Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

It is time for the high court to clarify that the right to bear arms does not stop at someone’s front door. What other constitutional right is confined to one’s house? The Second Amendment was never meant to be encumbered with such a limitation, and it cannot possibly be interpreted that way, but it will take a Supreme Court ruling to convince lower courts and anti-gunners, and put this debate to rest.

Alan Gottlieb
January 9, 2014
U.S. SUPREME COURT ASKED TO CONSIDER SAF, ANJRPC RIGHT TO CARRY CASE
[While I agree it is time to “put this debate to rest” as long the rulings of the courts are ignored in the short term it doesn’t really matter that much. The short term reality is that Despite Ruling, Chicago Officials Vow to Continue Gun Control Measures. And when they decide to obey the law they drag out “compliance” as long as they can.

It might ultimately matter when they get put on trial but that is not going to happen any time soon.—Joe]

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13 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

  1. I have long held — and beaten the drum, probably ad nauseam — that RKBA inheres to the individual, and the proscription in the Second Amendment is absolute and universal, and NO ONE — no actor at any level of government OR in private society — may infringe upon the right. That it is, in cases where conflict among rights is asserted, RKBA, the right to personal self-defense, trumps property or association rights. That the “no guns” signs on the doors of businesses amount to actions to deny free exercise of civil rights and are, as such, punishable under the law.

    It’s good to see an attorney at least approaching this position from the liberty side.

    M

    • So you think you can come into my house and use your “First Amendment rights” anyway you want to and I don’t have a right to kick you out?

      That’ll be the day….

      • That’s a really silly deliberate misrepresentation (i.e., lame strawman) of what he said, and I’m pretty sure you are smart enough to know it.

      • If you come into my house, do I have the right to shove my hand down your pants? Do I have the right to go through your wallet or purse, simply because you’re on my property?

        Your private property ends at my personal property. Period, full stop. Whatever’s under my jacket or at the small of my back isn’t any of your business.

        • You are missing the point, you don’t have a “right” to enter another person’s property except by invitation and under the terms they set.

          If they say “you can’t be armed here” aside from attempting to persuade them to change their mind, you have two moral and honorable choices: don’t enter the property, or disarm. It is lying, which is both immoral and dishonorable, to say you will abide by their rules on their property and then not do so.

          To state you have a right to be armed on someone else’s property is to state by extension that you have a right to be there at all, which is about as entitled and anti-individual rights thinking as you can get.

    • Um, no. You have no right to aggress against others by forcing them to allow you into their property on anything but -their terms-. Full Stop.

      You are buying into the idea that other individuals owe you anything but benign neglect, which is an entitlement mentality and utterly antithetical to the concept of negative rights and individual liberty.

      You are free to open your own business with your own rules, other than that you can pound sand.

      • To clarify. You do have the absolute right to self-defense anywhere you have a legal right to be. What you -don’t- have is a right to go into other people’s property without their informed consent, and they have the absolute property right to demand you leave at -any- time for -any- (or no) reason and the right to enforce that demand with necessary proportionate force.

        If that demand occurs, you do not have the right to “stand your ground” on other people’s property from which you have been lawfully trespassed.

        Go exercise your absolute right of self-defense somewhere you are wanted and welcomed.

      • There is an established principle in constitutional law known as public accommodation. A business which is putatively open to the public is required to be OPEN to the PUBLIC and to serve the PUBLIC. It answers the assertion that the business owner’s property rights and right of free association is trumped by a right against discrimination. Personally, I don’t hold with it. I think vitiating one set of rights in support of another set (which I see as rather… um … shaky in principle) is no defense of rights. (And we are minded that defense of rights IS the purpose of government.) However, it applies. A business — a public accommodation — may not infringe upon the right to carry on one’s person the tools of self-defense. I can see that principle extending to places of employment — whether open to the public or not — with the employee standing in for the wider public.

        This is all just thought experiments, anyway. As Joe points out, the chances of it happening for real are two: fat and slim.

        M

        • I’m familiar with the law as it is interpreted. I agree it is wrong; but, to be philosophically consistent and demonstrate intellectual integrity, we can’t -add- to the error just because it involves something we happen to like/believe.

  2. Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer to that question. The Third Amendment is limited to your house.

    • Actually, I think the right to vote is limited to your house too (technically) — since you do not have a right to vote in jurisdictions outside of where you live.

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