I keep hearing the argument, “People don’t need guns” as an excuse to abolish the Second Amendment.
What right does anybody have to decide what another needs or does not need? How is that liberty?
We’re told we must have “common sense, sensible” gun laws. We already have sensible laws. Felons are not allowed to own guns. Police have discretion in reducing imminent danger with people who possess guns. We all have to get a background check before buying a gun.
By what right do I say to another person, “Hey, I don’t think you need that gun” and then impose that opinion by force? Even if that other person has never broken a law or threatened harm against anyone? Why is it my business?
That’s the problem with all the attacks on the Second Amendment. They’re not just attacks on the Second Amendment. They’re attacks on individual rights and liberty themselves.
Apply the same reasoning to the First Amendment:
“You don’t need to be writing all the opinions you write on your website, or in your book, or in your speeches. Somebody might take them the wrong way. It could incite or lead to unkind or even illegal things.”
So do we turn the First Amendment on and off at will, based on the opinion of a group of people who decide where freedom of speech starts and ends? If I don’t like something and you do, then I get to decide what may or may not be said in public, or read in private? Isn’t that precisely what happens in a dictatorship?
Some of those fervently defending the Second Amendment don’t even own a gun, or particularly want to use one. That’s not the point. The point is freedom. Either you have the freedom to do what it takes to defend your life, or you don’t. If we’re to outlaw guns because they could hurt somebody, then on the same premise we must outlaw anything that could be used to hurt another. Where does it end, and why does it start?
Some people say only an anarchist would permit people to own guns. The Founders of America’s Constitution were not anarchists. They upheld a strong central government for the express purpose of keeping people who live in the respective states free of force. Anarchy would lead to gang rule, without a rule of law – the same thing you get in any kind of a dictatorship.
You don’t have to be an anarchist to support the right to self-defense. The right to self-defense implies sovereignty over your own existence. If this isn’t what America’s Constitution stands for, then it stands for nothing.
If we don’t enjoy the right to self-protection, then we have no right to our own existence, and the concept of rights means nothing.
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