I got quite a bit of feedback from my last post about how guns are the illegitimate children of Satan and Charlton Heston , and it only seemed fair to address these issues in the form of another patronizing, self-righteous post.
The most common line of defense from the gun toters is that a ban on guns will only take away weapons from the good people (I’m not even going to try to explain the fallacy of the phrase “good people”).
First off, this is the same logic that we use to defend abortion — if we ban abortion, women will still have them, and they’ll be less safe. If this is your reason for owning a gun, you better be ready to support abortion.
Secondly, of course some criminals would still find ways to get their hands on guns. The point is, they’d have to do it illegally, meaning that these evildoers (again, I’m biting my tongue), could be arrested and prosecuted for owning firearms before they shot twelve year old boys trick-or-treating . If we’re really concerned about home invasion, we can invest in security systems, we can take self-defense classes, we can raise Rottweilers, we can demand a stronger and more efficient police force. We can work to make living conditions better for would-be criminals, we can legalize and regulate the sex and drug industries to ensure that the workers of these businesses can feel safe. We don’t have to shoot everyone trying to steal our TVs.
And of course, we can’t stop murder, as the pro-killers often remind us. There will always be knives, screwdrivers, piano wires, and bows and arrows — but these are nothing compared to the quick, unstoppable force of a single bullet. If T.J. Darrisaw ’s attacker was limited to a box cutter, he could still be alive today enjoying a Three Musketeers bar.
Then there’s the Constitution. The Second Amendment is apparently sacred to the urban cowboys, on par with the likes of the Sixth Commandment (that’s the not-killing one). What they forget is that this same constitution once labeled a black man as being equal to three-fifths of a white man and prohibited the production of alcohol . The founding fathers knew that no document could withstand the tests of time. Back in 1776, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that a woman’s voice counted for nothing, slavery was the backbone of the nation’s economy, and every citizen could own a musket to defend themselves from an encroaching government. But it’s 2008 now, and none of those values are still logical. There’s a reason these things are called “amendments”; laws can be amended.
They ask, “What if the government gets out of control? What if Czar Obama sends his secret police force after us?” They lament, “If only Anne Frank had an Uzi.”
They’re reading too much George Orwell. But assuming that they’re right, that the government will grow too big, reducing the US to a totalitarian police state, there’s not much a group of rednecks can do with their hunting rifles. In the 21st century, information is the strongest weapon around. No dictatorship, no matter how powerful, can stop the flow of information. Remember that it wasn’t an army of rebellious citizens that torn down the Berlin Wall in 1989, it was the fax machine.
Finally, it can’t be denied that guns have saved private citizens’ lives on occasions. Everyone has the right to defend himself, and the practical use of firearms has indeed given second chances to countless Americans. But at some point we must ask — at what cost?
