[SecretSquirrel]

You know im a full on anarchist rothbardian. Don't be a fucking troll.

I was merely answering the questions explicitly posed to me.

If you don't want to answer the questions posed in a thread, don't answer them. But that doesn't mean be some sort of hipster about it

[Rothbardian]

You know im a full on anarchist rothbardian. Don't be a fucking troll.

I was merely answering the questions explicitly posed to me.

If you don't want to answer the questions posed in a thread, don't answer them. But that doesn't mean be some sort of hipster about it

Didn't know you were an anarchist. I was just trying to answer the OP's question. Not sure why you're mad. It just seems he is confused, trying to come up with an objective definition for a right while believing it's derived from something as subjective as a government.

[SecretSquirrel]

he was specifically talking about the 2nd amendment and how you would interpret it. He was NOT talking about gun rights in a vacuum

[Rothbardian]

he was specifically talking about the 2nd amendment and how you would interpret it. He was NOT talking about gun rights in a vacuum

I'm talking about applying his concepts to reality, not the vacuum the OP seems to be arguing from.

[Soixante-Retard]

Rothbardian, I am arguing from a natural rights perspective, not that rights are derived from a charter (Paine).

[Rothbardian]

Rothbardian, I am arguing from a natural rights perspective, not that rights are derived from a charter (Paine).

Alright. Well if you want my opinion, I do see a relation to property rights. As in, it's not so much about whether or not people should be allowed to own guns or 'arms', but whether or not they have a right to own property since that is all a gun is. I would say that you are correct in saying that if you own land and want to restrict people from coming onto your land with guns, then you have a right to do so.

I think that gets a little hazy in terms of what is viewed as 'public' property. Carrying a gun down the street, in a park, etc. If you ask me, a government has no legitimate claim to owning any of that property so any rules it makes about it are a violation of property rights, since it only acquired that property by violating the property rights of generations of people.

I hope that makes sense. Obviously to me, what the constitution says is completely irrelevant. The constitution itself is a violation of property rights.

[Soixante-Retard]

The constitution itself is a violation of property rights.

Can't the constitution just be a codification of property rights? To say it is itself a violation of property rights without justification is, I think, meaningless.

[SecretSquirrel]

the Constitution has no relation to property rights. Property rights in the USA were "codified" via centuries of British (then colonial) common law. The Constitution is built on top of this common law heritage.

[Rothbardian]

Can't the constitution just be a codification of property rights? To say it is itself a violation of property rights without justification is, I think, meaningless.

The constitution includes a system of taxation. Taxes are a violation of property rights.

The constitution also imposes itself over a mass of humanity, violating their most important property rights - the right to self ownership.

Calling this a codification of property rights is a performative contradiction.

[Nunt]

The way I see it is:

You have the inalienable right to carry any weapon that is non-indiscriminate* (no bombs, for instance) in any (1) publicly owned place, (2) privately owned place which you own**, or (3) privately owned place which you do not own, at the owner's pleasure.

You do not have the right, inalienable or otherwise, to carry weapons into somebody's house if they do not let you.

*A weapon that is indiscriminate, such as a grenade, cannot be reasonably used against specific targets because of its nature. A gun will shoot where you aim it, barring gross malfunction, and a knife will only stab where you swing it, but a bomb will hurt bystanders as a matter of course.

**All weapons are permitted on your own property, including explosives, with the caveat that they must not pose a threat to anybody not on your property. You cannot own a MOAB in a suburban backyard because it has a 200 meter damage radius. You cannot legitimately own a nuclear bomb at all because any nuclear explosion produces global fallout and regional irradiation

I agree with this great summary.

[Rich]

The founders are just like Adolf Hitler. Hitler talked a lot about peace during 1930s. Now to me his actions demonstrate he self evidently wasn't a man of peace. But to his fans there is no convincing. For his fans Hitler remains essentially a tireless worker for peace who was surrounded by perfidious unscrupulous malevolent enemies. Hitler was doing the best you could reasonably expect.

