03-14-2014, 11:02 PM
"The answer to both questions is: not arbitrarily. But once can imagine a scenario in which the government makes it illegal for all citizens to own a certain type of item - say, for example, handguns. Then police might be dispatched to collect all handguns from all the citizens and turn these collected items over to a government agency, and then any citizen who retains one in defiance of this law might be subjected to some type of specified punishment. The validity of this government action would depend in large part on whether or not it is in conflict with some other existing law - for example, a previously established guarantee in the country's constitution of a citizen's rights."
See, this analogy seems to be a bad one. I say this because the guns are the property of the people who own them. The government doesn't own these guns. Any law that would legalize their confiscation disregarding the level of responsibility of the owner is an unrighteous law and tantamount to theft. So a citizen or a bunch of citizens would be just in protecting their property from a government that just legalized theft in the confiscation of someone else's property.
The only way you could argue for this analogy would be to say that the government owns everything or at least all the guns or whatever they legalize the taking of. And they don't.
See, this analogy seems to be a bad one. I say this because the guns are the property of the people who own them. The government doesn't own these guns. Any law that would legalize their confiscation disregarding the level of responsibility of the owner is an unrighteous law and tantamount to theft. So a citizen or a bunch of citizens would be just in protecting their property from a government that just legalized theft in the confiscation of someone else's property.
The only way you could argue for this analogy would be to say that the government owns everything or at least all the guns or whatever they legalize the taking of. And they don't.