Afghanistan is the 8th poorest nation in the world [1]
The US spent over a decade and over a trillion dollars fighting there [2]
We did not decisively "win" by any measure [3]
[1] https://financesonline.com/a-list-of-third-world-countries-1...
[2] https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-afghanistan-war-timeline-...
[3] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-will-never-win-t...
> you shouldn't be able to walk around with a rocket launcher or semi-automatic weapon
Generally speaking, this statement speaks to a lack of information regarding what semi-automatic is or what it means. Most firearms sold today are semi-automatic. Banning semi-automatic firearms bans the majority of firearms.
That you later go on to state "You don't need automatic weapons to defend..." implies to me that you've conflated automatic and semi-automatic. You cannot conflate those two terms in good faith and claim to be having a reasonable and informed debate.
You also assert that nobody's saying anything about taking guns away, but Hillary Clinton (and other politicians) repeatedly called for Australian-style gun buybacks, which were mandatory, which are the same as confiscation. I'll broadly agree that it isn't the popular sentiment, but suggesting that nobody's calling for it is disingenuous at the very least.
Moreover, from your link, the following statements are at odds with your assertion that the second amendment isn't under attack.
> Weapons of war have no place in our communities. Our nation requires a comprehensive assault weapons ban
> Limiting high-powered weapons to the military has worked elsewhere to eliminate the opportunity for mass shootings
> These magazines are devastating and need to be banned.
Finally, you make a very common mistake when you assert "you can't yell 'fire' in a movie theater". That has been covered here by me, by others, and by prominent first amendment attorneys all over the map, but despite the common misconception, there's no law or regulation that prohibits you from yelling fire in a movie theater.
Nobody ever believes that, so please enjoy some citations:
* https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
* https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
* http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/03/04/please-st...
They were mandatory, however gun owners with reasonable reasons (i.e. hunting, sport, recreation) were free to acquire a license to keep their guns (excluding military style weapons). You can currently acquire a semi-automatic rifle (under 10 rounds) with the proper licenses and reasons (farm worker, sport etc.)[1]
- There were no repercussions for illegal guns being handed in (someone handed in a rocket launcher).
- There were no laws preventing someone acquiring a license to keep their gun if they wanted (within the laws which were introduced).
- No police invaded homes to take weapons by force during the amnesty.
Australia's gun-amnesties/buybacks were not the same as confiscation.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia#Firearms...
I thought the 'mistake' would be assuming that this action is prohibited even in the event of a fire.
Now I question if it is assumed to apply unconditionally, even during a fire. And if so, what is the appropriate way to deal with such an event
* _Falsely_ shouting fire
* in a crowded theater
* for the purpose of imminently inciting harm to others
We started at submission about Google employees waving around a paper tiger petition, we proceeded to top ranked reminder to everyone of DARPA and how military funding is the One True Way, then on to crypto export controls, rolling onward into a gun control debate, conflating semi-automatic weapons with rocket launchers, and finally into yes, the meaning behind "fire in a crowded theater."
The comment section on HN is now second only to the comments from Yahoo news stories. Keep up the great work everyone.
It isn't a law, and where I say "might" in my follow-up, it should not be confused with "is" or "will". There are no laws that forbid you from exclaiming fire in a theater. People think there are because Oliver Wendell Holmes made a clumsy aside while explaining a bad decision that has since been overturned.
Either way, the real point to this is that a punishment for negligent use of one's rights (e.g., falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater for the purposes of causing harm to others) is still not remotely the same as banning free exercise of that right, or converting that right into a privilege through licensure, as is being suggested as rational compromises for the second amendment, predicated on a clumsy and wrong-headed interpretation on the first.
We might all prefer it if you had to obtain a license to speak in a theater, on the grounds that yelling fire in one might prove too dangerous a responsibility for average citizens, but I think most of us would agree that it would violate the first amendment quite heinously. The only way to imagine that equivalent restrictions are less heinous when applied to the second amendment is if one takes the second amendment less seriously as a "real" right, or to imagine that such restrictions are common on the first amendment. It isn't less real a right, and such restrictions are not common on the first, despite misuse of the aforementioned idiom.
Literally tens of millions of responsible Americans walk around, every day, carrying semi-automatic weapons, and this is not a problem.
This is also true in the Czech Republic! Shall-issue, just like Texas. They are one of the safest countries in the EU.
You are far more likely to be shot by a cop, than by a citizen legally carrying a semi-automatic weapon.
