| Kasz216 said: It's not really a matter of a slippery slope arguement, as that in of itself is the problem I have with socialized things. You need to infringe on peoples rights as a rule just to make the numbers work financially. (And even then....) It doesn't matter how trivial or pointless a personal freedom is, it's a personal freedom. Also, I'm not sure you can call the romanian revolution a legal one. It afterall did come about thanks to a bunch of illegal rioting. But in general, weaponry does give regular people leverage in both legal and illegal revolutions and preventing dictatorships... because the case for opression is going to be harder to make because it will be harder. |
As soon as there's two people interacting, the concept of personal freedom has to be clarified. Once again, if you stab yourself in the foot on a desrt island, it's your own bleeding and sepsis you're facing. If you stab your own foot on a street in NY you'll probably distress onlookers and grab some time out of some policeman's schedule, some resources in an ER, maybe some time for a psychiatric evaluation. All resources that could be used to fix and prevent actual accidents and unwilling behaviours.
Law is all about defining the fuzzy, overlapping bounduaries of rights, the keyword here being defining - an intellectual human activity. To think that rights exist a priori and the law has to stop on their hard bounduary is a nice, clean, naive thought.
When it comes to arms, I'm pretty sure you don't think citizens should have the right to secretly build explosives in their backyard, just in case they need the expertise for a rightworthy revolution. Because they would endanger their neighbours and kids, for a very questionable payoff. Well, having guns in every home endangers the lives of even the neighbour who doesn't own one: it escalates the risk of a burglar being prone to preemtive violence, it increases the risk of children getting their hands on guns, it increases the risk of a third party being involved into shooting for futile motives.
You may think that it's worth the cost, but you're paying it against the right of a burglar to not be shot in the face while stealing a TV, the right to the safety of your kids, the right to not be killed by a gunshot while walking by the door of a fighting couple. It's not a yes/no discrete situation, a right being adamantly observed or utterly trampled: in a community we assess risks, and we pay with small amounts of our saftey and liberty all the time to gain other new liberties. Tradeoffs is what a community is about - wrinkles on your shirt included.
