jcutonilli
Ultimate Member
- Mar 28, 2013
- 2,474
I'm sorry, but if the courts insist that "public safety" automatically trumps rights such that the government merely needs to claim that the law serves that purpose without having to even prove it (see, e.g., Friedman v Highland Park), then we have no rights, and that's that. Instead, all we have are privileges that we plebs are allowed to exercise when the government wants to believe that it's "safe" for us to do so, something the government will never believe when it comes to arms that make it possible for the citizenry to forcefully resist the government if/when the government should decide the citizenry serves it and not vice versa.
That means the courts have turned the entire purpose of the country on its ear, and we no longer live in a Constitutional republic where the protection of liberty, and most especially essential liberties (a.k.a. rights), is the primary duty of the government (so much so that the rights themselves are explicitly enumerated in the very document which forms the basis of the country in the first place).
The proper response to that isn't to continue to ask the courts to let us exercise what is rightfully already ours. It's to alter the construction of the government to remove the government's ability to be the final arbiter of the question in the first place, to place a direct check by those most invested in their liberties against the judiciary's choices.
I think you fail to understand that when you construct a government you inherently give up some of your rights in the process. There are no rights that are considered absolute. Every government has to balance competing factors. Public safety happens to be a very important factor that tends to trump other factors.
When the court decides cases, it tries to balance these factors. When you argue self defense you are not presenting an argument that has any real impact on public safety because an individual has little to no impact on society. This is why public safety tends to trump individual rights (no real impact to society). There is not much for the court to balance and so they tend to defer to public safety.
You can try and change the government, but there are over 300 million people in this country. You need to convince a large percentage of these 300 million people. The court only has one, three, or nine (depending on the level) people to convince and they tend to remain faithful to the law.