Similarly with the founders and individual liberty, so fixated are their fans on their noble intent that nothing can shake them from their convictions. The Founders cared nothing for individual liberty. They were hard core collectivists. Forget the Blacks, forget the Indians, Spanish, the poor, the working class, the lower middle class. Clearly the founders couldn't give a toss for their individual liberties. The key point is that the founders didn't even care about the individual liberties of the elite. Read the bill of rights amendments. They're absolutely nothing to do with guaranteeing individual liberties, although they were much later wilfully misinterpreted in that way. They were about defending the rights of the collectives: the elite of each individual state as a collective. There wasn't free speech for example. Southern slates banned the publication of abolitionist literature. The free speech of the individual slaver elite was restricted. The perceived good of the collective always trumped the rights of the individual. For the Southern slavers, slavery was always their overriding concern. They happily interfered in the business of slavers in numerous ways. For example they tried to make it next to impossible for slave owners to free their slaves. Collectivism! You see! Freeing his slaves might do wonders for the conscience and the quality of sleep for the individual bleeding heart, N***** loving Slave owner, but it was totally detrimental to the long term stability of Plantation slavery and hence to the collective interest of slave owners.

These c**ts didn't give a rat's arse about States rights either. Now of course the southern slave owners didn't care about the rights of Northern states, let alone the individual freedom of conscience of individual northerners. We see that with the fugitive slave act. But the key point was that ultimately, they didn't care about the rights of southern states either. So when they formed the Confederacy they tried to abolish the right of the individual states to abolish slavery.

The religions issue has perhaps obscured this. The idea that people went to America for individual religious freedom is another joke. A lot of the early settlements were set up as totalitarian theocracies. Religious struggles between various collectivist authoritarian religious factions were highly prominent in pre independence America. Naturally the boundaries of religious power, dominance and control tended to conform to colonial boundaries. So the elite, sometimes but not always identified with various religious factions. This was the collective to which they gave their allegiance. As America secularised the importance of the old religious identities waned. By 1860 their were two important collectives the Northern elite and the slaver elite. What mattered to a slave owner was that he was a brother to his fellow slave owners. He didn't really care that much whether he was a baptist or a Presbyterian, a Texan or a Virginian. It should also be noted that a lot of the Founders were not Christians. They identified with a minority collective. Jefferson and Washington were both Virginians so it was natural that they looked to Virginia's relative tolerance and secularism for protection. Religions issues seemed much more threatening to the founders than they actually turned out. Soon fundamental class interests trumped religious allegiance. Religion has of course remained a divisive issue in the United States even up to the present day but nothing remotely like what happened in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries.

But then if Cato, Brutus and the slaver investor John Locke can be champions of individual liberty, why not Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

In context the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is quite clear, if an individual state wants to ban guns, artillery, razors or even sharp edged plastic objects that's purely up to them. Its just that the Federal government shall not interfere in the rights of the collectives that are the States.

[SecretSquirrel]

No shit, sherlock. The entire, explicit point of the bill of rights is to limit the Federal Government and only the Federal Government

[Rothbardian]

The founders are just like Adolf Hitler. Hitler talked a lot about peace during 1930s. Now to me his actions demonstrate he self evidently wasn't a man of peace. But to his fans there is no convincing. For his fans Hitler remains essentially a tireless worker for peace who was surrounded by perfidious unscrupulous malevolent enemies. Hitler was doing the best you could reasonably expect.

