Rights Defined  by Tom Reynolds

A “right” is defined as: a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way.  It means you have the freedom to act but not that anyone will provide you with the means, particularly not the government at the expense of taxpayers, 

Owning a firearm and healthcare are both often defined as “rights” in different ways by different groups. What if the traditional “right” to own a gun was changed and redefined in the same way as healthcare is defined in Obamacare; it is a “right” and Obamacare mandated that from a mere domestic restraining order everyone must have health insurance.  And if you can’t afford it, the government will pay for it. 

If owning a gun is a “right” in the same way that the Left defined Obamacare, then the government should mandate that everyone must have a gun and if you can’t afford one the government will pay for it.  The “right” to keep and bear arms would mean that you have the “right” to have someone (the government) provide you with a firearm.    

Put another way, does the 1^st Amendment right to free speech mean the government has to provide you with the means of speaking or writing?

 Let’s flip it and define the “right” to health care in the same way that the 2^nd Amendment is traditionally defined.  The 2^nd Amendment traditionally means that you are allowed to own and carry any firearm you can legally acquire. You can buy one, receive it as a gift, or build one yourself. Once acquired, it is like any other property; it cannot be taken from you without the due process of law. (At least that’s how Amendments 4, 5 6, and 14 are supposed to work.)

Applying this to health care, it would mean that we have the right to see a doctor and pay for his services. It would give you the right to contract with anyone who might provide you with health care. Someone else might voluntarily pay for it out of charity or you might contract with an insurance company to pay for it. If you can obtain health care by any such legal means, government may not stop you or take it away from you.

Under either definition of a “right”, the Left loses the debate when both “rights” are defined in the same way.  But consistency was never a goal of the left.

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Courts have ruled that police do not have an obligation to protect us.  The primary responsibility of the federal government is to protect our liberty and our individual rights as guaranteed by our Constitution; its primary responsibility is NOT to keep us safe.  The oath that Presidents and other government officials take would seem to give some support to that idea since the oath requires them to preserve and protect the Constitution - and says nothing about keeping us safe. 

If the government’s job is to keep our rights safe, there is no basis for taking away our guns since to “keep and bear arms” is one of our rights that the government must protect.

And since the government’s job is not to keep us safe, that is further justification that we need to “keep and bear arms“ in order to keep ourselves safe.

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The United States District Court, Eastern District of Kentucky, Central Division (at Lexington), has held that a domestic restraining order’s ban on Second Amendment rights is unconstitutional.

A Family Court in Kentucky issued a Domestic Violence Order (DVO) - a restraining order - against Sherman Kelvin Combs. Kentucky’s DVO procedures do not require an attorney to be appointed or a jury to resolve factual issues.  Combs and his lawyers successfully argued that a ban on receiving a firearm while under a restraining order, is unconstitutional because of those issues.

This is at least the third case where a court has held that a ban from a domestic restraining order on exercising the Second Amendment right is unconstitutional. A Texas District court has also held the restraining order ban is unconstitutional and a three-judge panel in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has also held the ban to be unconstitutional.

We may sympathize with the idea of someone under a restraining order not having a gun but it must and can be done in accordance with the Constitution.  Like Red Flag laws, these restraining orders run afoul of the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th and 14^th Amendments.  When crafting legislation, the Left should focus on those needing protection and not on their real / hidden agenda of more gun control.

Remember when liberals were all for criminals going free if their Constitutional Rights were violated, even if the criminal had committed a murder?  They’re not so rabid about preserving Constitution Rights when gun owners are involved.