Rights, not Needs

 With Biden indicating...did I say indicating?,,,I mean promising gun control, the American Thinker yesterday had a piece entitled A Short Primer On the Importance of our Second Amendment Rights by Andrea Widburg. Widburg gives five reasons why the right is so important. The first reason is that the Second Amendment supports all the others. It is, as St. George Tucker said in Blackstone's Commentaries, the " true palladium of liberty." Second, there is no greater killer than government. Criminals, no matter how malicious, pale in comparison. Three is that there really is no way for people to counter a rampaging government except to be armed. Four is that gun control is, at its heart, racist. And five, of course crime actually increases when gun control is implemented.

Please go read the entire post, as it isn't long. Widburg does an excellent job of paring down the various arguments into their essential form. And it is all true. But once again, it is, as Barr calls it, a needs based analysis. I call it utilitarian.  It asks the question "why do we need guns?" and then proceed to answer it. with facts and figures. But what if the person you are arguing with dismisses your needs? What if the answer facts with made up statistics and cherry picked facts?  Is there a rebuttal?  Because we have been having these kinds of arguments for 70 years, and it has not worked.

I think there is a rebuttal. It is contained in David French's idea here that carrying a weapon is a civic duty. It is contained in Bill Barr's two articles here and here that discusses the Second Amendment in terms of a natural right. 

The only lasting, effective way to defend the Second Amendment is to view it as our Founding Fathers did; not as a utilitarian concept, which it necessarily becomes when considered as a “needs-based” right, but as a God-given, natural right of all mankind. Framing the Second Amendment in this original context completely changes the playing field from that on which the debate rages today, according to which it is the responsibility of citizens to prove why they need firearms in the face of government restrictions. Instead, when considered in its proper and historic context, it is the government that should be required to show verifiable cause to justify taking firearms away. This distinction makes all the difference, and clearly undergirded the crafting of our founding documents.

I commend Widburg for at least taking on the gun issue.  Too few at the American Thinker do. But I think it must be framed as a right, where the Government has the burden of proof if they wish to take it away. As it stands, it is we, the people, who keep having to prove why we need guns. Think of it this way: would the master of a servant allow the servant to tell him what he could and could not do? Specifically, would a master of a servant allow the servant to be armed to the teeth, and to tell him that he couldn't be armed at all? That is the position we put ourselves in with a needs based argument.  But government is supposed to be our servant, we do not serve the government.