The following is a paper I wrote for Ethics. Since there was a strict length limit, the points aren’t as fleshed out as they could be.
Gun Control: Life, Liberty, Property, Equality and Autonomy
For personal freedom and personal safety there are two theoretical extremes: absolute safety, and absolute freedom. Absolute safety necessitates totalitarian control while absolute freedom in no way guarantees any amount of personal safety. Obviously neither of these are optimal for a society. The same is true when you apply the principle to gun control: neither absolute control nor absolute freedom are optimal. The best path is to have minimal gun control while clinging to the ideals of protecting fundamental rights, and the empowerment of the people.
Hugh LaFollet puts foreword the idea that gun ownership is not a fundamental right, it is a derived right. In accepting this we can say that guns, and in specific handguns, are the best and most efficient devices for ensuring our personal rights of life, liberty and property. Hughes and Hunt state that total gun control is incompatible with the principal of autonomy. When you take away someone’s right to bear arms, you greatly diminish their ability to defend their life and their property. Therefore, citizens have a right to bear arms in the defense of their fundamental rights, and by the principal of autonomy.
This leads to the next issue: guns are power. With the disarmament of law abiding citizens, power in day to day life shifts to two demographics: police and criminals. In America, regardless of gun policy, criminals will have access to guns for the foreseeable future. And while criminals have guns, police will have guns. By removing guns from the hands of citizens, we would greatly throw off the equality of people. As the vast majority of people are law abiding, creating a significant difference in their power in favor of criminal’s power is a very bad policy decision.
Furthermore, removing the power of the people in favor of the government’s power, would shift the political atmosphere far to close to a totalitarian government. If the government does not, on a fundamental level, fear the people, then there is nothing to stop rampant corruption. Once this happens it opens the door for elections to become meaningless, and thus power would be concentrated in far to few people.
The armchair arguments put foreword by LaFollet that violent gun crime would increase must also be addressed. Both sides of the gun control vs. guns rights argument have armchair arguments that violent crime will increase if the other side’s ideas are implemented. These are both inherently theoretical, and are based on flawed attempts to extrapolate data. Some arguments use other countries such as Japan and Switzerland as examples for gun control or gun rights working; these results cannot be applied to America due to the vast cultural differences. In the end, gun rights or control should be argued for by principal, and not the flawed extrapolation of data.
The question of how much gun control is needed is a very important one. Of course people who have committed gun crimes should not be allowed to own a gun again, and of course we should run background checks on people before they buy guns. Age limits on purchasing guns is a good idea, as is the idea of requiring a gun safety course similar in spirit to a driver’s education course. This is where the fine balance between safety and freedom must be struck. This can be best achieved by a pragmatic approach: do what works and works well.
In conclusion, the principals of equality and autonomy combined with the derived right to protect ones fundamental rights of life, liberty, and property demand that private citizens are allowed to posses guns, and in specific handguns. Removing guns from the hands of the American people would set us down the path towards a totalitarian government, where safety is “guaranteed” by the government through the total control of the citizenry.
May 3rd, 2007 | Uncategorized | No comments