origin of the "right to keep and bear arms"

[Ben Swenson]

My government cannot detain me indefinately without trial and in contravention of law. Can yours?

Now wait just a dadburned second here, Agricola.

Of course my government can detain me indefinately without trial and in contravention of law. But so can yours. Unless, of course, your government isn't capable of violating laws.

Let me get one thing straight here. The United States of America is FAR from perfect. Still, you wanted to compare the relative freedoms enjoyed by a "mere civilian" in England to that of a "mere civilian" in the United States, so I gave an example (which, like many of my points, you cheerfully ignored).

[USP45]

I must say, i'm a bit surprised. In the past, while i disagree with virtually everything Mr. Agricola types, i have had to admit that atleast he's been civil.

it has long been a "natural" thing for man to kill another man. in the "wild", with all civilization and law removed, you have as much "right" to club your neighbour to death as you do to share your food with him because there is no convention. or, meek, is human history one of "Empathy, altruism, protection of self and kin group defined the limits of methods of behavior"? "man" has almost always had someone he wants to kill.

This... You can't possibly believe this. To resort to this kind of "scorched-earth" tactics is below you. How absurd to believe you have a right to murder your neighbor.

Never-the-less, Mr. Agricola i noticed earlier in this thread you cited on particularly non-sensical SCOTUS ruling as basis of your argument, US vs. Miller. Allow me to cite one of my own, Dred Scott vs. Stanford.

It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.

Terrible case for Mr. Scott. Fairly straight forward case for the 2nd A.

~USP

[agricola]

cordex / tamara

double jeopardy is still in here, DNA is taken at the same time as fingerprints, and when challenged in the courts will be subject to the same destroy-when-aquitted provisions. we also had our "preventative custody" thing that has recently been ditched by the Court of Appeal and will be done in when it gets to the Lords. our freedoms are defended by the courts both here and at a european level - but your government seems to be determined to ignore the holy constitution and do acts that, if committed by an individual, would find them in contempt.

usp,

please read what i actually said. in the natural world there are no laws, no morals, no codes, nothing. meek contended that humans in that condition were loving, tender creatures which in the light of history is blatantly untrue. i dont think that its "ok" to murder ones neighbour or anyone else, but only a fool would contend that man is the perfect peaceful being and ignore his tendencies for homicide

[Blackhawk]

Jose Padilla? He was arrested, is incarcerated, and hasn't even filed a writ of habeas corpus to the best of my knowledge. He hasn't even received free room and board for a year yet, and he is certainly entitled to due process under the 5A and 14A. Do you think that the U.S. government does NOT occassionally stomp on citizens' rights? It most certainly does. All governments do, and that's one of les raisons pour étant of the 2A, the 5A, and all the rest of them.

i also guarantee that you will die. unless, of course, you have special dispensation from God in which case please tell us of this.

Well, thank you, but your guarantee is no proof. You cannot prove it, and the inevitibility of death is something you obviously accept as an article of faith.

And now I've got you in quite a conundrum because you've been trapped into bringing faith as proof into an objective argument despite your previous railings against it in supporting your own points.

I love it when a pansophist gets hung on his own petard!

[Tamara]

but your government seems to be determined to ignore the holy constitution and do acts that, if committed by an individual, would find them in contempt.

You want to see "contempt"? Run a search here on my name and "Padilla"...

[agricola]

blackhawk,

death is inevitable, it is a fact, not faith, it happens to everything. you are the one that thinks he will live forever.

[USP45]

please read what i actually said. in the natural world there are no laws, no morals, no codes, nothing. meek contended that humans in that condition were loving, tender creatures which in the light of history is blatantly untrue. i dont think that its "ok" to murder ones neighbour or anyone else, but only a fool would contend that man is the perfect peaceful being and ignore his tendencies for homicide

You do not have the right to murder, regardless of law. You may have the ability and the desire to, but you do not have a right to.

but only a fool would contend that man is the perfect peaceful being and ignore his tendencies for homicide

Precisely why i need to be effectively armed.

To think otherwise is to believe that only the physically strong have the "right" to self-defense.

~USP

[Blackhawk]

death is inevitable, it is a fact, not faith, it happens to everything....

If it's a fact and not faith, it can be proven. So prove it.

[Zander]

If it's a fact and not faith, it can be proven. So prove it.

Oh, this should be fun!

Precicely why i need to be effectively armed.

Hmmm...sure looks like 'checkmate' to me.

[agricola]

blackhawk,

how many people do you know of that have lived for more than 150 years?

[Tamara]

Oh, this should be fun!

Well, Zander, I wouldn't go so far as to call my death and/or yours a "fact" as it has not yet been observed, we can make some predictions based on previously viewed results. The "Human Life" experiment has been run on several billion test subjects over the last several hundred thousand years, and thus far (unless you believe in fairy tales) it has ended in the death of the subject exactly one hundred percent of the time. I'd feel pretty safe betting on those odds.

[Blackhawk]

how many people do you know of that have lived for more than 150 years?

Irrelevant.

Prove what you said, that death is inevitible and a fact not based on faith.