Similarly with the founders and individual liberty, so fixated are their fans on their noble intent that nothing can shake them from their convictions. The Founders cared nothing for individual liberty. They were hard core collectivists. Forget the Blacks, forget the Indians, Spanish, the poor, the working class, the lower middle class. Clearly the founders couldn't give a toss for their individual liberties. The key point is that the founders didn't even care about the individual liberties of the elite. Read the bill of rights amendments. They're absolutely nothing to do with guaranteeing individual liberties, although they were much later wilfully misinterpreted in that way. They were about defending the rights of the collectives: the elite of each individual state as a collective. There wasn't free speech for example. Southern slates banned the publication of abolitionist literature. The free speech of the individual slaver elite was restricted. The perceived good of the collective always trumped the rights of the individual. For the Southern slavers, slavery was always their overriding concern. They happily interfered in the business of slavers in numerous ways. For example they tried to make it next to impossible for slave owners to free their slaves. Collectivism! You see! Freeing his slaves might do wonders for the conscience and the quality of sleep for the individual bleeding heart, N***** loving Slave owner, but it was totally detrimental to the long term stability of Plantation slavery and hence to the collective interest of slave owners.

These c**ts didn't give a rat's arse about States rights either. Now of course the southern slave owners didn't care about the rights of Northern states, let alone the individual freedom of conscience of individual northerners. We see that with the fugitive slave act. But the key point was that ultimately, they didn't care about the rights of southern states either. So when they formed the Confederacy they tried to abolish the right of the individual states to abolish slavery.

The religions issue has perhaps obscured this. The idea that people went to America for individual religious freedom is another joke. A lot of the early settlements were set up as totalitarian theocracies. Religious struggles between various collectivist authoritarian religious factions were highly prominent in pre independence America. Naturally the boundaries of religious power, dominance and control tended to conform to colonial boundaries. So the elite, sometimes but not always identified with various religious factions. This was the collective to which they gave their allegiance. As America secularised the importance of the old religious identities waned. By 1860 their were two important collectives the Northern elite and the slaver elite. What mattered to a slave owner was that he was a brother to his fellow slave owners. He didn't really care that much whether he was a baptist or a Presbyterian, a Texan or a Virginian. It should also be noted that a lot of the Founders were not Christians. They identified with a minority collective. Jefferson and Washington were both Virginians so it was natural that they looked to Virginia's relative tolerance and secularism for protection. Religions issues seemed much more threatening to the founders than they actually turned out. Soon fundamental class interests trumped religious allegiance. Religion has of course remained a divisive issue in the United States even up to the present day but nothing remotely like what happened in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries.

But then if Cato, Brutus and the slaver investor John Locke can be champions of individual liberty, why not Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

In context the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is quite clear, if an individual state wants to ban guns, artillery, razors or even sharp edged plastic objects that's purely up to them. Its just that the Federal government shall not interfere in the rights of the collectives that are the States.

It's actually pretty interesting how much of a love affair the west had with both Hitler and Mussolini. When Time wasn't making Hitler man of the year it was putting out fluff pieces about what a wonderful guy Mussolini was. Meanwhile western governments were all looking at germany and italy as the future of civilization and mainstream economists like Keynes couldn't say enough about how wonderful they were.

Well, look at how that turned out.

I agree that the founders were somewhat the same. They could talk until they went blue in the face about property rights and individual liberty....while imposing their own governments that reject the property rights and liberties of the people subjected to them. The anti federalists were guilty of this as well as the federalists, the difference is only a matter of degrees.

It seems to me that the fact that the founders were all heavily invested in western expansion and the king had just outlawed western expansion shortly before the revolution is not a coincidence. People are people, putting them into a government position doesn't change their nature. That is why humanity keeps making the same stupid mistakes over and over. It's a lesson that gets learnt and immediately forgot.

Yeah, people back then owned slaves. But they had enough sense to not put people in jail for owning vegetation. I'm not really sure we've progressed at all in the last few centuries.

I agree with this great summary.

What right do you have to decide what kinds of property I can own?

[SecretSquirrel]

In the state of nature? None. But in the state of nature, if you live nearby other people and insist on keeping a nuke in your yard, you have quite a bit more to fear than losing your insurance, if you know what i mean.

