Bang to Rights, Part 1

No doubt every reader is familiar, at least, with the skeleton of the “debate” currently being carried out most vociferously over the right of Americans to own and use firearms, but just for the sake of bringing our one visitor who’s been living under a rock into the light, here’s the down and dirty version:

                In the wake of the Newtown massacre (Aurora, Columbine, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum notwithstanding), it was generally decided that the time to talk about guns had arrived. In one corner were the gun rights activists, who loudly declaimed that all Americans retain the right to own and use literally any type of gunpowder-centric machine imaginable for literally any reason at all. In the other corner were the gun control activists, who loudly declaimed that firearms may or may not be the single worst thing the human race has ever come up with and that we should do away with the wretched things entirely. Most people’s opinions fell somewhere between the poles.

                The debate grew heated, as debates will, and propaganda for both sides started pouring into everything and now we have this bizarre battle of ideas that, strangely, doesn’t seem to address firearms in any real or logical manner.

                So let’s talk about them now.

                Foremost, a gun is a tool, and it has a purpose. The purpose of a gun is to kill things with. Many gun rights schills have claimed that lots of guns are for sport or for target shooting or for protection. This is true. It does not change the fact that all firearms are designed with the express purpose of ending life. It’s a fact, get over it.

                Second, a gun is not an inherently evil object. See above. I personally have had the pleasure of growing up with guns- shotguns, rifles, a pistol- and have never once sacrificed a cat to them or whispered demonic curses over them in the dark. I have also never killed anyone, wounded anyone or threatened anyone with a gun. Most people don’t.

                Bearing all  these things in mind, I think it’s essential that all Americans have the right to own a firearm, discounting those with violent criminal pasts (looking at you, felons of the world) and those who have mental disorders that render them incapable of owning or using a gun safely.

                It boils down in my mind thusly:

                Given that an essential tenet of liberal thought is the preservation and expansion of human rights,

                Given that the fundamental human right, to my mind, is the right to defend one’s life and other rights (pursuit of happiness, liberty, the right to eat Swedish meatballs that aren’t made of horse),

                Given that, when it comes to defending one’s life, violence can be a very real and very necessary- if unpleasant- condition,

                Given that the playing field involves firearms wielded, sometimes, by those intent upon harming others,

                Therefore people ought to have guns, if they like.

                This comes with a caveat, however. If we insist- and I believe we should- upon having a right to bear arms, we must also insist upon the responsibility of learning to safely and judiciously exercise that right. If the second amendment must be upheld as it is written, then firearm education must become commonplace. Consider it this way: we give teenagers the legal right to propel multi-ton vehicles are unnatural speeds after they partake in a ubiquitous training regimen and pass a basic competency test. A car is no less deadly than a gun (in fact, traffic fatalities outweigh gun fatalities, though the two numbers are set to converge by 2015).

                TL;DR for the lazy kids: Americans should have guns because humans are entitled to self-defense, as long as we institute a rigorous and comprehensive- and mandatory- gun safety course, ideally for adolescents.