The Right to Life

No, not the “right-to-life” in the anti-abortion sense.

Your right to life.

Your right to quiet enjoyment of your time and the fruits of your labor. Your right to enjoy a quiet evening with a good book, curled up by a crackling fire with a snoring dog by your feet and a contented cat in your lap. Sipping warm chocolate or cool wine. Your right to LIVE. Peacefully, and without worry.

Do you have the right to defend your life?

If not, then the right to life is illusory and you are merely a slave of whatever master chooses to own you or use you.

If so, should you be limited in what you can use to defend your life?

Logic says no. Logic says that you should use the most effective method at your disposal in defense of your life, until the threat is gone or you have perished.

Logic also indicates that any entity that would restrict the means available to you for defense of your life is, in essence, abetting your attacker. Those restrictions on your means constitute a rigging of the system against you, to the advantage of your attacker. You are now fighting for your life against a direct foe and an indirect one. One aims to deprive you of your life, the other aims to deprive you of your means to defend it. Both are evil in their aims towards you. Both are conspiring to ensure that the odds are stacked against your success in defense of your life.

Why?

I can understand the criminal's goal. It is immediate. It seeks gratification to satisfy some urgent want or need, and does not recognize societal boundaries erected to thwart it.

What is the goal of the entity abetting the criminal?

I can think of a few. More crime means more laws are required to “prevent” crime. More laws requires more lawyers and legislators. More laws means more policemen to enforce them. More policemen, lawyers, and legislators means more requirements for the people to support the system. More requirements means more taxes. More taxes means more power. More power means the need for more power. Ad infinitum.

In a just system, the victim (that's you) would have available to himself/herself the most effective means of defense possible. In a just system, there would be no restrictions on what you could use, because the system would recognize that your life was worth defending. A just system would consider that your quiet evening was disturbed by someone whose aim was to deprive you of your life, or of the fruits of your life.

You did not ask to be attacked.

You shouldn't have to ask for permission to own the proper tools of your defense, nor prove that you are worthy of defending. You should not have to subject yourself to scrutiny for wishing to peaceably obtain effective means of defense.

It is guaranteed that your attacker didn't...

Think about that one.

Law abiding people, by definition, obey the law. Criminals, by definition, do not.

Any law that restricts the actions of the law-abiding will not have any effect on the criminal. This is a logical statement. Enacting laws whose impact affects only the law-abiding is tantamount to abetting a criminal.

Such is the case with gun control laws.

It is too bad that existing case law has effectively granted immunity to the State for the consequences of their bad decisions. One really good wrongful death award to a plaintiff whose loved one was denied the means of defense by the state could have a chilling effect on bad policy choices going forward. Unfortunately, it will never happen...

Consider: No government agency has liability or consequence for the effects of their failed policies when it comes to gun control. They cannot be sued. They have “sovereign immunity”. Take Chicago or New York City, or (recently) DC as examples. Their draconian gun control laws have effectively disarmed the law-abiding. Only the criminals, by definition, are armed. Case law has established that the government has no duty to defend you if you call for help, dial 911, or shout to a passing patrol car. If you get attacked and call 911, shout to the patrol car, whatever, and they fail to stop the attack (and you have no means available to defend yourself), you would think that they would have SOME liability in this because they DID disarm you with their laws (which you followed because you are law-abiding). Not the case. Your heirs have no recourse.

In the United States of America today, unless you are (or are willing to become) a criminal, you have no absolute right to life. You have only the privilege of life, and only to the extent that you can prove yourself worthy of that privilege.

If you think that this stance is harsh, ask yourself what measures you had to endure, what steps had to be taken, in order to procure for yourself the best and most effective means available to defend your life (and assuming that you even can, based on where you live).

Then ask yourself: Is it right?

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Pax,

Newbius