"Right to sue" is irrelevant guff that, like the book's title, is simply designed to pump sales.

All that matters is: in what proportion of incidents where police were called to protect somebody being attacked, did they refuse to attend?

I suspect the proportion is vanishingly small.

An egregious fact that is unconstitutional in spirit if not in fact. Perhaps the sole legitimate reason for the existence of the state is so that the rights of its citizens are protected. A state that rejects the duty to protect them has forfeited its authority.

Yet, we increasingly have people saying that the possession of firearms by civilians must end. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't think you have to worry about it happening the US. I believe that plenty of male liberals (moderates?) (including myself) are quietly intent on keeping their guns. The public conversation tends to be dominated by extremes, which paints a misleading picture perhaps.

"Right to sue" is irrelevant guff — andrewk

Nobody has said anything about the right to sue, so you are attacking a straw man.

What has been said is that when the police have refused or failed to protect individuals from harm and those individuals have taken legal action the courts have ruled that the police have no obligation to protect individuals from harm.

All that matters is: in what proportion of incidents where police were called to protect somebody being attacked, did they refuse to attend? — andrewk

No, what matters is the law.

And the law, even the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted it to say, says that the police have no obligation to protect individuals from harm.

Yet, with each new mass murder in the U.S. we have people from all over the world increasingly calling for civilians to be disarmed, for the indivudual's right to bear arms to be seen as a myth that never had any moral or intellectual foundation, and for only the police and the military to be allowed to possess firearms.

Nobody has said anything about the right to sue, so you are attacking a straw man. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Read your own post. In para 5 it says:

If the police fail to protect you, even through sheer incompetence and negligence, don’t expect that you or your next of kin will be able to sue — =WISDOMfromPO-MO

No, what matters is the law. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

We are not going to agree on that.

If whether somebody actually helps you is less important to you than whether some obscure, disregarded piece of legislation says that they were obliged to do so then we are too far apart to hope to bridge the divide.

An egregious fact that is unconstitutional in spirit if not in fact. — Thorongil

What Constitutional provision is violated when the police fail to act?

The better argument is that sovereign immunity laws are assumed valid under the Constitution.https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D12680%26context%3Djournal_articles&ved=2ahUKEwilyerfgbbZAhWBNd8KHXqSC0oQFjATegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw3ZO7y1WniYfIdSO-5fsve7

Generally speaking, governmental entities are immune from suit except to the extent the government permits themselves to be sued. Since democracies have no actual sovereign, the remedy for this supposed outrage is corrective democratic legislation. Understand that when you sue a democratic government, you sue yourself, which is why it makes more sense to change the laws you complain of.

Yet, with each new mass murder in the U.S. we have people from all over the world increasingly calling for civilians to be disarmed, for the indivudual's right to bear arms to be seen as a myth that never had any moral or intellectual foundation, and for only the police and the military to be allowed to possess firearms. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The basis for the 2nd Amendment is not to assure the right of vigilantism of every citizen, but to protect you against a tyranical government. If a police department is unresponsive or inept, corrective efforts should be made, but there's no reason to believe that civil lawsuits are the best or most effective way to regulate the police. Instead of paying off injured parties on a case by case basis, it seems like a state regulator would be better suited than occasional juries.

The basis for the 2nd Amendment is not to assure the right of vigilantism of every citizen, but to protect you against a tyranical government. — Hanover

Nobody referenced to in this thread or directly contributing to this thread said anything about "vigilantism" until you brought up, let alone that it was the intention of the 2nd Amendment.

The point is that if you are in danger the people who many are saying that other than the military should be the only ones allowed to have guns, the police, have no obligation under the U.S. Constitution or under the law in many states and cities to protect you.

Yet, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that civilized, free, liberal democratic states have the police and the military and that individual citizens, therefore, do not need guns, let alone have any moral/natural right to possess them.

If a police department is unresponsive or inept, — Hanover

But, again, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that no right for an individual to possess firearms has ever existed and, besides, you have the police to protect you.

Acknowledging in any way that this police protection may at times not be there is a contradiction within that ideology and makes its whole thought system implode.