Oh yeah, Roth, to remind you yet again, the quote that Nunt agreed with was my interpretation of the founders intent of the second amendment, not my personal normative ideal of weapon ownership rights. If you're gonna be a smug prick in an argument, like me, learn to at least correctly interpret the arguments and opinions which you arrogantly dismiss

[Rothbardian]

In the state of nature? None. But in the state of nature, if you live nearby other people and insist on keeping a nuke in your yard, you have quite a bit more to fear than losing your insurance, if you know what i mean.

Oh yeah, Roth, to remind you yet again, the quote that Nunt agreed with was my interpretation of the founders intent of the second amendment, not my personal normative ideal of weapon ownership rights. If you're gonna be a smug prick in an argument, like me, learn to at least correctly interpret the arguments and opinions which you arrogantly dismiss

And it's a good guess as to their intent. For some of them anyway. Who can know for sure though, they were bureaucrats after all. Sleezy, slimy bastards one and all.

The overall jist of my post was intended to illustrate that the founders were a bunch of hypocrites.

[Nunt]

What right do you have to decide what kinds of property I can own?

Self defence.

Basically the idea is, that I don't have to wait until you actually violate my property to defend myself. For example, if you raise your gun to shoot me, I don't have to wait until you have actually shot before I can defend myself. Given reasonable beliefs that you may try to hurt me, I may act in self defence before the bullet is on its way to my head.

The same logic holds if my neighbour stores large scale explosive devices in his back yard. Should they go off, then my house gets blown away. Clearly, if my neighbour detonates a bomb in his back yard and the blast destroys my house as well, then he has aggressed against my property. If the risk exists, then I wouldn't need to wait untill the bomb actually goes off. I can use self defence and demand that he removes the device.

People have the right to decide what kind of property you can own if your property potentially interferes with the property of others. If you want to own large scale explosive devices, then you should make sure that they cannot violate the property rights of others.

Of course, it is for courts to judge when the danger to neighbours property is reasonable and when it is not. I can imagine that if someone builds an nuclear plant in a residential neighbourhoud without any of the modern safeguards, that this would be considered a violation of property rights while someone owning a box of grenades in a reinforced concrete bunker would be ok.

[Rich]

People have the right to decide what kind of property you can own if your property potentially interferes with the property of others. If you want to own large scale explosive devices, then you should make sure that they cannot violate the property rights of others.

Of course, it is for courts to judge when the danger to neighbours property is reasonable and when it is not. I can imagine that if someone builds an nuclear plant in a residential neighbourhoud without any of the modern safeguards, that this would be considered a violation of property rights while someone owning a box of grenades in a reinforced concrete bunker would be ok.

The problem with this is that its all a matter of opinion, which libertarians don't like. Eran's logic is correct if you accept the need for a state government, then why not a Federal government and if you accept the need for a federal government then why not a world government. Libertarianism is exactly the same as fundamental Islam , Christianity or Judaism, all seek to abolish opinion in questions of morality in favour of timeless "natural law" or the timeless law of scripture.

I always love to come back to the iconic fire bombing of Dresden. No one denies innocent people were killed. But when ever you fire any sort of gun there's a finite risk of killing innocent people. It actually wasn't 100% certain that any innocent person would be killed or injured at Dresden. It was just 99.9999... % certain. Fire an ordinary gun enough times whether hunting, self defence or target practice and its similarly virtually certain that an innocent person will get killed, that you will violate an innocent person's property rights.

The NRA supports massive government restrictions on the possession of arms. They do not want citizens allowed to carry anti tank weapons, surface to air missiles ,let alone (nuclear) suit case bombs. Hard core Libertarians tend to argue that their system will only come about when the majority of people support the non aggression principle, presumably generously and presumably nearly everyone's agreed on whether abortion is murder or a right. But even in this ridiculous fantasy world 1% of the world's population devoted to a totalitarian ideology could easily overcome the other 99%.

