Friday, September 01, 2006

Well, this pretty much makes it official:

The UN says you have no right to self-defense

Was looking through Instapundit and hit a link to this piece on a UN report. The Claremont post has this quote from the report:
No international human right of self-defence is expressly set forth in the primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law, or general principles.

Please note the 'expressly set for in the primary sources' bit, it's important.

Both Instapundit and Claremont linked to this over at 'Of Arms and the Law' that goes more in-depth into the UN report. You really should read the whole thing at OAatL; there's too much to really summarize and the full impact of the UN outlook should not be minimized. I will note a few bits:

Self-defence is sometimes designated as a “right”. There is inadequate legal support for such an interpretation. Self-defence is more properly characterized as a means of protecting the right to life and, as such, a basis for avoiding responsibility for violating the rights of another.

22. Self-defence is broadly recognized in customary international law as a defense to criminal responsibility as shown by State practice. There is not evidence however that States have enacted self-defence as a freestanding right under their domestic laws, nor is there evidence of opinio juris that would compel States to recognize an independent, supervening right to self-defence that they must enforce in the context of their domestic jurisdictions as a supervening right.

And the one that, I think, REALLY gets to it:

25. Again, the Committee’s interpretation supports the requirement that States recognize self-defence in a criminal law context. Under this interpretation of international human rights law, the State could be required to exonerate a defendant for using firearms under extreme circumstances where it may be necessary and proportional to an imminent threat to life. Even so, none of these authorities enumerate an affirmative international legal obligation upon the State that would require the State to allow a defendant access to a gun.(emphasis mine in all the above)

Besides the already known fact that the UN detests the idea of armed citazens, I think this sums up a lot of the reason for this crap very well: if you recognize self-defense as a basic human right, you cannot deny people the means with which to defend themselves; whereas if self-defense is only a 'defense to criminal responsibility' then there is NO 'right' to self-defense and NO right to the means of it. And in the long run that doesn't just mean weapons, it means ANY training in combat that would help you defend yourself.

As is pointed out in the Claremont piece, "
Of course, as I have noted before the U.N., has grown to be hostile to the natural rights foundation of the United States by its very nature. At the foundation of the U.N.'s understanding of law is an idea that is irreconcilable with the natural rights foundation of the U.S. Hence the U.N. does not grasp the necessity of a natural right to self-defense, a right of inestimable importance to us, and formidable only to those who would be tyrants.
To the UN, 'rights' are something the state 'grants' to you.

Which means that the founders of this country would do one of two things: run the UN out, or just burn the damn place down.

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