Even worse, it is saying individuals are not guaranteed any kind of protection from harm. An individual's protection from harm, it is saying, is dependent on the state deciding to do the individual a favor and allow him to own a gun even though nothing morally requires the state to do so and/or to do the individual a favor and have its police stop the harm even though nothing legally (or morally) requires the state to do so.

corrective efforts should be made, but there's no reason to believe that civil lawsuits are the best or most effective way to regulate the police. Instead of paying off injured parties on a case by case basis, it seems like a state regulator would be better suited than occasional juries. — Hanover

Either way the essence of the matter is not addressed: when an individual is in danger does he/she have the right to be protected from harm?

Even if the police do decide to respond they are not at the location of the danger immediately.

When they do arrive you lose all control over your protection--you must obey the police.

If protection is then in place it does not necessarily mean that it will stop the harm.

And if you are further harmed nobody, apparently, is responsible for the failure of your outsourced protection to prevent that.

Correcting the state's behavior after the fact of you having no protection or ineffective protection that was involuntarily outsourced does nothing to address the fact that an individual's right to protection was not recognized when he was in danger. It also does not guarantee protection to anybody in the future. An individual's protection will still depend on the state deciding to be generous and do him/her a favor.

If, as the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp insists, a right to possess firearms does not protect you, and if you are not at all times protected by the state, then we are left with protection in times of immediate danger not being a right. I do not see how any honest, rational person can accept the latter.

do not see how any honest, rational person can accept the latter. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Because the police do generally protect us, being human beings, and any rational person acts on the basis of what they actually have evidence for not on the basis of the exact legal terminology in some obscure court cases.

What Constitutional provision is violated when the police fail to act? — Hanover

I was thinking in terms of the sentiment expressed in the Preamble.

Nobody referenced to in this thread or directly contributing to this thread said anything about "vigilantism" until you brought up, let alone that it was the intention of the 2nd Amendment. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

You specifically brought up the right to bear arms, which was a reference to the 2nd Amendment. The title of this thread suggests an inconsistency between not protecting your right to bear arms and the state's lack of duty to protect you from crime. I was pointing out that there was no inconsistency because your right to bear arms, to the extent it exists, is not based upon the citizen's right to protect himself from other citizens, but only from the government itself. There are better solutions to solving the problem of inept police enforcement than deputizing the public to self-police.

The point is that if you are in danger the people who many are saying that other than the military should be the only ones allowed to have guns, the police, have no obligation under the U.S. Constitution or under the law in many states and cities to protect you. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

They are duty bound to protect you. The question is how you remedy a failure by the police. The case cited indicates it is not through the civil justice system.

Yet, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that civilized, free, liberal democratic states have the police and the military and that individual citizens, therefore, do not need guns, let alone have any moral/natural right to possess them. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't know that they have a single monolithic argument, but to the extent they are arguing you lack the right to have guns because there are police there to protect you, they have missed the point of the 2nd Amendment, which is that you have a right to own guns to protect you from the government.

But, again, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that no right for an individual to possess firearms has ever existed and, besides, you have the police to protect you. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

But again the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to protect yourself from citizens, only the government. Why would the Bill of Rights contain a provision protecting you against other citizens when the reason for independence was due to an oppressive government?

Correcting the state's behavior after the fact of you having no protection or ineffective protection that was involuntarily outsourced does nothing to address the fact that an individual's right to protection was not recognized when he was in danger. It also does not guarantee protection to anybody in the future. An individual's protection will still depend on the state deciding to be generous and do him/her a favor. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This is an argument from policy, asking what is the best way to handle the problem, which I don't have a problem with, but at least realize you're not now arguing from a position of rights. The question then would be: will we have fewer violent crimes if we arm the public than if we require reliance upon the police? If the answer is yes, then I'd be in favor of legislating freer gun access, but if it's not, then I wouldn't. On the other hand, if the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, then I wouldn't care about the policy reasons or the consequences. A right is a right. My hunch is that reduction of gun ownership will reduce violent crime. Call it a strong hunch.