[Nunt]

The problem with this is that its all a matter of opinion

You are right that we cannot objectively draw a line between: "this threat is reasonable" and "this threat is not reasonable". The law can only provide broad guidelines, but it is up to individuals to apply these guidelines to real world situations. As you say, some risk to innocents is unavoidable for every kind of human activity (it doesn't even have to be explosives related). Thus it must be up to courts to decide whether or not the risk is reasonably low or not.

[Eran]

Libertarianism is exactly the same as fundamental Islam , Christianity or Judaism, all seek to abolish opinion in questions of morality in favour of timeless "natural law" or the timeless law of scripture.

Not quite.

Libertarianism isn't a complete moral theory. Rather, it restricts itself to the question of the use of force in society. Libertarians are the people who believe that it is (almost) always wrong to initiate force against other peaceful people. Period.

Once the initiation of force is excluded from the range of allowed actions, a very wide spectrum is still available for people of different opinions. Libertarianism is consistent with voluntary socialism (like an Israeli kibbutz), a gift economy, pure capitalism or any combination thereof.

It is consistent with fundamental religious views (as long as no force is initiated against non-believers) and with complete atheism.

It is consistent with Victorian morality as well as hedonistic ethics.


This is akin to constitutionalism which restricts the range of (legitimate) options available to governments. Within constitutional constraints, many different government policies are still possible, and people can have strong legitimate disagreements even while agreeing on the content of constitutional constraints.

Hard core Libertarians tend to argue that their system will only come about when the majority of people support the non aggression principle, presumably generously and presumably nearly everyone's agreed on whether abortion is murder or a right. But even in this ridiculous fantasy world 1% of the world's population devoted to a totalitarian ideology could easily overcome the other 99%.

Not at all. Again, observe the analogy with constitutionalism. The vast majority of Americans accept the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. That doesn't mean that a 1% of people willing to violate the constitution (or ignore its consequences, i.e. constitutionally-valid laws) can easily overcome the other 99%.

Libertarians aren't pacifists, and do not object to the use of force for defensive or restorative purposes. The 1% who doesn't accept the NAP will be considered criminals, and will be fought and defeated (easily) by the force arrayed against them by the 99%.



On the question of pre-emptive prohibition on the use of arms, I believe situations justifying pre-emptive action are few and far between, essentially requiring a persuasive evidence for likely harm to innocents before force can legitimately be initiated. It is impossible to speculate in advance where such line will end up being drawn.

If weapon ownership is an issue, people will gradually migrate towards communities in which the possession of excessively-dangerous weapons is prohibited by the legitimate owners of the land of the community.

It is easy to envision a perfectly-legitimate (from a libertarian perspective) privately-owned town (or just residential neighbourhood) which restrictions over gun (or heavier weapon) ownership.

[Rothbardian]

Self defence.

Basically the idea is, that I don't have to wait until you actually violate my property to defend myself. For example, if you raise your gun to shoot me, I don't have to wait until you have actually shot before I can defend myself. Given reasonable beliefs that you may try to hurt me, I may act in self defence before the bullet is on its way to my head.

The same logic holds if my neighbour stores large scale explosive devices in his back yard. Should they go off, then my house gets blown away. Clearly, if my neighbour detonates a bomb in his back yard and the blast destroys my house as well, then he has aggressed against my property. If the risk exists, then I wouldn't need to wait untill the bomb actually goes off. I can use self defence and demand that he removes the device.

People have the right to decide what kind of property you can own if your property potentially interferes with the property of others. If you want to own large scale explosive devices, then you should make sure that they cannot violate the property rights of others.

Of course, it is for courts to judge when the danger to neighbours property is reasonable and when it is not. I can imagine that if someone builds an nuclear plant in a residential neighbourhoud without any of the modern safeguards, that this would be considered a violation of property rights while someone owning a box of grenades in a reinforced concrete bunker would be ok.

So you, or some men you hire, are going to come and threaten my life when I haven't done anything to anyone and claim its self defense?