I used to be on the fence about the idea of ‘intellectual property rights’ until, by chance, I heard a comment from one of the leaders of the Swedish Pirate Party: You know that something can’t be a right if it expires.
Can you even imagine a law saying that your right to free speech expires when you reach age 70 or when you’re convicted of a felony, whichever comes first?
Or that your right to insist on a warrant before being searched expires after 50 years?
Or that your right to free speech kicks in only when you reach age 21 or after you’ve taken some necessary training?
Or that your right to worship as you wish doesn’t take effect until age 16 or 18 or until you’ve passed a background check?
If you have a right, you have it because you are human and not because you’ve reached (or not yet reached) a certain age, passed some kind of test, or filed some kind of paperwork. Your ‘permit’ — your ‘background check’ — is your DNA.
Justice Thomas rightly noted in Bruen that the kinds of restrictions that have been placed on the right to keep and bear arms are simply not applied to other constitutional rights. And yet, we still have governments at all levels arguing about which restrictions on RKBA will be accepted by the courts. Now their arguments have to be based on ‘historical precedent’ rather than on ‘public safety,’ but otherwise, nothing has really changed.
If you only get to do something for a limited amount of time or as a reward for ‘good behavior,’ then it’s some kind of monopoly or franchise, but it’s not a right.
If you only get to do something after you reach a certain age, or take some kind of training, or pass a test, or pay a fee, then what you have is some kind of license or entitlement, but it’s not a right.
A monopoly or franchise or license, or entitlement is political. It’s something given to you by the government so that it can be taken away by the government.
A right is fundamental. It’s something you have simply by virtue of being human, and it is, as the Declaration of Independence says, inalienable. It can’t be taken from you or even given away because it’s part of who you are.
So if you’re a gun owner, here’s a question you need to ask yourself: Do you have an inalienable right to keep and bear arms, which you have by virtue of being born human? Or do you have some kind of franchise, which may be granted or restricted, or revoked at the discretion of the government?
And here’s another: Do you imagine that you can use the government to convert someone else’s rights into franchises — for example, by passing and enforcing laws to ‘keep people from saying the wrong things’ or to ‘keep guns out of the wrong hands’ — without doing the same thing to your own?