Rights are not given by government / people. Rights are inherent.

You all forgot to read the disclaimers...

*All rights are subject to change arbitrarily at the discretion of the government, and will be restricted, regulated and possibly removed when deemed necessary for the betterment and/or safety of the general population

Someone mentioned the idea that "might makes right" meaning that if you have the ability to do something it is your right to do it. That post was claiming that was the gist of another poster's comment, not their own opinion. Seems to make since that ability = right, I have the ability to move from point a to point b, therefore travel must be a right.

What no one has seemed to address here is that our rights end the moment we violate another person's rights. I have the ability to kill and steal, but doing so violates another person's rights, therefore this is not my right to use my ability to harm others. So might does not make right and having an ability to do something doesn't make it my right to do it. I am free to go on a killing or thieving spree, but I would have to take the consequences of my actions. I have freedom to do anything I'm capable of doing, but I don't have the right to do everything I'm capable of doing.

Goverments inherantly ARE a restriction on your rights.....thats WHAT THEY DO.....
The idea is to spread the goverment around enough to force everyone to do what they require....
All Freedoms and rights are inherantly ANTI GOVERMENT.
The conflict arrises when your rights conflict with anothers.....
Goverment, is the consented to, limitation of those rights...in order to make society run smoothly.....
Rights may be restricted or limited by goverement to the degree that the goverment becomes a tyranny.....
Whereupon the founding fathers urge you to take up arms against such a goverment that has gone rogue....

Originally posted by RedmoonMWC

The right to bear arms costs no one anything, it is the miss-use of weapons that cost peoples lives.
Training and education can solve some of this, arming law abiding people stops more crime than disarming people does.

You have the right to your opinion, of course, but I disagree. (not that it matters).

I do not believe it is an "God given right", and certainly not for everyone.
I prefer societies which have deemed it a right one has to prove they are responsible enough to handle.
Some people are very mentally ill, some are just extremely stupid, some have problems with anger management, and they cost the lives of other people when they are automatically afforded that right.

If training, and education is obligatory BEFORE being granted that right,
and regularly carried out inspection and rules, then it costs less lives.

But that is then outside of the "inherent" universal right concept.

Rights come with responsibilities, and when it comes to murder, it makes little sense, to me, to wait until someone has murdered to decide they are irresponsible with firearms.

Here is a post I made a while back. It takes this topic an expands on it with some historical references. It did not garner much attention.

Maybe it was to long or to complex or written at a time when most were in the dread and fear cycle of this great awakening.

Warning this rabbit hole runs deep and requires a great deal of study but it is the foundation of the system all around us. The law controls and hides all the secrets.

Truly above top secret !!!!


www.abovetopsecret.com...

I notice some view rights and gun rights as two distinct things.

Lets be clear on something here friends.If you are in the english speaking world your rights have come about because of arms,force,violence and the threat of using force of arms.

A bunch of men writing words on the Declaration of Independence does not give you rights.
More men writing and signing the Constitution does not give you rights.
The Magna Carta does not give you rights.
And sadly god via the church does not give you rights-- from wiki-Pope Innocent III also annulled the "shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the King by violence and fear." He rejected any call for restraints on the King, saying it impaired John's dignity. He saw it as an affront to the Church's authority over the King and the 'papal territories' of England and Ireland, and he released John from his oath to obey it.- re the Magna Carta

Men and women willing to fight and die for a cause ,men and women who fought for a cause,is what gives you your rights.
Nothing else.
The rights you now have-written by men on paper,were earned by men with spilled blood.
Political power always falls back on the threat of violence, and the barrel of a gun.
By the willingness to occasionally use force if necessary you can preserve your rights that your grandparents earned for you....But if you willingly allow a political power the authority to take away those earned rights you will never get them back.

The 1st amendment regards freedom of speech and religion.
The 2nd says citizens can have guns.
The founding fathers put them in that order for a reason.They knew that all of the right written about could only exist if the people had a means to fight back against tyranny.

The desire by many to clamp down on the 2nd Amendment Rights of Americans fills me with dread. Simply because I can see what it will lead to in the future.

Freedom,rights,liberty all come from the barrel of a gun

All the petitions in the world will not change that one fact that so many of you miss.

Originally posted by Bluesma

Originally posted by RedmoonMWC

The right to bear arms costs no one anything, it is the miss-use of weapons that cost peoples lives.
Training and education can solve some of this, arming law abiding people stops more crime than disarming people does.

You have the right to your opinion, of course, but I disagree. (not that it matters).

I do not believe it is an "God given right", and certainly not for everyone.
I prefer societies which have deemed it a right one has to prove they are responsible enough to handle.
Some people are very mentally ill, some are just extremely stupid, some have problems with anger management, and they cost the lives of other people when they are automatically afforded that right.

