Law Professor Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) has a provacative new article up today on Fox News called The Next International Right . The lead-in to the article sums up the Professor's thesis:

"The international community has a dismal record of preventing or stopping genocide or punishing those responsible; the victims of genocide tend to be unarmed civilians; the best way to prevent genocide is to ensure that civilian populations are armed."

Using Rwanda, Cambodia and the Congo as examples, Prof. Reynolds says "it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed."

According to law professor Daniel Polsby and criminologist Don Kates, the meaning of this is that "a connection exists between the restrictiveness of a country's civilian weapons policy and its liability to commit genocide."

Prof. Reynolds argues that human rights groups "should be prepared to endorse a new international human right: the right of law-abiding citizens to be armed."

Like we said, it's a provactive column, and well worth a read. We're still thinking about it, although we're having a little trouble leaping from a Second Amendment right to bear arms to an international recommendation that citizens of all nations arm themselves as a precaution against genocide. Our conception of a "right" is an entitlement we choose to exercise, rather than a duty we feel obligated to perform. For some reason, the idea of an international recommendation to arm ourselves seems like the latter.