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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
Mostly the ones that sell booze.
We have rights to our property. A consumerist right can be restricted to reasonable degrees under law. The nuclear weapon example comes to mind: our rights to purchase and fabricate new property probably will reasonably have limits in any modern society.
Property we already have. I don’t have a right to own your car. You have that right, but you don’t need to allow me your property.
The argument goes, and emotionally holds, that guns exist primarily to cause deaths. Ban cars and our economy shuts down. Ban showers and the economy will do some strange things as french baths become the norm.
And yet the right is regularly challenged. We do a terrible job of convincing people of that right, and should we lose 2020 we may just. Viriginians will be our trial ground.
This is why a defense of the right to bear arms that does not rely on “Unless it harms someone else” is important. Our guns must survive the Great Automobile Bans/Restrictions.
I’d rather not only shoot .22 unless I’m a politician or have applied for a special license. I’d rather some restrictions we have today go away under a framework of “defending lives”, instead of getting more restrictions under “owning guns”.
Of course that’s what they’re for. Guns are weapons.
Death is a good deterrent to one’s attackers. Guns are a fine method of effecting death. Case closed as far as I’m concerned.
Sorry Kid, lots of things the left wants to ban, including cars and planes, if you were paying attention, are supposed to do something. Like say, coal plants.
Yes. And it’s hard to convince them otherwise.
I converted someone who is generally on the left to a more pro-gun attitude than he had before. The defining argument that got through his preconceptions was the knowledge that police don’t need to protect you. Nothing about “I carry a gun because I can’t carry a cop” or “We have the right to own property” or “Shooting is fun” made any difference. The difference was the knowledge that he might himself need to wield tools of self defense because nobody else has any obligation to on your behalf. Maybe our cause would be further along if we capitalized on what changes minds instead of what’s simply true.
ABSOLUTELY!
Starting with “Vulnerable people need to defend themselves” is much more effective than “I want it.”
Marketing matters. It really does.
I am unwilling to give any leftist an inch
And why am I suggesting giving so much as an inch? By reverting to more marketable arguments we take miles from their “progress.”
Never have I seen thing work that way with th left, Kid.
Making persuasive arguments is not conceding ground. On the contrary: making persuasive arguments is the way in which we gain ground.
You open with a concession that I don’t have a right to an object for fun. Right tobiwn property is pretty fundamental concession.
I open with a concession that we are defending something that is not a fundamental human right. The right to own property is another argument, and even those typically come with caveats. Do you own grenades? How about RPGs? As I understand it, those are really fun, but we lost the arguments in their favor.
Worst:
Very Bad:
Bad:
Neutral:
Good:
Best: Left as an exercise for the reader.
It grieves me that the 2nd Amendment is taken so lightly by the forces of weakness, but it has long been so.
The Constitution was designed that we could quibble about the things that weren’t in it. Yet do liberals shove new impediments down the slippery slope leaving us to Sisyphus them back up until the Supreme Court gets off of their nine asses and cleans house.
The 2nd Amendment that should need no defense turns out to need a lot, because politics.
Politics is about throwing red meat to ‘your’ side while throwing shade on ‘their’ side – and sometimes persuading some of theirs to become yours, and sometimes waiting for the law to back you up.
I welcome a multi-pronged approach to defending gun rights because pronging gun-grabbers is vital work.
The right to own property includes guns.
I won’t concede that, and there is nothing you can say that will change my mind
Obviously, to us.
But surely that right doesn’t extend to obtaining new guns without a license. Or mental health exam. Or background check. Or approval from a local judge. Or a communal vote on your readiness for that property. Or a local law naming you among the list of valid gun buyers.
The right to own property is enough to keep property you already have. Not necessarily acquire new property, or for young people to acquire similar property as readily as you.
If you simply back the right to own guns on the right to own property, people born in a decade will never own guns, while you may hold yours until the day you die.
Yes it does.
Period.
There is not amount of text you can put up that will change my mind. Never. I have a right to freedom of assosiation, Kid, and that includes a right to engage in transactions. There is no right for the community to tell me I can or cannot buy something. That is the road to tyranny.
Tell me, when was the last time you bought a fully automatic firearm?
Because I bet that the stance of “You can’t do that!” leads to more restrictions, illegitimate as they may be.
When was the last time you made a fully automatic firearm? Did you get an FFL first, or did you become a felon? And that is just the right to change things you own into other more fun things.
Somehow, this framework of “It’s mine and you can’t have it” doesn’t win votes. It doesn’t win hearts, it doesn’t win minds, and it doesn’t win elections.
Maybe, if we focused on actual human rights to property and defense, we can win back our rights from the law.
As for the road to tyranny, we have been walking down it for quite a while. Help me reverse the trend, instead of using tried-and-failed arguments.
So I assume you are similarly against all regulation that limits, restricts or raises the price on goods and services? Do you also consider the FDA a piece of the tyranny, for example? Are you equally opposed to all taxation?
In other words: is your position the absolute libertarian one, or are you more interested in guns?
I tend to say once per gun thread (which is probably too often, but here I go again) that guns -n- ammo and the like should not be subject to any taxes, as they raise the price which has the effect of preventing some people from purchasing them. If the Feds decided to tax guns at 5000% it would be a back door to gun control. I say they should tax them at 0%.
Guns should be treated as a form of extreme medication. They certainly helped me preserve my health on one occasion.
“I reckon that hombre needed medicatin'”
~blows smoke rising out of gun barrel~
You know the old saying: God didn’t make men equal. Sam Colt did.
I think said laws should not exist.
Right is right.
I don’t agree with your strategy, therefore I won’t support it.
I am against price controls in areas where government regulations have not mucked up the market.
I am for paying fair value if there is a taking caused by, say, a rezoning or environmental law.
The FDA is poorly executed but, yes, Iam for some regulation of drugs. I happen tho think they do it wrong, and patent law needs to give drug makers more time (not to mention we should stop other nations violating out patents, but that is another story).
Guns, however are special, in that they are linked to our liberty. I have the God given right to own them to guard my home, my family, my life, against fellow citizens and tyrants in power. All tyrants first disarm the population.
Finally, it is ludicrous to ask Bryan G. Stephen’s on Ricochet if he is absolutely libertarian.
Drugs are about our very lives, more relevant to the average citizen than are guns.
I think it is inconsistent to accept the FDA but reject gun laws.
I assume that is because you are conflating two different things.
I am all for laws requiring guns to be safe to operate. By all means, lets have laws that prevent gun makers from selling guns which malfunction dangerously when used.
Get back to me when you have an apples to apples comparison.
But they do exist. And why do they exist? Because of attitudes from our side that don’t win arguments, but end in an annoyed
I do not agree with any stratgey that involves making concessions to the left. Never. I have seen that for 50 years. It always fails. Always.
The only way to fight the left is to dig in and never conceed anything. There is nothing you can say that will change my mind. You are simply in the wrong. I don’t agree with people who are in the wrong.
It’s mine and you can’t have it, has in fact, been working. IN fact, our gun rights have increased nation wide. We are making progress. Must have missed that, Kid.