At least it isn’t cars vs. guns again.
It’s been a while since I delved into the murky world of scholarly pro-victim-disarmament papers. Let’s take a look at Can States Block or Heavily Restrict the Second Amendment Constitutional Right by Following the Design of Texas Bill 8? (PDF). Basically, the weirdos compare the alleged right to abortion to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms (yet oddly keep talking about licensure). The paper is a difficult to read mess, mainly — I suspect — because they have no frickin’ clue what they’re talking about.
In this research we ask three interrelated questions. First, does the Second Amendment right constitute an afront to International Law’s right to life under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”)? If yes, can states adopt a design similar to Texas Bill 8 to ban or extensively regulate the second amendment right? Finally, what are the intrinsic differences between the right to bearing arms and the right to abortion? If they are intrinsically different, this research calls for examining each of them under a different scrutiny standard. In order to answer the last question, we assess two landmark cases regarding abortion and right to bear arms currently pending before the US Supreme Court, in an attempt to predict the future of those rights.
At the first glance, it follows from a logical point of view that allowing anyone in the street to possess lethal weapons only results in more homicides, assassinations, and general chaos even when initial purchasers meet the arm licensing conditions. [emphasis added]
Only?
Yet the potential dangers surrounding bearing arms did not enter public discourse until after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Not until 1963? I seem to recall something in 1934.
Money quote:
Taking our findings into account, we argue that the US Supreme Court should assess the right to abortion under a strict scrutiny standard, and the right to bearing arms under an intermediate scrutiny standard.
So abortion, not a right until 1973 — and not to be found enumerated anywhere in the Constitution should be given strict scrutiny. But a right recognized by states prior to the Constitution and specifically enumerated therein for more than two centuries should only get intermediate scrutiny?
The second practical concern was to guarantee personal and state autonomy against the federal government. This was influenced by John Locke’s thesis legitimizing revolution against oppression or injustices.36 By examining these practical concerns in the 21st century, they seem to be largely hyper-vigilant. Further, these practical concern could easily be rebutted by the distinction between militia’s right in bearing arms (which is currently substituted by the police force) and bearing arms for personal self-defense.
Ah, NO; the “police force” is not the militia. One might expect a law professor to know something about the law, particularly in an area he chose to write about. But clearly he doesn’t:
Perhaps the majority created this exception on a misreading of history regarding the ban of shotguns and machineguns…
When did that happen? I was aware of registration requirements for machineguns and short-barreled shotguns (the previously linked National Firearms Act of 1934), but when did this alleged ban happen? Anyone? Bueller?
Dear Bog, they even slipped in this BS argument:
In contrast, an accurate originalist interpretation of the second amendment would lead to a contrary result: namely, banning most firearms currently existing since they are not the same – technologically – as the ones existed in the 18th century when James Madison and Thomas Jefferson drafted the second amendment.
-sigh- Allow me to quote myself.
The next victim-disarming idiot who uses a smart phone connected to a computer network operating over fiber optic lines to tell me the framers of the Constitution and the Second Amendment never envisioned modern firearms, and that the Second Amendment only protects muskets is getting bitch-slapped.
James Madison, known for his role in drafting the Bill of Rights (including that pesky 2A) lived through the rise of repeating firearms, breechloaders, paper cartridges, percussion caps, metallic cartridges, pinfire cartridges, centerfire cartridges, revolvers, and mass production of firearms.
Consider yourselves slapped, bitches. And recall that repeating firearms predated the very existence of the United States. By centuries. These folks’ knowledge of history is matched only by their knowledge of federal law. Well, lead author Yacoub is an “International Lawyer” practicing in Egypt, so perhaps there’s some slight excuse for his ignorance. But Briggs claims to be a practicing US attorney; G-d save her clients.
Section II of this paper gets interesting, in a morbid way. Now they bring up the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights — more a hash of muh socialism and a checklist of things governments can do to their citizens, than a bill of individual rights — and argue that it trumps the Second Amendment, because life. You see, keeping and bearing arms somehow violates someone’s right to life; but ending a life through abortion doesn’t.
The right to life was specifically mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); regional conventions such as the American Convention on Human Rights among others.90 Invoking the right to life was very influential in abolishing the death penalty in many nations.91 Yet the indirect relationship between the right to life and the US constitutional right to bear arms remains unexplored to a large extent.
In the HRC General Comment No. 36 issued in 2018, paragraph four, in particular, connects the right to life and states’ obligation to implement policies so a person is not arbitrarily deprived of their life. “[A]rticle 6 of the Covenant provides that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life and that the right shall be protected by law.
No.
Under the Convention, gun control is essential to protecting the right to life. While persons can claim self-defense of the individual person as an exemption to criminal responsibility, it does not trump the fundamental right to life that is inherent in international human rights law.109 Even if there was a so-called “right to self-defense,” States still have a positive legal obligation under the Convention to implement gun control measures to protect their citizens in the collective sense and not the right of one individual to carry a gun.
I said, “No.” An aggressor’s “right to life does not trump my right to self defense — protecting my own life, BTW. And defending myself against a specific individual who attacks me is not arbitrary; I’m not randomly shooting every sixth person that walks past.
I really wanted to analyze this whole mess for you, so you wouldn’t have to. But I’m going to have to stop only a third of the way through, for the sake of my own sanity if nothing else. Feel free to read it yourself. But be aware that it only gets worse.
As a warning of what you’ll encounter, note that these two scholastic schizos have done a number of papers together. My personal morbid favorite is the one where they argue for the United States to adopt Sharia law to “solve the problem of US mass incarceration.”
Beating, hand-chopping and beheading as an alternative to prison time? That might make “the rehabilitative approach of the Icelandic criminal justice model part a bit tough to implement.
