By Selwyn Duke
In the wake of the Aurora
For the sake of argument, let’s accept the
supposition that outlawing firearms would save lives. Does it logically follow from this that guns
should be restricted or banned?
Well, it would certainly save lives and
countless injuries if people didn’t engage in mountain-climbing, hang-gliding,
motorcycle-racing, trampolining, big-wave surfing, cave-diving, heli-skiing and
a host of other dangerous activities.
And, like guns, knives and baseball bats are common murder weapons. Does it logically follow that these items and
activities should be banned?
The point is that we never treat saving
lives as the only imperative when devising policy. If we did, we’d perhaps consider reducing
speed limits on highways to 5 mph, since this might save most of the 43,000
lives lost on the road each year. Speaking
of which, since 40 percent of those deaths are alcohol related, we can consider
resurrecting Prohibition, too.
Now, since gun-control advocates think they
have morality on their side, they may want to ponder a question: is it moral to
sacrifice 43,000 lives just so we can be free to zip around at 55 or 65
mph? The answer here is that the safety imperative
is balanced against an economic one, in that too much productivity would be
lost with a five-mph speed limit.
But sometimes far more trivial things trump
the safety imperative. No one needs to
drink alcohol, go rock-climbing, or play baseball when doing so necessitates
the availability of a dangerous weapon.
So, imagine that, we’re actually placing fun and enjoyment ahead of
saving lives. In fact, some among us
will even tolerate death on a massive scale if we think the reason is good
enough. An example is when the anti-gun
left is willing to accept 1.2 million killings a year through abortion.
So if we’ll accept death through fun, should
we question death through the gun? As
with dangerous recreation, the enjoyment justification exists with firearms,
too, in the form of target and sport shooting.
As with driving, an economic justification exists in that revenue is
collected from hunters and because some poorer rural Americans help feed
themselves through hunting. But there is
something here that is a true imperative, one that’s greater than most any
other:
Thwarting evil.
The apocryphal saying, “God made some men
big and others small, but Samuel Colt made them equal,” gets at the point
here. Whether it’s a smaller person or
group, firearms tend to even the odds.
They help create parity, and that’s not what criminals want—they want
easy prey. Thus, like a predator in the
wilds that generally won’t attack a creature more than half its size, even if a
criminal is armed himself, he’ll be reluctant to tackle a target that can target
him back.
Even more significantly, as Prohibition,
prostitution and drugs have proven, illegal isn’t synonymous with unavailable. So, again, let’s assume a gun criminalization
that left firearms in the hands of a few criminals did save lives overall. What should we conclude if those armed
miscreants could nonetheless ply their dark trade with little resistance? What should we feel if good people were
declawed and rendered powerless to thwart their evil?
A
virtuous, justice-oriented person should find this intolerable to the point of
outrage.
He should quote Emiliano Zapata and say,
“It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” Yet better still is to live on your feet. And a gun in the hand makes that more likely.
As for debating the Second Amendment,
there’s nothing wrong with using facts to refute the notion that more guns equal
more deaths. But this should be only
part of the debate, not the debate itself.
Otherwise we miss some great principles, one of which is that life at
all costs is too great a cost. Living is
about more than just life, and whether the matter is sports that can kill,
drink that can kill or guns that can kill, you can’t really live if you’re
suffocated with a Big Brother bubble-wrap mentality.
