Thursday, February 22, 2007

Group vs. Individual

The FAA bans handguns from private space flights, in orbit or otherwise.  The FAA, however, has changed the reason why.  Their previous explanation claimed that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms was a "collective right" not an individual right.  The new explanation says that the FAA has the right to ban guns from spaceflights, as it does from planes, as a reasonable exception to the 2nd amendment.

The trend here is that the left thinks of group rights while the right wants to protect the rights of individuals.  For example, affirmative action, strongly supported by the left, is intended to provide group justice regardless of the injustice that it does to many individuals.  The claim that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect governments ("collective rights") against individuals is perverse: History shows that the Bill of Rights was passed out of concern that the newly created federal government might have too much power, not too little.

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