The right to self-defense is not basic. One’s protection can be delegated to others such as parents in the case of young children and the military in the event of foreign invasion. Moreover, if we enjoyed perfect physical security, there would be no need for protection. The right to self-defense is grounded in the fundamental moral right to physical security.
(David DeGrazia (ddd@gwu.edu) is a professor of philosophy at George Washington University.)
Source: Gun rights include the right not to be shot – Baltimore Sun
This guy has to be tenured. No other way he could put out an editorial without a basic research and get away with it. A bit of Google-Fu would have taken him to read about No Duty to Protect and avoided him this embarrassment. If anything, in Warren versus District of Columbia you will find the following: “[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists.”
Do we need to explain this in crayola or what?
So the ultimate foundation of the right to private gun ownership — physical security — is also the basis of the right not to be shot. Rights are extremely important, but they also require support. Supporting the right not to be shot requires some limits on the right to gun ownership.
I see where he is coming from: If you own a gun, you are a criminal, period. You are a bloodthirsty animal who goes out every morning seeking for targets of opportunity to increase your collection of minority heads mounted in your wall. Your Gun Club and the local chapter of the Bloods or MS-13 are one and the same legally and morally wise not to say intellectually. I am still baffled by this attitude but they need to feed out of their own Narrative which sees us as a bunch of brain-dead rednecks with a second grade education and a felony record for dealing moonshine. That we are probably more law-abiding than 99% of his friends in the faculty does not compute in his pre-programmed little mind.
Pro-gun scholars often assert that the right to bear arms trumps considerations of social utility — including the possible fact (suggestive evidence abounds) that widespread gun ownership increases homicide, suicide and lethal-accident rates.
Again, a total lack of five minutes of Google research which may have led him to the FBI data proving this statement so wrong, his jacket’s elbow patches would have fallen off.
We need to do more to prevent violations of the right not to be shot.
Shoot first at those who come after you?
It is time to say No to those who tolerate the killing of thousands of innocent Americans each year in the name of gun rights.
The blame for the murder of innocent people lays 100% on your feet dear professor. Your kind has been playing some sick game of Social Engineering and collecting bodies on the way. Your ilk kept telling us that family is bad, drug abuse is good, honor and religion are dead, charity is outdated, being a leach to the taxpayers is OK, humility is shameful and disrespect for others is fundamental.
You are so stupid, you think you can juggle six jars of nitroglycerin forever without a problem.
Boom.
I took a few philosophy courses as electives when I was in college. The whole nature of the subject is one of needless over-thinking and semantic wrangling. You can see some of that in this guy’s comments on the subject of firearms and self defense. It’s also worth noting that philosophy has absolutely no practical use in the real world. None. This is stuff for college professors to make themselves look smart in front of an audience of students, and a degree in that subject is only good for becoming a philosophy professor. So yeah, I’m going to pretty much dismiss what this fella says.
I wouldn’t say philosophy is useless. Though philosophy is what you do when the essential stuff is covered. There are interesting questions.
But what we have here is no Aristotle. Just some dumb credentialed lefty who wanted his 5 minutes of pseudo-fame by vomiting a word salad in the local fish-wrap. Maybe there are funding issues for his chair and he had to boost his lefty street cred and keep the money coming ?
Disagree wholehaertedly as to philosophy being useless. IMO it is the first field to try to objectively understand the nature of our world, perception, knowledge, thought, etc and forms the basis and questions of many scientific persuits; that’s why I call it the first science. Everything ties back to the classic question: why?
As far as practical use, it helps train you to think critically and analytically, helps you learn to write persuasively abd effectively, and helps you develop reading comprehension; those skills translate. But I don’t wholly disagree, you aren’t getting many jobs based off of your philosophy degree alone.
Re overanalyzing and over thinking… It’s field dedicated to thought and analysis, I don’t think you can over do it… But it is true, philosophy becomes inaccessible to many because it often deals with ideas that have no obvious or tangible link what is practical or how reality actually plays out on a daily basis. That’s the nature of the beast and not a reason to dismiss it IMO.
As to what the author says in the article I will reserve comment until I read it past this; from the snippets provided I get a utilitarian vibe.
Good points from both of you, and I suppose I was being overly-harsh. My experiences with philosophy classes obviously left a bad taste in my mouth, and I should probably not be so broad and say only that what I gleaned has had no practical purpose in my life, up to this point. I’ll try to keep my knee from jerking so hard next time. 🙂
“I’ll try to keep my knee from jerking so hard next time” lol no worries we all do it Without a doubt philosophy isn’t for everyone, just like calculus, English Literature, driving properly, shooting a double action revolver well, etc. isn’t for everyone. I definitely don’t fault you there, different strokes for different folks.