If training, and education is obligatory BEFORE being granted that right,
and regularly carried out inspection and rules, then it costs less lives.

But that is then outside of the "inherent" universal right concept.

Rights come with responsibilities, and when it comes to murder, it makes little sense, to me, to wait until someone has murdered to decide they are irresponsible with firearms.

edit on 27-1-2013 by Bluesma because: (no reason given)

I'm sorry, I presumed you had received the memo.
This is not opinion, rather proven fact. Where the gun laws are the most restrictive the crime rates are sky high, where there are little to no gun restrictions the crime rate is almost nill.
Don't believe me look at the UK, or in your case France and compare to Switzerland.
Since I am in the U.S. look at Chicago, Il compared to Kennesaw, GA

Your government is sovereign over you, my government was never meant to be sovereign over the people of this country.

If there were less of us human beings inhabiting this planet, I would agree with the OP wholeheartedly. Unfortunately that is not the case. We have too many groups of different people wanting to dictate how we live. If we had less people, we would have so much more freedom.

We are living in a bottle necked world and the only way to control it is through law and edicts. Yes OP, you have no rights and won't ever under the current living situation.

I have a different take on this debate.

I believe that most rights which some believe are inalienable are not, and are part of a social contract, and I think the rights we really do have, that are completely natural, are unreasonably and immorally restricted by a supposedly reasonable society claiming to provide a positive collective experience but which rather provides a negative and immoral collective existence.

We live in a society that believes it can take possession of something which was once FREE: land, minerals and materials, water and food, and heavily restrict or completely deny access to them, even charging a fee for what ought to be FREE by all rights of nature if it is needed for individual use; therefore, our inalienable rights to live in this world FOR FREE is taken, and with it our free thought, our right to self defense, our right to reproduction, or right to movement, our right to eat, drink, and be merry in the most basic of ways - all of it is taken by society. What evidence is there for this? Look at nature, look at animals, and look at what we are doing to the planet.

Our true natural rights (and those of all living creatures on this planet) are denied by an evil collective (all of us) which believes it knows how to provide a better society for us, but at the cost of denying individual liberty to not only all of us, but all things within our environment.

I do not have a natural right to bear arms, but I do have a natural right to defend myself and others against all enemies foreign and domestic in accordance with whatever natural means are at my disposal (including my intellect and my ability to manufacture a weapon or pay for another to make the weapon for me). My right to defend myself comes from the fact I am alive and I am capable and it is a necessary ability in order to remain alive and capable. Likewise, my right to free expression and choice stems from the very fact I am alive and capable, and I find it necessary to remain alive and capable, etc.

Like the rights to defense and free expression, I also have a natural right to reproduction, free movement, free association, free water, free wild edible and medicinal plants, free hunting and fishing, free shelter, free warmth, and free recreation.

We (Society) take these things either because we claim we can do better if they are controlled or because we claim we can do them better if they are provided by our "system" and not nature. We yield our natural rights to the doctrine of materialistic efficiency, which roughly translates to "We can do better than God or Nature or whoever/whatever".

So, I think both sides of the argument are correct: rights come from both, but only because neither prominent position really looks at what is and ought to be a truly natural right.

reply to post by HillbillyHippie1


HillbillyHippie1 if I could flag your post I would.
Excellently put.

reply to post by HillbillyHippie1


I still think that freedom and being free are not the same as having rights. Being a property owner gives me the right to do as I please with said property.

If I live in a natural state and have complete freedom to do what comes naturally and I pick some fruit to eat, the fruit in my hand and someone else comes over and takes that fruit from me, is that the other person's right to do so?

They are free to steal the fruit I pick for my natural right to survive, but they have no right to take it from me. As long as we are capable of doing something, think not restrained or incarcerated, we are free to do it, but that doesn't make it our right to do so.

It really seems to me they call a right "a right" because it's the moral and right thing to do. In the case of our western civilization, this is based primarily on Christian and Biblical ethics.

Originally posted by SilentKoala

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.

Doesn't that imply that rights are therefore subject to the whims of your creator?

If we take "creator" as "parents" then doesn't that completely legitimise abortion?

Originally posted by RedmoonMWC


I'm sorry, I presumed you had received the memo.
This is not opinion, rather proven fact. Where the gun laws are the most restrictive the crime rates are sky high, where there are little to no gun restrictions the crime rate is almost nill.
Don't believe me look at the UK, or in your case France and compare to Switzerland.
Since I am in the U.S. look at Chicago, Il compared to Kennesaw, GA

Your government is sovereign over you, my government was never meant to be sovereign over the people of this country.

I responded to you with respect and courtesy and you decided to go with sarcasm and rudeness instead- okay, if it is too difficult for you to remain civil.....

