Lions and Eagles

I've gotten into an interesting Facebook conversation on rights. It started with an event invite to an upcoming meeting of local Libertarians on gun politics. A curious Facebooker asked a question, and I found that my answer was getting long, so, here it is in blog form:

I admit it: I’m a huge fan of sci-fi. From Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, to Gene Roddenberry and every single superhero movie to come out in the last decade, I just can’t get enough. The imagination, the spectacle, the endless possibilities of hope… and, of course, utopias and dystopias that teach us about the best and worst of humanity.

Heard on the radio this morning that the latest scare is the possibility of people on terrorist watch lists being able to legally buy guns. I understand the worry, really I do. The people on those lists are supposed to be potentially really bad guys, and if there's any one we want to keep away from guns, it would be the really bad guys. But before we jump on board with this, please let me present a couple of reasons to think twice about using terrorist watch lists in this way. First, what are these watch lists exactly? My understanding is that they aren't lists of people who have already done something bad. They are lists of people who are suspected of being likely to try something really bad in the future. Like Tom Cruise in The Minority Report, our protectors in law enforcement want to catch the crime before it happens. But unlike Tom Cruise, we don't have a trio of bathing precious to give us indisputable evidence from the future. We don't know what will happen, or...