Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
I’ve Come to the Conclusion That We Have No Right to Own Guns
There. I’ve said it. Human beings have no right to own guns. You on the left can shut up now about how we want to own guns more than we want to keep kids safe. We don’t have the right to the consumerist pleasure of owning lots of fun machines.
But.
It is immoral to prevent an individual from acting to preserve their own life.
Nobody* thinks it’s unreasonable to fight back if someone is actually trying to kill you. People* don’t think it’s unreasonable for a woman to hit someone attempting to remove her autonomy.
People, it follows,* can not be morally prevented from defending themselves. People have a right to defend their lives. There is no court that can return you your life or property intact.**
Of course, now that we have established that, it’s plain to see that humans, as users of tools, should be able to use tools that can help them in their defense. Otherwise, you effectively ban defense of the self as clearly as if you yourself stabbed every victim. How can you morally prohibit a tired man, a paralyzed woman, the elderly, from protecting themselves? They may, of course, defend themselves with their fists but are less likely to be successful even against an unarmed man than if they just had a tool.
People propose the need for a line. Obviously, we don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry owning and using nuclear weapons. Society and civilization couldn’t handle it. We Need a Line.
So here it is. Can I use it to preserve my own life from another individual trying to take it? While keeping my own life in the process?
If you can, then it’s immoral to prohibit an individual from using that tool to defend their life, as well as immoral to prohibit an individual from equipping themselves with that tool. Just in case they must defend their life.
We don’t have a right to own guns. We have a right to defend our lives from damage and our property from destruction. We have a right to equip ourselves with the tools and skills necessary to do so, if we choose so.
To do anything else is immoral.
*Except for Britons or other places where there is a doctrine of proportionate force. Or people who got the wrong lessons from the successes of peaceful protest.
** Attribution not remembered.
Published in Guns
None of this would be necessary if only this train of logic were written down in the late 1700s, instead of leaving us “The right to keep and bear arms” as the conclusion.
You can’t teach people to respect human life by only stating “Killing people is wrong.”
Good points!
The right to preserve our own lives being paramount, the freedom to own the necessary tool(s) to achieve that end shall not be infringed.
No law eliminates need of common sense and honesty. As lawyers know, the longer a claim, the more there is for liars to twist.
My pet peeve on this issue is that states like Texas will let you carry a gun but not a large knife. Apparently, a weapon that can kill instantly at range is less dangerous to public safety and order than a weapon that requires proximity and dexterity.
That’s the sort of nonsense that comes from ignoring first principles. The further removed law becomes from philosophy, the more arbitrary and haphazard it becomes. In a country of a billion laws, laws represent whims of the powerful.
I am sorry, but I cannot agree with the first line. Who has the right to tell me what I can and cannot own? I have a right to own the objects I want unless you have a case I should not.
You don’t understand, gun control isn’t about “keeping kids safe”. The whole point is to deny us the ability to defend ourselves.
There are few things the powerful despise more than self defense, as it is predicated on the basic human dignity of others. Furthermore, they have no intention of giving up their guns. There will be carve-outs for the connected to get the necessary permits, private security firms, plus preferential treatment from law enforcement. Those with the necessary political squeeze will have all the guns they need.
It’s just we peons who will be unarmed. This was always the purpose of gun control.
In Texas, Open Carry of swords was legalized in 2017. Permitless.
Weapons are useful in force against other humans, primarily. This is the case made against private ownership of firearms. It politically wins hearts and minds.
I mean, yes, that is the whole point of this post. Redefine the narrative, and take control of the terms. It’s not gun control if it’s Restrictions on Defense. If our concerns are about the motive rather than the method, restrictions on defense can’t politically win.
Sorry Kid,
But Guns are fun to fire. Period. Telling me that some people might misuse them is not a reason to keep me from using them.
Unless, son, you are wanting to ban cars. They kill more people than guns daily. Get back to me on that.
As most liberals say, “If you want my smartphone, you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers” . . .
Agreed. Unlike we do with non-prescription drugs. Or even prescription drugs. Or nuclear weapons (Mushroom clouds are FUN). Or subliminal messaging (which really could do people a lot of good).
We live in a society. One side effect is banning things because of the effect on that society. Currently we focus on the guns because they are scary looking and are easy to moralize “Won’t you think of the children.” We’ll do a lot better when we focus on the primary purpose of those guns, and they are not there simply because they are fun to shoot.
I have come to the conclusion you stopped reading at the first line.
Not to mention the polar bears! The greenies will be pushing hard to ban private ownership of cars within the next decade or two, it’s the only way to meet their impossible zero-emission greenhouse goals.
I missed that news somehow. Apparently, it is now generally legal to carry a sword in Texas but not a knife under 5.5 inches.
I could openly carry my KA-BAR. Now, I wonder how many businesses in my area have private restrictions posted.
I agree with you, but the 2A is how this manifests – in writing and reasoning – and is all that stands in the way of confiscation (other than the guns themselves). Or to put it another way, your clarity is a few centuries late to the party.