The argument for gun control does not mean that all guns must be illegal in society beyond special persons such as active duty police officers, security, and such. Nor does it mean that, even if one wants to ban guns, that the chief thrust of the argument for eliminating guns. The core of the argument is that 1) gun control, up to and including a ban of firearms, would reduce deaths, injuries, and increase social welfare, and 2) owning a firearm is not a right like free expression of ideals or freedom of religion. It is, at best, a civil right whose primary justification- arming a citizen's militia against the federal government- no longer makes sense in a modern context or is not strong enough to warrant the level of protection guns currently have in American society. If one wants to ban firearms, then one thinks the Second Amendment should be repealed somehow and that people, while having the right to self-defense, do not possess to the right to whatever weaponry they desire.

The police and their response to crime are ultimately irrelevant to the argument. The core of the argument is reduction in deaths per capita and the fact that owning a gun for either the purpose of either self-defense or defense against a tyrannical government are faulty.

You specifically brought up the right to bear arms, which was a reference to the 2nd Amendment. — Hanover

No, it was not a reference to the 2nd Amendment.

The individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp says that possessing firearms has never anywhere been a right of any kind in the first place. That is a universal, categorical position. It is not a position with respect to any particular law. I am responding to the former, not the latter.

The title of this thread suggests an inconsistency between not protecting your right to bear arms and the state's lack of duty to protect you from crime. — Hanover

The individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp does not recognize an individual's right to possess firearms. They see no gun rights of indivduals for them to protect or uphold.

And then they say that only the military and police should be allowed to possess firearms.

In other words, individuals should be disarmed, and only the state should possess firearms.

We are talking about the same state that says that it has no duty to protect individuals from harm.

Yet, the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camps says that disarmed individuals who are obeying the law, armed individuals who are not obeying the law, and armed agents of the state is the only morally acceptable scenario--and that it is pragmatically optimal.

I was pointing out that there was no inconsistency because your right to bear arms, to the extent it exists, is not based upon the citizen's right to protect himself from other citizens, but only from the government itself. — Hanover

And I was pointing out that individuals believe that they have the right to possess firearms for their personal protection and that it is a universal right.

I was pointing out that they want that right upheld for good reason: the state has no duty to protect them from harm, and the state says so itself.

There are better solutions to solving the problem of inept police enforcement than deputizing the public to self-police. — Hanover

Again, nobody directly participating in this thread, and nobody referenced to outside of this thread, has said anything about vigilantism, self-policing, etc. It is not about enforcing the law. It is about being protected when in immediate danger.

It is not about the police being inept at enforcing the law. It is about the police having no duty under the law to protect individuals from harm.

They are duty bound to protect you. — Hanover

Apparently that is not what the law says in a lot of places or how courts interpret the law.

The question is how you remedy a failure by the police. The case cited indicates it is not through the civil justice system. — Hanover

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has said that there is no failure--because there is no legal duty--apparently.

I don't know that they have a single monolithic argument, but to the extent they are arguing you lack the right to have guns because there are police there to protect you, they have missed the point of the 2nd Amendment, which is that you have a right to own guns to protect you from the government. — Hanover

They do not say that individuals lack the right to possess firearms because the police are there to protect them. They say that individuals do not need to possess firearms for their protection--that is what the military and the police are for.

With respect to rights, they say that individuals possessing firearms never has been a right.

If someone says that it is stupid, foolish, barbaric, etc. to have individuals in society possessing firearms rather than only the state possessing firearms, and that no right has ever existed in any way, shape, form, etc. for individuals to possess firearms, what an individual might be protected from by possessing firearms is irrelevant to them.

Nonetheless, plenty of individuals assert that they need to possess firearms to ensure their own personal protection from harm. The individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp then responds that gun ownership by individuals does nothing to increase safety for those individuals, let alone the general public. It makes everybody less safe, they say.

Do you see what is happening there? They go back and forth between rights and utility. They go back and forth between the individual and the public. The problems/issues at hand, therefore, are obscured.

Outside of all of that back and forth theoretical gibberish is concrete, practical reality: individuals regularly find themselves in immediate danger of being harmed, and not only can the police not be in all places at all times to stop the threat of harm, the law in many places does not obligate the police to stop such a threat.

