You appear to be conflating terms and theories of law to support your assertions, at least as they apply to Objectivist Law. You state: 'The “conditions of use” are nothing more (or less) than objective laws" Prior restraint is the exact opposite of Objective Law.

But the theory of Objective Law by Objectivist defines: "Objective law is men's protection against power-lust. Objective law does not require submitting to anyone's will; it exists to prevent others from substituting their will, their plans, their judgment for one's own.

Although the function of objective law is to protect individual rights, the proper means for securing this protection is by bringing a civil or criminal action after the fact, not by prior restraint. If a plaintiff can prove that someone's planned action poses an objective threat of damage to him, he can sue for an injunction to prevent it. But the general possibility of human wrongdoing provides no grounds for requiring a given individual to prove he will not engage in it. Individuals are separate entities who possess free will and make their own independent choices. Therefore, the wrongful actions of some men do not cast the slightest suspicion upon the activities of others. This is another manifestation of the individualism embodied in objective law." See The Association for Objective Law. http://www.tafol.org/bulletins/b07.html

I can see that you have a fear of others' actions with the possibility (remote or otherwise) of impacting you. But those fears do not allow you nor the collective to limit, control, or otherwise restrain any of my (or anyone else's) individual rights.

'The premise of regulatory law is: since some individuals may act irrationally and irresponsibly, all must submit to supervision. Thus regulatory law sacrifices virtue to vice. Objective law is designed to protect the very thing regulatory law crushes: independence.'

Rights are determined by man’s nature, not by any man or by any government, and the protection of these Rights becomes the only proper purpose of government. A man or group of men may grant government whatever powers he or they want, but if the powers granted are not directed solely at the protection of Rights, then that is not a proper government. (And no one morally has to follow those laws.)

The “conditions of use” are nothing more (or less) than objective laws. Objective laws are required to control the power of government officials, limiting their power to only the protection of Rights.

A weapon is private property, and a proper government requires laws (“conditions”) to protect the rights of both the owner and others. For example, a 10 year old should not be allowed to own and use a gun without the supervision of a parent. Such laws are required to protect the Rights (i.e., lives) of the child, parents and others. A convicted felon should not be allowed to own any weapon at all. A private citizen should not be allowed to point a gun – which is a threat to one’s life – at any innocent person. These are all valid laws or conditions of use.

Should a company that wants to develop a nuclear power facility, or maybe even develop nuclear weapons for the military, be required to meet certain conditions of use? (i.e., should they be required to obey certain laws aimed at ensuring the protection of the lives of nearby citizens and employees?)

The only way Rights can be violated is through the use of force or through the threat of the use of force. In any situation where a person’s rights are violated, or threatened to be violated (as set forth above), by the use of force, then the government can and should step in and either stop the violation or remove the threat. In many cases, the removal of a potential threat, like the development of a nuclear power facility, can be accomplished through objective laws that set the conditions for its use.

Again, government cannot BAN anything, including a nuclear power plant, but it can and should set the conditions (u.e., objective laws) for its use. Rejecting tyranny does not mean we have to accept anarchy. We need objective laws to control government and to protect the Rights of all citizens.

You are in essence accepting the gov't's assumed authorities to determine your rights to life and private property. A proper gov't can only have those authorities granted to it by it's citizens. A man can not 'condition the use' of any other man's private property, therefor he can not grant to the gov't what he doesn't have himself.

The government DOES have an obligation to protect the rights of its citizens; this is the only purpose of government. It does not have the right to BAN anything, but it does have the right to set the conditions of the use of anything that threatens the rights of others. If it can be shown that the possession of a certain weapon by a normal adult poses a threat to someone's rights, then the government can step in and set the conditions of its use. It does not have the right to ban it, but it can and should set the conditions of its use.

The government has no obligation to protect individual rights. It only has authority, given to it by the individuals that support it, to apply retaliatory force in an objective manner. Although we might have a hope or plan that such retaliation to rights violators will serve the purpose of 'protecting rights' by making those that are considering violating someone's rights fear receiving such retaliation, the government itself has no obligation to protect. The government can not and will not provide a body guard and a property guard to each individual 24/7.

