Right to bear arms

From Free Talk Live

The right to bear arms is a phrase often used in the United States to refer to the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution that protects the right of the people to keep and bear firearms i.e. guns.

The Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Despite the common citation of the Second Amendment, the right to own guns is not actually based on the second amendment. If there were no second amendment in the U.S. Constitution, one would still possess a right to own a weapon of self-defense, which in today's context, means guns.

The right to own a firearm, is based on the right to self-defense, i.e., the right to those means to defend oneself against those who wish to destroy one's life. The right to self-defense is itself is a corollary of the right to life (a corollary is here defined as a self-evident implication of a general principle).

It would be absurd to say one has the right to life, but does not have the right to the means necessary to protect that life. It would be like saying one has the right to life, but not the right to purchase food. Yet, this is what opponents to the right to own a gun are really against: the right to life.

Under libertarianism, it is the government's job to use force to defend its citizen's rights; however, government is not omnipotent, and it is not omnipresent: it cannot be everywhere. In many cases the protective forces of government cannot arrive to a criminal situation in time to prevent an irreversible situation, i.e., such as a murder. As such, every peaceful citizen has the right to those means necessary to protect themselves in emergency situations, until the police can arrive to 'takeover', i.e., an intrusion by a would be rapist when a woman is alone in ones apartment.