Hi Pat,

Plenty of confused thinking here.
1/ I was simply responding to Bob’s quote:

Quote:

So it all boils down to a group of people wanting to take the rights of another group of people away.”



As you can see, this is expressed in terms of rights and not choices. I replied in kind.

2/ RIGHTS are indeed guaranteed by law, but that is not at all the same as saying that a particular right – in this case the right to own firearms – is not open to discussion. Of course it is. That’s one of the things democracy is all about. Laws come and go. They change. What do you think your legislators do all day?

Even declarations of rights, and, yes, constitutions, change – precisely as a result of such debate. Look closely and you will find that the Right to Bear Arms is, itself, an amendment.

I’ll leave you to compile your own lists of rights that have been conferred, amended, or withdrawn over time by laws, or higher declarations, in response to changes in society, changes in public opinion. etc.

3/ (and here we digress a little) There are many schools of thought as to what the function of the law is, but they all focus, obviously enough, on determining what is and what is not legal. Determining penalties comes much later in the process.

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