Would that our Supremes would do so as well – I’ve no doubt that the writers of the Constitution believed them to be explicitly covered under the 2A.
I’ve written elsewhere that government banning something because some people might misuse that thing is a variety of authoritarian infantilization that particularly sticks in my craw.
How much you can deposit limited because drug dealers. How much sudafed (?) you can buy because meth makers. How quickly you can buy a gun because someone might be angry and do something rash.
You can’t __ because someone might__.
I appreciate the effort and, if in fact we didn’t have a Constitutionally protected right to own guns, I’d certainly find an effort to derive such a right from first principles useful.
But, fortunately, we do have such a right already enumerated, so I don’t have to depend on anyone agreeing with the suppositions or logic of the argument you’ve presented, however sensible it sounds to me (and it does sound sensible to me).
I read the whole thing. You lost me with the first line.
There is a difference.
You are willing to make a concession I will not. There can be no telling me what I can and cannot own without some compelling reason. The left has never given one. Guns are designed to kill people. That is enough reason to want to own one.
Again, cars kill more people than guns. If the point about banning guns is deaths, we should go after cars. And showers.
Why not?
John Locke said we have the right to life, liberty, and property. Property includes fun machines.
But of course, the left already does. I want a proper shower head, I’m sick of this low-flow nonsense. And incandescent light bulbs. And disposable plastic bags.
They freakin’ want to ban drinking straws, for goodness sake! Where will it end???
When my priest began bloviating about gun control from the pulpit, this was exactly what I wanted to stand up and yell at him.
People in Parkland had been deprived of the tools necessary to defend themselves and the state actively refused to defend them themselves.
Despite my atheistic ways I believe priests are due some respect.
Would that they could stop confusing God with pop culture.
Come-to-Jesus meetings aren’t just for the laity.
“You can take my three-gallon flush toilet when you pry my cold, dead rear end from it” . . .
I don’t think KidCoder is arguing against the 2A, guys. He’s offering a rhetorical option, which could actually be pretty useful.
Police officers, officially, are authorized to use deadly force to defend themselves or others from death or serious bodily injury. Once the threshold for deadly force is met, the instrument doesn’t matter. Whacking someone in the head with a nightstick is deadly force. So is choking him, hitting him with your cruiser, or —if you’re strong and skilled enough—punching him. Why do police officers have guns? Because a gun is —in most instances—the tool—designed for purpose ——-most suited to delivering deadly force at a relatively safe distance.
The same applies to a hundred ten pound woman walking through a deserted parking structure at night: a large man comes at her with menace in his mien, and she is justified in using deadly force to defend herself. She can stab him with her knitting needles, throttle him with her silk scarf, do that thing where you try to shove his nose-bones into his brain, whack him with the rolling pin she just purchased at Williams-Sonoma…or she can shoot him from three yards away. All of these are legitimate means of self-defense, but only the gun is likely to be effective.
Slight correction: Laws are not about controlling inanimate objects. Laws are about controlling people. Period.
Gun control is hitting what you’re aiming at.
Every time I hear some mindless, ignorant twit say we have to remove guns from people’s hands I want to ask: What do you have in mind for me that my having a gun makes you nervous?
I find the gun control advocates tend to be urban and have no grasp of the fact their ideas can’t work in rural, or even most suburban areas, in part because they have no concept of the vast space of the country, and how long it takes in most isolated situations for law enforcement to arrive. And many of the gun control advocates don’t even really care about citizens’ personal safety, they simply want to take the weapons to de-empower the citizens.
Libertarians joined the left in New York early in the past decade at suing over ‘Stop and Frisk’, while Bloomberg and his gun-grabbing nanny state-ism probably makes him the most anti-libertarian presidential candidate out there. But he could sort of make it work in his small world as NYC mayor because you had a densely-populated city, where the government could fund massive amounts of concentrated policing, and give them the legal tools to make it so that even if there wasn’t a cop immediately in sight, any wanna-be perp would know the risk/reward factor for them was too low to commit the crime.
You can’t do that in less densely populated areas, because you’d bankrupt the government with all the law enforcement you’d need to blanket the area. And Bloomberg’s successor and other mayors and Soros-backed district attorneys around the nation have shown they don’t share Mayor Mike’s belief that unarmed citizens need overwhelming law enforcement coverage. They’re all-in on the unarmed citizens part, but they think blanketing the area with law enforcement is a problem, not a solution, and it doesn’t take very long after that for the wanna-be perps to become actual ones, because the risk/reward factor is now on their side.
In the pols’ minds, if a few people have to be hurt/die to fit their idea of what law enforcement and criminal justice should be, well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Just not their eggs….
The constitution is a beautiful document. But it shouldn’t be relied on alone to affirm one’s rights. Without the means to discourage abuse, all of your rights are either provisional or you have no rights at all. Dave Chappelle gets it.
Right, I get that, and I agree the argument from the principle of self defense is both true and useful.
My objection is that the first paragraph concedes too much. We do have a right to the consumerist pleasure of owning lots of fun machines, and we have the right to self defense. It’s not one or the other, it’s both.
Yes.