. As a smaller example, even politeness - civility - is a counter example.

The fact that people have to be taught other ways goes against saying it's human nature, doesn't it? Why would you teach someone to do things they already do?

And then you bring up every method of manipulation as if people don't hate all of those things. Why would we need to invent clever tricks to manipulate people if it was human nature to like it?

Sure, we're plenty effective both at hurting others and manipulating people, but it seems odd to express examples of our capability at doing that to unwilling people as evidence that we like those things being done to us...

Why would we have to go to such lengths to develop these capabilities if it was something we naturally liked? You're kind of proving the opposite of the point you think you are here....

Sigh.

If you want to be closed minded, and not accept that you are choosing your axioms in the same way as someone else exposed to different upbringings is - as per my examples, then I guess I have no chance of convincing you otherwise.

Well, you seem to be under the misconception that I think these are some kind of platonic ideals or whatnot. There was a time when the law tried to describe the values of the people rather than to dictate it and they came up with common law and some ideas about human rights after considering human nature and what did and did not work.

You can say there's construction there, but there's a limit to it. I mean, just as you can't simply construct a functional bridge out of anything you want, neither can you reasonably construct any sort of right and have a functioning society. There are both positive and negative rights, tensions among the rights of different people, and responsibilities imposed on individuals and society by any particular conception of rights.

> Which is what the US Constitution is.

OP quoted the Declaration of Independence, which is neither law nor agreement.

And yet the rights of US citizens appear to stem from a fairly elaborate system of humans interpreting the constitution of the United States.

John Locke talks extensively about Natural Rights (and he was the source of inspiration to America's founding fathers). His Second Treatise of Government goes deep into his explanation.

There have been many thinkers that have challenged Locke. I am currently reading the Second Treatise to try and really understand Locke's position before I make up my mind.

My belief is that natural rights are defined by God and therefore exist regardless of whether people agree with them or not. Sort of the rights equivalent of divine command theory.

IME there are as many interpretations of divine law as there are individuals who believe in a god.

To me that's kind of like the sound a falling tree makes when no-one is there to hear it. As I see it, rights exist in the context of a social framework that defines the limits of acceptable behaviour. They can be seen as actually curtailing freedoms, since if we're defining rights, we're also implying there are things an entity does not have a right to. In any case, a right is not very meaningful to me if there is no system in place to ensure it is respected.

This is, of course, not an argument about moral rigts and wrongs, just a pragmatic one about how rights work.

> I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate?

From our own human nature, actually. Think about this for a minute. Would a normal person be willing to believe something because you were forced to? If someone was violently attacked, would they not fight back?

By recognizing these aspects of human nature as something fundamentally not controllable by laws, we can instead force government to work with that human nature instead of contrary to it.

Now, the current conflict is being caused by pitting these against each other. Because people believe they are unsafe because of people who own guns or use hate speech, you now have two groups of people who believe that the other group is making them unsafe.

This is ironic, because we're actually becoming statistically safer over time, but it does lead to some very real conflict because people believe there's another group out there that wants to harm them, instead of realizing that both sides really just want to protect themselves, barring a few fringe whackos on either side.

> By recognizing these aspects of human nature as something fundamentally not controllable by laws, we can instead force government to work with that human nature instead of contrary to it.

If human nature is ultimately "not controllable by law", then that would certainly apply broadly, not just to cherry picked aspects of it.

Certainly assault, murder, rape, theft, harassment, abuse, cheating, and the like are facets of feral humanity; just as much as positive traits like self-preservation, compassion, parental instincts, social bonding, etc. Law usually stands in a directly contrary position to the former list, to wide agreement.

It's better to work with instead of against our natures. There are certainly things that can stand improvement.

If there are natural human rights, what does that mean for, e.g., prisoners? Is the right to personal freedom not a natural right? If it is, can natural rights be taken away? Under what conditions? Or is imprisonment a breach of natural rights, and what does that imply?

It's pretty hard to pin down what natural rights are. That a society ought to consider the limits of normal human behaviour I don't dispute, but that just informs the rights a society grants its members. Rights are still a human social construct.