It is up to the individual to effect his own 'self defense'. It is his individual right, not collective right, by virtue of existence. And each and every individual has the right to utilize any weapon that he can produce or procure for that purpose--notice that purpose is for self defense. He does not have the right to utilize a weapon for the initiation of force against another.

You may argue, that a particular weapon has the potential to harm too many people if mis-used. So does an automobile, a batch of poisonous herbs, a rogue wave, a cigarette in a sleepy person's hand in an apartment complex, a hammer or screwdriver or any number of common everyday hand tools, a drunk doctor, a mentally disturbed suicidal teenager, a leaking natural gas pipe or valve, and how far do you want to go with it. Life has never been, is not now, and can never be made to be 100% safe for every individual life, and all men are not rational nor use reason.

The difficulty with your argument is simply that once you give government, proper or otherwise, the authority to ban or control anything on any particular conditional basis--government will not stop at that point and there exist any number of other individuals that will push government to step over that condition or expand it's definition beyond the original scope. Our history of mankind, as far back as we're able to determine, even including archeological evidence, adequately demonstrates and proves that point.

A quote to illustrate that point: “Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is , so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.” —Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith, Hope, 2001

This point is universal in the history and experience of mankind. Should one choose to ignore that, he does so at his own peril, but I won't let him make that decision for me. He doesn't have that right. It is mine, by birth and existence.

“…any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”

Morally, this is true. Also, morally, this is the justification for creating a government.

The sole purpose of government is to protect individual rights. If one can demonstrate that the ownership and use of anything – weapons or otherwise – violates or threatens to violate the rights of others, then the government can step in and set the conditions of its ownership and use.

Would you permit the unconditional ownership and use of nuclear weapons? What about rocket launchers? What about grenades?

There needs to be certain conditions of ownership and use even on small arms, like handguns. Pointing a loaded handgun at someone is a direct threat on their life, and therefore properly breaks the law.(threatens someone’s right to life) Shooting a handgun in a suburban neighborhood potentially threatens the lives of everyone one in that neighborhood.

This does not mean the government can ban the ownership and use of any of these weapons, leaving a man defenseless, but it can set the conditions of their ownership and use. Criminals, as an obvious example, should be barred from purchasing and owning any weapon.

These conditions do not violate a man’s right to self-defense, they implement it.

The use of physical force needs to be controlled by objective laws; that is, we need objective conditions that control both the government’s and the individual’s use of physical force. The opposite of tyranny is not anarchy.

Thank you William.

Yes, maybe even a better idea today.

Well said. +$

Because I lament the decline of personal freedoms in the US, I periodically look for countries that have a higher degree of personal freedom. I do not find them; I would like to. Can you point out some that you think qualify?

Jan

AHA! khallling found the post for me. Now I can conclude my comments with a short quote from rbuck's post: "On one side of the argument we want to believes that all people are intrinsically good, want to work, and if only given the chance will contribute in a positive way to society, but are not responsible enough to be trusted with a gun..."

This is actually something that I think I might discuss with some of my liberal friends, just to see if they contradict themselves. (I suspect that most of them are pro-gun, but it is a question I can ask.)

Jan

rbuck - I could not find your post again (closed tab accidentally), so I have responded to you as an independent post.

Jan

Yes. Thank you. I can find it in your link, but not in this one.

This is an interesting topic - thank you for starting it. Discussions like these compel me to clarify mine own thinking on subjects that do not often come up in general conversation.

Jan

No, not "any weaponry". The purpose of having a government is to bring force under objective control - the opposite of anarchy where everyone has to defend themselves and therefore must scramble to personally stay one better than the criminal elements.

We retain the right to reasonable personal arms under that system, because no reasonably constituted government can actually be hanging around as our protector all the time (and any government that was able to do that would become our oppressor itself in no time flat).

What "reasonable" is has to be defined by that objective legal system, including the votes of the population (the ones doing the delegating), and I don't think the precise position of the "line" can be defined in advance of the actual conditions in the country. Personally I would definitely include handguns but exclude automatics of any kind, but I haven't done enough research to be sure.

