United Nations: You Have No Right To Self-Defense

Glenn Reynolds points
to a UN
report that attempts to minimize the most basic and premier human right
of all: self-defense –

20. Self-defence is a widely recognized, yet legally proscribed, exception
to the universal duty to respect the right to life of others. Self-defence is
a basis for exemption from criminal responsibility that can be raised by any
State agent or non-State actor. Self-defence is sometimes designated as a “right”.
There is inadequate legal support for such an interpretation. Self-defence is
more properly characterized as a means of protecting the right to life and,
as such, a basis for avoiding responsibility for violating the rights of another.

If a guy breaks into your house with a gun, and you shoot him, you are ‘violating
his rights’ according to the UN, not engaging in your right to self-defense.
The UN’s notion that there is "inadequate legal support" for the idea
that self-defense is a human right is an agenda-driven wilful misreading of
texts on the issue. The right to self-defense is the first among all human rights.
Even Thomas Hobbes recognized that "summe of the Right of Nature"
is "by all means we can, to defend our selves." Enlightenment literature
and legal thought is replete with the concept of self-defense as the cornerstone
of all natural rights. As an example, the Pennsylvania Declaration of 1776 stated
that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves
and the state." In criticizing the UN report, the Claremont
Institute points out that the very founders of international law itself,
who would count for something at the UN one would think, Grotius
and Emmerich de Vattel
both recognized the concept.

The UN is most eager to deny that self-defense is a right, because this would
obligate the UN to defend the concept of individual self-defense. Since unarmed
self-defense in a world full of weapons is too often meaningless, this puts
the UN in the position of having to defend the individual right to bear arms.
Quelle horror! Is there anything more vulgar to a silk-suited euroweenie
diplomat than individual gun ownership? This should not baffle you – the UN
and its supporters are proponents of a single world government, under the ludicrous
belief that a unitary government would hold a monopoly on all arms throughout
the world, thus abolishing violence. Then, once violence is abolished the UN
may disarm itself and the glorious new age of peace, love and rainbows can ensue.

The report goes out of its way to clear up any silly confusion about self-defense
for States, including totalitarian regimes, as somehow also applying to lowly
individual human beings:

"Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations applies to the States
acting in self-defence against armed attacks against their State sovereignty.
It does not apply to situations of self-defence for individual persons."

How ironic, that the preeminent human rights organization in the world, the
UN, gives the full panoply of protections and immunities under international
law to someone like Kim Jong-Il, whereas if you engage in self-defense you are
‘violating the rights of another.’ This goes to the heart of an entire belief
system rampant in the world today that thinks that all violence is bad regardless
of circumstances and context, and that the problems of violence are caused by
weapons and not those that wield them. We saw this in the 80′s with the unilateral
disarmament movement. They believed that reducing nuclear arsenals somehow reduced
the chance of war breaking out. If we have an arsenal of 10,000 warheads and
we reduce that arsenal to 5,000 warheads – voila! – we have reduced the
chance of war by 50%! As if each warhead was just itching to detonate itself,
so the fewer the better. And so it is with guns. Every gun is just waiting to
go off, and so reducing the number of guns will somehow reduce violence. And
as we all know, the mere possession of a gun causes the urge to violence in
otherwise perfectly sane and law-abiding owners. So, if everyone just put their
guns down, and put their full faith in sovereign government instead to protect
them, we can begin to initiate the Reign of Peace.

Anyone see any holes in this logic?

P.S. As for the unilaterial disarmament argument, proponents of the argument that fewer warheads make war less likely get it exactly backwards. Fewer warheads makes it easier for an enemy to destroy those warheads, thus actually inviting attack. Shrinking nuclear arsenals can actually be destabilizing. Is this, then, an argument for more weapons?
An armed society is a polite society.
Crossposted from WILLisms.com