Balancing rights and responsibilities

An article by David Rosenthal in "The American Thinker":

There is a right to bear arms that is defined as unalienable. The Second Amendment states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

But rights do not exist in a vacuum. The right to bear arms does not include the right to use arms in any way imaginable. No one has freedom to use arms to harm the innocent. 

Every right is accompanied by responsibilities. The right to bear arms is not a license to use them to vent one's frustration or fury. The right to own firearms does not authorize anyone to shoot them in a situation in which it is inappropriate, or to brandish them in a threatening manner to intimidate those who have not themselves posed a threat.

There are individuals who should not be permitted to own firearms, who do not intend to use them correctly, but who intend to do harm to the innocent. But there also exist people whose agenda is to infringe the rights of those who have not committed any wrongdoing.

It is the responsibility of every gun owner to use their guns only according to the purposes for which the existence of guns is tolerated in society, such as for self-defense, for sport, for hunting, or to serve as a deterrent to tyranny in government. And the vast majority of gun owners use their guns responsibly. Yet those whose agenda is to infringe the right to bear arms continue to claim, without reason, that guns should be banned, based on the irresponsible behavior of a handful of criminals.

The argument that guns should be banned based on the criminal behavior of less than 1% of the population of gun owners is without merit. To suggest that more than 99% of gun owners should be deprived of their unalienable right to own that which is meant to serve as a deterrent to tyranny in government is to suggest that society should agree to subject itself to tyranny. After all, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee recently stated that socialist candidates are the future of that party.  And the fairly recent history of far-left parties of China, the Soviet Union, and other tyrannical regimes has been first to disarm and then to slaughter dozens of millions of civilians.

It may seem like a stretch of the imagination to claim that Americans potentially face the same fate as those murdered by the Communist Chinese, the Soviets, the Nazis, and other insane regimes. But presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Most of the other Democratic candidates have shown evidence of sympathizing with socialism. Kamala Harris shows evidence of being a sociopath. And the rest of the Democratic Party is not far behind.

All that being said, some people should not be allowed to own guns. The weekly death toll in Chicago is evidence of that. The ever more frequent occurrence of mass shootings is evidence that some only bear arms to harm the innocent. Some people refuse to handle guns responsibly.

If anyone continues to drive while intoxicated, their license to drive is revoked. No one expects a sober, responsible driver to lose their license to drive based on the refusal of a drunk to drive only when sober. But the argument continues to be advanced that responsible gun owners should be prevented from owning that which establishes a deterrent to tyranny in government, based on the irresponsible or criminal behavior of less than 1% of gun owners. That argument is unsupportable and disingenuous. In the hands of Socialists, it is subversive and sociopathic.

Among the challenges we face is to find ways of preventing them from owning guns who refuse to use them responsibly, while preventing anyone's rights from being infringed who have not acted irresponsibly. Part of the equation must be to prevent irresponsible legislators, executives, and judges from remaining in office, whose willingness to infringe the right to bear arms has been too clear.