Obviously they can be, it's just there's a cost to it.

We value our safety from, e.g., rapists more than the rapist's liberty.

You have a right to not be harmed, but that does not give you the right to harm others.

This assumes rights are universal.

The gravity of the second amendment isn't arms per se, it's the right to retain enough personal power to repel a dictator from taking over the government and just as importantly, making it so that even if a dictator succeeds, the country will be ungovernable for them.

So we should substitute 'strong cryptography' for 'arms' and see what happens.

It is funny you mention that actually - as a personal anecdote, I can say that many of my friends who happen to be advocates for free distro of crypto tech - or more commonly, cryptocurrencies - also tend to be fairly strong 2A advocates.

TL;DR; - IMO there is some significant crossover between crypto* people, and 2A people.

Cryptography is useful to protect privacy, which is very closely related to liberty.

I have noticed this correlation as well (I am an example of it in fact). I think there is a common thread of decentralization and bringing power closer to the people that resonates with the two groups.

I think the correlation is termed "libertarian."

I have not noticed this correlation, so it may be anecdotal.

At first thought, it seems 100% absurd that an ad-hoc underpowered group of people with small arms counts for anything in the modern age.

But history shows otherwise: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Empirically, every totalitarian state bans citizen firearms (Nazi Germany, USSR, Cuba, N. Korea). For "good" reason.

While of course different, crypto has many of the same pros and cons as firearms, and it should be supported for the same reasons.

https://xkcd.com/504/

Don't forget the Revolutionary war, when we were the Guerrilla force.

with lots of help from France...

That's the classic example, though folks will often argue it doesn't apply because there were only muskets and cannon, not machine guns (though that's technically not true).

Every example of yours had plenty of external help without which I am doubtful they would have as much success.

No idea what your definition of totalitarian state is, but there certainly was not a complete ban on firearms neither in Nazi Germany nor in many of post WW2 socialist countries (e.g. hunters).

> there certainly was not a complete ban on firearms neither in Nazi Germany

It actually started post-WWI (due to Treaty of Versailles).

> In 1919 the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership...anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks. [1]

Laws were later relaxed from a total ban, though ownership was low, as all guns and ammo had been confiscated earlier. And Jews and companies with at least some Jewish ownership were forbidden to own any firearms or participate in their manufacture.

When oppressing a group, either selectively or indiscriminately, guns + speech for that group must go.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_legislation_in_Germany#Reg...

Germany in 1919 was definitely not a totalitarian state. The laws were relaxed in 1928 which was BEFORE nazis came to power.

The VC, Taliban and everything that followed also heavily leveraged explosives against an underarmored opponent in their fights-- it wasn't just a matter of small arms. It should be telling that you can currently keep your toy guns, but god help you if you try to buy fertilizer and blasting caps in America without a damn good reason.

Waco and Ruby Ridge had an endless arsenal of small arms. It didn't help them.

Common law (root of UK and US law) does have the right to self defence.

And this "other countries" mm a lot of this had constitutions where the citizens where given some rights by the king and not have universal rights.

I believe UK law is not as strong as US laws regarding right to self defense

[1].https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/pensioner-arrested-stabbing-susp...

[2]. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1361028/Martin-is-cl...

I was more talking about some of the roots of the 2nd amendment - the uks' gun control laws started to be brought in during a panic over the general strike.

Thinking of it as "guns" being a fundamental right is... kinda backwards.

And, for the record, I think that "because the Second Amendment" is a horrible and fantastically lazy argument for gun ownership.

Now, let us take a look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specifically, Article 3:

"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."

From this, I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone has the right to protect the above -- within reason!

Everyone has an innate right to defend their life, liberty, and security of person. Without that, those rights are meaningless.

This is not the job of the police. You should definitely call them if you have the time! But they are under no obligation to protect you, or even to show up.

(Most people don't know that, by the way.)

When you encounter a threat to the above, you have the right to fight until that threat ends, with some leeway granted for the adrenaline dump of combat.

This is not an indiscriminate license to kill or even to engage in violence!