The idea that 'this is not a problem' is exactly the thing under dispute, so I don't think it should be cheerfully asserted
Objectors to this climate of easy access to firearms -wrong or right- will point to things like:
* criminal gun violence and mass shootings (a phenomenon that is staggeringly rare in most other comparable nations) but also to
* accidental gun deaths, frequently including of children, to
* suicides facilitated by this easy access to firearms, to
* the trigger-happiness of American cops being directly related to the significant likelihood that anyone those cops interact with is armed, compared to countries like the Australia, Japan, or New Zealand.
They also point to a political climate in which research into gun violence is blocked, and where measures such as universal background checks are supported by huge number citizens, but the political situation prevents these from being enacted.
There are sixteen million Americans with concealed-carry licenses, plus fourteen states that allow for "constitutional carry" (e.g., no license required).
(Keep in mind that I do think that we should require training and licensing for concealed carry, although this needs to be balanced with not imposing an undue economic burden or disenfranchising minorities)
According to the Violence Policy Center -- a very solidly anti-gun group -- there were 27 murders committed by licensed concealed carriers in 2017 across the United States. That's a murder rate of 0.16 per 100,000 people.
By comparison, the total UK murder rate for the same year was six times that.
Likewise, the Czech Republic, which also has a lower murder rate than the UK, has "shall-issue" concealed carry licensing for gun owners -- just like Texas -- and the majority of Czech gun owners have such a license.
I think it's fair to say that concealed carriers are not the problem.
That's a ridiculous statement to many people. Most handguns are semi-automatic weapons and you will find little agreement from pro-2nd amendment people to eliminate both handguns and any rifles that aren't muzzle-loaders or bolt-action.
Note: the statement above does not choose a side.
'Fundamental rights' (under US law) I think is defensible as fundamental is treated as an alias for constitutional so guns are in.
'Fundamental human rights' to me implies broad and fundamental applicability, i.e. the UN declarations and covenants on human rights, which don't iterate guns as a right.
Case in point, when non-US countries talk about human rights, none of them are talking about guns.
My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in the united states.
For every right that most people hold evident, you'll find people who disagree. This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.
The US was built upon the idea that rights are inherent and not granted to citizens by a government.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
> This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.
Which is what the US Constitution is. (Just because the say "We hold these truths to be self-evident" doesn't mean that they are)
Mind blown huh?
Simply put, those who are attacked will fight back. Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.
Therein you have a basis for the first and second amendment, i.e. freedom to think and freedom to defend yourself.
Curious wording. The vast majority of even modern human history seems to provide an incredible amount of contradictory evidence—at least if you’ll grant that “forced” can also mean socialized into a certain cultural and ideological narrative from birth. Sure, there are notable moments when resistance forms quietly, and perhaps even makes its way into the public sphere. However, resistance does not appear to me to be a default human trait. That’s usually only found in a smaller portion of what is typically non-boat-rocking humanity—those who hope to convince their fellow citizens to join them. The majority of humans appear to rarely make it habit to question anything at all.
Well not that I'm Christian, but Christian teaching is basically the opposite of this (Matthew 5:39 - i.e. turn the other cheek). And Gandhi's resistance was also an example of the opposite. In fact the opposite is the only way to deescalate a fight (or, as the US chooses to do, create the biggest weapons, but isn't that then affecting the rights of the people on the other side of the argument?)
> Those who are forced to say or believe something will instead resist the idea.
Really? Advertising, religion, nation states, even your belief that these are "natural" laws are examples of your inherent bias. As a smaller example, even politeness - civility - is a counter example.
And then you bring up every method of manipulation as if people don't hate all of those things. Why would we need to invent clever tricks to manipulate people if it was human nature to like it?
Sure, we're plenty effective both at hurting others and manipulating people, but it seems odd to express examples of our capability at doing that to unwilling people as evidence that we like those things being done to us...
Why would we have to go to such lengths to develop these capabilities if it was something we naturally liked? You're kind of proving the opposite of the point you think you are here....
If you want to be closed minded, and not accept that you are choosing your axioms in the same way as someone else exposed to different upbringings is - as per my examples, then I guess I have no chance of convincing you otherwise.
You can say there's construction there, but there's a limit to it. I mean, just as you can't simply construct a functional bridge out of anything you want, neither can you reasonably construct any sort of right and have a functioning society. There are both positive and negative rights, tensions among the rights of different people, and responsibilities imposed on individuals and society by any particular conception of rights.
