This is an article to rattle cages, and I’m sure it will serve to make me unpopular, but perhaps to burst our liberal bubble is worth the risk. In this moment, you can choose to either dismiss outright millions of Americans as being crazy—and therefore perform some of the most arrogant analysis of the 21st century—or engage in logical discussion. I invite you to try the latter.
It should first be noted that to own a firearm is guaranteed to citizens under the Second Amendment. If we do in fact want to rid the United States of weapons, then the conversation to have is how we should go about revising the constitution. Is there a reason that the Founding Fathers included this right in our Bill of Rights? Of course there is, and that reason was two-fold. The Founding Fathers lived under fear of an oppressive government and believed that they had the right to be able to defend themselves not only from the dangers of the world around them, but from the government that was established to protect them. It is important to remember that gun culture was bred into America from the very beginning, when a rifle was needed to sleep at night on the Front Range. As to the threat of government, even Madison admits, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” In a world where our phone records are tapped, drones are flown over our own cities, and police seem to have all the force they deem necessary in a moment’s notice, is it wise to forget the words of Madison? Surely the United States government becoming authoritarian seems ridiculous, but I will remind you that Japanese Americans have sat in internment camps without justification and our government is kept in check only when Americans are willing to do the checking. Checking that without the leverage of armament would be useless.
In another perhaps obscure argument for an armed populace, I will ask you to think of guns in America in an international context. Many nations may think we are insane for owning guns, but ask those same nations if they would consider invading us. There are just as many—if not more—guns in America as there are people. In the context of invasion, this is a chilling reality. If an invading army landed in America, they would be confronted with the best-armed defensive force in the history of the world. Every mile would meet an invading force with shots ringing out from fields and rooftops alike. The idea of Americans’ ability to take their own lives and rights into their hands founded America. Here, on the topic of individual rights, is where we meet the more mainstream arguments against gun ownership.
As I have stated before, gun ownership is not only constitutionally legal, but is a reality in the U.S. as frequently as there are citizens. In the abortion debates that dominate the news, liberals implore conservatives to understand that abortion is in fact legal, whether or not they like it. The tables are officially flipped. Gun ownership is not only legal, but is far more expressly defined in the constitution than any pro- or con-abortion argument. Thus, we must apply our logic unilaterally, admit that gun ownership is legal, and treat making it illegal in the same exasperated way that we treat discussions of making abortion illegal. Likewise with immigration debates, we concede that to physically remove millions of illegal immigrants is economically and logistically impossible. It is equally impossible to remove guns from American culture. To physically remove all the millions of weapons from every apartment building and barn house is obviously impossible. Now nothing I have said so far is groundbreaking or something you don’t already know to be true. These are sentiments that “logical people” have already agreed upon in other cases, even if the issue of guns seems too taboo to extend logic towards.
With the reality of guns and their culture in our country, we have to frame the discussion differently than we currently are. We are not operating under the assumption that we are going to get rid of weapons, and nobody believes that we are going to magically stop mankind from violence. In light of being pragmatic, we should recognize that all human interactions occur via persuasion or through force. Force is a realistic part of life. Guns are the only weapons that level the playing field of force. With a gun, an old lady has just as much power as a body builder. In this way, the everyday human can protect themselves from violence in their own homes and lives. Advanced weaponry and this leveling of the playing field is what brought us out of the dark ages. It allowed the average peasant to give himself protection against an invading knight without having to subject himself to a higher lord (aka feudalism). In this very same way, Americans still rely on guns for protection. In the moment of a house burglary or attempted homicide, persuasion has become an inviable option, and time is limited such that waiting for the police is not an option either. In this moment, it is the gun that gives the individual power to protect themself. Yes he is probably going against another armed individual, but that is exactly why he needs to be able to operate on the same playing field.
How do bad guys get guns? The argument stands currently that with regulations, guns will become accessible so the bad guys can’t get them. It is true and agreed upon that there are a ton of guns in America that we cannot physically get rid of. With these in mind, let’s again revisit logic generally affirmed, and apply it to the current situation. Imposing a laundry list of restrictions on illegal immigrants creates an underground world that we cannot control and the legalization of prostitution, drugs, and marijuana all create environments where we can more effectively manage problems. How then does it follow, that a laundry list of regulations will be good for managing guns, and that criminalization will make for more effective management. These are all questions of management after all. If legalizing marijuana makes the problems better, then why criminalize guns? If restricting immigrants makes things worse, than why doesn’t the logic carry? We agree in the cases of drugs and prostitution that people will access these things anyway, so why doesn’t that logic apply to guns? If we agree that some people will have access to guns, then why are we barring the way for others to access them?
The reality is that some people will have guns, and one person having a gun automatically begets the reality of another person needing a gun to maintain the balance of power. We know that guns exist in society and that guns will always be used in offensive ways; therefore, why take away guns from those that wish to use them defensively? Criminals are the people that use guns in ways that create atrocities, and criminals and those without the mental capacity to determine otherwise are the same people that don’t care about laws. Criminals break laws; that’s what they do. Therefore restrictions don’t much matter. The insane don’t regard laws; therefore, going around restrictions is immaterial. The regulations therefore only put up barriers to people that do, in fact, regard the law. Now we have a power balance where criminals have weapons and innocents have no way to protect themselves. This power balance is evident in the atrocities we see around the nation. One study from the Columbia Population Research Center concluded that 92 percent of mass shootings since 2009 have been in gun-free zones. Thus the power imbalance is evident, and the atrocities can continue to occur with aggressors going unchecked.
In the effort to continue logic that works in other places but apparently not with guns, I implore you to consider the effects criminalizing guns would have on disadvantaged populations. Gun ownership is much more real in communities where violence is real. A family in Detroit is far more likely than average to own a gun because they live in a world where criminals get guns—generally not through any legal means—and use it to threaten their lives on a daily basis. They live in a world of violence where they don’t have the luxury to not be able to respond when gunshots ring out. This is the same for the backwoods hillbillies I’m sure you think are the only people that care about gun control. Perhaps they don’t have such safety concerns, but the inner city family and Appalachian “yokel” have something important in common: they are low-income people. Criminalizing guns would affect poor people—especially African Americans—more than others groups. Criminalization would give our penal system yet another reason to lock up young children and increase the amount of incarcerated in our country. Logistically speaking, who draws the line of who is allowed to have a gun? I suppose the law originally states that the mentally insane cannot have guns but then these lines become muddled. What happens when the law shifts so that those “at risk” can’t have guns and the laws are again subjective enough to apply in a biased fashion to target minority sections of people? In the same way that voter registration target specific groups of people and the war on drugs targets specific groups of people, gun registrations would also target very specific groups of people.
I have said many things in this article, maybe too many, but perhaps something has stuck. I haven’t used groundbreaking logic or logic that hasn’t been applied in other places that you undoubtedly agree with. This logic apparently cannot be extended beyond the situation that it’s tailored for, although sound logic should be able too. This means that either I am wrong now, or the previous places similar logic is applied are wrong. Which do we risk? I am not here to convince you that you must own a gun, nor am I here to state that all regulations on weaponry are bad. I am merely writing to make you think about all sides of an issue that has been made simple and make you consider taking a foot off of the carefully treaded liberal party line. Form your own conclusions about gun control, but do not dismiss everyone else as crazy. That is no more “open minded” than Donald Trump speaking of immigration and building giant walls across our southern border. Be pragmatic, engage in discussion, do not shut others out, extend your logic across the board, recognize that guns are a reality, and, for God’s sake, don’t shoot the messenger.