[Vision2020] Rights, Guns, Abortion, and Speech

Mon Nov 10 13:57:43 PST 2008

Well written Joe.  The only thing I disagree with is your statement 'no one should be in favor of unrestricted abortion
“rights”.  I am, in fact, in favor of unrestricted abortion 'rights' and if you're interested to know why I hold this position let me know and I'll email you off line.  It's very unpleasant so this might fall in the category of when someone says 'you don't want to know', maybe you don't want to find out after the fact that you really didn't want to know.  In any event, even with existing abortion restrictions I don't go out of my way to do anything to battle those restrictions.  The abortion line may swing slightly from the right to left and vice versa, but I don't expect there to be a major shift in where the line is presently drawn.  The main target for the abortion wars are now aimed at the rights of US females under the age of 18 which is why there are a seemingly endless ballot measures for 'parental notification' or the more intrusive 'parental consent' for abortion.  And the anti-abortion crowd did manage to outlaw the procedure for partial birth abortion and I think that only succeeded in banning the procedure but not outlawing late term abortions which are now performed via a different procedure.

In terms of gun control laws, I think it would be beneficial if laws could keep the guns out of the hands of criminals and irresponsible people who shouldn't have them in the first place and simulataneously have no restrictions on the vast majority of gun owners / enthusiasts who are very respsonsible with their guns, but good luck trying to solve those problems with supposedly fair laws.  The bad guys by definition don't play by the rules of civil obedience so placing restrictive laws aimed at criminals / irresponsible people are simply not going to be effective on people who routinely break those laws.  And then at the same time, those restrictive gun laws then only restrict the rights of people who are actually responsible law abiding citizens.  This probably sounds like rhetoric right out of the NRA, but it's just common sense to me and again I don't do anything one way or the other personally to fight this battle.  I neither donate money to the NRA nor the ACLU, but I think they're both great American organizations and both are legally working within the guidelines of our system to make what each group thinks will be a better / safer society.  And the only thing I share about Dan and Kai's concern regarding 'brace yourself for Obama's assault on Second Amendment rights' may be to brace yourself for a legal battle and ensure you have a solid defense for upholding Second Amendment rights, but I have no fear - none - that the Second Amendment will emerge no only unscathed, but on even more solid footing (which is hard to believe it can more solid).  And if the Amendment is so weak to begin with, maybe it would be best to rip the whole thing out of the Constition and replace it with another amendment that define gun rights in absolutely no uncertain terms.  Constitutional Amendments don't ban rights with the exception the ones that ban same sex marriages (go figure how that happens) and also the Prohibition Amendment which was rather quickly nullified by a subsequent Amendment.

-Scott

Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:23:40 -0800
From: josephc at wsu.edu
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Rights, Guns, Abortion, and Speech

Scott,

I’ve been reading your posts lately about the possible
threat to the 2nd amendment given the recent Obama election and, although I
find your thoughts and arguments interesting, I am in firm disagreement with
your view. So I’d like to say what I think about the issues. I’ve
made these points before but I don’t think I’ve made them all to
you.

First, you mention a lack of consistency between liberal
views on abortion rights and liberal views on gun rights. Some of the confusion
may be settled if, instead of talking about abortion “rights,” we
talked about the right to privacy, the right upon which the “right”
to abortion is founded. Granted the right to privacy is not an explicit right,
not explicitly noted in the bill of rights, for instance. But the argument is
that several of those rights would make no sense were there not a prior right
to privacy. We could talk about whether this argument is good or bad at a later
point but for now let’s just assume that there is a right to privacy that
grounds the “right” to abortion.

No one thinks that we have an absolute right to privacy, one
that should not be infringed under any circumstance. In a court of law, for
instance, a lawyer might ask a defendant questions about his private life that
might be deemed inappropriate under normal circumstances. Yet the defendant
cannot, or cannot always, refuse to answer on the basis of his right to
privacy. A search warrant allows police to investigate the drawers containing
your undergarments. Similar examples abound.

