If someone attacks you, they have relinquished their rights and are no longer deserving of any consideration. Anything that you must do to protect yourself or another innocent person is not "violating the rights of the attacker." It is keeping him/her/them from violating yours.
Exactly.
What is "bugging me" about it is that it flies directly in the face of my belief system regarding self defense.
The quote directly states "Self-defence is a widely recognized, yet legally proscribed, exception to the universal duty to respect the right to life of others" and "Self-defence is sometimes designated as a “right”. There is inadequate legal support for such an interpretation."
This is just the UN trying to rules-lawyer their way into justifying their desire to have the monopol on use-of-force. Self defense is a natural human right and as such CANNOT be "granted" or "proscribed" by ANY manmade law.
We will leave aside the fact I consider the right to bear arms an inseperable *part* of the right to self defense and simply go into the four points about the right to self defense in general.
It's very easy to understand my beliefs about this issue once I have explained them to you:
The first point of my central belief system is centered on the premise that every human being has rights. You may, if you wish, say that they come from a god, or from nature, or from written law, as suits your preference, but the underlying premise is that they are THERE, irrespective of their form.
The second point is that whatever the number of rights one possesses, they all stem from the right to EXIST, and to try to preserve that existence. This is simple brain-dead logic; one can neither possess nor exercise ANY rights if one does not exist.
Now , the last time I tried explaining this to someone who was less interested in hearing my view as in ridiculing it, this is the point at which I had this incredibly intelligent person interrupt me with"Yeah, well y'know what? Y'know what?....."
He waited for me to say "what". I thought that was cute....ly retarded.
"Yeah, y'know what? But you just said everybody had the right to exist, so if you shoot 'em that's hypocrisy, so you're just as bad, yeah, so there".
So I will answer that here as well:
No.
It is not "Just as bad, yeah, so there."
Self-defense is NOT the moral equivalent of homicide.
The person defending themselves from death or grievous bodily harm has not made the same decision as the person who has already demonstrated the ability, opportunity and intent to kill him/her.
The concept that both these people should be held to the same standard should be self-evident in its sheer ludicrousness.
How does my belief system tie into this? It ties into this because when a person decides to make an unjustified attempt to remove another person's right to exist( in plain English this is called assaulting or murdering them), that person has chosen to arrogate to themselves a right that they do not possess, and in so doing sacrifices their right to exist that the innocent person who has done NO wrong, and deserves to live, may live.
The third point is that therefore, in order to attempt to preserve one's existence, one must know of, and have available, and have ready, the means to resist attempts to jeopardize one's existence. Learning how to use one's body will only take one so far, and address the threat only to a certain point on the threat range.. Learning weapons driven only by leverage and muscle power will broaden one's area of defense as well, but the fact remains that in the modern era the main and most
effective such weapon is the firearm, whether one likes it or not.
Which brings us to the fourth point, and that is that therefore, those who support
gun control, or who otherwise attempt in ANY way to "proscribe,", the natural right of *ANY* form of self defense, are attempting to impose their will on those of us who do not, in a way that would strip me of the primary modern means of preserving my existence, and therefore, whether they realize it or not, are, for all practical intents and purposes, trying to kill me. They cannot see this, blinded as they are by their over-intellectualism and self importance, but it remains the truth.
The quote from that UN document is......Insane.
Period. Full stop, end of story. The UN was founded after 2 countries tried to take over 6 continents. The whole POINT was "Never Again"....and now THIS?. Insane.
