Guns and Gun Control

In my youth I was very anti-guns. Guns kill people. The argument that people kill people is stupid. Although it acknowledges that people will kill other people with or without guns, it ignores the numerous instances of people shooting each other by accident (something decidedly harder without a gun). This is especially relevant for children, who are able to get hold of keys, are very inquisitive and boastful, and who are not renowned for their ability to listen to basic instructions or their finesse and subtlety of grip.

It seemed to me that it was obvious that a nation with easy access to guns would necessarily be a nation with very high levels of gun crime and homicide. I looked at America and it was instantly obvious that this was the case. Things like the number of Americans, per day, dying from gun crime compared to the number of people in the UK made the case seem water tight. I was unshakable in that conviction for many years and got into many debates with people about the need for weapons.

Most of the people I argued against believed that hunting was the best and most sure-fire way to win the gun control argument. As a native of the UK, this argument was lost on me. We have no big game. We have no hunting traditions. We wouldn’t have anything worth buying 9mm ammo for, which we would be allowed to hunt.

Then I found out about the gun ownership laws of Switzerland. They have fewer deaths per year than America has per day. For this to be comparable on a per capita basis the population of Switzerland would have to be little more than 825 thousand. It’s 7.5 million. The rate of gun crime in America is around nine times higher. There must be a reason, other than the availability of guns, to explain this difference.

If you look at figures for homicide, America outstrips most ‘civilised’, democratic nations in the world. Compared to Finland, the US has around seven times the gun related homicide rates and twice the overall homicide rates.

Gun ownership is clearly not causing the murder rates, see Lithuania as a country with stong gun controls yet very high murder rate, so the question must become “What is?” And I think it’s clearly cultural. The US is in love with violence. The South Park movie might have its tongue firmly in its cheek when it has a parent saying that “Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, so long as people don’t say naughty words” (or something to that effect), but it is clearly exemplified in the shows you can find coming out of the US. Very little swearing of any kind, yet lots and lots of violence.

Now, as I’ve matured, I’ve come to see what the Second Amendment is FOR. It’s not so some stupid Yank can go shoot some animals with a high powered assault rifle. It’s so the government fears its people. As Jefferson said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears its people, there is liberty.” Gun ownership should be about the prevention of tyranny, not hunting, nor defending oneself against ones fellow citizens. It’s about protecting your liberty against your government. You have a right to defend yourself against others within your society, but your gun is not the first or best means through which that should be done, the government is. Your gun’s primary purpose should be the protection of your liberty from tyranny, plain and simple.

Since I came to this realisation I have been in favour of fewer gun controls. The people should be able to buy armour piercing bullets, high explosives, high velocity rifles, assault weaponry, etc. They should because they need it against their government. You don’t need an AK47 to take down game, you need it to take out soldiers who are coming to take away your freedom, your property, or your/your families life. You don’t need high explosives to go fishing, you need it to make the government think twice about sliding into fascism. You don’t need a pistol in your bedside table in case of break-ins, you need it in case of late night Nazi-style round ups of your friends and family.

You need a weapon capable of protecting your liberty from the one thing most capable of taking it. Your own government.

The survivalist angle that you need guns for hunting come the collapse is also flawed. Ammunition has a limited shelf life, primers stop working, without the easy access to the means of maintenance guns stop being reliable, etc. If you want a gun so you can hunt you would be much better advised using the last few years of cheap, easily availability of everything to learn how to make an implement from natural materials and use it to hunt with. That will set you in a much better position to survive than having a static stockpile of ammo and guns.

Even the best, most prepared and most heavily provisioned person can be dropped by a stray/lucky shot. Making a strong point and defending it might be a very civilised way to go about self defence, but a nomadic, light and knowledgeable person, capable of simply walking away into the wilds and finding food and water has a much better chance of surviving the fall of civilisation. A house is a target for gangs looking for food. A shelter which is concealed, made by someone who can, if needs be, leave it at a moments notice and make another somewhere else, is much better.