Consider next the right to free speech. That right is not
absolute either. I do not have the right to slander you, to libel you, to tell
lies about you, or even (I would say) to insult you. I have a right to speak
freely and in so doing I might insult you but that does not mean that I have a
right to insult you. I looked up ‘human rights’ in an on-line
dictionary and got: “The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans
are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of
thought and expression, and equality before the law.” I am entitled to
speak freely but I’m not entitled to insult you. Still, in an effort to
ensure the former we might have to put up with the instances of the latter.

I would say the same about the “right” to abortion,
which I would not call a right at all. I have a right to privacy and what that
ensures is that the government cannot tell me when I should and when I should
not have a child. That is my decision. Provisions should be made that allow me
to make that decision on my own, without government intrusion. That gives me
limited access to abortion. The “right” to abortion is founded on
the right to privacy, and since no one thinks that the right to privacy is
unrestricted, no one should be in favor of unrestricted abortion
“rights,” though as in the case of free speech the initial right
may be important enough to allow for behaviors that others would deem
offensive. Such is the price of freedom.

It is no mystery when rights should be restricted, for no
one has the right to deprive another of his right. My right to free speech
cannot restrict your right to privacy, so restrictions against, say, my
broadcasting your home address and phone number are appropriate. In general,
when my acts are likely to lead to harm to other persons, the law may
intervene. My rights go only so far. What counts as a harm? What counts as a
person? These questions complicate the matter but clear answers in each case
abound, and in those clear cases laws may be made restricting certain behaviors,
behaviors that would otherwise be protected.

Thus, your view on gun rights seems to be far more extreme
than what I take to be the liberal view on abortion and speech and rights in
general. In the latter cases, we recognize restrictions all the time. In fact,
there are many restrictions to speech and abortion that are already imbedded in
the law. Few liberals want to do away with laws against slander or laws against
third trimester abortion since in those cases the harms are clear. (In the latter
case, I am not talking about the harm to the fetus, I’m talking about the
harm to society in general, which might override the woman’s right to
what goes on in her own body once the fetus has passed the point of viability.
That is how I understand Roe v. Wade.)

Someone above – I can’t remember if it was you
or Dan or someone else – talked about the right to bear arms extending to
hunters and gun collectors, as if we had rights to hunt or rights to collect as
many and as diverse a collection of toys as we individually deemed fit; that
the second amendment protected the collection of any gun by any person for
whatever reason. That is like saying that because I have a right to privacy
I’d have a right to your house were that the place that I felt most
private. The second amendment says nothing about hunting or collecting. Nothing
at all, for there are no such rights: not in the bill of rights, not in heaven,
not on earth. These are privileges at most, not rights.

Nor is our right to bear arms unrestricted, as you seem to
suggest. If it were, why not allow citizens to obtain nuclear arms? The reason
is that the chance for abuse and harm is great. The implication is that in such
cases, the restriction of arms is justified. To think that nuclear arms offer
the only such case is absurd. Ergo, there is no unrestricted right to bear
arms. That is a myth.

I understand that Americans have a fascination with guns,
just as they have a fascination with privacy and with speech, and given those
fascinations a tolerance for pushing the bounds of those rights should be
respected by all parties: conservatives should appreciate the attempt from
liberals to push the boundaries of our rights to privacy and free speech, and
liberals should appreciate the attempt from conservatives to push the
boundaries of our rights to guns and free speech. (It seems that free speech is
a right of which we all agree, though how that right should be manifested is
something about which we don’t always agree.) Toward that end, I’ll
try to be more respectful of your attempts to keep your toys. But not to the
extent of affording easy access to nutcases like the Moscow and Virginia Tech
murderers. Clearly there is a problem with current gun laws but one that we
should be able to solve without infringing on your right to protect yourself,
or even your “right” to have a little fun!

Best,

Joe Campbell

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