But again the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to protect yourself from citizens, only the government. Why would the Bill of Rights contain a provision protecting you against other citizens when the reason for independence was due to an oppressive government? — Hanover

Again, individuals believe that they have the inalienable right as humans to possess firearms. Some of them are libertarian anarchists and similar types who do not recognize the U.S. Constitution, let alone any amendment it contains.

When legislatures and courts operating under the U.S. Constitution say that the police have no duty to protect individuals from harm, the authority of the U.S. Constitution on the matter of humans and firearms is further compromised.

This is an argument from policy, asking what is the best way to handle the problem, which I don't have a problem with, but at least realize you're not now arguing from a position of rights. — Hanover

Again, I am responding to the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp. To them it is about rights.

The question then would be: will we have fewer violent crimes if we arm the public than if we require reliance upon the police? If the answer is yes, then I'd be in favor of legislating freer gun access, but if it's not, then I wouldn't. On the other hand, if the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, then I wouldn't care about the policy reasons or the consequences. A right is a right. My hunch is that reduction of gun ownership will reduce violent crime. Call it a strong hunch. — Hanover

It is really simple:

1.) People need to know the facts about social reality before they start saying that a right ought to be taken away or that it ought not be upheld because it never was a right in the first place. The fact in the U.S., apparently, is that individuals are on their own when they are in immediate danger. Even if the latter is not a fact, the fact that the police cannot be in all places at all times remains.

2.) People need to be consistent: is it about inalienable human rights, or is it about the best utilitarian scheme? Is it about individuals, some collective entity called "the public", or both?

3.) People need to be honest. If they do not like guns and would say good riddance to every gun as it is being confiscated, they should say so. Instead of obscuring everything with hairsplitting over militias, crime statistics, political theory, etc. they should just be honest and say, "We do not like guns. We do not trust individuals enough for them to own guns." Then we can have an honest conversation about, say, inalienable human rights versus the rights of groups to try to engineer their ideal society.

Britannia blazes the trail. All you need is the human rights convention.

The core of the argument is that 1) gun control, up to and including a ban of firearms, would reduce deaths, injuries, and increase social welfare, — Chany

Okay, so collectively there will be greater safety.

Now what about an individual who, consequently, is killed or severely injured by a threat that he/she could have neutralized if the aforementioned gun control had not been enacted?

Is he/she collateral damage?

Collective public safety is greater than the safety of individuals?

We need honest answers to those kinds of questions before we can get any real traction on the issue.

2) owning a firearm is not a right like free expression of ideals or freedom of religion. It is, at best, a civil right whose primary justification- arming a citizen's militia against the federal government- no longer makes sense in a modern context or is not strong enough to warrant the level of protection guns currently have in American society. — Chany

Well, I have never seen that point thoroughly, honestly evaluated, analyzed, debated, etc.

In the United States of America we are talking about a government that through murder and other violence removed the indigenous peoples from its part of North America, leaving only a small percentage of them alive, and continues this policy today.

People can argue that armed citizens have no chance militarily against a state with the military manpower and weapons like those of the United States, but "no longer makes sense in a modern context" is highly debatable.

I have never seen that debate happening, let alone in an honest manner.

If one wants to ban firearms, then one thinks the Second Amendment should be repealed somehow and that people, while having the right to self-defense, do not possess to the right to whatever weaponry they desire. — Chany

The right to self-defense is useless if one does not have the right to the means necessary to effectively defend him/herself from a threat.

The police and their response to crime are ultimately irrelevant to the argument. The core of the argument is reduction in deaths per capita and the fact that owning a gun for either the purpose of either self-defense or defense against a tyrannical government are faulty. — Chany

It is not about "crime".

It is about the threat of being harmed immediately, or the process of presently be harmed.

People need to be consistent: is it about inalienable human rights, or is it about the best utilitarian scheme? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The inconsistency is between the two sides, not within either of them, which is what one would expect in most debates about most subjects. The pro-gun camp bases its position on its belief in an inalienable human right to own guns. The anti-gun camp is generally concerned with consequences. They want gun control because the evidence strongly shows that it reduces harm. When the anti-gun camp discusses rights, it is because of the pro-gun camp's claim that there is an inalienable human right to own guns. Human rights can sometimes trump consequences, but only if one is convinced that the human right exists. So what the anti-gun camp does is point out that it does not believe the claim that the current legal right is an inalienable human one, and return to its consequentialist argument.

