Individual Rights Versus the Public Good

[renie408]

The brouhaha over the Florida “Stand your ground” law got me to thinking. When do a person’s individual rights supercede the public good? Does the Constitution REALLY guarantee a 9mm in every glove compartment? Is that smart?

So last night Silverhair, who is a poster here, explained that he is a conscientious gun owner. He keeps his guns in a safe place, uses alternative protection for his home, avoids pissing his wife off to the point she wants to kill him and has become well-versed in gun safety. I couldn’t care less if he owns a gun. He sounds like the kind of guy that is responsible with his weapons. His right to bear arms doesn’t bother me.

But then there is the father of one of my son’s friends who lives in the neighborhood down the road. He keeps a gun in his glove compartment. He showed it to my husband over the summer with the comment that ‘he was ready for anything’. He is not what I would call a rocket scientist, puts back a couple of cases of beer every week and has that kind of blustery, swaggering kind of false pride that makes up for a saggy gut and thinning hair. Since he is a part time employee of a Home Depot in the suburbs and picks up his kids from school most afternoons, I am not sure what he is getting ‘ready’ for that requires a gun. I admit things can get ugly in the car rider line, but I have never really been tempted to kill anybody. He leaves the gun either in the car or unlocked in a drawer in the house. He has a 13 year old son and kids are in and out of their house all the time. This guy's right to bear arms makes me nervous.

Ok, I am thinking that for every one Silverhair who is an intelligent and responsible gun owner, you have many more who are like the guy down the street. In fact, when my son was six, he was over at a friend’s house and the friend got his father’s gun out and showed it to him. I told the family and their answer wasn’t to put the gun up, but to beat the tar out of the little kid. Needless to say, my kid never went over there again.

When you read so many stories about accidental shootings of children, when we have things like Columbine, when there are SO many gun shootings in this country every day because one person cut another off in traffic or for some other petty reason, when there are so many stats which support the fact that countries with tighter gun control have less murder and violent crime….is Silverhair’s reasonable right to bear arms overwhelmed by the right of society to be free of worry about people like the idget down the road? Is there any reasonable compromise that will help to curtail some of the problems that so many guns loose in our country seem to cause? Is the appearance of gun problems overstated? Are guns as big a problem as some people perceive?

Let me say that I know that guns will never be banned. I am not 100% sure that they should be. This is an issue that genuinely concerns and confuses me. I know people personally who, like Silverhair, own guns very responsibly and use them for recreation and protection. But I also know many people like the idget who own guns to make themselves feel ‘big’. Maybe the background check should include a personality profile. I would also like to add that I am not particularly against ‘bad’ people getting shot. I am not sure if I object to anybody shooting somebody who breaks into their house or who threatens another person. But I don’t see how you can insure that only ‘bad’ people get shot. It seems to me that plenty of innocent people get shot every day. Just over the weekend in Charlotte some guy got shot because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got hit by a stray bullet. How many times do you think a gun saves someone versus how many times a gun kills someone? Alcohol is legal, but drinking and driving is not. A person's right to drink alcohol is superceded by the public good. This is not the best analogy, but it is the only thing coming to mind.

[bryant69]

1. The argument has to be made

That the benefits of taking away peoples right to carry arms are so great that it justifies taking away that right. In my mind, although I don't like Guns, and don't own any, the anti gun groups have not made that argument yet.

In a free society you always defer to individual rights unless there is a necessity to infringe upon those rights. Taxes, for example, are a clear infringement on our individual right to own property, but they are necessary, and most people, although they might not like taxes or think they are too hard, would admit the necessity of some taxation. The same can't be said for banning guns.

That's my two cents anyway.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[tx_dem41]

2. You need to be careful about this line of reasoning....

The irresponsible use of any individual right (free speech for example) could be used to justify taking the right away from everyone. Luckily, we have a Constitution and a rigorous amendment process that would make this very difficult.

That said, I don't think the right to bear arms has ever received a thorough judicial review in the United States. Ask yourself why the Supreme Court has never ruled that a struct gun ban in a local jurisdiction is unconstitutional. I don't claim to know what the "correct" answer is, but I do know that people on both sides make claims that don't hold water...(of course making it like any other political issue).