by GCM

Created on: March 24, 2008

No, a person should not lose rights, even the right to bear arms, based on an unproven accusation alone. Such a law would violate basic principles set forth in the fifth and sixth amendments to the Constitution.

The fifth amendment provides for the right to due process before the government can deprive life, liberty, and property. Due process includes procedural protections and substantive protections that does not allow the government to infringe on individual rights without notice and hearing and without weighing the value of the individual's right. Depriving a person of a right without notice and hearing and based on an unproven accusation would be a violation of these due process protections. It breadth of scope would sweep wrongly accused innocent persons as well as the guilty. At a minimum, the government should have to demonstrate at hearing that the accusation is true before a person's due process rights have been properly accorded.

The sixth amendment also embodies rights that allow an accused defend themselves and to obtain a proper and speedy trial before an impartial jury. These rights and protections exist to protect the basic concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty by a fair and impartial jury. Denying a person a right based merely on a accusation alone runs contrary to this principle. However one might feel about the right to bear arms, the precedent of allowing the government to deprive a person of a right based on an unproven accusation would erode this basic concept of innocent until proven guilty.

In conclusion, a person should not lose rights, even the right to bear arms, based on an unproven accusation as such a law would run contrary to principles set forth in the fifth and sixth amendments. While governments need to take measures to reduce domestic violence, especially gun related domestic violence, the government should be careful to adopt measures that do not erode important constitutional protections.

(Because the question appears to presupposes the existence of such a right, I have assumed for the purposes of this article that there is actually such a right. Whether or not such an right exists and if it does exist, what the parameters of that right might be, I leave for another debate).

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