OP quoted the Declaration of Independence, which is neither law nor agreement.
From our own human nature, actually. Think about this for a minute. Would a normal person be willing to believe something because you were forced to? If someone was violently attacked, would they not fight back?
By recognizing these aspects of human nature as something fundamentally not controllable by laws, we can instead force government to work with that human nature instead of contrary to it.
Now, the current conflict is being caused by pitting these against each other. Because people believe they are unsafe because of people who own guns or use hate speech, you now have two groups of people who believe that the other group is making them unsafe.
This is ironic, because we're actually becoming statistically safer over time, but it does lead to some very real conflict because people believe there's another group out there that wants to harm them, instead of realizing that both sides really just want to protect themselves, barring a few fringe whackos on either side.
It's pretty hard to pin down what natural rights are. That a society ought to consider the limits of normal human behaviour I don't dispute, but that just informs the rights a society grants its members. Rights are still a human social construct.
We value our safety from, e.g., rapists more than the rapist's liberty.
If human nature is ultimately "not controllable by law", then that would certainly apply broadly, not just to cherry picked aspects of it.
Certainly assault, murder, rape, theft, harassment, abuse, cheating, and the like are facets of feral humanity; just as much as positive traits like self-preservation, compassion, parental instincts, social bonding, etc. Law usually stands in a directly contrary position to the former list, to wide agreement.
Codified rights are effectively statements of belief of a government, to which they are binding themselves. As a statement of belief, there's no legal structures or arguments upholding them. They are simply installed by declaration (either dictatorially or by some measure of consensus) as an official part of the government's world view.
There have been many thinkers that have challenged Locke. I am currently reading the Second Treatise to try and really understand Locke's position before I make up my mind.
This is, of course, not an argument about moral rigts and wrongs, just a pragmatic one about how rights work.
If that's the case, I don't want to live anywhere else. If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, they pose a deadly threat to my family. In what country would you not feel the same way?
> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.
Not all states are benevolent, nor are they guaranteed to stay benevolent. Many Americans are wary of our gov't (and IMO rightly so.)
Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.
Well, yeah.
There are no illusions that a group of people with dubious levels of training could square off against the government and come out on top. However, you can certainly raise the cost of occupation _significantly_.
Despite the US rolling into the middle east with all of its technological might, planes, helicopters, and modern armor, its still bands of people with guns and bombs who, years after "mission accomplished", drag the conflict onward.
The loss of property, and the violation of one's home and sense of security are real harms. But the point is not to make the violator pay, so much as it is to merely prevent an injustice.
And many (I believe most) defensive gun uses involve merely brandishing the weapon. Most people do not relish the thought of taking another's life.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore? The same people who are large proponents of the 2nd Amendment also seem to encourage a massive defense budget which seems backwards to me.
It makes more sense when you realize that there is significant overlap between "gun owners" and "past or present military service".
I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be. I'm not going to wait and find out if you would attempt to kill me as a result of discovering you are burglarizing my home.
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Nobody is under any illusions that the US military could roll through with tanks and cluster bombs and annihilate any opposition, but I doubt the government is particularly keen on ruling over a pile of ruined infrastructure. If that's the case, they instead have to deal with a large population of armed guerillas, which the Mid-East conflicts have proven the US is rather poor at dealing with. To say nothing of the fact that a large portion of the US military would defect upon being told to fire upon the people they've signed up to defend. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to deter the government from using overt force.
> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.
to shooting someone would in most countries be considered a illogical and reckless act.
I'm having a hard time thinking of any scenario where taking someones life is a justified, logical and logically judicial act. Especially in the case you said.
Someone breaks into your house with a knife with the intent to cut your throat and steal anything that can be sold quickly.
People have been murdered by burglars many times so you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend that's not an outcome.
In your ideal world, do you prefer that the victims allow the burglar to eliminate them as a witness?
That is assuming a lot of thinking from a scenario that started as:
> I don't know who you are, why you are in my home, and what your intentions may be.
Even assuming what you said, the right to take a life is not a right a citizen should ever have, in any situation.
The right to kill in self defense exists in many countries but I belive in most countries it will result in an investigation and you'll probably have to go to court to convince a judge that you had
1. Reason to fear for your or someone elses life
2. considered (and if possible: tried) other reasonable options.
I think it would be extremely cruel to punish someone for defending themselves or someone else.
Also keep in mind that stopping an attacker without the option of hurting them seriously is way harder than if you are allowed to use any means.
Using deadly force to counter a purely material crime is madness.