I feel you. If I were to evaluate “philosophy” on the merits of classes I took (had to take) years ago I’d come to the same conclusion as you HP. There are indeed a number of philosophy professors who sure do like the sound of their own voices.
Historically philosophy was part of the whole upbringing, not just some standalone thing.
Philosophy is a vast field covering lots of topics (which when you dig a little will usually be somehow connected).
So yeah thinking about some abstract ideas can be interesting.
Until you realize that you’ve go no ammo left and there’s a steel challenge on Sunday and that pile of bullets, primers and brass won’t reload itself! Time to wrap up the philosophy and start cranking that press! 🙂
Very little thought based on anything but feelings and it’s the feelings that count more than anything else. If it affects the feelings then “it” has the right to deny possession or the ability to act in that manor and if three can be found who’s feelings sort of match that is a majority to dictate to the rest of society. The liberal mentality is now to the point that if three matching crazy people can be found they are capable of changing the course of human development. While the prof ignores fact to sink into his depressed mental reality what drives him even deeper into the depths of liberal depression is that society and law makers are rejecting his form of mental reality.
“The right to self-defense is not basic.” Self-preservation is a basic right, which necessarily includes self-defense. If there is no right to self-defense, it would follow that there is no right to self-preservation — he probably has no idea that’s the direction his philosophy takes.
My fisking
The ability to delegate protection to another does not mean the right to protect oneself does not exist. This argument really doesnt address if self defense is a basic right or not.
If we enjoyed perfect physical security the issue of making firearms illegal or heavily regulated because they are dangerous to our personal security is moot because we have perfect personal physical security…
Every innocent person has a right not to be shot. Id say it’s more a reasonable expection in practice, a right to a presumption of physical security ideally. No one has the right to cause physical harm without just cause and you have the right not to be harmed for no reaso. Simply having a right doesn’t guarantee its application or effects though and thus a reasonable expectation in practice and a definite reight to presume you won’t be harmed. More to the point, correlation does not equal causation; merely having a gun does not endanger an innocent person. I can imagine how Hume would respond to his point here.
The rest is more false equivalency stuff like above. Id say he hurts his point as well with the voting example; a reasonable measure to help the disabled old lady vote is accommodate her. So why wouldn’t it be a reasonable measure to accomodate my right not to get shot by allowing me to have body armor and arms to dissuade ne’er do wells and give me protection?
It is obvious he believes there is a causal link between firearms and violence ignoring the entirety of recorded human history and more recent research that suggests otherwise. At worst he is making the obvious suggestion that if guns didn’t exist no one would be shot by the thing that doesn’t exist to do the action that has no meaning.
I think it is also a fair critique here to say this is an example of the ideal vs the real problem many people think much of philosophy falls into. This professor is obviously too stuck in the ideal to understand the real.
This also heavily reminds me of an article featured here not too long ago; it was major deja vu reading this one. Couldn’t say which it is at this point though.
Lives and works in the District… Nuff said…
“The right to self-defense is not basic. One’s protection can be delegated to others”
Delegation of the exercise of a fundamental right does not negate the nature of that right.
Even delegated, the right to self defense against threats, both personal and political, remains a basic human right.
Ah, yes, more of the “right to not be shot” crap.
Here’s my take, and I’d spell it out in crayon if I could get that to post on the Interwebz.
You have a right to not be shot. The way you exercise that right is by protecting yourself from people trying to violate it. That means you are necessarily exercising your right to self-preservation and self-defense.
That’s right: The “right to self-defense” and the “right to not be shot” are one and the same. You cannot have one without the other, you cannot give up one without the other, and you cannot delegate one to others without losing control of both.
If that’s OK with him, then great. But it’s not OK with me, and I for one refuse to let him strip away my right to self-defense (and to not be shot) simply because he’s willing to give up his own and he happens to disapprove of my methods.
Methods, I might add, which pose zero threat to him.
The right to self defense is founded on the fact that your body and life are owned by you and you alone; your free will can’t be abrogated (though it can be influenced by threats, force and frauds). Delegating your defense to others doesn’t eliminate your right to defend yourself because it is an inherent right created by your existence.
BTW, everyone has their own philosophy even if they haven’t though about it. Why am I here, what is my purpose, what is “good”? “Philosophy is bullshit” is a kind of philosophical statement.
His argument falls apart if he truthfully addresses the hypothetical of his life being threatened by a murderer. If no police are around, you can rest assured that he would resort to lethal force, including the use of an evil firearm, to preserve his life.
Perhaps his convictions are so strong that he would allow himself to die at the hands of a murderer. Sad for him. However, I agree as stated above that he does not get to make that choice for me and impose that restriction on me.