Fundamental rights aren’t up for a vote

Published 8:01 pm Friday, November 7, 2014

1. Why debate on guns never goes anywhere
2. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: Obama gun control actions ‘trampled’ Bill of Rights

Where do our rights come from? The government? Or maybe from a majority vote? The Declaration of Independence says no — “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”And that’s why the gun control lobby’s newest campaign to curtail the Second Amendment is so misguided.

“Despite a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate, gun control advocates celebrated Wednesday on the heels of a major ballot measure victory in Washington state, which they say offers a new road map for enacting new gun laws around the country,” Time magazine reports. “The new national strategy is to largely bypass Congress, where recent gun control efforts have gotten little traction even in the wake of the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. Instead, gun control activists say they are redirecting their attention and money to states — and to voters directly.”

The problem with this, of course, is that the right to bear arms is a fundamental right. The right to defend one’s home and property and freedom is a right that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized — they didn’t decide it.

The U.S. Supreme Court also recognized it as such, in a 2010 case.

“It is clear that the Framers … counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” writes Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Here’s how to think about it. Put any other right in its place, and see how that sounds.

“Speech control advocates are appealing to voters to rein in right.” “Atheist groups want the freedom to worship put to a vote.”

See the problem here? It’s a concept called “tyranny of the majority.” It’s why your high school civics teacher corrected you when you called America a “democracy.” Majority rule must always be checked by minority rights.

Even as Washington gets it wrong, Alabama gets it right. On Tuesday, Alabama voters amended their constitution to explicitly enumerate the right to bear arms.

“Every citizen has a fundamental right to bear arms in defense of himself or herself and the state,” the amendment reads. “Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny. No citizen shall be compelled by any international treaty or international law to take an action that prohibits, limits, or otherwise interferes with his or her fundamental right to keep and bear arms in defense of himself or herself and the state, if such treaty or law, or its adoption, violates the United States Constitution.”

Louisiana and Missouri have passed similar amendments.

The Atlantic magazine is portraying the Washington vote as an “historic rebuke” of the National Rifle Association.

That’s also looking at the issue in precisely the wrong way. It’s not a political battle (though it has been politicized from the earliest days of our Republic). In other words, it doesn’t matter who is winning and who is losing.

The issue is fundamental rights. Those are not subject to a public vote on whether we will allow others to keep theirs.