Its not the victim's obligation to quiz the home invader on their intentions before they act to protect themselves, their family and/or their property. A person knowingly and foreseeably puts their own life up for forfeit by invading another's home... and for what - a material crime, as you say? (But I hope we all acknowledge that the stakes are often far more serious and irrevocable than having your ipad stolen while you sleep).
The big open secret here is, no government today or in the past has had a monopoly on deadly force (nor will they ever). They only have a monopoly on punishing deadly force via the judicial system.
Deadly force can be legally prohibited and morally justified. It can be legally justified and morally abhorrent.
Why would a guy who grabs a cop's gun and waves it around pointing it at people for a thrill have to pay with the actions of their life when another cop shoots them?
>Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Do you really think gun owners would line up on the field to take on the military in the open? Ruling over a country where half of the people are supporters and the other half are armed dissidents would be impossible regardless of military strength. Just look at the failures of the last Iraq war to see how a tiny fraction of the population was able to throw off the whole thing.
They have the option of wearing a bullet proof vest or use trained monkeys to do their bidding.
Note that the US military is sworn to the constitution, not to any current administration. When anti-citizen measures are proposed, the military aligns with the citizens.
> Do gun owners truly believe that they can band together and stop the entirety of the United States military anymore?
Nope, some of us citizens believe that the US military ranks will by and large not obey unlawful/unconstitutional orders to attack its own citizenry on our soil. If they choose to do so anyway - good luck, there's more of us than there are of them.
They shouldn't. But what guarantee does someone have that the intruder won't harm them?
Really? Your profile was created 15 minutes ago, and this seems like an absurd statement.
If one is so depraved as to argue that self-defense is unacceptable as such, then one should be prepared to live and die as a slave to the first thug or dictator who walks by one's neighborhood or country.
Any limits to the right to intervene should not go further than what the state can fill in for. Since the police is not everpresent in our lives (and shouldn't be!), there will inevitably be situations where you need to fend for yourself, since you can't always just wait for police to arrive.
You can put this through some translation software of your choice;
http://www.domarbloggen.se/sodertorns-tingsratt/ansvarsfrihe...
There's arguments to be made as to what percentage of the populace needs to agree for a stable society to be formed. Both extremes of 100% and 0% are obviously bad as you either get no agreement or total dictatorship.
Just saying that you should listen to the government though ignores the majority of the history of governments
Things aren't black and white. Every country is lawless to a certain degree. Otherwise there wouldn't be any robberies in countries that aren't "lawless" (whatever that means). One difference between EU and US is that a robber has a decent chance of being shot in US and not in EU meaning you become a sitting duck the moment you stop living the socialist life that state deems appropriate.
I think you are wrong. At least in Norway where I've lived for the last few decades I'm pretty certain people are found not guilty because of self defense.
> Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the definition of a lawless society (a society where the state has no way to impose the rule of law).
Persecuting minorities where completely lawful in nazi Germany.
I guess you should be looking for another word because as much as I'm against lawlessness that doesn't cut it here IMO.
Nazi Germany was a country full of laws. (I realize I am Godwin’s law-ing, but the parent implied that self-defense ought not be a right in a society with legal institutions and laws; Nazi Germany is a perfect counter example of how “laws” aren’t always just and that a fear of government is a legitimate concern.)
Note that like most other points made in discussions involving "rights," this is an opinion, presented as if it were an objective fact.
Another opinion is that you have only the rights that you can defend. That one, at least, has some empirical proof behind it.
Even more, many think they should be able to hide their actions from the state...that is the definition of a lawless society.
I get it, HTTPS is fun. But a human right? Definitely not.
TL;DR; - IMO there is some significant crossover between crypto* people, and 2A people.
But history shows otherwise: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Empirically, every totalitarian state bans citizen firearms (Nazi Germany, USSR, Cuba, N. Korea). For "good" reason.
While of course different, crypto has many of the same pros and cons as firearms, and it should be supported for the same reasons.
No idea what your definition of totalitarian state is, but there certainly was not a complete ban on firearms neither in Nazi Germany nor in many of post WW2 socialist countries (e.g. hunters).
It actually started post-WWI (due to Treaty of Versailles).
> In 1919 the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership...anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks. [1]
Laws were later relaxed from a total ban, though ownership was low, as all guns and ammo had been confiscated earlier. And Jews and companies with at least some Jewish ownership were forbidden to own any firearms or participate in their manufacture.
