The rights that don't exist

Alphecca has a blog entry about gun control being a right. Well, actually it's about a commentator for the Salt Lake Tribune spinning this right in to existence.

Saul Cornell, a writer for the History News Service, is a professor of history at Ohio State University and author of "A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America."

Now, i've never read his book nor have I read any of the History News Service, to my recollection, but in reading his commentary, it leads me to believe that he studied history at Justice Stephen Reinhardt University. For those of you unfamiliar with that name, that is the justice of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who has rewritten most of the US constitution and Bill of Rights with his political ideology based decisions instead of being based on the supreme law of the land.

In Mr. Cornells commentary he states,

They also staked out another right that has not been much talked about recently in this debate: a right to be free from the fear of gun violence.

and

The right to be free from the threat of gun violence deserves as much respect as the right to bear arms.

So, being a history professor, Mr. Cornell should be able to provide some sort of evidence that there actually exists a right 'to be free from the fear of gun violence' or a right 'to be free from the THREAT of gun violence' but he decides not to put forth this evidence. Since he did not, I took it upon myself to look for this right through all the history documents that I could find and was unsuccessful, however, I did find this little peach of an entry,

"There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties; it tells the state to let the people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order."

This comes from a 1982 7th circuit case 'Bowers v. Devito' which explicitly states that you have no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. Now, you DO have a right not to be murdered, but since there is a law prohibiting murder AND you are 'supposed' to have a right to defend your life, this is taken care of. It makes YOU responsible for protecting your right to life. One can only assume that if there is no right to be free from being murdered, then there is absolutely no right to be free from gun violence, or the threat thereof, only to use your own means to protect yourself from it, hence the right to keep and bear arms.