Auctioneers are generally very conservative. Auctioneers are generally rigid individualists, proclaiming their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness notwithstanding almost any rule or law.
In other words, you can do whatever you want, and I can do whatever I want? In fact, most auctioneers would likely agree that:
Safety is important but more important than safety is our individual rights and our individual liberty.
Unfortunately for those believing such, the laws don’t necessarily agree with your view. Your rights to life and liberty are guaranteed to the extent they don’t infringe on others’ rights to life and liberty.
We live here in the United States where we’re in a collective society where collective rights often — but not always — trump individual rights.
For instance, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) the Supreme Court of the United States held that the state law regarding its citizens to receive a vaccine was a legitimate exercise of the state’s police power to protect the public health as it was neither unreasonable nor arbitrarily imposed.
So what’s “unreasonable?” What’s “arbitrary?” Could either then suggest your individual rights supersede any collective rights? Maybe. It’s generally held that any public safety (collective) laws — any laws — have to be rationally applied …
In fact, regarding the Second Amendment, from 1939 until 2008, your right to “keep and bear” arms was considered a collective right, and since 2008 has been considered an individual right … but really didn’t change that much.
Isn’t it interesting that despite the Second Amendment specifically saying that your right to “keep and bear” arms cannot be infringed upon, those rights have been infringed upon every day since 1939? How can that be?
If you as an auctioneer want to argue that your individual, sovereign, proprietary, founding father’s and/or inalienable rights — guaranteed by the constitution or otherwise — can’t be infringed upon, there’s no such legitimate argument to make.
However, if you want to argue that your rights can’t be infringed upon unreasonably, arbitrarily, irrationally, or create any undue burden to exercise any of your guaranteed rights … welcome to the real world.
Mike Brandly, Auctioneer, CAI, CAS, AARE has been an auctioneer and certified appraiser for over 30 years. His company’s auctions are located at: Mike Brandly, Auctioneer, RES Auction Services and Goodwill Columbus Car Auction. He serves as Distinguished Faculty at Hondros College, Executive Director of The Ohio Auction School, an Instructor at the National Auctioneers Association’s Designation Academy and America’s Auction Academy. He is faculty at the Certified Auctioneers Institute held at Indiana University and is approved by the The Supreme Court of Ohio for attorney education.
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