Answering gun grabbers … without the tedious stats
I hate discussing guns and gun rights. For one thing, it’s usually an emotion-charged exchange, and high emotion is seldom conducive to a rational consideration of anything.
But even worse: Each side of the divide has its own set of facts, its own battery of statistics. One side will show via the numbers that the proliferation of guns clearly tracks with higher murder rates. The other will invoke figures to show that more guns equal fewer murders, not more.
For each point under discussion, the citations are at complete loggerheads. One particular country under consideration got rid of guns and now murder rates are down, say the gun control advocates. No, retort the Second Amendment stalwarts: The rates are actually up. Numbers fly back and forth over the people killed in gun violence vs. the people saved from violence because of their guns. Each side contradicts the other, flatly. Each uses cold numerals.
Where does that leave me? If you can’t rely on numbers, then what can you rely on?
Of course, the numbers don’t lie. The real problem is twofold: 1. the sources of the statistics, and 2. the way they are sliced and diced to prove a point.
I’m terrible at numbers. So, I don’t even want to wade into that morass. I prefer common sense and reason. Here goes.
BTW, I’m not focusing here on people who merely wish to limit certain components of firearms, for example, bump stocks. Or even people calling for a ban on certain kinds of guns, such as the AR-15 (we can talk about that another day). My comments here are directed at those, and there are many, who wish to remove guns from society in toto. I am unalterably opposed to them for the following reasons (reasons that don’t involve stats):
1. In a world without firearms, the person with the most upper-body strength will win every violent encounter. If you advocate the removal of guns from society, you need to face this squarely: You are snatching an equalizer from the weak and ensuring the strong will dominate. You want the rugged to overpower the frail, you want the buff young man to overpower the old and feeble. Your paradigm ensures that men will nearly always defeat women in any physical altercation.
Imagine the old man living in a crime-ridden neighborhood who sees drug deals occur on the sidewalk in front of his home with terrifying regularity. Fear fills his days and nights like static electricity in the air. The one thing that brings him a measure of peace is the pistol in his nightstand drawer. He knows that if one of these thuggish SOBs kicks down his door at 2 a.m., he’ll have a fighting chance.
People who want to get rid of guns wish to remove that man’s fighting chance. Shame on them. They do not occupy the moral high ground — far from it.
2. Gun bans mean a government monopoly on instruments of death. If confiscation becomes a reality, the one institution with a legal right to exercise force (deadly force, if necessary) will be the only one wielding firearms. Is there nothing unsettling about this? It’s amazing to me that people who gnash their teeth at Donald Trump every hour, nevertheless, believe that the government he inhabits should be the sole possessor of guns. Have these people failed to think this through?
3. I have a natural right to live and to own property. That implies that I have a right to defend both life and property from those who would deprive me of them. If that right eludes me, then life and property are reduced to a nullity.
Besides, any means of protection I own falls under the category of private property. The state has no more claim on this piece of property than on my furniture or my car. An entity that can take away my property at will is an oppressor. Anti-gun zealots are unwittingly calling for such tyrannical overlords to govern us. Again, this is not moral high ground.
4. This one has become hackneyed by common repetition. But the reason for its oft-repeated status is simple: It’s unassailable. If you make guns illegal, only those people who regard the law will comply. Unfortunately, these are not the people we need to worry about. And they will be at the utter mercy of the criminally inclined who, naturally, will ignore any ban. If you covet such a state of affairs, any moral high-horse you pretend to ride is a mere figment. You have effectively made yourself the advocate of the thief, the rapist and murderer while reducing your countrymen to defenseless children.
That’s it. Four reasons I oppose gun grabs, reasons that don’t involve numbers that people can quibble over. If you think I’m wrong, tell me where. Use logic, please.
