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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 agree, children shouldn't own firearms. As the meme goes, they should instead be trained to operate crew-served weapons. It suits their frame, and teaches cooperation and other valuable life skills.
Consider the three categories of people nearly everyone agrees should not own firearms: children, people with mental deficiencies, and people with demonstrably violent impulses they cannot control. Notice anything? We generally don't trust these categories with much of anything. The first two get guardians or become wards of the state. The third we imprison. This suggests something interesting about the nature of trust in civilization. We've already made these fundamental judgments about competence and dangerousness. The gun question isn't really creating new categories, I'd say it's revealing categories that already exist.
I like guns. They're cool. I want to own guns. I am also libertarian adjacent, and I believe that I am willing to pay the tax on my beliefs that come from the downsides of widespread firearm ownership.
The first major anti-gun argument runs: guns are dangerous and unnecessary, and this combination justifies banning them.
Dangerous? Absolutely. Their purpose is literally to be weapons. But we don't ban everything dangerous. Cars kill more Americans annually than guns, and cars can achieve horrific mass casualties (see: Nice, France, 2016). We could make bombs from commonly available materials that I won't list here because I'm not a psychopath, but the point stands.
The "unnecessary" part does more work in this argument. We don't typically ban dangerous-but-necessary things. Chainsaws are dangerous but necessary for forestry. Commercial aviation is dangerous but necessary for modern logistics. Even cars, despite their body count, serve essential transportation functions. Even prostitutes, despite their body counts, serve essential transportation functions as the town pony.
It's the dangerous-and-unnecessary combination that supposedly justifies prohibition. But this opens a philosophical can of worms that I suspect most gun control advocates haven't fully considered.
Who decides what's "necessary"? Jet skis kill people and serve no essential function beyond recreation. Theme parks occasionally kill people and exist purely for entertainment. Large houses consume resources and increase inequality while providing no survival advantage beyond a certain point of diminishing returns.
Most hardcore authoritarians - sorry, "public health experts" would indeed ban all the fun toys if they could. The UK has been steadily moving in this direction for decades, restricting everything from kitchen knives to mean tweets, apparently operating under the theory that a sufficiently bubble-wrapped society approaches optimal safety.
This reveals what I think is the true philosophical divide: either you let adults decide for themselves what risks are worth taking for what benefits, or you have a central authority make these decisions for everyone. There's no stable middle ground here, every "reasonable restriction" contains within it the seeds of total control.
And keep in mind: you might not be the one making these decisions. Bureaucracies have a nasty habit of optimizing for metrics that strip every joy out of life while genuinely believing they're making things better. Eventually you'll be sad enough that you'll find the second argument more compelling.
Of the specific alternative forms of suicide you've mentioned, I think jumping off a tall building or bridge is almost as easy as using a gun. Guns are slightly more convenient, but it isn't very hard to find a bridge and overcome your fear of heights.
Wikipedia tells me that the US has the 24th highest suicide rate per capita. It's beaten by Japan, and South Korea takes the number 2 spot. The tiny little Saint Vincent and the Grenadines takes bottom place, and its suicide rate is as low as its water content (Wikipedia says both are negligible, or perhaps the country is too poor to afford water bodies and statisticians). Firearms really aren't that big of a deal in that regard.
(Do they contribute? Of course. I just don't think it matters particularly much.)
Here's where I probably lose some readers: I think competent adults should have access to reliable methods of suicide.
Not because I want people to kill themselves. Quite the opposite. On an individual level, I think suicide is usually a terrible mistake, and anyone contemplating it should get help. In many cases, I am the help. Sometimes that isn't enough, and all the King's horses and psychiatrists combined can't put your will to live back together again.
But there are cases where continued existence involves unbearable suffering: terminal illnesses, degenerative neurological conditions, lives of such persistent misery that death genuinely seems preferable.
