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Gun Rights are Civilization Rights
I believe, if you don't trust an independent adult to have a firearm you ultimately don't trust them enough to be in the same civilization or society as you.
There are three categories of people that nearly everyone agrees should not be allowed to own a firearm:
And you'll notice we generally don't trust these categories of people with much of anything. The first two categories of people we insist on them having guardians, or being wards of the state. The third category of people we imprison.
There are two major arguments against gun rights that I think hold the most salience for people.
Argument One: Guns are Dangerous and Unnecessary
They are undoubtedly dangerous. Their purpose is to be a weapon. But there are other things that are dangerous that we don't ban. Cars can be used to achieve mass casualty events. Bombs can be made with some commonly available materials. These other things are rarely labelled as "unnecessary" though. There are also plenty of "unnecessary" things that we don't ban. Plenty of purely recreational items and services exist. Jet skis, theme parks, cruises, large houses, etc (some of these things are even dangerous). Only the most hardcore socialists and communists want to take away all the fun toys.
There is an argument that gun advocates make that gun rights are necessary to keep the government in check. I generally like this argument, and think it is demonstrated by the level of free speech rights in places like Great Britain where guns have been successfully banned for most private "citizens".
But I'll grant for the sake of argument that guns are totally "unnecessary". And that it is the special combination of Dangerous+Unnecessary that leads people to want to ban it. Since other categories of things like Safe+Unnecessary or Dangerous+Necessary go largely unbanned and untouched.
I think the widespread existence of many "Dangerous+Necessary" demonstrates that we can trust most adults to handle dangerous things in a responsible way. We can't trust them 100% of the time. And we can't trust that there won't sometimes be negligence.
The "unnecessary" component of the argument is also a scary slippery slope to be on. People have different desires and wants. There are I think two steady states of being in regards to "unnecessary" things. Either you let everyone decide for themselves on every topic. Or you have a central authority that decides on everything for everyone. If you are willing to bite that bullet, keep in mind that it will not necessarily be you deciding what is necessary and what is not. I believe it is fully possible for such a bureaucracy to mercilessly strip every single joy out of life, and they'll fully believe they are making your life better. You'll eventually be sad enough that you'll come to the second main argument against gun rights:
Argument Two: Guns enable easier suicide
I don't have the data on hand, and I don't really want to get into an argument about said data. But it is my understanding that there is a noticeable and undeniable effect of guns on male suicide rates. This makes intuitive sense to me. Many methods of suicide require you to actively torture yourself for a short time period, drowning, hanging, cutting yourself, jumping from a very tall building etc. Or they present a chance of a failed suicide attempt that leaves you heavily injured, like jumping from not high enough, or getting in front of a moving vehicle, or pills. Guns make the attempt a more sure thing, and present an option that does not involve torturing yourself.
Something about this whole approach to suicide prevention feels very wrong. On an individual basis I think you should not commit suicide, and if someone can be talked out of suicide they generally should be talked out of it. But there are also some cases where I believe it is very cruel to prevent suicide. Medical cases for sure. But there are also people who have drawn a shit straw in life in too many ways. A bit too dumb, constant low level bad health, unable to figure out how to love or be loved, etc. A life of quiet misery. They should have an exit option, and they should have one that doesn't require them to torture themselves on the way out.
Civilization is one big nebulous agreement we have that helps us get along. But I think saying "you can't leave this agreement without being tortured", is just evil.
Forbidding gun ownership means forbidding exit, and it means you lack trust in others to such a degree that it breaks down many of the assumptions we already have about the rights and responsibilities of adults in society.
Some of the implications of my argument that I am already aware of and fine with:
Some areas that I left unaddressed to save space:
Edit: lots of good responses. I've read all of them but I'm unlikely to respond. Most of the responses were better thought out than my original post. I sometimes just have ideas or arguments kicking around in my head that need to be spilled onto paper. And I think better in response to what others say so this has helped me refine my thoughts on the subject a great deal. That synthesis of thought might end up in a future thread.
I do not think that UK libel laws have much if anything to do with their restrictions on gun ownership.
More broadly, I think that the idea to use guns to keep the government in check was fine in 1800 but today is just laughable. Since world war one, the wartime capabilities of states and what US citizens are allowed to own have greatly diverged. How is your semi AR15 with a ten rounds mag going to fare against a predator drone or a tank? In the very best case, you would be fighting a protracted war against the federal government. If you win, it looks like Mao winning his civil war, if you lose, it looks like Hamas in Gaza.
Of course, on the basis of "things should not be illegal if they are fun, even if they are not necessary", we can legalize further things.
For example, I imagine that hand grenades are much fun. Or landmines. Watch the stupid coyotes explode when they trespass on your property. Contact poisons are fun. Radioactive substances are fun. So is building your own nuclear reactor. And if we really want to counterbalance the federal military advantage, why not allow citizens to start their own nuclear weapons program? Provided they are not minors, mentally retarded or have demonstrated poor impulse control, of course.
In a country where most people hunt their dinner, guns are a necessity. But this is not sustainable in any but the most sparsely settled areas.
Different people naturally have different ideas about the tradeoffs between usefulness (which includes being fun) and danger. Some want to ban any knives with blades longer than 3cm. Some would be fine if you could just buy hand grenades at the hardware store.
