Pages

Labels

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Requiring gun ownership.

Glenn Reynolds has a NYT op-ed about towns that require residents to own guns. He likes this on the ground that it reduces crime if it is known that everyone in town has a gun in the house. What if you don't want to own a gun? If you think individuals have a right to own guns, shouldn't you think they have a corresponding right not to own guns? The right of free speech includes the right not to speak.

Whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right or a collective right is a hot question. ("Under the 'collective right' view, the Second Amendment is a federalism provision that provides to States a prerogative to establish and maintain armed and organized militia units akin to the National Guard, and only States may assert this prerogative.") Glenn alludes to the collective right view here:
The twin purposes of self and community defense may very well lie behind the Second Amendment’s language encompassing both the importance of a well-regulated militia and the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. As the constitutional and criminal law scholar Don Kates has noted in the journal Constitutional Commentary, thinkers at the time when the Constitution was written drew no real distinction between resisting burglars, foreign invaders or domestic tyrants: All were wrongdoers that good citizens had the right, and the duty, to oppose with force.
Don't you have to adopt the collective right view to believe people can be forced to possess guns?

0 comments:

Post a Comment