Regarding collective vs individual safety, of course governments mostly favour the former over the latter, and citizens mostly support their doing so. Such a policy approach is generally founded in consequentialism, although it can probably find a home in other ethical frameworks as well. I haven't seen anybody seek to deny that governments take decisions that exhibit that preference, or that people generally support that. Government is hard, and hard decisions need to be taken.

If we were to base public policy on an aim to avoid any individual ever suffering at its hands, we would have no justice system at all, because you cannot have a justice system without it occasionally happening that an innocent individual gets unjustly punished. Which I suppose makes it philosophically consistent for a genuine 100% anarchist to argue against gun control.

Some of these posts are flirting with denying dignity, equality and other ideals and values that the West supposedly cherishes.

Maybe I have been misled, but it is my understanding that we want a constitutional democracy because we value the dignity and rights of the individual over the wishes of mobs, and that the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution exists to limit the government's ability to infringe on the dignity and rights of individuals, not to empower mobs to see their collective wishes enacted.

Apparently a lot of people think that some abstraction called "public safety" trumps any rights or dignity of individuals. Individuals who are harmed by, say, the loss of (or should I say, end of the upholding of, since some are asserting that no right ever existed in the first place) gun rights will be nothing more than collateral damage in an effort to realize results that greatly exceed their importance, apparently.

Of course, the institutions protecting the individual and upholding his/her rights must be preserved or that protection and those rights may end along with them. Of course, things like the disorder of an out-of-control epidemic of mass shootings can jeopardize those institutions.

But it is not the health of the republic that motivates the anti-gun crowd. They are, as far as I can tell, motivated by nothing more than a personal dislike of guns and are willing to compromise ideals such as human dignity and the rights of individuals in their utopian effort to rid society of one of their least favorite menaces.

Their many fellow citizens who responsibly own guns and are equally appalled by the mass shootings are being disrespected.

The people who have been victims of gun violence by the state, not by their fellow civilians, are being disrespected.

No individual or group can have everything they want. I thought that in the U.S. we have checks and balances to find a happy medium while certain rights are always guaranteed to individuals.

But it looks like individuals and their dignity and rights do not matter in the minds of certain people with respect to firearms. And it looks like their numbers are growing.

Keep in mind that in the U.S. we just recently defeated a push to amend the Constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman. The strongest argument against such an amendment was that American history had up until that point been about expanding rights or finally upholding rights, not taking away rights. Taking away rights is not the American way, the argument went. But now we have people calling for ignoring the dignity of individuals and for the refusal to recognize a human right, all for the cause of something that they apparently see as exponentially more valuable than any individual: "public safety". It is not much different from how same-sex marriage opponents saw tradition as exponentially more valuable than the dignity and rights of any individual.

Okay, so collectively there will be greater safety.

Now what about an individual who, consequently, is killed or severely injured by a threat that he/she could have neutralized if the aforementioned gun control had not been enacted?

Is he/she collateral damage?

Collective public safety is greater than the safety of individuals?

We need honest answers to those kinds of questions before we can get any real traction on the issue. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I can easily imagine that there are individual situations that owning explosives could save someone's life- but we don't see that as a valid reason to allow everyone to have a grenade or a rocket launcher because the potential damage they can cause is so high that we accept the cost of those deaths that could have been saved. All decisions carry an opportunity cost. Money spent on the opioid problem is money that could have been spent saving lives elsewhere. Research into cancer is research that could have been spent looking to other diseases and medical problems. There is always a cost when it comes to social decisions. However, in this instance, I am not sure it really matters, because I can switch the inverse onto you.

