In the wake of recent mass shootings there are a lot of people talking about guns. The murder of children in Newtown has exposed our raw emotions and anti-gun people are a lot more honest about their goals and their fears right now. People talk about repealing the 2nd Amendment, confiscating guns and other pretty drastic measures.
I agree with the anti-gun crowd in one respect: if there were no guns, there would be fewer deaths by murder. But that's like saying if there were fewer cars there would be less death in accidents. Cars are necessary, we have to do our best to make them as safe as possible, and make our use of them as safe as possible. It's exactly the same with guns.
I want to address a few aspects of this argument. Part one is the idea that there is no good reason for citizens to own guns and that the 2nd Amendment should be repealed or that it wasn't intended to guarantee an individual right to arms. Part two will be the idea that anyone with a gun is dangerous. I also want to talk about the AR-15 specifically.
I don't love guns. I was brought up around guns and we used them for hunting. I never developed a love for hunting and I don't pursue it as an adult. But it was a great education in gun ownership and is a great way to get a sense for what people had to do to survive before meat was readily available under cellophane in the grocery store.
What I learned about guns was that they are just a tool. There is no magic in a gun and there is no evil either. It's just a means to an end. Twenty-five years in the Army and I still feel the same way. I don't go to the range for entertainment, I go for work. Even firing my civilian guns is practice rather than fun.
Not to say I don't enjoy it, I do. But it's more the satisfaction from accomplishing something rather than an adrenaline rush or amusement park type fun. To each their own though. Many people shoot for fun and I see nothing wrong with that. Some people bungee jump, some go to wine tastings, some go to the range.
I also see the gun, especially the semi-auto, as amazing engineering. It's as fascinating to me as a mechanical watch, which I've posted about in the past.
All of that being said, again, I don't love my guns, but I wouldn't want to be without them. I don't love the hammer in my toolbox either, but I wouldn't want to be without it either.
I strongly believe that the gun has done more good in the world than bad. I'm not going to list a bunch of examples, although I think I could. But go back to before guns and I wouldn't have wanted to live in that world. In that world serfdom and slavery were common. The strongest made the rules and the weak had no say. The common man was concerned with day-to-day survival. He worked the fields or a trade and counted on the benevolence of his rulers to guarantee his safety and property rights.
Justice was at the whim of the rulers, if they were just and fair then good. If not, well too bad. Maybe you get together with your neighbors and take your pitchforks and axes and maybe a sword or two and go demand justice. Of course you are going to lose because the rulers have trained soldiers whose only job in life has been to learn how to use the sword or lance or whatever the weapon of the era happens to be. Angry farmers or merchants don't really stand a chance against trained soldiers when the weapons demand years of training to become skilled at using.
This was the situation for roughly 5000 years of history. From the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans to the Byzantine Empire and the rulers of China and Japan, right through to the Kings of Europe. Might makes right. A ruler or government who could afford to keep an army of well-fed, trained and disciplined men, and could equip them with quality weapons of the day could run roughshod over the people and the people, unless they could turn the army to their side, could do little about it. Hollywood makes movies about the very few exeptions to this rule, "Braveheart" is a good example. And remember how he ended up.
The gun changed this equation. You don't need to spend years of training to learn to use it. You don't have an advantage if you are well-fed and stronger than the next person. Often a cheap one works as well as the state-of-the-art one.
There is no better example of what I'm talking about than the American Revolution. We felt we were not getting justice from our rulers. So we declared our independence and we had to fight for it. Without the gun our rebel forefathers would have stood little chance against the British Army. But we had guns and we won our freedom.
To imagine that the men who wrote the Bill of Rights were not keenly aware of the role of the gun in the winning of our freedom is ludicrous. People argue that they only meant militia members should keep guns, but at the time of the Revolution, the militia was everyone. So go ahead and stick to that point, I guess, but it's saying the same thing: everyone should be armed.
The more important point, to me, is that guns = freedom. This equation has not changed in the last few hundred years. Where the people are not armed, they live in fear and have no freedom. Ask the villagers in Uganda, whose children are stolen and forced to become slave soldiers in Kony's army, if they would like to have a gun in each house.
It doesn't matter how far we've evolved, how civilized we've become or how much we trust our current government. I have no paranoid fantasy about the U.S. government coming for me in the night. I do not fear the government because we have a strong constitution that guarantees my individual rights. These rights work together to guarantee my freedom, none of them is more important than another.
It's wonderful that England, Australia and Canada banned guns. Go there if you want to live in that culture. They are participating in an experiment, in my opinion. It will probably be fine in my lifetime, and even my kid's lifetimes. But remember, within living memory a European country enslaved and murdered millions of it's own people, various Asian countries have done the same thing, with North Korea still under brutal dictatorship. And, of course, don't forget the Kony thing. We haven't evolved so much.
Governments change, circumstances change, we don't know what the world will be like in 100 years any more than we could have predicted the internet back in 1910. Come what may, Americans will be free, not because the government guarantees it, but because we, the people, guarantee it.
Protecting the individual right to keep and bear arms has nothing to do with "gun culture" or paranoia, it's not about hunting or self-defense either. It's simply our heritage, it's American culture. It's what makes America what it is: a free country.
