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Thursday, October 17, 2002
International Rights and Law Glenn Reynolds has a piece on making the right to keep and bear arms an international, basic, human right. It's a wonderful idea that would surely spur investment in gun technologies leading to cool new guns that I would very much want to own but rarely be able to afford. The article is well documented and is truly an interesting idea. Unfortunately, it has about as much chance of coming to fruition as I do of walking on the moon. Armed citizens, they argue, are far less likely to be massacred than defenseless ones, and armed resistance to genocide is more likely to receive outside aid. It is probably no accident that the better-armed resistance to genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo drew international intervention, while the hapless Rwandans and Cambodians did not. When victims resist, what is merely cause for horror becomes cause for alarm, and those who are afraid of the conflict’s spread will support (as Europe did) intervention out of self-interest when they could not be bothered to intervene out of compassion.Perhaps the best arguement or at least the most salient point of the article is this paragraph: It may seem odd to make such an argument at a time when D.C. is being terrorized by a mysterious gunman. But no one should pretend that rights do not have costs. We recognize the right to free speech not because we believe that speech does no harm, but because we believe that free speech has benefits that outweigh the harm. We recognize the right to abortion not because we believe that it is costless, but because the cost of having the state supervise women’s pregnancies is seen as worse. And we recognize the freedom of religion not because religion is safe -- it can and does lead to violence, as the worldwide epidemic of Islamic terrorism demonstrates -- but because having the government prescribe what is orthodox is worse.That's a great point and it's one that Glenn also touched on recently on InstaPundit in regards to calls for more gun control in the wake of the Washington DC area sniper shootings. In an only vaguely related story, we find out that a church in England has silenced its bells which had tolled every fifteen minutes for the last 115 years. Why did this church suddenly change its ways? Well, it turns out that under EU law, people are, "guaranteed the right to sleep free of noise, light or smell pollution." I only wish I was kidding. How are these stories even vaguely related? I don't know. I guess because one deals with international rights and the other deals with a law under the international body that is the EU. Whatever. It's late, and I'm getting tired. |
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