The fact is you cannot design a completely flawless justice system. It is impossible. This means that you are, on occasion, going to convict innocent people. It also means that you are, on occasion, going to kill innocent people as long as you have the death penalty. The appeals process is primarily only good for dealing with procedural flaws, not factual weaknesses.

1. I’m leery of natural rights in general, but even given natural rights, I’m fine with self defence. The concept of self defence can come apart from the concept of fire-arms. The point is that people seem to do fairly well in defending themselves in gun controlled societies.

2. I can see that the explanation you gave in your point 3 explains why the 2nd amendment was thrown in, and why there is a cultural attachment to the right to bear arms.

I see rights as the lines that define what precisely is cooperation vs defection if we view the whole of society as a prisoner’s dilemma. As such, I would say that maybe in the american context there is a right to bear arms. However, this would be nowhere near universal. I could also consistently say that in much of the rest of the world, there is no right to bear fire arms. Some rights are more culturally relative than others because what counts as cooperation and defection depends on the particular ends that the people comprising society have. That would vary from culture to culture, and not all of those ends are necessarily subject to rational criticism. Some ends are simply there.

3. As a matter of principle, I dont think that there is a coherent right to rebel. (depending on how you define rebellion) For example, if the army is to defend the constitution and the republic, then if the politicians themselves threaten the republic, action taken by the army would not be rebellion. Also, the government in Singapore would never turn the military against the general populace. Because we are all conscripts, there is pretty much no-one to turn the army on other than our own women, children and other non-combatants.

4. Doomsday scenarios in general seem to be a very bad way to organise society. That is a lot like building a 50 ft thick wall so that you are protected from even the strongest explosions, earthquakes etc etc etc.

Anyc itizen’s militia will need far more than hand guns, shot guns and hunting rifles in order to stage a coup or to pose any serious threat to the army.

2.Logical entailment is different from slippery slope. If the whole point of your system is to make prisoner’s fit to live with when they rejoin society, then a benign variant of clockwork orange is not morally problematic. Of course the whole argument will not work if your intuitions vis a vis clockwork orange are different from mine.

3. Different slopes are slippery to different extents. Many slippery slope arguments are bad, but there are some that may actually work. don’t press me on this because I cant think of any at the moment. But I’m sure I’ve heard a few good ones somewhere…

1. Since you go into some detail about your country’s constitution, I can only repeat myself: sorry about that. Arbitrary detention is prohibited by the US Constitution.

2. I really don’t think that Americans take the Constitution/Madison/Hamiltion as sacred cows, not to be critiqued ever. Law schools are full of people doing just that full time. However, I think people agree that following it, even in changing it, gives the nation strength.

What arguments regarding the right to keep and bear arms are you thinking of, specifically?

You seem like you have quite a background in philosophy, etc etc. Can you explain why self defense is not a natural right?

3. I see it this way (and I’m open to correction from you): the right to keep and bear arms was added to the Constitution as an amendment for political reasons: along with the other nine amendements of the Bill of Rights, it was required so as to get people to vote for ratification. The framers of the Constitution thought that these ten amendments were superflous–the rights they enshrine were already implicit in the Constitution itself.

Therefore, people back then wanted the right to keep and bear arms to be written in stone, as it were. They believed that this was their natural right and furthermore, that it was all that was standing in the way of tyranny. Tyrannies are always models of gun control. I think most people take it as a “doomsday” clause in the Constitution. If things get really bad, then people can fight for their own survival the best they can.

The people who ratified the Constitution were not so different from Americans today. Guns and freedom go together in most people’s minds.

The above seems irrational to anyone educated in a “gun controlled” nation. Aren’t guns for killing? Isn’t killing bad? Why make it the people’s right to wield lethal force against others? And so forth.

But if you consider history, and therefore the context in which the Constitution was written, you may see that the right to bear arms only belonged to the noble classes. In some nations (Japan, for example) simple possession of arms caused the death penalty. Therefore, whenever they wanted to they could practice their swordsmanship on the nearest peasant or just test the sharpness and strength of the blade on his or her arm, if that was pleasing to them.

Firearms became the great equalizer. A peasant with a gun was just as good as some knight/samurai with a lifetime of martial arts training, special diets, and so forth.

Don’t you find this argument convincing, if it explains the presence of the Second Amendment in the US Constitution?