AUN! Opinion: A Victory for Human Rights

The people of Brazil struck a blow for individual rights when they rejected a national gun ban by an overwhelming majority this weekend. Story here, here, and here.

An international cabal of organizations determined to deny people the right to own the tools necessary for self defense poured into Brazil, hoping to set a precedent that could be used to further restrict the rights of the people to resist aggression.

Fortunately a coalition of groups dedicated to the preservation of the right to own arms helped local citizens to defend their rights. This was a major human rights victory.

In the battle over human rights few issues are a contentious or as important as the battle over the right to own weapons.

Because of the widespread use of arms to oppress and kill, many international organizations have drawn the totally erroneous conclusion that only governments should have arms. The problem is that many of the victims are killed by arms in the hands of the government or quasi government organizations. The 20th century is notorious for, above all, the massive scale of Democide, government killings of their own citizens, committed by totalitarian governments.

The use of arms by criminals is also pointed to as a reason to ban arms. This ignores the obvious fact that criminals by definition don’t obey the law. Guns are likely used more often to deter crimes than to commit them.

Murderers either dictators or garden variety criminals, do not have a right to disarmed victims. On the contrary, people have an absolute right to defend themselves.

Of course the international press has as usual let itself act like an arm of the gun ban cabal, repeating their arguments. The most obvious case is the use of the phrase “manipulating people’s fears” in several of the stories. The AP story doesn't even pretend to be objective, taking the motives of the anti gun groups to be true without arguement.

Thankfuly, the people of Brazil struck a blow for human rights and gave the government power movement a resounding defeat.