Stop weaseling around, and just prove what you said. It doesn't have anything to do with me if it's a fact.

But I don't think you can prove it because you don't know the difference between fact and faith as evidenced by all the wiggling and logical fallacies you've employed in this thread alone.

[Tamara]

Nice try at a line of argument, but it's Remedial Scientific Method 101 for you.

Based on the course of events of the universe up until this moment, I can say with some certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that it will rise in the east unless outside events occur that would change the conditions of the experiment. This is not based on my "faith", but rather on repeatable experiments that you can run every morning of your life. All the faith in the world won't make it rise anywhere else.

[Ben Swenson]

Hmmm ... I wonder ...

Ag, if I (or someone else) compiled a list of unanswered questions and logical challenges in this thread, would you answer them point by point?

[gburner]

Agricola,

I posted early in this discussion. I have not found it necessary to amplify on those posts due to....

the marvelous job being done by my peers.

your lame and emotional debate technique.

You remind me of Burnside at Fredericksburg in 1862. All heart, but without the sufficient knowledge or intellectual capacity to see the idiocy of your strategy, the rashness of your tactics and the untenable nature of your position.

[Blackhawk]

Based on the course of events of the universe up until this moment, I can say with some certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that it will rise in the east unless outside events occur that would change the conditions of the experiment. This is not based on my "faith", but rather on repeatable experiments that you can run every morning of your life. All the faith in the world won't make it rise anywhere else.

You're off base, Tamara. A person's, ANY person's, faith is irrelevant to empiracally demonstrable facts.

What we call the sun's "rising" can be proven as fact given that the earth rotates on an axis roughly parallel to its orbital axis about the sun and that its speed of rotation is faster than the time it takes to complete an orbit. That knowledge demystified the rising of the sun, which before could not be explained except by faith. What really confounded the ancients is the moon because they always saw the same face without realizing that its period of orbit was the same as its period of rotation. (BTW, the moon doesn't orbit the earth. They orbit each other, but we won't get into that for now.)

We don't have to understand things in order to use them. Gravity, for example, as somebody (you?) mentioned earlier. Airplanes are really interesting. A cadet crashed into a tree in the early days of aviation, and the OFFICIAL cause was listed as there being "no lift" in the air that day! Early airplanes (until the '50s) were basically copies of previous designs that worked without the benefit of really understanding aerodynamics. The Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager flew to break the sound barrier for the first time had a fuselage patterened after the shape of a .50 caliber BMG bullet. Why? It was the only known suitable shape that was stable above the speed of sound.

The first step in applying the scientific method is faith. Oh, sure it's taught as hypothesis, but anybody expecting success in scientific investigation had better have a pretty good idea about what's going to happen before commencing research. IOW, if I "know" the sun's going to come up tomorrow, but I don't know "why", its rising is an article of faith to me. If I want to know why, I might develop several hypotheses and begin testing them. When I have a demonstrable, repeatable, explanation that does NOT depend on ANY article of faith but is wholly compliant with the laws of physics, only then do I truly know as a fact that it will.

[Zander]

Well, Zander, I wouldn't go so far as to call my death and/or yours a "fact" as it has not yet been observed, we can make some predictions based on previously viewed results.

Tell that to a distant relative of mine...he's died twice and is trying as hard as he can not to die a third time. Probably be pretty tough to convince his ER doctors and the trauma nurses, too.

The "Human Life" experiment has been run on several billion test subjects over the last several hundred thousand years, and thus far (unless you believe in fairy tales) it has ended in the death of the subject exactly one hundred percent of the time.

Actually, it'd be the "Human Death" experiment, wouldn't it? I'd like to see your proof.

As an aside: Does it make you happy to denigrate people of faith? Seems pretty sad to me.

I'd feel pretty safe betting on those odds.

Which would be a matter of faith.

[Tamara]

As an aside: Does it make you happy to denigrate people of faith? Seems pretty sad to me.

Not denigrating anyone, just have yet to see scientifically acceptable proof of an immortal human. Anecdotal evidence is not acceptable scientific proof, and you know that. You produce some independantly verifiable, repeatable evidence of humans not subject to death and corruption, and we'll take it from there.

My mortality or yours can be easily proven by anyone posessing the morals of Dr. Mengele and not afraid of a felony charge.

[rennaissancemann]

Greetings Agricola,


Quite the debate you have going on here, hope you don’t mind if I join in the fun, I promise to try and stay “on topic”…

To begin, there are some elements of this debate where you and I can find some common ground, namely that the concept of “rights” is an abstract idea. An abstract concept which gains substance and meaning when a group of people choose to believe in them. By way of example, one of the more poetically attractive descriptions of the Unites States was that it was a nation united by a common belief, a belief that all men are created equal. Your statement that “whether or not the NHS or free healthcare is a "right", we consider it is” would be another example of this phenomenon.

Now the honeymoon’s over…

Your central contention is that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) as a right of the individual is a separate concept from that enumerated in the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States which you interpret to be a collective right designed to protect the fledgling state from oppression and conquest. As evidence, I present the following quotes taken from your posts to this thread.

imho the right is a modern (1600's) corruption of old english (and european) ordinances that the subjects of the Crown must bear arms to serve in the King's forces according to their circumstances.