Even if you "feel threatened". You must be able to demonstrate that you acted in defense of life -- yours or another's -- in order to justify your use of force against an attacker.

Weapons are the means by which individuals use force.

Allowing for self-defense allows for the use of weapons.

There is no such thing as a "non-lethal" weapon.

Your hands and feet are natural, and lethal, weapons. More people die by these every year in the United States than by "assault weapons".

Clubs and knives? Definitely lethal. The difference between the winner and a loser in a knife fight, is that the winner dies on the way to the hospital.

Tasers kill more people annually in the United States than "assault weapons". Tasers are also one-time use only. Miss your attacker? Too bad. Attacker has a thick jacket? Better luck next time. Multiple attackers? That sucks.

Pepper spray is probably the least-lethal thing you can use, but it still can and does kill people. Pepper spray is horribly ineffective. Use it indoors, or against the wind, and you will incapacitate yourself. It is useless in the rain. Or if your attacker is wearing a face mask. Or if you have multiple attackers.

A gun, on the other hand, works in the rain. It works in the wind. It works equally well regardless of how strong or weak you are. It works against multiple attackers.

Guns, even if "silenced", are also amazingly loud, which is a big advantage when you're defending yourself, because you want people to hear that noise and call the cops.

So, in a world where we respect peoples' human rights, allowing gun ownership really is common sense.

The 2nd amendment states that the right to bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. This implies that the right to gun ownership predates the constitution because you can not infringe on a right that doesn't yet exist. Thus our forefathers saw it as an inalienable right that predates our nation.

Yes, the entire Bill of Rights in fact pertains to our inalienable, universal rights. There is no difference from what one may term "fundamental" or "human" rights. It doesn't matter what the UN or anyone in other countries say or talk about -- just as the laws of physics are facts regardless of what some people may say or feel.

If we have the right to life, we have the right to self-defense. If we have the right to overthrow tyranny, we have the right to fight it and install a new form of government.

this is my preferred interpretation, also :)

Then please petetion your senator to deregulate tanks, fighter jets, nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles, submarines etc. If you are serious about arming civilians as protection to overthrow tyranny, do a better job.

We already have the National Guard [1] --aka militias-- which provide ample check from the State level against a would-be dictatorship at the Federal level. For further self-education, one may want to read The Federalist Papers, in particular no 46 written by Madison (see [2] for a discussion of the issue).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...

[2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...

The national guard is NOT the militia.

I agree that it is not the only militia.

The constitutional concept of the militia is universal (well, universal for adult free males, at least, but arguably the limitations their relate to limitations applicable to the concept of full citizenship at the time, not special ones for the militia); the National Guard is a subset of or overlaps with the militia (and is, as it is structured, in some ways, in conflict with the conceptualized role of the militia in securing liberty) but is not equivalent to the militia.

I agree, militia is a wider concept and there can be many such free-formed associations. I merely wanted to mention that the National Guard are also known as militias, and they have always had very powerful weapons at their disposal.

>Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", Tribune (19 October 1945)

Please explain Vietnam.

It is a myth that the Vietnam war was mostly a war between US conventional forces against Vietnamese guerrilla forces.

In point of fact, the majority of the battles the US military and ARVN engaged in were against the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). That is, conventional forces vs other conventional forces. While the VC (VietCong) were very active and played a crucial role in the eventual victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam, they were never the primary military force deployed by the communists.

Moreover, the VC were not just guys with AK's. They had the full panoply of military hardware that light infantry uses: from anti-tank rockets to mortars to light anti-air missiles. The VC even had a few tanks. The VC did not engage solely in small unit guerilla operations either. Once in a while, they would launch major offensives using coordinated assaults of 10's of thousands of soldiers.

What history has shown is that while insurgencies can cause problems for established regimes, without outside logistical and financial support (i.e. supply of arms, food, money, etc) they usually cannot win.

