Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Second Amendment as an individual Right.
Is Cryptography a State right, or an Individual right? The US Supreme Court has decided to rule on whether the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, or only the right of a State in the Union. For purposes of Int'nl law, crytptography is defined as a munition. If the right to keep and bear arms is ruled a State right, not an individual right, is my right to strong cryptography affected? The free exchange of ideas is so important to me that I am willing to endure derision for making the argument below that the right to bear arms is for the purpose of the populace keeping a roudy militia in line. Amendment II 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. The militia can be members of military type units, but the word (according to Webster - presumably the authoritative source for definitions of the founding fathers' language) can also mean all men between ages of 18 and 45. This is why we occasionally use the phrase 'armed militia,' without being redundant. To my understanding, the statement is not 'the right of the militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' It seems to me that the thing being regulated is the militia, and the entity doing the regulating is armed people. So the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. BTW, a gang might be an example of what I perceive to be a militia in need of regulating By that argument the right would be an individual right. To give the argument context, look at Amendment III: No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. One could infer that the people were having a problem with militia members quartering themselves where they chose, and the populace was to be armed against this, and associated evils. The third amendment gave them protection against even the government legislating this. I think that if more people shouldered the responsibility of carrying a weapon even now, criminals would be less brazen in holding up convenience stores and the like, for fear, not of the man behind the counter, but of an armed customer bringing the force of arms to bear. In closing, My wife, my mother and my daughters will always be safer when I am armed and have the right to defend them. If you wish to do something to me or them to which we would not consent meekly, simply hand me my gun and try it! That being said, I also think that cryptography should be an individual right, but as the law stands, I would have to allow that arms does not necessarily comprehend munitions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment