Property Right: The One And Only

June 9, 2014

By: Kelly Diamond, Publisher

For whatever reason, this past week has been a battle for property right on the interwebs!

I had two major discussions, both of which ultimately lead to the same conclusion. The first was regarding the Isla Vista shooting/stabbing and the other regarding amassing wealth.

The Isla Vista Shooting/Stabbing

Joe the Plumber wrote an open letter in light of the Isla Vista shooting saying, “Your Dead Kids Don’t Trump My Constitutional Rights”.   In this letter, he also expresses his condolences. I don’t follow Joe the Plumber, and I’m not particularly concerned with his reputation or his political views. I will say that the sentiment he expressed here, though, is not incorrect. It’s incomplete, but not incorrect.

Allow me to complete it: Your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights because your dead kids are mutually exclusive of my rights and the free exercise thereof. My rights, my person, and my guns had nothing to do with this shooting, and therefore none of those things should be anywhere near a political chopping block.

Is it crass? I don’t see it that way. I see it as a valid response to the knee-jerk reactions from gun-control advocates and politicians every time there is a shooting. It certainly wasn’t said in a vacuum. And even if it was, it doesn’t make it any less correct.

Inevitably the gun control advocates trot out dead children as props to advance their own political agenda. Shamelessly and without compunction, they show their dead corpses, the grieving family members and friends, the candlelight vigils. That’s not considered insensitive, however. That’s considered a glorious tribute to the victims!

We honor the soldiers who supposedly die for our freedoms in the same way: by reducing the liberties of everyone with as much haste and force as possible.

Among other things, I take issue with the fact that not long ago, there was a young boy who took his parents’ car out for a drunken joy ride and killed four kids in the process. He plead “Affluenza” (i.e. he suffered from too much affluence, and therefore never learned cause and effect or to take responsibility for his actions!) and got off with nothing more than some time in rehab. Not ONE law changed in Texas. No one even lobbied to change one law pertaining to the acquisition of a license or a car.

More people die from cars and cops than from gun use by private citizens, but we fine people for driving like jerks and enable cops even more by giving them military grade weapons like BEARCATS and hollow point bullets! So to say I find gun-control advocates to be disingenuous is an understatement!

Here is the greatest irony in the battle to restrict and regulate guns: people are calling for more legislation. How exactly is that legislation enforced? By men with GUNS! The solution to gun violence is to concentrate all the guns in the hands of the ONE group of people who have consistently killed more people year over year than any other group of people in the United States: The Police.

Look, I don’t like the idea of anyone dying. A loss of life is a loss of life, which is why I’m as much against war as I am against the death penalty. But to try and legislate guns out of our society is like trying to legislate sex out of it: it’s futile and utterly preposterous! It’s a fool’s errand to say the very least.

Guns aren’t going away any more than sex is. The solution to mitigating unwanted outcomes in both cases is not by the criminalization of one thing or another, but through proper education and safe integration of them into our society. People keep trying to push these taboo things to the outskirts and margins of society, and it simply doesn’t work. The safest thing to do is to remove the taboo and the restrictions. And while I’m on the topic, it needs to be said that the majority of rapes involve a man’s penis. Where is the outcry to regulate that in any way? There’s a reason why penises are not regulated, while rape is still punished. It’s because there is a political stigma attached to regulating a person’s body. The same liberals who want to tell you what to do with the extensions of your person, don’t want government telling you what to do with your actual person.

Women don’t want regulations on their reproductive organs. Well, needless to say, their argument is weakened if they go after the regulation of men’s reproductive organs.

I’m not advocating regulating anyone’s reproductive organs. Nor am I arguing that rape is excusable. It’s absolutely not. But it is a violent crime that has not received ONE ounce of attention in terms of regulating the very weaponized object used to perpetrate the act!

So why is it that only GUNS are up for debate? Why is THAT particular property special? Not to sound trite, but guns are morally neutral objects. They can be used for good purposes such as hunting and protection or even as a hobby like collections or target practice in safe environments or in competitions. They can be used for bad purposes such as murder, extortion, and bullying. Same goes for a penis. They can be used for pleasure in a consensual sexual arrangement. They can be used for cruel purposes such as rape.

The gun-control advocates seem to understand that argument when it comes to a man’s penis, but not when it comes to an individual’s guns.

