The Biggest Rights Violation

Back in September of 1996 the U.S. Congress passed a bill making it illegal for anyone convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor to own a firearm. Congress also made that law retroactive. That is, if you had pleaded guilty to a minor domestic violence misdemeanor, say a shouting and shoving match between you and your wife or girl friend, in which the neighbors called the police, and this had happened in 1976, then the 1996 law made you a felon if you possessed any firearm.

At the time there was a lot of raving and ranting in the news about that unconstitutional law (there is no legitimate constitutional authority for the federal government to ban gun ownership) being the biggest rights violating law in U.S. history.

Those ranter and ravers were wrong.

The biggest rights violation laws are the laws prohibiting adults from the manufacture, sales, and use of certain mind-altering, sometimes addictive, sometimes dangerous drugs used by private individuals for recreational purposes or, in some cases, for self-medication.

The domestic violence conviction gun prohibition only violated the rights of somewhat over one million people. The so-called war on drugs (WOD) violates the rights of tens of millions of adults.

If we, U.S. citizens, have inalienable rights as the Declaration of Independence states, then we have the right to the use of our bodies and minds as we so wish, just so long as the use does not violate the rights of others.

The drug use that is the greatest cause of the violation of the rights of others--merely from its use--is the true narcotic drug alcohol. According to Department of Justice statistics approximately one half of all violent crimes--murders, rapes, robberies, assaults--are caused by people who have been drinking alcohol.

Almost all of the violence caused by the presently illegal drugs is caused by the laws making them illegal, not merely from the use of them.

Marijuana is the number one illegal drug use in America. Not only are there no recorded deaths from using that substance, there are few if any recorded murders or other violent crime associated with the use of it.

If Americans have a right to use the potential dangerous and violence-causing narcotic drug alcohol, why don't they have an equal right to the use of the less harmful and non-violence causing drugs that are presently illegal? Further, by what legitimate constitutional authority did Congress outlaw the presently illegal drugs? And, by what legitimate constitutional authority did the Supreme Court (a branch of the federal government) uphold those laws?

If one researches the history of drug use in America in the early part of the 20th Century, he or she will find out that the use of the presently illegal drugs was not associated with real criminal behavior--that is, the violation of the rights of others. Only alcohol was, as it is, still, today. The ban on certain drug use is specifically a religious or personal moral matter and there is no constitutional authority for Congress to pass laws to regulate your personal moral decisions that do not violate the rights of others.

The WOD is the biggest violation of the rights of otherwise honest adult citizens and it set a precedence for the federal government to continue to skirt the legitimate authority of the U.S. Constitution to pass other rights violating laws. The domestic violence conviction gun ban being but one of them.

Our government long ago passed from being a rights protecting institution, as the Founding Fathers of this nation wanted it to be, and became a granter of privileges to "the people." In other words, it long ago became a paternal dictator, which is just another word for tyranny.

In America we are free . . . free to do whatever the government allows us to do.