For the most part, people agree with the level of regulation around cars, which are immensely practical in most areas but also account for a huge fraction of accidental manslaughters. So you need a driver's license, your vehicle has to be designed according to certain standards and get regular safety inspections, and you need to obey all lot of different rules while on a public road. This is all very bothersome and expensive, but it also keeps these manslaughter cases on a manageable level, compared to a counterfactual level where everyone could build their own vehicle and try to learn to drive it unsupervised.
My estimate is that in most of Europe (e.g. Germany), getting a hunting license (including the rights to own rifles and a pistol, but not the right to bear them outside your home except when on hunting trips), plus the costs of a gun safe is still somewhat cheaper than the costs of a driver's license. The costs to get licensed to own a gun for sports shooting are lower (no need to demonstrate knowledge of tracking down an injured paper target), but also might require a few years of membership in a shooting club. Few people get the license to carry loaded weapons in public, typically this is restricted to on-duty employees of security companies.
I really never understand this argument, particularly not the way it is made with smug certainty.
Many people did not think this argument was fine in 1776. The patriot militias were very much understood to be out-gunned and under-equipped. Pragmatic loyalists argued in the continental congress that the colonists lacked artillery, a navy, a cavalry, etc. To say nothing of the divergent quality of firearms: many observers noted that the rusty muskets pulled down from over minutemen's fireplaces were no match for the cleaned and oiled Land Pattern Muskets of the redcoats. This argument has been made against every guerilla army, and while guerilla warfare isn't a win-now button, it has been proven effective.
Hamas in Gaza did not allow private firearm ownership. Gaza, under Hamas, probably had around 20,000 civilian firearms across about 2,000,000 people, a 1% ratio. The US has an estimated 30 million "modern sporting rifles" (the NRA's preferred designation for things like AR variants) for a population of 330 million. If 10% of Gazas preward population had owned an AR, Israel never would have invaded. Which is the real function: it prevents government tyranny by making it impractical to enforce through violence. Once the shooting starts, the people in the military aren't vidya game pawns that go to the directed square and do what the commander said. They're going to reconsider their options, rapidly.
What are you talking about with 10 round magazines? In most states, you can currently purchase any size you like. Just 16 restrict it.
The advantage in weaponry back in 1776 is like two different sized water bottles, the advantage in weaponry now is a water bottle vs a giant lake. Guerilla armies thrive nowadays for a number of reasons, but a lot of it is that the big armies don't go all out.
The stark difference between say, the US during WW2 vs the US during the Iraq War suggests we have a lot of extra capacity we could throw at any issue if we wanted to. We just don't really want to, Americans don't want to feel actual meaningful sacrifices from the nonsense going on in the Middle East, so we throw a fraction of overall power at it. Israel doesn't want to (or at least are held back from) just rounding up all the Palestinians and shooting/bombing/etc. Hamas only operates by hiding in civilian cover and even then they still don't inflict much meaningful damage back. Their fight for survival is us scratching an itch on our backs.
Even when wars are more equal, it's often because they have the support of other great powers. Look at Russia vs Ukraine rn, they're both getting equipment (and sometimes even troops) from various different sources, and according to Trump Russia still seems to be facing a 14:1 ratio against Ukraine. and this is Russia
Ukraine is getting a pittance of western firepower compared to what we could do (we're not even at Iraq levels of sacrifice) if we really wanted to go all out and they're holding on strong against the Russians.
I'm sure a bunch of rogue American militias could go around shooting up theaters or something and terrorizing government siding citizens, but as long as the military stays loyal they don't got a chance if we actually wanna go all out.
The better hope here is that the military is made up of normal Americans, many who will side with the citizens if it ever got to the point where most Americans wanted an uprising to begin with.
All the high tech weaponry in the world doesn't matter for counterinsurgency purposes. Modern combined arms warfare is optimized for defeating peer and near peer adversaries in a stand up fight, not for blowing up a bunch of goat fuckers with rifles. If the enemy doesn't have anti-tank missiles or tanks, a multi-million dollar main battle tank is no more combat effective than a pickup with armor plates welded on and a cannon in the back. If the enemy doesn't have radar, your multi-billion dollar supersonic stealth strike fighter is no better than a crop duster with bombs strapped on it. Of course having armor and air support at all is super important, but the overmatch eventually doesn't provide any additional value.
During WW2, China lost nearly all its modern equipment and trained forces in the early days of the war, leaving them to fight the remainder of the war with only obsolete or crudely made small arms, against an enemy with machine guns, trucks, tanks, artillery, and air support. An enemy that was also willing to go gloves off and genocide the as many Chinese as necessary to win. Yet even with collapsing state capacity and morale against an overwhelming enemy, the Chinese still managed to stubbornly cling on to territory and inflict serious losses to the enemy, while only taking 3:1 casualties in direct confrontation. Actual gorilla warfare which does not even attempt to meet the enemy's attach head on would achieve a much more favorable kill ratio.
In the end a lake is more powerful than a water bottle, but a bucket will do the job just as well. Yet insurgencies have succeeded in the past even against determined and far more powerful opponents.
The Allies (primarily the US) provided a total of something like 650,000 tons of materiel to China via The Hump, at the cost of nearly 600 aircraft and around 1700 crew lost. There were also notable Allied air units (and some ground units) in China during the war.
Which isn't to diminish their accomplishment, but it wasn't completely a solo effort.
The origin of the meme "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" is that various WW2-era generals (of whom Montgomery was the first to go on the record in 1962) thought that Allied assistance to China in WW2 had been a mistake - presumably because Chiang and Mao preferred to use the aid to fight each other and not the Japanese.
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