| Kasz216 said: A) A burgler has no right to not be shot in the face. If someone is breaking into someone elses house, they've basically forfeited all rights they have by illegally breaking in and threating someones private space. B) Two people don't intersect until there is actual interaction. Taking the above example... 1) Distressing people on the street. A non arguement, as anything on the street could distress people. Two gay people making out on the street would distress people for example. 2) Why would it grab time out of a policeman's schedule? You stabbed yourself in the foot you haven't committed a crime. If by stabbing yourself in the foot and then you need a policeman to help you to the hospital or something... then you should be charged for use of said policeman since the wound was self inflicted. 3) Resources in the ER. This is why we pay for medical treatment. The government shouldn't be paying for someone stabbing themselves in the foot or someones lung cancer who smokes cigarettes. 4) Psyche Evaluation. Again, this is why we pay for medical treatment. C) Any resulting action that causes trouble, for example someone being careless with their gun and a kid accidently shoots someone would in fact be a crime of course. It's neglect letting a kid get ahold of your guns or to store explosives near residential areas. D) The fact that some people will make mistakes is in fact the "price of freedom." however the right to make mistakes is again a natural freedom that shouldn't be infringed. E) Heck, gun control laws? Cigarettes are way more costly to society to them, and are much more likely to effect people due to second hand smoke, including smokers children. Fast Food is more costly and deadly to society, including defenseless children who grow up on it. There are numerous things more dangerous and costly to society that we wouldn't think of banning. Heck the above are more dangerous then someones rights to stab themself in the foot! Which is in general the problem again with such freedom restricting laws. They are mostly arbitrary... look at the ban on violent videogames in some countries for example. There is no proof of ANY negative effect... and yet... Politicans don't ban things for public good. They ban things for popularity's sake.
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It's quite obvious that I don't agree with your idea that a burglar has forfeited his right to not be shot in the face as soon as he sneaks into my home to steal a TV. I think you'll find that most civilized country legislations agree with me - at best they'll add mitigating circumstances to praeterintentional or voluntary murder unless you're directly assaulted.
But that's just an example of rights, or better what we think of as rights, clashing and overlapping. Which brings me back to the fact that idealistic petitions about freedom are naive when compared to the complexity of the world. While it's true that the most responsible, caring person could manage to never harm anyone with the gun he keeps at home, safely stored and everything, it's also true that a drunk person can make more damage with a gun than his bare hands.
Accidents happen, bad decisions are taken and later regret and if multplying the chance of an accident happening by the damaging potential you get something too high, you just trace a line. Which is why not even a very competent, patriotic and morally sound nuclear engineer would be permitted to build a nuke in his garage.
Going around swinging fists stopping just before other's noses sounds funny for a two liner that makes you feel all good inside about the sanctity of so called personal freedoms. But while idealism is concerned with the intentions, the pragmatic law must deal with real outcomes: if everybody went around trying to do that kind of swinging, we'd end up with a lot of bruised noses. And if the effects of the lack of common sense or care or cold blood is shooting your neighbour by mistake rather than punching someone, then a pragmatic decision by a community can very well be to limit the chances for really bad outcomes to happen.
