Will the Second Amendment survive?

[Radar]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Yes, any country with a nuclear weapon will not get attacked by a conventional enemy. Iran notes this, that is why I even have doubts of them giving up their nuclear weapon program in 2003. The part about them bombing Israel or giving their future nuclear weapons away is a load of crap, it doesn't make sense, but I do believe nuclear weapons is on Iran's agenda.


We did learn about unalienable rights in public school, I just disagree with that idea.


If someone attacks me with a knife, I will defend myself whether it is a right or a privilege.

Either way, besides a minor few things all we are disagreeing on is semantics. When you say discovered I say created, when you say give up I say don't have the right. We get the same result either way, you just start at the top (unlimited rights) and come down (what we have now) while I start from the bottom (no right) and come up (what we have now).

I just believe that rights is an abstract concept, like morals, ethics, and freedom, because only humans can understand or use them and there is no way to test if they are actually there or not.


You did not read my post correctly Radar. I said since no one believes they don't have a right to life, no one can ethically decide if they have a right to life or not. Society can only mold people's beliefs of rights and enforce them. If Hitler believes the Jews don't have the right to life, that means he feels he doesn't need to justify killing them. If German society believes that a Jew has no right to life, that means a German growing up in that society will most likely believe that Jews don't have a right to life and that there would be no penalty for killing a Jew. A Jews can protect him or herself with the justification that he or she has the right to life. Rights, like ethics, are highly based on perspective.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of living with a few unalienable rights because it makes things much simpler and sets very ethical guidelines 99% of the time, I just don't believe they are real. "Do unto others as you would want them to do upon you" is a horrible idea in some situations, but it is a good generalization to live by 99% of the time. Like unalienable rights, I don't believe that quote is the correct way, but I will tell other people it is because it is simple to understand, easily avoids conflict, and would be the most moral decision, in my opinion at least, 99% of the time.

Another reason I don't believe in the idea of unalienable is because there is nothing to enforce those rights besides humans. If everyone in the world besides me believed that I don't have a right to live and all 6 billion people try to kill me, there is nothing the universe or nature is going to do to stop them. The only person that can stop them is myself. If nature says that everyone has a right to life, then it would make sense that nature would enforce it, but it doesn't, hence another reason why I believe rights are man-made. Humans are the only ones that can enforce rights, so it makes sense that humans created rights. Nature enforces the laws of gravity, hence why it makes sense that nature "created" gravity.

Nature grants us life, and all of our natural rights. Nature does not need to "enforce" rights. We protect our own rights. Another part of nature is that we die. Our lives are fragile and we have a right to defend them. Nature doesn't "enforce" the law of gravity. Gravity just is and that's part of nature. Our rights just exist. Neither our rights, nor gravity can be bought, sold, taken, or given away. They can be overcome, but that doesn't mean they cease to exist.

I can overcome the gravitational pull of the earth by getting into a rocket. The gravity still exists. I can overcome someone's right to life by killing them. It doesn't mean they didn't have that right. I can overcome their right to private property ownership by stealing from them, it doesn't mean I have a right to do so or that they don't still have the right to own property.

Our rights have nothing to do with perception. I don't have a right to life merely because I perceive myself to have it. I'd have a right to life even if I didn't know what rights were and I were dim enough to think they were created by society.

Here's a question.

Society is made up of individuals. If individuals do not have rights, where does society gain its powers from? By what authority does "society" act? How can "society" grant rights to people when the people who make up society have no rights?

In other words, how can you give something to someone that you don't have?

Also, anything that can be GIVEN can also be taken away. These are privileges. If society could give rights to people, they would cease to be rights. They would be privileges. If rights came from society, there would be no such things as rights.

If you acknowledge that we have a right to life, (and you have done so) my entire argument is proven because rights can't be bestowed upon us, they can only exist on their own.

A right inherent and is something you do not require permission to do. A privilege is permission to do something and this permission can be revoked at any time.


For instance, if I own a piece of land. I can walk across my land all day back and forth, and there isn't a single person on the face of the earth who can tell me to stop. I don't require the permission of anyone to walk across my land.

If I want to take a shortcut across YOUR land, I'd require your permission. You could grant me permission and extend the privilege of walking across your land. But in the future, if you get tired of me walking across your land, you can revoke that permission. You can never revoke my right to walk across my own land.

You said that you would defend your own life regardless of whether it were a right or a privilege. This statement alone proves it to be a right. It's something you do not require permission to do. It's something you were born with the right to do. This right can not be taken away from you. You can't sell your right to defend yourself to me because I already have a right to defend myself. I was born with it. You can't vote away your right to defend yourself. Nothing you say or do will separate your right to defend your life from your life itself. You can end your life, but then you would have no life to defend so your right to defend it is irrelevant.

As long as you have a life, you have a right to defend it. As long as you have a life, you own yourself and no other person or group of people has any claim to your life or your person. As long as you own yourself, your thoughts, speech, and labor are your own and so are the fruits of that labor. Nobody else on earth has any legitimate claim to the fruits of your labor unless you have sold those fruits or otherwise traded them.