I'll write Part two when I get a chance.
I agree with the anti-gun crowd in one respect: if there were no guns, there would be fewer deaths by murder. But that's like saying if there were fewer cars there would be less death in accidents. Cars are necessary, we have to do our best to make them as safe as possible, and make our use of them as safe as possible. It's exactly the same with guns.
I want to address a few aspects of this argument. Part one is the idea that there is no good reason for citizens to own guns and that the 2nd Amendment should be repealed or that it wasn't intended to guarantee an individual right to arms. Part two will be the idea that anyone with a gun is dangerous. I also want to talk about the AR-15 specifically.
I don't love guns. I was brought up around guns and we used them for hunting. I never developed a love for hunting and I don't pursue it as an adult. But it was a great education in gun ownership and is a great way to get a sense for what people had to do to survive before meat was readily available under cellophane in the grocery store.
What I learned about guns was that they are just a tool. There is no magic in a gun and there is no evil either. It's just a means to an end. Twenty-five years in the Army and I still feel the same way. I don't go to the range for entertainment, I go for work. Even firing my civilian guns is practice rather than fun.
Not to say I don't enjoy it, I do. But it's more the satisfaction from accomplishing something rather than an adrenaline rush or amusement park type fun. To each their own though. Many people shoot for fun and I see nothing wrong with that. Some people bungee jump, some go to wine tastings, some go to the range.
I also see the gun, especially the semi-auto, as amazing engineering. It's as fascinating to me as a mechanical watch, which I've posted about in the past.
All of that being said, again, I don't love my guns, but I wouldn't want to be without them. I don't love the hammer in my toolbox either, but I wouldn't want to be without it either.
I strongly believe that the gun has done more good in the world than bad. I'm not going to list a bunch of examples, although I think I could. But go back to before guns and I wouldn't have wanted to live in that world. In that world serfdom and slavery were common. The strongest made the rules and the weak had no say. The common man was concerned with day-to-day survival. He worked the fields or a trade and counted on the benevolence of his rulers to guarantee his safety and property rights.
Justice was at the whim of the rulers, if they were just and fair then good. If not, well too bad. Maybe you get together with your neighbors and take your pitchforks and axes and maybe a sword or two and go demand justice. Of course you are going to lose because the rulers have trained soldiers whose only job in life has been to learn how to use the sword or lance or whatever the weapon of the era happens to be. Angry farmers or merchants don't really stand a chance against trained soldiers when the weapons demand years of training to become skilled at using.
This was the situation for roughly 5000 years of history. From the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans to the Byzantine Empire and the rulers of China and Japan, right through to the Kings of Europe. Might makes right. A ruler or government who could afford to keep an army of well-fed, trained and disciplined men, and could equip them with quality weapons of the day could run roughshod over the people and the people, unless they could turn the army to their side, could do little about it. Hollywood makes movies about the very few exeptions to this rule, "Braveheart" is a good example. And remember how he ended up.
The gun changed this equation. You don't need to spend years of training to learn to use it. You don't have an advantage if you are well-fed and stronger than the next person. Often a cheap one works as well as the state-of-the-art one.
There is no better example of what I'm talking about than the American Revolution. We felt we were not getting justice from our rulers. So we declared our independence and we had to fight for it. Without the gun our rebel forefathers would have stood little chance against the British Army. But we had guns and we won our freedom.
To imagine that the men who wrote the Bill of Rights were not keenly aware of the role of the gun in the winning of our freedom is ludicrous. People argue that they only meant militia members should keep guns, but at the time of the Revolution, the militia was everyone. So go ahead and stick to that point, I guess, but it's saying the same thing: everyone should be armed.
The more important point, to me, is that guns = freedom. This equation has not changed in the last few hundred years. Where the people are not armed, they live in fear and have no freedom. Ask the villagers in Uganda, whose children are stolen and forced to become slave soldiers in Kony's army, if they would like to have a gun in each house.
It doesn't matter how far we've evolved, how civilized we've become or how much we trust our current government. I have no paranoid fantasy about the U.S. government coming for me in the night. I do not fear the government because we have a strong constitution that guarantees my individual rights. These rights work together to guarantee my freedom, none of them is more important than another.
It's wonderful that England, Australia and Canada banned guns. Go there if you want to live in that culture. They are participating in an experiment, in my opinion. It will probably be fine in my lifetime, and even my kid's lifetimes. But remember, within living memory a European country enslaved and murdered millions of it's own people, various Asian countries have done the same thing, with North Korea still under brutal dictatorship. And, of course, don't forget the Kony thing. We haven't evolved so much.
Governments change, circumstances change, we don't know what the world will be like in 100 years any more than we could have predicted the internet back in 1910. Come what may, Americans will be free, not because the government guarantees it, but because we, the people, guarantee it.
Protecting the individual right to keep and bear arms has nothing to do with "gun culture" or paranoia, it's not about hunting or self-defense either. It's simply our heritage, it's American culture. It's what makes America what it is: a free country.
I'll write Part two when I get a chance.
