THE RIGHT TO BE ARMED IS A NATURAL RIGHT

Guest Post by ‘Ol Remus

The Maryland Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’s decision ordering the lower court to apply strict scrutiny to an “assault weapons” ban has heartened Second Amendment defenders. They see it as the first light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I see it differently.

It’s generally accepted that people care less about how things are than whether things are getting better or worse. Politicians also know the appearance of improvement and actual improvement need not be the same thing. Successful gun control relies on appearances, facts do not support it. Looked at unencumbered by particulars, this court decision reveals itself for what it is, an appearance of improvement and nothing more.

The right to keep and bear arms isn’t reviewable by any authority or subject to any decision by any court. This decision, welcome as it appears to be, is merely part of a continuing transgression on that right. The right to be armed is not a legitimate concern of the judiciary, or the legislature or the executive. There are no valid arguments for or against it, it’s neither diminished by opposition nor improved by support. Like all natural rights, the right to be armed is free-standing, there’s no second party. Nor is it pendant to any other right or purpose. Natural rights are not subject to popular approval or exceptions or statistical analysis or notions of a greater good or veto or repeal, nor do they incurr any unique obligations or consequences. A natural right just “is”.

The right to keep and bear arms is neither granted by nor guaranteed by the Constitution. The Second Amendment merely names and acknowledges the right and confirms government pledges not to infringe on that right. Just as we don’t gain the right to be armed by any document, nor do we keep it or lose it by any document, nor does any document confer validity or any other particular quality to it, nor can any document expand or reduce it. A document is an incidental artifact, it may be reinterpreted or altered or even withdrawn, but the right it attempts to describe remains.

Natural rights are not dispensed by men. One man can’t give another man permission to be armed, it’s not his to give. Permission schemes are worse than invalid, worse than fraud, worse than “pre-crime” star chambers, although they are all of these. Permission schemes are a denial of personhood itself. The right to be armed does not rest on its acceptability to others. No legislative or judicial body can claim authority to dispense the right to keep and bear arms and also claim legitimacy, and no person can apply for permission and see himself as, or be seen as, or be, a free man.

Illegitimacy has brought down governments all by itself, and where it hasn’t, it’s been the one indispensible ingredient in doing so. Suppressing the right to keep and bear arms demonstrates illegitimacy in a particularly stupid way, it “makes trouble where there wasn’t any.” It harasses and enrages the citizenry for no practical gain and leads them to conclude there is no purpose to it other than preparing the ground for further subjugation. Opposition commonly focuses on intent, presumed to be equally illegitimate, which ripples through society’s larger equations, reinforcing related fears and existing suspicion. Nations and empires have fallen in just this way.