With the history of the Civil Wars (explained here ) Parliament decided that the only guarantee that they as "protestants" had from Crown (or, more accurately, catholic) oppression was to arm themselves.

Thus in the English experience the "right" springs from the short period of revolution and counter-revolution. This was then transmitted to you as the lessons of the (then) most recent revolution against tyranny available, and incorporated accordingly.

but thats the point; it seems to me that at some stage it was not a "natural right" (in terms of to keep and bear arms) as it seems to have been developed post the English Civil War, at least in the Anglo-American experience.

The only argument that you could make is that the reliance upon the militia, as opposed to the establishment of a standing army which was considered "tyrannical" and which was specifically targetted against in the Constitution and opposed by Adam Smith. Your RKBA exists for the defence of the state, not defence from the state.

the RKBA does allow the citizens of the US to keep and bear arms, but for the establishment and staffing of the militia and not in terms of individual (as opposed to collective) self defence.

The word "militia" does not go away in any of this and it is a key word - wholly individual RKBA is not provided for except as part of the militia.

the framers were either possessing of second sight, ie were not human, or they were men of their times and they said what they said having the history that they had - ie: the militia being superior to the professional soldier and the people being the militia - in short, those who were to defend their state.

This line of reasoning, that the second amendment describes a collective right, is very old news in this country. The initial appearance of this concept closely parallels the growth of the Socialist movement in this country. Its fallacy lies in the notion of where the power is placed in this country. To a socialist, the power rests with the central government, and your statements parallel those arguments rather closely. To a federalist, the power rests with the people, and that authority to exercise power may be delegated to the central government, but the responsibility of its use resides with the people. People in this context is not a euphemism for the body politic as embodied by the government, but rather a literal rendering meaning all of the individual citizens collectively.

The framers of the constitution were men of their day. They were educated in the classics, they knew the history of England and the development of common law, and they understood power and how it is exercised. Consider the following passage from the Declaration of Independence:

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 -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

These gentlemen did not have a collective state in mind when they drafted these documents, rather their goal was the creation of a republic composed of free men, and they took as their guide the best ideas available to them, added their own thoughts to the mix and produced something unique. Collective defense is an intentional by product of the second amendments guarantee that each man is free to arm himself.

Agricola, I carry a firearm each and every day of my life. Not in the performance of duties sanctioned by the state, but as a free man. That firearm is at one and the same time the symbol of that freedom and my means of assuring its continuance.

Your comment that:

only a fool would contend that man is the perfect peaceful being and ignore his tendencies for homicide

is absolutely correct. Man is capable of committing acts of unspeakable barbarity. I diverge from your line of reasoning that the possession of weapons in private hands inevitably leads to anarchy and violence.

there is a line drawn historically where societies decide that they will (or set conditions upon) or will not allow their citizens to have weapons for that self defence, because there is plenty of evidence that people, being people, abuse them and use the weapons for attack or political ends; as the history of almost every society on earth shows. IMHO self defence is a "right", if such a thing exists, RKBA is not.

While individuals have the capacity to do evil on a small scale, it takes a government, as society to use your term, to do evil on a grand scale. One individual is capable of committing a number of murders before being stopped, but a nation state is capable of committing genocide. In both cases, the Sociopath and the Society committed to genocide, rely upon having victims that lack the power to effectively resist. Individuals who are not free.


One final parting comment.

Your statement,

its only arrogance that leads people to assume that their system is best and all others are defective.

strikes me as the pot calling the kettle black.

[braindead0]

Zeno proved that motion is impossible, doesn't make it so. Logical proof may not match with reality in all cases, your mileage may vary of course.

[Blackhawk]

...just have yet to see scientifically acceptable proof of an immortal human. Anecdotal evidence is not acceptable scientific proof, and you know that.

Whoa, there!

I started this death proof stuff, and it's got NOTHING to do with immortal humans, or anything else involving religion. It strictly involves what you can prove and what you can't.

Agricola made several statement that cannot be proven, yet he rejects faith as a basis of knowledge about human behavior apparently not realizing that his own conclusions are based on faith. Most people are typically unable to separate fact from what they just "know" but may not be true. Agricola is among them.

And your second sentence in what I quoted, Tamara, goes directly to my earlier post in response to yours about the sun rising. Just because it has been observed to dependably rise in the east for a really long time isn't scientific proof. It's just anecdotal evidence.

[Blackhawk]

Zeno proved that motion is impossible, doesn't make it so.

And that's reason one why Zeno is often confused with a household cleanser, a game in Las Vegas, and a city in Nevada....

[Ledbetter]

rennaissancemann, good answer, but I'm afraid the original debate is over. Not much left to see here.

[SW9M]

well said.

I wish I could articulate half that good.

[rennaissancemann]

Ledbetter
Your absolutely correct... still, agricola does come here to play and I fell victim to temptation.

SW9M
Thanks