Guns

[MacNeil, D.]

"That area" you describe is using something you have a right to for a criminal purpose(i.e. something you don't have a right to do), fraud and inciting violence in the examples given.

The first amendment doesn't mean I have the right to commit fraud or libel/slander and other crimes involving printed/spoken words anymore than the second amendment means I have the right to commit armed robbery.

Do you think we should ban a person who commits computer crimes from owning a computer, a newspaperman who prints libel from owning a press, or someone who runs a Ponzi scheme from owning a phone and printer?

That's the kind of thing you're talking about with guns being a conditional right. They don't practice the equilvalent with the first amendment. The "yelling fire in a crowded theater" type examples don't apply.

I'm not sure that's my actual quote. I agree though.

While you're right in saying that the balancing tests a court uses to determine whether the government has a right to limit speech content is not the same test for limiting the right to bear arms, there are tests that courts will use for the second amendment.

Both first and second amendment tests are similar in this way: the government's interest in restricting a constitutionally guaranteed right is balanced against the private right itself. Where the fulcrum lies depends on a variety of factors, such as how narrowly the government's law infringes, and whether the law does what it says it does, and the government's stated purpose, but the bottom line is that there are no absolute rights.

The government can criminalize falsely shouting "fire" in a theater, it can also criminalize private possession of anti-tank rockets.

 

[MacNeil, D.]

...

The first amendment doesn't mean I have the right to commit fraud or libel/slander and other crimes involving printed/spoken words anymore than the second amendment means I have the right to commit armed robbery.

Your analogy fails.

The USSC in NY Times v Sullivan says I have the right to slander a public official, so long as I don't do it with "actual malice", a term of art.

 

[MacFall]

Doesn't matter to me. Its a legal fiction of American government that the government itself doesn't create rights.

This implies that all of the mass murders committed by states in all of human history were justified, since those who died had no right to live according to their respective states.

This is why I have no problem with people using the Nazis as an example of the eventual end of gun control: because one cannot posit the just power of the state to prevent people from equipping themselves to defend their lives, liberty, and property without implying that the people have no right to life, liberty, and property. And if people do not have those rights, then all the millions of killings of innocent people committed by states are perfectly just.

 

[MacNeil, D.]

This implies that all of the mass murders committed by states in all of human history were justified, since those who died had no right to live according to their respective states.

This is why I have no problem with people using the Nazis as an example of the eventual end of gun control: because one cannot posit the just power of the state to prevent people from equipping themselves to defend their lives, liberty, and property without implying that the people have no right to life, liberty, and property. And if people do not have those rights, then all the millions of killings of innocent people committed by states are perfectly just.

You have some serious reading and analytical deficiencies. I did not mention nazis, and how you concoct the notion that mass murder is justified based on a statement that the government is not the source of civil rights just beggars belief.

 

[acropolis]

That is based on an incomplete understanding of the nature of rights. Rights, when understood as noncontradictory axioms, do not require conditions because they contain their limitations in their expression.

What reason do we have to believe that moral norms exist as a set of a small number of axioms? On what basis are those axioms chosen? Why should anyone care which axioms you chose?

 

[coreydstone]

I am a hunter and therefore a gun rights guy, BUT too many people, Christians included, worry so much about gun rights and the ensuing freedom from government oppression that they provide that they forget about eternal freedom and the vast shadowing importance of telling the gospel of Christ... :/

 

[MacNeil, D.]

I am a hunter and therefore a gun rights guy, BUT too many people, Christians included, worry so much about gun rights and the ensuing freedom from government oppression that they provide that they forget about eternal freedom and the vast shadowing importance of telling the gospel of Christ... :/

That's not very persuasive.

 

[coreydstone]

Haha was I supposed to be swaying?

 

[Blackguard_]

Your analogy fails.

The USSC in NY Times v Sullivan says I have the right to slander a public official, so long as I don't do it with "actual malice", a term of art.

That a special case of part of my analogy fails does not mean the whole thing does.

 

[MacNeil, D.]

That a special case of part of my analogy fails does not mean the whole thing does.

So we can actually join issues, are you saying that second amendment rights are unconditional?

 

[MacFall]

You have some serious reading and analytical deficiencies.

This is hilarious, considering the following:

how you concoct the notion that mass murder is justified based on a statement that the government is not the source of civil rights just beggars belief.

I said that if government IS the source of rights, then it is justified in killing the people under its jurisdiction. Which is what is implied by the idea that the government can justly deprive a people of the means of defending their lives, liberty, and property. Before you criticize my reading comprehension skills, you should ensure that you are not understanding the exact opposite of what I wrote.