economist120724.docVIP

Economist 2012-07-24 Step by step, never say never  PAGE 9 Gun control Too late Jul 21st 2012, 0:48 by M.S. PEOPLES ideas often dont make any sense when you try to hold them together in your head simultaneously, as Richard Rorty, Daniel Kahneman or Desiderius Erasmus will be happy to tell you. One of the areas in which people tend to have ideas that dont make sense, when you hold them together in your head simultaneously, is that of rights. For example, many Americans believe that our rights derive from God or from the very nature of being human. As  HYPERLINK /rs/2012/07/01/paul-ryan-repeal-health-law-because-rights-come-from-god/ Paul Ryan put it in a discussion of Obamacare this month, folks of his political persuasion dont believe that the people have the power to make up new rights; rights come from God and nature. These same Americans also generally believe that our rights are those delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution, including a non-infringeable individual right to bear arms. And yet, clearly, people in most law-governed democracies other than the United States, countries like Britain, Canada, France, Israel, the Netherlands and Japan, do not have an individual right to bear arms. How, then, can the right to bear arms as enshrined in the constitution derive from God, or from the very nature of being human? Is this a special sort of right, one that can be created by the people via government if they so choose? If so, then what stops the people, through their government, from creating other sorts of new rights, like a right to education, or a right to health insurance? Take  HYPERLINK /LawReviews/Stearns1.htm this essay by Cliff Stearns, the Republican congressman and (to be reductionist) gun-rights advocate. Not only is the right to be armed a Constitutional right, it is also a fundamental natural right, Mr Stearns writes. And then, in the very next paragraph: Once again we can trace the right to be armed to legal