Originally posted by: CFster
Originally posted by: Dissipate
BTW, you could probably benefit greatly by reading
this.
Yeah, I gather John Hasnas has a idealistic vision of a society governed by "order" instead of law.
That's great, in a perfect world. But it will never happen. He's basically asking a large group of people to come to a mutual agreement based on common sense alone. Well, as much as I'd love to believe it could work, (as the saying goes) one person is smart, many people are stupid.
And he's saying that most disputes would be settled at community level. Well, regardless of what level it's settled at, it's still a form of government. SOMEBODY has to enforce those decisions. To just expect people to play nicely isn't going to work. There will always be somebody who doesn't want to cooperate.
Who's going to enforce things? You with your gun?
I'm not going to argue with you over some guys hypothetical view of how our legal system should work. We have laws, enforced by government, and that's the way it is.
Regardless of what legal system he thinks we should have, the point is that 'laws' are whatever the government, or 'lawmakers'/judges want them to be. This renders them the opposite of what a 'law' is supposed to be. In the end it always just comes down to the law enforcer's opinion. The 'rule of law' is a myth, a fairy tale or a fable if you will. 'The rule of law' simply does not exist and never has. Hence, all this talk about the Constitution and this law and that law is meaningless babble. You can find laws and interpretations of laws that support any claim imaginable because a number of them contradict each other entirely.
Now back to the real world.
You should take your own advice. Look at the real world, nowhere will you find 'the rule of law.'
I'll tell you what. Right now there are laws that say if can own that gun, how you can buy it and if you need a license to keep it. Those laws exist because of the Constitution. If you own that gun illegally, or shoot somebody with it - you'll have some answering to do.Just because you feel it's your God given right to have it wont save you either. Or some other belief that isn't inline with our Constitution.
That said, I don't like them. But I respect people's constitutional right to own them - however perverted it may be.
What I don't respect is some people's twisted reasoning, or interpretation of the law that allows them to do so.
What allows or disallows people to own handguns has nothing to do with the 'law' or the Constitution. It simply has to do with whether or not the public wants people to be allowed to own or disallowed to own firearms. If the public wants to outlaw firearms, the government will make sure it finds a way to interpret the 'law' so that people are not allowed to own firearms, and vice-versa. Or actually a better way to put it would be to say that if the public was willing (but not necessarily support) to give up its firearms to the government, the government would definately find a way to interpret the 'law' to allow it to do so.