When oppressing a group, either selectively or indiscriminately, guns + speech for that group must go.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_legislation_in_Germany#Reg...
Waco and Ruby Ridge had an endless arsenal of small arms. It didn't help them.
And this "other countries" mm a lot of this had constitutions where the citizens where given some rights by the king and not have universal rights.
[1].https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/pensioner-arrested-stabbing-susp...
[2]. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1361028/Martin-is-cl...
And, for the record, I think that "because the Second Amendment" is a horrible and fantastically lazy argument for gun ownership.
Now, let us take a look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specifically, Article 3:
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
From this, I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone has the right to protect the above -- within reason!
Everyone has an innate right to defend their life, liberty, and security of person. Without that, those rights are meaningless.
This is not the job of the police. You should definitely call them if you have the time! But they are under no obligation to protect you, or even to show up.
(Most people don't know that, by the way.)
When you encounter a threat to the above, you have the right to fight until that threat ends, with some leeway granted for the adrenaline dump of combat.
This is not an indiscriminate license to kill or even to engage in violence!
Even if you "feel threatened". You must be able to demonstrate that you acted in defense of life -- yours or another's -- in order to justify your use of force against an attacker.
Weapons are the means by which individuals use force.
Allowing for self-defense allows for the use of weapons.
There is no such thing as a "non-lethal" weapon.
Your hands and feet are natural, and lethal, weapons. More people die by these every year in the United States than by "assault weapons".
Clubs and knives? Definitely lethal. The difference between the winner and a loser in a knife fight, is that the winner dies on the way to the hospital.
Tasers kill more people annually in the United States than "assault weapons". Tasers are also one-time use only. Miss your attacker? Too bad. Attacker has a thick jacket? Better luck next time. Multiple attackers? That sucks.
Pepper spray is probably the least-lethal thing you can use, but it still can and does kill people. Pepper spray is horribly ineffective. Use it indoors, or against the wind, and you will incapacitate yourself. It is useless in the rain. Or if your attacker is wearing a face mask. Or if you have multiple attackers.
A gun, on the other hand, works in the rain. It works in the wind. It works equally well regardless of how strong or weak you are. It works against multiple attackers.
Guns, even if "silenced", are also amazingly loud, which is a big advantage when you're defending yourself, because you want people to hear that noise and call the cops.
So, in a world where we respect peoples' human rights, allowing gun ownership really is common sense.
If we have the right to life, we have the right to self-defense. If we have the right to overthrow tyranny, we have the right to fight it and install a new form of government.
That school of thought dates from the 18th century when thinkers appealed to a Creator who endowed those rights (even if it was a rather aloof Deist conception of God). However, in the following century it faced strong competition from the utilitarian school that suggests that rights are only a convenient fiction that society recognizes for the common good. Plus, these days ever more people do not believe in any particular Creator who could have endowed anyone with rights.
Human ethics, metaethics and politics is definitely nowhere near "laws of physics" settled and agreed on.
And I guess you can argue that some do not recognize universal rights, but it's not a compelling argument to just point out what some people think.
What is it in human nature that concretely and morally entails our having rights? the faculty of reason and its crucial role in human life, as long as we are free to act according to our thoughts. No faith involved, no mysticism required.
[added] The Founding Fathers did not create a theocracy. I don't see what point you are trying to make -- the concept of natural rights does not require a god, and it is irrelevant whether some person invoked deism or not. The fact is that we are all born with inalienable rights by virtue of our nature, what we are and how we ought to live together.
The Greeks may have had a concept of natural rights separate from their being endowed by a Creator, but that is not the same concept of natural rights that John Locke proposed and which inspired the American Founding Fathers, leading to posts from Americans like the one we see above. Advocacy for that school repeatedly cites the existence of a Creator.
That writers continue to conflate the definition of legal "law" with scientific "law" is in some ways amusing, but it weakens the analogies. A physical theory (testable hypothesis making specific predictions) isn't a law. The analogies aren't merely suspect, they are often fatally flawed with appeals to authority amongst other practices which are not relevant in science.
What I am saying, more simply is that "laws" of physics aren't facts. Using them as the basis for an analogy results in flawed reasoning.
With regard to the original subject matter, fundamental rights mean different things to different people, countries, governments, and other entities. It would be nice if everyone adopted a single minimal definition that we all interpreted and supported in the same manner.
This wish is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, as fundamental human rights often run counter to power structures of various types across the world. These rights could potentially constrain other entities rights, so they may choose to adopt some or none of them, or interpret them in as wildly different a manner as they wish.
