When is a right not a right?
This is not a trick question
We hear a lot about rights in this country, and often people saying “this is a constitutional right” or “that is a constitutional right.” A right is something you can exercise without permission, unlike a privilege, which does require permission. For example, there is no right to drive on public roadways; a license (permission) must be obtained before doing so, because the government “owns” the roads, and therefore, it is a privilege. However, a person does have a right to drive on their own private property without a license.
The Constitution does not spell out all of our rights for us, because it does not seek to define all of our rights nor to grant them. Instead, in the Bill of Rights, it seeks to provide protections for several of our rights that the founding fathers believed were of the utmost importance. For instance, the First Amendment protects multiple specific rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Here we find that Congress cannot force anyone to participate in any particular religion, establish an official religion for the United States, nor write any laws preventing people from practicing their religion. As well, Congress may not write laws that interfere with our right to speak freely, restricting the press, nor of people to assemble peaceably. These are constitutionally-protected rights, or, in more proper terms, natural rights. No license is required to exercise these rights. There is no prior government registration needed before partaking of these rights. Could you imagine a reporter having to register, go through a waiting period, and perhaps even pass some type of qualification test in order to write for a newspaper or report the news on TV? The idea is obviously ludicrous (though some in our current climate might disagree). The reason this idea is ludicrous is because these are rights - permission from government is not required; otherwise, these would be privileges, not rights.
Let’s look at another of our natural rights protected by the Bill of Rights:
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.
Notice the right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms shall not be infringed. As with those covered in the First Amendment, the rights herein designated are protected by the Constitution (Second Amendment) from government interference. But wait, is that true?
The government, and many people in this country, don’t seem to truly believe what the founding fathers wrote in this amendment regarding arms. Oh, they may say they do, and claim to support the Second Amendment, but they don’t really (John Cornyn is a perfect example). Because some people abuse their liberties and use them for evil, the government and activist groups seek to restrict a natural right that was guaranteed to be protected. Since at least 1934, there have been many times the government has sought to place restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. The National Firearms Act (NFA) was passed in 1934 to (purportedly) help cut down on the gangland crime of the Prohibition era by imposing a tax on the purchase of certain items - fully-automatic weapons, any rifle or shotgun with a barrel less than 18" in length, and suppressors. Now, I say purportedly because the required registration and the $200 tax stamp would likely, in 1934 while America was still in the midst of the Great Depression, only be affordable for - you guessed it - the gangland criminals. It is clear that the NFA was not about stopping crime, but about government getting its cut.
Other law since have been passed in an attempt to cut down on gun-related crimes, laws like the Crime Control Act of 1994 which banned so-called “assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines.” However, this law also failed to stop violent crime, because, as we all know, criminals don’t obey the law. But I digress.
The point here is that, though the Constitution prohibits infringement on our right to own and carry “arms”, the government continually seeks to do so. If you have to fill out government paperwork and go through a background check to procure a weapon, then you are not exercising a right, you are requesting a privilege. If you have to take a class and pass a test in order to carry a firearm, you are not exercising a right, you are seeking a privilege. All of these laws that the government puts in place, and seeks to put in place, in order to restrict our rights to keep and bear arms, reduce that right to a privilege.
People like to make arguments they believe are convincing for enacting such laws, but no argument can overcome the command “shall not be infringed.” What are some of the arguments?
The founding fathers couldn’t foresee the progress of weapons - actually, they had seen weapons progress and knew that further progress was possible, which is why the generic term “arms” is used.
No civilian should own a weapon of war - first, the founding fathers all owned weapons of war; they used these weapons in the revolutionary war to defeat an invading army, and this is what they intended for all of us to be able to do if necessary, whether that army was a foreign force or our own government. As a side note, though this is all too often used in reference to AR15s, AR15s have never been employed by any military to fight wars. While the AR15 resembles the M16, it is not one. As a matter of fact, the M1 Garand, which is a larger caliber rifle than an AR15 or M16, was used in World War II and the Korean war, is legal to own, and no one seems to be complaining about those. Why?
No one should need an assault weapon for self-defense - first, “assault weapon” is a polymorphous term that is generally used to mean any gun that looks scary to the person using the term; in reality, it is a fictitious term. That said, back to the previous point, if people are to be armed such that they could, as a militia, defeat an invading army, or defend against our own government should it seek to employ tyrannical rule, yes, people will need “assault weapons” to come anywhere close to being on equal footing with government forces.
We should have universal background checks - most of the people who commit crimes with firearms either obtain their firearms legally after passing a background check (many of the active shooters in recent years obtained their firearms after passing a government background check) or obtain them illegally (the majority of gun crimes are committed with firearms obtained illegally).
No one needs a high-capacity magazine; if you can’t hit a deer with ten shots, you’re not a very good shot - while the second part of that statement may be true, the Second Amendment wasn’t written to protect our right to hunt - it was written to protect our right to keep and bear arms.
The list goes on, and on, and on… While these arguments may seem rational to some, laws put in place in response to these arguments don’t stop crime, but they do stop or hinder people from exercising one of their constitutionally-protected natural rights. All such laws change our right to bear arms into a privilege. If you have to get permission from the government to exercise your right, it is not a right.