Look, I'm not going to get sucked into one of your tangents about a personal baliwick of yours. But the right to bear arms is not a universal human right. What is a universal human right is security of person. However, as to what or how to go about assuring security of person is debatable and is where it becomes dependent on the civil rights and jurisdictional decisions that involves civil rights.
It absolutely is a universal human right -- it's the natural and proper extension of the inherent right to self-defense. Self-defense, to be meaningful, inculdes the right to instruments of one's choice for a sufficient defense against the latest technology.
And it is essential to fighting hate crimes. No law will protect a person against a hate crime, except perhaps one providing a bodyguard to every person who might become a victim. The only guaranteed protection is to become your own bodyguard.
For you, ensuring the security of person is the right to bear arms, for others it's not allowing people to bear arms which helps ensure security of person; i.e. for you it's all about gun ownership, for others it's not allowing gun ownership, e.g., the differences between the US and England. But the right to bear arms is not a universal human right it's a civil right. The universal right is security of person and gun ownership is one and only one of the considered means that may be attempted to assure such security of person.
"not allowing people to bear arms which helps ensure security of person" is such a load of silliness I don't see how people can buy into it. For starters, people who want to violate someone's person will ignore any such rule, as has been demonstrated over and again in numerous countries when people use guns in "gun-free zones". Belief that a law can protect people against violence is a belief in magic, pure and simple.
There may be a right to secure one's own person, but that's just another way to say "self-defense". No one else can secure your person for you, and depriving someone of the means to do so only makes them less secure. Take away the most effective means, and criminals will turn to others -- or they will turn to hardware stores, where one can purchase what is necessary to make firearms, or crossbows, or blowguns, or whatever.
If you want to discuss gun ownership and resume your advocacy for that, then go take up the subject again in one of your multiple threads where you obsess on that subject or have already highjacked the topic onto that issue. It's way off topic for this subject and I've already strayed way off topic myself and have been trying to put an end to such off-topic discussion being continued.
I've never hijacked the topic onto the right to keep and bear arms. It's interesting that when someone advocates for freedom of the press, they don't get attacked by a half-dozen others, or if they stand for freedom against search and seizure they aren't set upon by a pack in opposition, but speak one word in defense of this most basic of natural rights, and the make-everyone-a-victim swarm descends with a fury... and then accuses the person who has merely pointed out an inherent freedom we should make use of of "hijacking" the thread.
I brought it into this thread because it is appropriate: anyone believing that a law will protect them from getting bashed, i.e. from hate crimes, is living in a world of make-believe. Once the rednecks are there with their rope to drag us by our feet through the back roads, if you rely on your law, and I rely on my .357, guess who's not getting bashed? All the law can do is decree that the bashers,
if they get caught, and if there's a jury that isn't sympathetic, will sit on their butts in prison for a time. So when it comes right down to it, in terms of safety for gays it doesn't matter if Bush signs the bill or vetoes it -- it will only make a difference in what happens after.
The Pink Pistols' motto is "Armed gays don't get bashed" for a reason: once some gay-hating types decide to get violent,
nothing else will stop them except superior force.
However, it's odd you contend that security of person isn't a universal right since the entire article 3 of the universal declaration of human rights consists of a single sentence: "Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Yet, I shouldn't be surprised because you still don't seem to be able to grasp the distinction between civil rights and universal rights, why the two are not synonymous, and how security of person is a universal right while something like the civil right to bear arms is a debatable means codified as a civil right that may be attempted to assure the universal right of security of person.
I don't really care what a bunch of bureaucrat types striving for a text that won't upset many people wrote down. I'm talking about truth and reality.
And I'll say it again, this way: any government which does not allow citizens to possess whatever means those citizens choose for the protection of their persons is
not a free country, but a realm where the dignity and worth of the individual are not recognized -- however much the words may be used. Any government which says, "You may not defend yourself with means commensurate to the possible dangers against you" is saying "We'd rather you be a victim" -- and at root is saying, "You don't own yourself; we do".
Which is what gay-bashers act out -- their attempt at ownership of you. And if your government does not permit you to carry the means to stop two, three, four or more attackers at once, then they are partners in your victimization.