The United States has the highest rate of gun related injuries among developed countries, though it also has the highest rate of gun ownership.

In France, as well as Switzerland, there are controls. In Swizerland, military training (including weapon training) is obligatory before you can bring weapons home. To buy, you need to get a permit first, which includes a check into your legal status and health records. Here in France there are obligatory laws as well about the proper care and safe storage of firearms, and you need to regularly update your permit.

I propose that their lower gun related injuries and deaths by firearms is due to this refusal to make gun ownership considered "inherent" for all.

This comment made me LOL- "Your government is sovereign over you, my government was never meant to be sovereign over the people of this country. "
Apparently you missed the memo and slept through the meeting- I am American and came to live here as an adult. I have experienced both. Most people know this, but France in particular does not have a large or powerful government! The people rule here. The criticisms of this country go the opposite direction, critics claiming that because the public has the largest power, it is the least educated of the nation who make crucial decisions (and this is a valid point). The cops don't carry guns, the politicians are forced to appease the masses, because they go on strike at the slightest chance and are legally protected in doing so- they stop up all trade, sales, travel and movement within the country. Their belief in solidarity means that all the public support them, even in protests they do not personally feel concerned with.

This is, however, off topic and I understand it was just a childish attempt at insult you slipped in there, not an actuall attempt to refer to fact. But when we can learn something along the way......

The concept of "Rights" is a lot like the concept of "Morals". We attach strong emotional worth to both but, in reality, neither of them exist. For the most part, both concepts are man-made and don't have much meaning outside of human interactions.

While you seem reluctant to admit it, your idea of "Rights" seems to stem from religious views on the subject - that some divine Creator afforded all of its creations inalienable freedoms by virtue of it being created. This holds no weight in the logical sense.

Originally posted by LewsTherinThelamon
reply to post by Bluesma

 

Because if you choose to live in a pack, you will get various benefits which increase your chances of survival.
Shared and cooperative access to food, protection, mating rights.... to keep these benefits you must adhere to the rules and hierarchy of that particular pack. The "rules" are not the same in each group. Each group pronounces the rights they will allow, and for whom.

People are wierd... some prefer to live in cooperation and social structure with other humans, to exchange services and products amongst each other, have military and police protection, emergency services, utilities and buildings and roads that they didn't build all by themself,
instead of being free. Go figure.

The social contract? Interesting. That sums up very well the difference between a right and a privilege and how to tell the difference.

With rights come responsibility.

You said that people join together into societies for the benefits that large, cooperating numbers can generate. The benefit in this case is the safety that large numbers bring. But when you transfer your responsibility to another, like your own safety, you are giving the group power over you because of the fact that you are receiving a benefit.

The only answer is to stop receiving the benefit and to take back your responsibility. If you do not rely on other people to provide for you in anyway, then you are not receiving a benefit, and this is what true freedom is. If you do have to rely on someone, that is where the principle of "equivalent exchange" comes into play. You will either pay through fiscal means in the exchange or you will pay by giving up your rights.

I see you are ready to take responsibility for you own benefits You see that it's up to you to make sure all those things that make for the necessities that you deem appropriate are there. The more of these responsibilities we farm out to the whole the less free we become. Well it's a tough road if you want to take it. I like to think that I get a lot of stuff from the whole that I'm pretty happy about. Particularly that time I plopped out of my mother's womb. I was happy about my mother, but I was also kinda grateful for whoever it was that caught me so I didn't hit the floor.

I think you pretty much nailed it with the benefit responsibility dichotomy. In reality keeping track of these tradeoffs become not so easy. But the one thing that I find disturbing is the growing reluctance on the part of many to acknowledge the reception of any benefit and all the while extolling responsibility. This represents a self centered and self interested view. It is also incorrect and a bit delusional. If we think about the things that one individual does during the day to acquire what is needed to meet his responsibilities, this work might be seen to be fairly trivial when compared with the enormity of what modern day life provides.

Yet in one respect I can see your point. If the house is on fire and I have a hose, am I going to wait for the fire department to tell me how to turn it on?

I think our problem today is failure to see the whole picture.

reply to post by HillbillyHippie1


I wouldn't make the rights to the wild edible plants look all that alluring We are social because it's the way to go. Exceptions to this are few. It works.

I knew a guy who didn't have much opinion or right and wrong behavior. I asked why he didn't just go wild and do what he wanted. He said that if he followed the rules he had a better chance of a longer live.

I think people have rights until they become a detriment to the whole. Then these rights get adjusted. And a sticking point here is understanding that the idea of what is detrimental to the whole changes.

All that matters legally is what is in the constitution. So yes, our rights are on a piece of paper.

Seems like you've seen that fan-made Sonic the Hedgehog movie that was just released prior to your post?

@ 8:30 in the film...