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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
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Author: albaby1 SILVER
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Number: of 84350 
Subject: Re: Here's one for the ATHEIST board
Date: 05/30/23 6:18 PM
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Again, what does my risk profile look like?
Do I have a 0.00001% chance of shooting myself? Or is it 50%?


Almost certainly closer to the former than the latter. There are just under 50,000 suicides per year in the US. A slight majority (more than any other method) are by firearm, so figure between 23K-24K. It's higher for men than women. There's probably about 57 million households with a firearm in them (about 44% of 130 million). So figure a 0.02% chance of shooting yourself in a given year.

You guys understand that literally the entire premise of the United States is the concept of natural rights...right?

That's not "the entire premise" of the U.S., of course - but I take your point that the Founders argued their case for liberty by an appeal to natural rights, and they certainly believed in them. But that doesn't mean that everything in the Constitution is a natural right, and none of the Founders would ever argue it was. Most of the document isn't. There's obviously no "natural right" to have a bicameral Legislature or to have patent law decided at the federal level rather than the state level. There's no "natural right" to be free from having troops quartered in your homes or to have two witnesses to be found guilty of Treason. Our recognition of those things as "rights" is contingent on the specifics of our document, arising out of specific annoyances with England, not a recognition by the Founders that these were natural rights or an argument that they are inherent in the nature of humanity.

The Second Amendment is almost certainly more of a contingent right than a natural or fundamental one. Most state constitutions didn't have it as a right at the time of the Founding - the limitation was on the federal government disarming the populace, not the state governments. Unlike speech and free exercise and some of the other rights, which were protected in almost all the state Constitutions against infringement by state governments.
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This community has written 84,309 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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