Friday, June 19, 2009

Should The Right To Keep & Bear Arms Be An International Human Right


Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

Sir George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1803

One can hardly argue with the centuries old observation of Sir George Tucker set down in the first American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the law. An unarmed populace is subject to brutality and repression from a tyrannical government. The picture of an unarmed youth shot by basij in Iran speaks a thousand words on the topic.

Iran required gun owners to register their weapons in the late 1970's and then banned gun ownership, as opposition to the Shah coallesced. Iran's theocracy has kept that ban in place. As we watch the people in Iran, disarmed, fall to the predations of armed thugs and riot police of the theocracy, I wonder if we should not be arguing that the right to keep and bear arms should pursued as an international human right.

It is the most repressive regimes that seek to ban private ownership of weapons - and the UN. This from Janet Ellen Levy writing in the American Thinker two years ago:

In the international arena, the United Nations is at the forefront of a global movement to limit worldwide gun production and eliminate private firearms ownership. Total disarmament of civilian populations is the U.N. goal. For the past five years, the United Nations has convened an annual, international gun control summit to discuss strategies to forestall the "proliferation of small arms and light weapons." Participating countries have included Iran, China, Algeria, Nigeria and Bangladesh, among others, as well as anti-firearms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have pressured governments worldwide to eliminate civilian gun ownership.

The images of today from Iran should hammer home why the more repressive the government, the more the push on their part to disarm their populace. And it should equally hammer home the stark need for people to have an absolute right to own weapons. As James Madison famously said "People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of their people." It seems to me that "human rights" begins and ends with that observation.








8 comments:

MathewK said...

"I wonder if we should not be arguing that the right to keep and bear arms should pursued as an international human right."

I agree 100% but those who supposedly have our interests at heart will never let it happen, at least not willingly. They want us unarmed and defenseless.

KG said...

We are at the point now where people ought to be arming themselves and stocking up on ammunition regardless of the laws of the country they live in.
Waiting to be given the right by governments is an obvious absurdity.
To hell with the laws--buy and keep guns any way possible.

suek said...

"Total disarmament of civilian populations is the U.N. goal."

Well duh. Who goes to the UN as representatives...people sent by their _government_...that's who! Of _course_ they want to take guns away from the population! They're exactly the ones who make the guns necessary!!

suek said...

KG, you might find these site of interest - and perhaps links to others.

http://www.keepandbeararms.com/

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/

http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner

Also, not bookmarked by me, but maybe of interest...search for Three Percenters and Oathkeepers

KG said...

Thanks very much Suek--I've bookmarked the links and as soon as I get some sleep I'll go take a look.

KG said...

There ya go--I just posted on it Suek.

OBloodyHell said...

"Among other things, being disarmed causes you to be despised."
- Machiavelli -

'Nuff said.

OBloodyHell said...

Also, I would direct anyone and everyone on the fence about this to locate and read Federalist #46, which explains exactly why the Constitution has that provision in it.