People have a right to defend themselves, but this is just an extension of their right to life. Why do the lives of those who defended themselves with a gun count for more than those who died because of current gun laws? Consider an example. The following example is entirely hypothetical and in no way reflects actual statistics, and is merely meant to show a point:

Imagine that for every death that was prevented by a gun, 100 deaths occurred from current firearm policy from a combination of mass shooting and general gun violence. In total, 100 people are save by firearms, but 10,000 We can enact a different set of firearm policies- the new policy would save 10,000 lives in the upcoming year, but would prevent people from obtaining guns and, as such, would cause 100 to die.

Why do the lives of the 10,000 individuals count for less than that of the 100? You make it sound like the 100 individuals are being sacrificed for monetary gain or some indirect good, like one would do in some utilitarian calculus by speaking of social good and the public, but we are talking about individuals who are dying. Those 10,000 are people, too. Are the 10,000 just collateral damage for the 100? All else being equal- without consideration of rights or other uses- it makes semse to protect the right to life of 10,000 over the right to life of 100.

Well, I have never seen that point thoroughly, honestly evaluated, analyzed, debated, etc.

In the United States of America we are talking about a government that through murder and other violence removed the indigenous peoples from its part of North America, leaving only a small percentage of them alive, and continues this policy today.

People can argue that armed citizens have no chance militarily against a state with the military manpower and weapons like those of the United States, but "no longer makes sense in a modern context" is highly debatable.

I have never seen that debate happening, let alone in an honest manner. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I discussed this topic in another thread and you bringing up the indigenous population helps make my point. In one point in history, the disparity between what a civilian militia could bring to the table versus what the government could bring was relatively low. When the southern states seceeded from the US, the difference in terms of the power of each was there, but the South could feasibly hold off the North and could have won. Weaponry and capability between what the government can muster versus what the average person can muster is so great that it seems unlikely that someone could reasonably stand up against the state. If you had half the country rebel, similiar to the Civil War, then it begs the question of why you need guns when you can just get arms from the local military base.

This assumes an overt form of violence against the general populace is used. However, as history shows us, democracies tend not use overt violence against "normal" citizens. It becomes hard to stand for life, liberty, and the pursuit of hapiness when you attack the "average" person. Rather, the government uses a more covert form of oppression- you justify yourself and your actions by playing on people's fears and shifting public perception to see your actions as necessary or, at the very least, acceptable. No one- at least, the majority and those in power- cared about the natives and how they were treated as trash, so they effectively had no rights. Japanese Americans during WW2? Potential enemies. We had to intern them in camps. We were at war. So on and so forth.

The government can oppress those at the fringes of society and get away with it. That's not the question. The question is whether guns are going to help? The Native Americans? They tried violent resistance, and they lost outright. Japanese Americans during WW2? I can only see bloodshed and validating the fears of the public from an armed resistance. Blacks? John Brown and Nat Turner couldn't start a slave rebellion. Slavery was ended by a war and a vote to amend the Constitution. Even after the Civil War, whena group of black Republicans formed a militia to protect themselves, the Supreme Court said the Second Amendment only applied to the federal government and the allowed the individual state to abolish the militia. I doubt the civil rights movement from then one would have done very well if it was an armed and violent movement.

I don't see it seriously discussed often because, well, it is not generally considered all too seriously. The government has already proven that it can take rights away- it just does so in the dark against people no one cares about. Firearms would either be counter-productive to small groups and would be irrelevant to anything approaching a civil war.

The right to self-defense is useless if one does not have the right to the means necessary to effectively defend him/herself from a threat. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I must be able to have military-level firearms, such as light machine guns and other full-auto firearms, because of the possibility of being attacked by multiple attackers wearing full body armor. The need for suppressing fire can help defend myself. Without said firearms, my right to self-defense is useless, as I do not have the means necessary to effectively defend myself from a potential threat. I also must be allowed to carry these weapons at all times (at least on state and public property, like public schools) because if I can't use them, then I can't effectively defend myself, making the right to self-defense useless. This applies even if I am a convicted violent felon, have been deemed mentally ill, or am a minor, as everyone has the right to self-defense.

Morally, the right to self-defense simply means that a person is, at all times, allowed to defend themselves from severe bodily harm, even if that defense involves lethal force. I am not morally wrong to kill someone in defense of my life and limb. Legally, self-defense is a just a legal defense to justify an action that is normally considered a crime, like killing someone or assualting someone. It does not mean that I must have access to an object that can greatly aid in my defense. A grenade can effectively defend me and might save my life in situations that a gun could not, but we do not see the need to legalize grenades.

