Reply #69: see the other post [View All]

[iverglas]

I think it addresses these questions.

"You're not supposed to have to pay money to exercise a right, regardless of if it's $500 or $.50"

Tried exercising your right of free speech lately by publishing a book without paying for the printing?

How's the legal aid situation in the US? Doesn't everybody have a "right to counsel"? Shouldn't everybody be provided with the services of, oh, F. Lee Bailey on demand?

Now I know, I'm mixing apples and oranges. Prices that must be paid in the private sector to exercise a right, and fees charged by the government. Those points would be more relevant if someone were suggesting that guns themselves should be available free of charge. Nonetheless, the point stands that there are often costs associated with exercising a right. You have a right to life, but you still have to pay for the food you need to exercise it.

Do state govts in the US charge sales taxes on books and newspapers? That's a burden on the right of free speech.

This 'right' to possess firearms, surely even you have to agree, is not quite like the right of free speech, or the right to vote. There are legitimate, justifiable burdens on that right that don't come into play for most other rights -- like restrictions designed to prevent people with violent criminal records or who are subject to restraining orders, or children, from obtaining firearms. There are costs associated with operating a system to achieve those objectives.

Should the general public be liable for those costs? Even if owning firearms were a 'right', it is still a choice. I don't expect to be liable for the costs of someone else exercising certain rights that they are free to exercise or not, make where their choice to exercise the right has no beneficial impact on "the general welfare".

I agree to subsidize their choice to have children by paying for their children's schooling, because I believe that to be important for the general welfare. There are other exercises of rights that I believe to be for purely personal benefit; ownership of firearms, even if it is a right, is one of those, and I see no reason why anyone else should subsidize it.

Despite that precedent in the US, I'd say the same about marriage and divorce these days. Marriage is no longer as fundamental to status and entitlements as it once was; it's much more in the nature of a personal choice that someone can take or leave without being denied benefits or suffering costs (well, where I'm at, it is), and I wouldn't be up for subsidizing the costs of someone else's choice in that respect either.

Everything we do is in the exercise of some right or other -- fundamentally, the rights of life and liberty. I'm taxed on all sorts of things I do in the exercise of those rights, even where there is a less direct connection between the costs of my choice and fees or taxes I pay.

Like I said: cigarette taxes? I have a right to smoke; it's inherent in my right of liberty. I'm being charged an exhorbitant fee by the govt. for exercising that right; I am required to buy my tobacco through the govt.-regulated system, and I must pay enormous taxes when I do. Poor people are without question discriminated against by the adverse impact of those taxes. We see paying that fee as their choice -- even though meeting the need created by nicotine addiction is truly much less a "choice" than is buying a firearm. I see paying the fee for permission to acquire a firearm much the same way.

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