"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[Chaerophon]

Without the right to bear arms, all other guaranteed rights are just words on paper. The age of firearms is what brought these powers to the people in the first place...

This is perhaps the biggest crock that I have ever read Nystul. Sorry, but guns don't equal rights. Consensus, shared existence/history, mythologized "horizons of significanance" - these are the things that preserve societal rights. (Funnily enough, most articulations hold that it is STATE military power that preserves order and rights) Carrying your gun around in your purse only protects your right to carry a gun in your purse.

First of all, you're not going to take on a hypothetically totalitarian US military with civilian weaponry; however, the SHARED VALUES and idealisms of those who belong to the military may, in fact, preserve citizen's rights as they refuse to act on the totalitarian impulses of those in power. The shared understanding of what rights are and the valuation of what has gone before is what preserves rights - NOT the ability to carry a gun wherever you go.

To take another example: there is an ongoing struggle at the international level to preserve women's rights. UN conferences have convened in which various NGO's, governments, and other civil society groups have engaged in lengthy and meaningful dialogue, arriving at consensus as to a number of resolutions in defence of women and their rights. For the feminist movement in general, the key to obtaining equal rights has not been "getting guns" - it has been cultural pressures and internal manipulation of the public consensus that has slowly led to their empowerment. Progress may be slow in many countries, but it does exist, as more and more women at the local level are laying claim to, and receiving, their basic human rights as women.

I don't see that they [rights] can be maintained without them.

Funny... seems to me that there are a lot of countries doing fine without laissez-faire gun laws. What's more, I really don't see the posited link that you are making here. How do you figure that soft gun laws are the root of your society's order? Many societies are more peaceful with stricter laws... Is the structure on which your 'rights' are based really so tenuous? In daily life, does having a gun make you more free to speak your mind or sit where you'd like on the bus? In my opinion, it's all hogwash. The right to bear arms is a right enumerated under the American constitution. Fine. That being said, I'm not sure that they are the fundamental key to American rights, nor am I willing to concede that without them, anarchy would rule the day.