Gun Control/The Second Amendment

This is a serious topic in our society, and I think that my opinion is, in some sense at least, very different from most people. People seem to own guns for one of four reasons:

1) To use them for illegal purposes

2) For hunting/related activities

3) For self-defense

4) They collect guns

Clearly reason 4 is very rare, and most people who collect guns are collecting really old guns that don’t even work very well, so we’ll ignore them for the purposes of this discussion. Obviously, as a society, we want to minimize the number of people that fit into number 1. We don’t want our criminals to own guns, since they will use them to commit crimes. Unfortunately there is no obvious way to go about this, and before we talk about accomplishing this goal, let’s talk about the real fundamental question at the heart of this issue– does a person have a right to own a gun?

The second amendment to our constitution states that we have the right to bear arms, and its original intention (as I understand it, anyway) was to allow the citizens of the country to protect themselves against their government. Well, you could argue that we’ll never need this, and you may be right. More to the point, I’m not sure that our (even armed) citizenry would really stand a chance against our military if it were directed fully against us, so this idea may be a little outdated. Clearly, our founding fathers did a good job of establishing the foundations for this country, but they were not omniscient. They had no idea what the future would look like today, and no concept of the problems we would be facing. They might be astonished at the very fact that there are no slaves in today’s society. My point is that I think that the people who say “the Constitution says we can have guns so we can” are wrong, but I also think that the people who say “the 2^nd Amendment is outdated so we should ignore it completely” are wrong. We should be sitting down and thinking about what’s really right and not either blindly agreeing or disagreeing with previous policy.

So, back to our point – do people have the right to own a gun? Well, we certainly need some device capable of killing animals. If you live in this area, then you know that deer are everywhere. In fact, we need more people to hunt them, not fewer. Their populations are steadily increasing despite the large number of them killed by cars each year. Does every person have a right to hunt? Well, I think it’s hard to deny this, provided they follow the rules we have established regarding hunting. Certainly in cities this is more or less invalid, but in some parts of this country outlawing hunting would be silly. Now, I would be in favor of serious restrictions on which guns you can use for hunting (these may exist already, I’m not really up on current regulations). Single shot rifles and/or shotguns should be sufficient for hunters, and those aren’t likely to do very well against groups of people. I think it’s hard to argue against the idea that hunting should continue to happen, and I don’t think that most people buying guns meant for hunting are using them to commit crimes – it’s very difficult to walk into a convenience store carrying a shotgun or rifle and remain inconspicuous.

With hunting pretty much out of the picture, this gun control issue boils down to “does a person have a right to own a gun for defense of themselves, their family and/or their property?” For my part, I do not own a gun. I sincerely hope I will never feel as though I need to own a gun. If I were being robbed, I would not try to use a gun even if I owned one – I judge that just the risk of being killed in a gunfight I started would be a much greater loss than the loss of all of my possessions. Material goods can be bought again – once you or someone you care about is dead, they can’t be brought back. I can only imagine owning a gun for self-defense if I thought there was a high enough chance that someone would break into my house with the pure intention of killing me or someone I loved. I judge this risk to be negligible. However, I cannot imagine telling another person that they are not allowed to defend themselves if their best judgment tells them it is necessary – telling another person that I am a better judge of their safety than they are is not reasonable in my opinion. And I certainly cannot imagine the government telling people that it can judge for them.

Does this mean that some people who will use guns for illegal purposes will have an easier time getting them than they otherwise would have had? Yes, probably – it may even allow some criminals to get their hands on guns who wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Thorough background checks help, and I think we should really work on our ability to avoid selling guns to those who should not have them. This system can be improved, and I think this is where our efforts should be focused. You could argue that if we didn’t sell guns to anybody, then maybe criminals wouldn’t be able to get them, but, at least for now, the reality is that criminals have guns. Surely many of those criminals would find other illegal ways of obtaining guns if they were not able to purchase them legally. I certainly agree that some kinds of guns should never be sold to civilians (machine guns, etc.).

Now, and interesting question that I think is fundamentally different is whether or not people should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on their persons. I think this question is fundamentally different because now we’re talking about these guns being drawn and/or discharged in public places, which brings up a host of new problems. For example – if you perceive that you’re in danger and fire your weapon and kill an innocent bystander, have you committed a crime if it turns out that your danger was not as serious as you thought? (or maybe more importantly, even if your danger was real). Within your own property, if you start a gunfight with a robber, you are essentially only endangering only you and your family (yes, there is a small chance that a neighbor or somebody driving by in a car will be hurt too). In a public place, there is a strong incentive for society to discourage anything from escalating into this level of violence, since innocent people being shot is a really, really bad thing. Besides this, how many normal, law-abiding citizens have a real need to carry a gun to defend themselves? Even if you’re getting mugged, you are very unlikely to be severely injured, and a concealed weapon does not help if you are suddenly approached. And anyway, let’s say you are walking down the street at night and a guy in dark clothes is approaching you from behind. Do you have a right to draw a weapon on that person? They have done nothing illegal simply by wearing dark clothes and walking quickly. I would bet that very nearly 100% of the people who would choose to carry concealed weapons are either criminals, or have had dealings with sketchy people who are probably criminals.

Maybe you’ll argue that if people carried concealed weapons, that something like the Virginia Tech massacre would have been stopped. But let’s be honest. There’s a big difference between having a gun on your possession that maybe you’ve even taken a course to learn how to use, and being able to draw, aim, and fire your gun accurately with your life on the line in a matter of a few seconds. Normal citizens aren’t trained to do this kind of thing, and for that reason they are just as likely to cause harm and kill more innocent people when trying to be a hero. The fact is that events like this are extremely rare – hundreds of times more people die each year from automobile accidents. Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, but the fact is that we really cannot prevent such tragedies from happening. If somebody wants to kill 20 or 30 of their fellow citizens, there are tons of public places this could be accomplished. Allowing or even encouraging normal citizens to carry concealed guns will do far more harm than good, in my opinion.