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Abstract
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On September 11, 1997, Charlton Heston addressed the National Press Club. His speech argued that the right to bear arms is the fundamental right. His speech made it clear that what he meant was that gun-ownership rights are a condition of the practical existence of other rights. Because he was speaking as new president of the National Rifle Association, and because his conclusion differed from journa listic fashion, the arguments and considerations he suggested for this view were dismissed by news accounts. Those accounts focussed on finding it ridiculous that someone who had played Moses in the Ten Commandments might have something intelligent to say.
In this essay, I argue that there are very good arguments for Heston's position that deserve the attention of philosophers, politicians, and people who care about the welfare of their great-grandchildren and other future human beings.
I take it as obvious that having a right that x entails having a right to take steps to make it more likely that x. Making it more likely that x essentially means taking steps to prevent unjust coercions which would prevent x. So, if a person has a right to the use of his garden produce, he has a right to lower the probability that that produce will be stolen by animals or people, for instance. Such rights, of course, have to be weighed against other rights. If my garden-protection scheme involves powerful searchlights and high- decibel recordings of rock music, my right to protect my garden runs afoul of the rights of my neighbors not to have their environment polluted by excessive light and sound.
Government is legitimated, at a minimum, by its protection of rights to life and liberty. Its institutions are at least designed to coerce citizens into respecting others' rights. If government were absolutely reliable and effective in ensuring rights not to be assaulted or despoiled of ones goods, then any measures one took independently to ensure that one's rights were not violated would be redundant. A person could still lock his valuables in a safe in his house even though the risk of theft had been reduced to zero by effective police. Even a perfect government should permit citizens to dispose of their resources foolishly. It would entail, though, but would require that no such steps could violate another's rights, even in the slightest...
... A right to resist government coercion, while paradoxical as an explicit institutionalized right, is essential to reasonable consent to be governed. The right is in effect insured by rights to effectively arm oneself and the other political rights that a population able to resist direct coercion can retain. Conceptions of the "social contract" that treat this right as uncivilized or failing in trust are committed to irrational and, in the long run, destructive policies. It is never inappropriate to protect oneself and humanity in general against the possibility that governments will go bad. The record of government is too mixed to have the confidence required not to have an enforceable way to revoke a "social contract" when the government side fails to live up to its end of the bargain. Given that government is (sometimes legitimate) coercion, this means that the right to effectively resist coercion should not be given up lightly. It should not be lightly withheld from those in desperate need of it either
Language: en |