Here are a few facts to chew on regarding guns:

1. Gun related murders are down.
2. The states with the highest per capita gun ownership, have the lowest gun related crimes.
3. The states and districts with the lowest gun ownership and highest restrictions have higher gun related crimes. (Source: Wikipedia)
4. Criminologists have found that guns are a great deterrent to violent crime. Turns out violent criminals don’t want to tango with someone who has a gun. Go figure. (Source: Just Facts; University of Chicago Study)

There absolutely needs to be discussions and conversations on responsible use of guns and how to best integrate that into our society. Just as there absolutely needs to be discussion and conversations on responsible sex and respecting the word “No”. But regulating guns and penises is not going to fix the VERY real and pressing issue of violent crimes in America. Taking the weapon away doesn’t eliminate the criminal intent or mindset. And that is the heart of the problem.

Amassing Wealth

The subset argument that typically arises from the overall gun control debate is the issue of “need”. This same contention rears its ugly head when discussing wealth.

“You don’t NEED an AR-15!”

Really? How would you know?

This past week, I was told again what I need or don’t need by someone who’s never met me. I was told I don’t “need” multiple pieces of property. I don’t need to “hoard” resources. I don’t need millions of dollars. Why not? Because evidently wealth is a zero sum game to them. If I have wealth, they can’t go out and create/generate wealth for themselves anymore. I didn’t realize my work ethic was so socially crippling and debilitating! That my success would actually prevent someone else from doing the same for themselves! I never realized how powerful I really was.

It makes no sense that we’d be required to get permission to acquire property, if property is in fact a right. Yet, I can’t run a business, I can’t drive a car, I can’t get a gun, I can’t protest, I can’t park my car, I can’t draw on a sidewalk with chalk without paying for permission first.

So I don’t need a gun. I don’t need wealth. This is why, at the beginning of this article, I refer to property right in the singular. It’s NOT property rightsssss. It’s property right. Only one right. Myriad of piece of property to own out there, but only ONE right to acquire them. Your right to own a gun is the same right that enables you to own a house and the same right that enables you to buy clothes and the same right that enables you to feed yourself. It is NOT contingent upon what you are buying, nor is it contingent upon first justifying your “need” of it.

Therefore, there is no such thing as “gun rights”. There’s just property right. There’s no right to free speech even. There’s just property right.  If you own yourself, you own your speech.  So speech is just an exercise of your use of property: your words and thoughts.  You own yourself, you own your actions, you own your speech, you own your choices. It’s all an extension of yourself, and that is the definition of private property. It all starts with self-ownership.

The legitimate acquisition of property and the peaceful use of it is not up for debate. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s a right. As such, it’s inalienable. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are the trifecta of the primary pillar of Capitalism: private property right.

To fragment that right is to weaken it and delegitimize it. Look at how politicians treat the populace: they break us up into demographics. You have the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the women’s vote, the Christian vote, the gay vote and all the politicians are trying to appeal to them and ingratiate themselves within each little sect they create.

Sadly people buy into it! By breaking people up with false dichotomies you can divide and conquer, and no better example of this exists than in American Politics! There is so much in-fighting that people don’t realize it isn’t about left and right or black or white… it’s free people vs the oligarchy. It’s all of us against the few and powerful.

But as the government does this to the people at large, look how it operates. Always centralizing, always concentrating more and more its power. Whereas there once was decentralization with state and individual rights, now there is a consolidation of all that under one national control. Look at the drug war. It’s a national drug war. Look at taxation. Look at immigration. Look at how marriage has become a national issue. Look at the minimum wage laws. All are falling under federally centralized control.

So as we are divided, they are concentrated. And that is exactly how the government attacks our property right: by breaking it up into little bite-sized easily consumed pieces.

Oh, we aren’t attacking your property rights! This is about gun rights!

Oh, we aren’t attacking your property rights! We’re just telling you to ask permission before you get a car.

Oh we’re not attacking your property rights! We’re just saying you can’t sell or buy raw milk.

Oh we’re not attacking your property rights! We’re just saying you can’t sell, possess, or use marijuana.

Oh we’re not attacking your property rights! We’re just saying you can’t give birth in your own home.

Oh we’re not attacking your property rights! We’re just going to shoot your dog because it barked at the cops.

Oh we’re not attacking your property rights! We just want to build a revenue generating plaza where your house is.

Oh we’re not attacking your property rights!  We just want to tell you what you can say and where you can say it.

Yeah. ONE right. Myriad property. Don’t let them chip away at it. They attack one tiny unused corner of it, they will come back for more. No amount of illusions of safety are worth the liberties is costs to sustain the hologram.