> our inalienable, universal rights

That school of thought dates from the 18th century when thinkers appealed to a Creator who endowed those rights (even if it was a rather aloof Deist conception of God). However, in the following century it faced strong competition from the utilitarian school that suggests that rights are only a convenient fiction that society recognizes for the common good. Plus, these days ever more people do not believe in any particular Creator who could have endowed anyone with rights.

Human ethics, metaethics and politics is definitely nowhere near "laws of physics" settled and agreed on.

The "right to life" is seen in the objection to a government killing a citizen for no reason. The argument is that, self-evidently, it's wrong for a government to do that. So there must be a right to life independent of the laws of a country or the whims of its rulers. Sure, a theist would claim that God would in particular object to capricious killing, but you don't have to be a theist to claim it's self-evidently objectionable.

And I guess you can argue that some do not recognize universal rights, but it's not a compelling argument to just point out what some people think.

Not at all. The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights. The schools of thought that led to that identification and to the foundation of the US based on the ideal of a government exclusively tasked with securing these rights goes back at least to the 15th century (Aristotle and other Greek thinkers already were inching towards the idea that there are things that are right to protect in the polis despite what others may think or the laws may impose; for example, read Antigone by Sophocles).

What is it in human nature that concretely and morally entails our having rights? the faculty of reason and its crucial role in human life, as long as we are free to act according to our thoughts. No faith involved, no mysticism required.

[added] The Founding Fathers did not create a theocracy. I don't see what point you are trying to make -- the concept of natural rights does not require a god, and it is irrelevant whether some person invoked deism or not. The fact is that we are all born with inalienable rights by virtue of our nature, what we are and how we ought to live together.

> The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights.

The Greeks may have had a concept of natural rights separate from their being endowed by a Creator, but that is not the same concept of natural rights that John Locke proposed and which inspired the American Founding Fathers, leading to posts from Americans like the one we see above. Advocacy for that school repeatedly cites the existence of a Creator.

John Locke and many American Founding Fathers definitely do cite the existence of a Creator, but that isn't a fundamental requirement of the argument. Part of the derivations of natural rights (at least in Locke) comes from observing animals in nature, and applying these "natural" rules to humanity.

The french rights pronounced by the French Revolution had nothing to do with the idea of a Creator and were very similar in concept with many of the Founding Fathers'. So this does not seem like a reasonable argument to make.

FWIW, and I use this example in discussions with non-scientists all the time, Newtonian Gravity, aka the "Law of Gravity", not only isn't a fact, it isn't even correct. General relativity appears to be a closer approximation to nature, as Sir Arthur Eddington demonstrated in 1919[1], and Albert Einstein put forth in 1915[2].

That writers continue to conflate the definition of legal "law" with scientific "law" is in some ways amusing, but it weakens the analogies. A physical theory (testable hypothesis making specific predictions) isn't a law. The analogies aren't merely suspect, they are often fatally flawed with appeals to authority amongst other practices which are not relevant in science.

What I am saying, more simply is that "laws" of physics aren't facts. Using them as the basis for an analogy results in flawed reasoning.

With regard to the original subject matter, fundamental rights mean different things to different people, countries, governments, and other entities. It would be nice if everyone adopted a single minimal definition that we all interpreted and supported in the same manner.

This wish is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, as fundamental human rights often run counter to power structures of various types across the world. These rights could potentially constrain other entities rights, so they may choose to adopt some or none of them, or interpret them in as wildly different a manner as they wish.

This is vastly different than how physicists interpret and test theories. We don't set h_bar == 0 because we don't want the world to have a quantum character in some locations. But entities in power can set FundamentalRight_type == 0 for a specific type (pick speech, life, liberty, pursuit of happyness) if they so choose.

In this way, "fundamental" rights are really not so fundamental. They aren't like the theories of physics, the same everywhere.

[1] see https://www.space.com/37018-solar-eclipse-proved-einstein-re... though like almost all writers, they misunderstand what "proven to be correct" means in the context of a physical theory.

[2] see https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters_20...

You're muddying the water and completely missing the point:

Facts are what they are, regardless of what people may say or feel about them. The laws of physics, such as Ohm's Law, can be discovered and are facts even were people to deny their validity. The same is true for all facts of nature, including the nature of humans and their rights.