This is vastly different than how physicists interpret and test theories. We don't set h_bar == 0 because we don't want the world to have a quantum character in some locations. But entities in power can set FundamentalRight_type == 0 for a specific type (pick speech, life, liberty, pursuit of happyness) if they so choose.
In this way, "fundamental" rights are really not so fundamental. They aren't like the theories of physics, the same everywhere.
[1] see https://www.space.com/37018-solar-eclipse-proved-einstein-re... though like almost all writers, they misunderstand what "proven to be correct" means in the context of a physical theory.
[2] see https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters_20...
Facts are what they are, regardless of what people may say or feel about them. The laws of physics, such as Ohm's Law, can be discovered and are facts even were people to deny their validity. The same is true for all facts of nature, including the nature of humans and their rights.
The fact is that I'm a brain in a jar, therefore you don't really exist and have no rights whatsoever.
For what you say to be fact, and not just your personal belief wrongly presented as such, you first need to prove to me that you really exist.
All this to say, anyone who claims to know the "truth" or "facts" in a discussion about ethics and morals doesn't know what they're talking about.
Fact in law is not the same as a fact in science.
Scientific "law" is an artifice, more of something created by someone attempting to explain using a poor mapping of language to the way scientists do their work. Scientific theory makes testable and falsifiable predictions. Gravity is a theory, not a law. It makes testable and falsifiable predictions.
Specifically, Newtonian gravity, what you call the law of gravity or a "law of physics" is known to be wrong.
Given this, how can you claim that they are what they are "regardless of what people may say or feel about them" ?
As a (non-practicing Ph.D) physicist, I have this discussion with many non-scientists, to try to help them move beyond the concept of "laws of physics" (there are none), and into the concept of testable predictions arising from the hypotheses in the theory.
Ohms "Law" is yet another example. Ohm's law breaks down spectacularly for certain materials under specific conditions. Quantum systems like Josephson junctions most definitely do not obey Ohm's "law".
In science, absolute laws do not generally exist. Using your words "regardless of what people may say or feel about them", they are irrelevant, and often incorrect. Scientific "law" is not absolute. They are not "facts".
Language, english or otherwise, is a very poor substitute for the language that testable hypotheses are written in. There is often a fundamentally severe impedance mismatch between what is written out, and what the language of science (mathematics FWIW) actually says, or even how to interpret or describe what is going on.
Without constructing a strawman, I'd like to point out that in previous centuries, people were so enamored of the fixed natural "laws", that they actually persecuted those who poked holes in them. One that comes to mind is the geocentric model of the universe.
This one is particularly interesting, as it had both religious overtones and support, and made specific predictions. The predictions of geocentricism about other planetary orbits did not match observations.
That is the fundamental Ptolemaic system law of planetary motion was wrong.
But it couldn't be.
But it was.
So astronomers developed modifications to the laws. Epicycles were invented.[1]. Which made the calculations harder. And it meant you had to discuss a mechanism by which this worked. That is the law which you are claiming to be inviolate, must be modified at best, or discarded at worse.
Add in to this very accurate measurements and analysis by Brahe, Kepler, and others, this lead Galileo, Newton and others to formulate a new model of the solar system, backed up by testable predictions. It took a while for this "law" to supplant the previous "law". But supplant it, it did.
Because science is not based upon absolute, legalistic versions of laws. Science is based upon testable hypotheses. If the tests fail, so does the hypothesis.
This mechanism survived unscathed for about 250 years or so. Until Einstein pointed out the problems with it.
My point was simply that just because the popular science writers call it a law, doesn't mean it is a "law".
George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", Tribune (19 October 1945)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...
[2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...
In point of fact, the majority of the battles the US military and ARVN engaged in were against the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). That is, conventional forces vs other conventional forces. While the VC (VietCong) were very active and played a crucial role in the eventual victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam, they were never the primary military force deployed by the communists.
Moreover, the VC were not just guys with AK's. They had the full panoply of military hardware that light infantry uses: from anti-tank rockets to mortars to light anti-air missiles. The VC even had a few tanks. The VC did not engage solely in small unit guerilla operations either. Once in a while, they would launch major offensives using coordinated assaults of 10's of thousands of soldiers.
What history has shown is that while insurgencies can cause problems for established regimes, without outside logistical and financial support (i.e. supply of arms, food, money, etc) they usually cannot win.
It seems to me that 1st and 2nd amendment rights are both under particularly intense bombardment these days.