It is not about "crime".

It is about the threat of being harmed immediately, or the process of presently be harmed. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

See above regarding self-defense. Part of your argument is an attack on the pro gun-ban position by mocking the idea that the police will adaquately defend everyone. I am saying that the reliance on police is not a needed premise of the pro-gun ban stance.

But now we have people calling for ignoring the dignity of individuals

So far as I can see, nobody has said any such thing. You are the first to mention 'dignity'.

and for the refusal to recognize a human right

It is up to you to make the case that it is a universal human right to own a gun. You have not been successful in making that case.

Is it the case that the police are not obligated to protect citizens from clear and present dangers (vague potential dangers are another matter)? Something seems to motivate the police to act protectively. I regularly hear of police protecting the public. I doubt if they are performing the protective portion of their job because they have nothing better to do.

For one thing, the duties of police officers wouldn't be described in the constitution, anyway; wouldn't they be described in state law, and in the charters of cities and counties (or the laws cities and counties pass)?

"In general, court decisions and state laws have held that cops don’t have to do a damn thing to help you when you’re in danger. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This is a fairly radical claim. More facts, please.

If you are in danger from the actions of another person, then they are committing a crime, and the police are (I believe) supposed to stop crime. That's how you get protected.

I don't think there's any question that the police have a job description that if not met will result in firings, public outrage, reorganizations and whatnot. The law simply protects officers and departments from civil lawsuits. As a general matter, civil suits have limited regulatory function anyway, with their primary purpose being specific victim compensation. As I noted, there is a long history of sovereign immunity for a variety of purposes, so this rule is not that unusual. Also, the police generally do their jobs (with the typical complaint being with too much vigor, not a lack of it), meaning we don't really need more police oversight through the civil justice system. I really wish the anti-police folks would decide: Do the police enforce too harshly or do they twiddle their thumbs?

Thanks.

But isn't it true that the function of the police isn't a Federal matter (except for federal marshals).

This is a fairly radical claim. More facts, please. — Bitter Crank

They are not my words.

If you are in danger from the actions of another person, then they are committing a crime, and the police are (I believe) supposed to stop crime. — Bitter Crank

Everything that I am reading suggests that law enforcement discretion is the rule.

And that the government has no duty to protect individuals--the government only has the duty to protect the general public. The only exception is if there is a special relationship between the government and an individual, such as someone in witness protection.

That's how you get protected. — Bitter Crank

Apparently not.

How do you account for the reality that the police actually do protect people from bad things happening to them? Granted, the police do not protect people from all bad things. There aren't enough police to do that, they can't be everywhere at all times.

So protecting the "general public" from harm is like public health protecting the people from sickness. It invariably involves individuals. The "general public" doesn't get shot, robbed, hit over the head, or murdered. Similarly, "the public" doesn't get sick. Individuals get sick, so they are vaccinated, one by one.

I'm still not convinced by your case.

How do you account for the reality that the police actually do protect people from bad things happening to them? — Bitter Crank

I don't know.

It is beside the point.

We could speculate for pages and pages about that. Among other things, one could take a functionalist perspective and say that for a society to stay together its members have to believe that they are being taken care of, and that the police serve that function. But that is another thread.

The point is that in the U.S. the law has been written and interpreted to say that the government has no legal obligation to protect individuals.

Basically, your own personal safety is your own problem. A firearm can be an effective, and sometimes necessary, tool for an individual to maintain his own personal safety. If your personal safety is your own problem, and if you are not allowed to possess a firearm, now what?

So protecting the "general public" from harm is like public health protecting the people from sickness. It invariably involves individuals. The "general public" doesn't get shot, robbed, hit over the head, or murdered. Similarly, "the public" doesn't get sick. Individuals get sick, so they are vaccinated, one by one. — Bitter Crank

Disease prevention and control, fire protection, police protection, etc. are public goods. If there is a fire at your neighbor's house and the fire department puts it out your house is saved from the fire further spreading, not just your neighbor's. Why should your neighbor pay for fire protection when to save your house you would pay somebody to stop the fire at his house? We resolve that prisoner's-dilema-like problem by making everybody pay for the cost of fire protection.