Scientific fact is testable and falsifiable. If you're going to claim that natural rights are fact, I'm going to ask that you provide a testable hypothesis that demonstrates the right to life as a law.

Irrelevant. Things are what they are regardless of what you think, pray, ask, claim, test, or emote. If you truly want to learn about the factual basis of individual rights, there is ample literature for you to look up and read. If you wish to believe or claim that rights are not grounded in the facts of human nature, that's one of your rights.

Ok. So the law of gravity is the law. No matter what I say, right?

The facts subsumed by Newton's laws. Laws themselves are not the facts they are identifications of facts.

What the big T Truth is is irrelevant if it can't be proven or measured. Watch:

The fact is that I'm a brain in a jar, therefore you don't really exist and have no rights whatsoever.

For what you say to be fact, and not just your personal belief wrongly presented as such, you first need to prove to me that you really exist.

All this to say, anyone who claims to know the "truth" or "facts" in a discussion about ethics and morals doesn't know what they're talking about.

Respectfully, I disagree on both claims.

Fact in law is not the same as a fact in science.

Scientific "law" is an artifice, more of something created by someone attempting to explain using a poor mapping of language to the way scientists do their work. Scientific theory makes testable and falsifiable predictions. Gravity is a theory, not a law. It makes testable and falsifiable predictions.

Specifically, Newtonian gravity, what you call the law of gravity or a "law of physics" is known to be wrong.

Given this, how can you claim that they are what they are "regardless of what people may say or feel about them" ?

As a (non-practicing Ph.D) physicist, I have this discussion with many non-scientists, to try to help them move beyond the concept of "laws of physics" (there are none), and into the concept of testable predictions arising from the hypotheses in the theory.

Ohms "Law" is yet another example. Ohm's law breaks down spectacularly for certain materials under specific conditions. Quantum systems like Josephson junctions most definitely do not obey Ohm's "law".

In science, absolute laws do not generally exist. Using your words "regardless of what people may say or feel about them", they are irrelevant, and often incorrect. Scientific "law" is not absolute. They are not "facts".

Language, english or otherwise, is a very poor substitute for the language that testable hypotheses are written in. There is often a fundamentally severe impedance mismatch between what is written out, and what the language of science (mathematics FWIW) actually says, or even how to interpret or describe what is going on.

Without constructing a strawman, I'd like to point out that in previous centuries, people were so enamored of the fixed natural "laws", that they actually persecuted those who poked holes in them. One that comes to mind is the geocentric model of the universe.

This one is particularly interesting, as it had both religious overtones and support, and made specific predictions. The predictions of geocentricism about other planetary orbits did not match observations.

That is the fundamental Ptolemaic system law of planetary motion was wrong.

But it couldn't be.

But it was.

So astronomers developed modifications to the laws. Epicycles were invented.[1]. Which made the calculations harder. And it meant you had to discuss a mechanism by which this worked. That is the law which you are claiming to be inviolate, must be modified at best, or discarded at worse.

Add in to this very accurate measurements and analysis by Brahe, Kepler, and others, this lead Galileo, Newton and others to formulate a new model of the solar system, backed up by testable predictions. It took a while for this "law" to supplant the previous "law". But supplant it, it did.

Because science is not based upon absolute, legalistic versions of laws. Science is based upon testable hypotheses. If the tests fail, so does the hypothesis.

This mechanism survived unscathed for about 250 years or so. Until Einstein pointed out the problems with it.

My point was simply that just because the popular science writers call it a law, doesn't mean it is a "law".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle

Physics and its development is not the sole, nor the primary, reference for man's means and acquisition of knowledge. Ohm's Law is valid within certain limits, and these limits are also facts. (I misstated something earlier -- Ohm's Law itself is not a fact, it is conceptual framework, an identification of facts.) Just as our understanding of blood groups and their compatibility has improved over time -- the underlying facts did not change, the knowledge and theories changed to take into account the expanded knowledge of facts. Science is a systematic body of knowledge, that is: knowledge of nature -- nature being the facts.

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