|
A few points: 1. It is a misframing of the issue to put it into terms of "self-defense". In the context of the social contract that establishes the militia duty of mutual defense, "self-defense" becomes "defense of the community", with oneself being a member if the community to be defended. One has the same duty to defend oneself that one has to defend another. And in general, that is usually also "law enforcement", in which each member of the community, as militia, is also a law enforcer. 2. "Outlawry" in this context is not just removal of the protection of the law from some individual (which does require judicial due process), but removal of the protection of militia. In other words, members of the community are duty-bound not to protect the outlaw, lest they become complicit in his crime. 3. The concept of "bill of attainder" gets complicated with it is not just a single individual that is legislatively made a felon, or a small group of individuals, but everyone or almost everyone. That could consist of granting administrative authority to anonymous officials to decide someone is too "dangerous" to lawfully possess firearms, based on vague events or conditions of which the individual is not aware, or of creating so many vague criminal statutes that almost everyone is a felon for doing ordinary things. I discuss this at Public Safety or Bills of Attainder? — Written Jun. 14, 2000. Published in University of West Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 34, 2002. -- Jon ---------------------------------------------------------- Constitution Society http://constitution.org 2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322 twitter.com/lex_rex Austin, TX 78757 512/299-5001 [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------- |
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