Therefore, when the fire department stops a fire on your property they are not doing it out of any obligation to you personally. They do it to eliminate a threat to the general public.

I doubt that there is really any discretion in responding to fires. I doubt that the law allows the fire department to respond to a 911 call by saying, "We'll wait and see how fast it is spreading or if there is rain".

But apparently law enforcement does have room for discretion. Therefore, if they choose to turn right and see if there is a drug deal taking place on a sidewalk rather than pull over the car they have been following on the road, and if it turns out that that car had a drunk driver and he hits and kills a pedestrian, you can't say that they failed to protect that pedestrian.

And you can't say that the public was not protected--the police were patrolling public streets and sidewalks.

But at least that pedestrian legally had the right to do everything he could to protect himself from motor vehicles. If he was nearsighted there was not anybody trying to make it illegal to have corrective lenses that could mean him seeing an incoming vehicle sooner and have more time to react.

However, if you are in your home, an intruder has entered the building, and a firearm could neutralize the threat, unlike the pedestrian there are people calling for your right to possess the thing that would help you protect yourself to be taken away.

The police have no legal obligation to you as an individual with respect to any immediate danger you might be in. If they do intervene when you are in immediate danger it is because of their obligation to enforce laws supposedly written to maintain public safety.

No, they can't be in all places at all times. Therefore, they have to use discretion. If they had to protect every single individual--if they had to both pull over the car and investigate the gathering on the sidewalk--that would be impossible. They do what serves special interests and the general sense of public safety.

The point is that in the U.S. the law has been written and interpreted to say that the government has no legal obligation to protect individuals. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It is your point. It is not a point that anybody else cares much about, because other people care about whether protection is provided, not about whether the law says it is provided.

We could speculate for pages and pages about that. Among other things, one could take a functionalist perspective and say that for a society to stay together its members have to believe that they are being taken care of, and that the police serve that function. But that is another thread. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

No, what you're missing is the point that there are other ways to regulate conduct other than civil lawsuits. If the Peoria PD decides it no longer wants to protect its citizens, the police chief is called before the City Council and asked about it with hundreds of angry Peorians screaming about in the room. If the City Council decides to support the police chief despite his decision to not do his job, the next election won't go so well for the councilmen and the mayor. That's how it's done all the time, not through the filing of civil suits demanding damages. In fact, if there were a rebel police chief and city council, would they really care if the City of Peoria were required to pay its tax dollars to a damaged citizen? Would that really alter their behavior? It seems like in this example they don't really care about much.

And all this explains why the police do their job, which is the same reason that everyone does his job, which is that they don't want to get fired because ultimately everyone is accountable to someone.

There are federal marshals and the FBI and Homeland Security and I'd guess all sorts of other federal enforcers of federal law.

Sovereign immunity applies not just to the federal government, but also to states and counties, as they're all official subdivisions of the government. Municipalities are often treated differently.

Here's the thing, which could make for an interesting debate. Much of what I said about the right to bear arms being limited to protecting yourself from the government and not other citizens was rejected by the Supreme Court (5-4) in the most recent couple of cases dealing with the issue. I can't say I read them too closely, but it seems very wrong to me to interpret an item from the Bill of Rights as anything other than a check against government power.

Another interesting thing that is worthy of debate is whether the right to bear arms is an inalienable right. That language appears in the Declaration (not the Constitution), and the three inalienable rights noted are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those are general principles, not specific, so it would seem pretty odd to say that we all have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and guns. Whether gun ownership can be extrapolated from those general principles seems pretty much subject to the person interpreting and surely not something so patently obvious that it shouldn't be admitted that it is subject to interpretation.

Thank you.

But then there is this illogical piece from the Fab Four:

When I hold you in my arms
And when I feel my finger on your trigger
I know nobody can do me no harm
Because:
Happiness is a warm gun momma

Like, had momma even consented to have his incestuous finger on her trigger? Talk about boundary issues, jeez.