At the extreme end: you have the right to self defence, but you do not have the right to pre-emptively point your guns at someone else, as the act of pointing a weapon is initiating physical force against them. So indiscriminate weapons of mass killing (e.g. bombs, missiles, biological and chemical weapons) - which are effectively pointed at everyone within their radius of operation - are never properly under the control of private individuals.

Yes...thank you. I see, now, that we are both on the same page.

Complete the thought of right-to-life to get consequences and the deterrent answer, e.g.you have the right to live your life, you do NOT have the right to purposely deprive that of another, and if you do, you lose your right to life.

Example: If you drive impaired, you are committing attempted-murder. If you succeed in killing someone, you committed murder and your life is forfeit. The provider of the impairments only responsibility is reminding them of the above.

Apply to the Yersinia example. When you get the bug from someone, they have to tell you, and "society" as a whole tells you similarly, that if you screw up, you are committing attempted negligent homicide, and if someone gets sick, you are responsible for their medical care and jail time. If you screw up and someone dies, your life is forfeit. Period. Then let the deterrent effect take care of what regulations otherwise would expected (not necessarily succeed) to accomplish.

Same with weapons. You have the right to any weapon. If you kill an innocent, you die. If you attempt to use it against an innocent, your life is forfeit to your attempted victim (self defense). Therefore you are more careful.

I should be able to own any weaponry I want to protect myself from other people or my own government or other governments that violate my rights. The purpose of the second amendment was to limit government's power to take my weapons away while allowing IT to have them.

Ben Carson was right a few weeks ago- if the jews had guns, it would have been a LOT less likely Hitler could have done the holocaust.

Take our weapons away and governments historically just become more and more unfair and controlling.

was it this comment, jan? https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

This is puzzling and perhaps someone can help me figure out what happened. I read an interesting post by someone I did not recognize "rbuck[something]". While I was drafting a response (in Word) I accidentally closed the tab. Now I cannot find the post of rbuck.

Below is my partial answer:

Good discussion, rbuck. I have some comments.

First paragraph, "...own or possess something...". This is (to me) the hinge point. I think that if 'something' is a gun, the definition of who should be able to own it is “everyone” and then some exclusionary criteria applied: insane, felon, baby, etc. If the ‘something’ is a WMD, then I think the definition of ‘someone’ is “very few people” and the criteria are inclusionary (and level for all entities): possesses a Level 4 lab, has degree in nuclear physics, etc.

Second paragraph, “…[drugs are] rarely used as a weapon…”. I would restate this more as ‘rarely does damage to anyone other than the individual using it’. I agree with the points you make, but think that it is important to not allow future interpreters of the law to say that self-inflicted damage constitutes use as a weapon.

Third paragraph. As many people have noted, the disparity between weapons the people have and weapons the State has is a lot different now than in the 18th century, and our modern interpretations need to take that into account. However, since WWI, people have considered themselves patriots of their land and I think that the ability for a citizen army to keep their own people subdued is questionable, however large the discrepancy of armament. It is the willingness of civilians to fight back that is the key, and the possession of arms may be key to that willingness. I have seen video of people standing down armed military and tanks (both Russian) with their bare hands, but I think that raises the bar pretty high.

(there was more to rbuck's post, but this is as far as I got)

Jan

H--l, YES!!--Man has the right to self-defense. And
that is the purpose of government;self-defense and
retribution. And the citizen for whom this suppos-
edly exists has the right to have a weapon (at least,
at his own expense) to defend himself.

Not real sure if the alternative to the question posed is to own weapons collectively, but...
Just as one can own a car but is not allowed to mow down pedestrians, one should be allowed to own weapons - it's what is done with those weapons that becomes the philosophical part of the question: Whether that weapon is used to negate the individual rights of others or to protect yours from being taken.

There are lots of wacky people out there. The thing that keeps people from building nuclear weapons in their garage is not the technical difficulty but the availability of fissionable material. The technical problems are not that great. Several of the people on this site could probably do it.

If you say that everyone has the right to buy nuclear material -- which presumably you are advocating then someone will think it's cool to have one. Testing it could be a bitch, though.