More controversially, I think this extends beyond medical cases. Some people draw genuinely shit hands in life: too many cognitive limitations to achieve their goals, chronic health problems, inability to form meaningful relationships, economic circumstances they can't escape. A life of quiet desperation and misery, year after year.
Civilization is fundamentally a voluntary association. We agree to follow certain rules and norms in exchange for the benefits of cooperative society. But if the implicit terms of this agreement are "you must participate forever regardless of how miserable it makes you, and if you try to leave we'll ensure the exit is as torturous as possible," then civilization starts looking less like a beneficial arrangement and more like a prison. Some places manage to be both beneficial and prison adjacent, such as the dementia care homes that I'm frankly sick of visiting, but I hope the average person can be extended more autonomy than an 82 year old with Alzheimer's.
The gun control advocate might respond: "But we can address the underlying causes of despair! Better mental health care, economic support, social programs!"
Sure, we should do those things anyway. But two problems with making them prerequisites for respecting individual autonomy:
First, it assumes we can solve all sources of human misery through policy interventions. This seems... optimistic. Some people will always be dealt rough hands by genetics, circumstance, or pure random chance.
(I am an optimist, in that I put higher than 50% credence in the claim that a Singularity within a decade or two that will solve this issue. But this is far from inevitable, and I think it's cruel to dictate how long someone needs to stomach their misery)
Second, it places the burden of proof on the individual to justify their decision to the satisfaction of others. You have to convince the authorities that your life really is sufficiently miserable to warrant an exit visa. This turns suicide from a tragic personal choice into a bureaucratic process, which seems to miss the point entirely.
This brings us back to the central thesis: forbidding gun ownership means you don't trust other adults to make fundamental decisions about their own lives.
But trust is the foundation of civilization. We trust strangers to drive two-ton vehicles at high speeds in our direction. We trust random people not to push us onto subway tracks. We trust that the person preparing our food hasn't poisoned it. We trust that pilots, surgeons, engineers, and countless others will perform their jobs competently rather than causing mass casualties through malice or incompetence.
Every functioning society is built on millions of these trust relationships. When trust breaks down, civilization breaks down. You get high-crime neighborhoods where people don't go outside after dark. You get societies where every transaction requires extensive verification and monitoring. You get authoritarian systems where the state assumes everyone is a potential threat.
(Hmm.. I write this while still in London)
The gun control position, taken to its logical conclusion, suggests that ordinary adults cannot be trusted with the power of life and death over themselves and others. But this power already exists everywhere around us. The main difference is that guns make it more obvious and immediate.
If you genuinely believe that most adults are so irresponsible, impulsive, and dangerous that they can't be trusted with firearms, then you should probably also believe they can't be trusted to drive, practice medicine, operate heavy machinery, raise children, vote, or participate in countless other activities that require judgment and self-control.
This is a logically consistent approach, but then one must contend with the fact that there's no consistency or rigor in how we approach this. Any Tom can still his dick in a
Harryhairy pussy and pop out a kid without needing to get a fucking loiscence. Cars, forklifts and doctors need licenses just about everywhere. People automagically age into the right to vote, unless they commit a crime and become felons who are stripped of it.I also doubt that even US-levels of firearm ownership are particularly strong mitigating factors against the risk of coup or government oppression. The government has drones, tanks, nigh panopticon surveillance if they cared to really use it. I am happy to acknowledge that it increases the difficulty of the government acting up, but I claim it's not that big of a difference.
That being said, I like guns, and wish I lived in a jurisdiction where I could shoot beer cans with the boys over a barbecue. And not the anemic shotguns or hunting rifles can get in the UK, those bore me to tears. Give me a minigun in Vegas, and give me the salary to fire it for more than a few milliseconds.
Red-tailed hawk painted like a Bald Eagle screeches in the background.
I know you're in the UK, but if you ever swing across the pond to the US, DM me. If you're gonna be in my area I'll take you shooting. I, tragically, do not have an actual machinegun (my username can be considered more aspirational than factual) but I do have many interesting guns.
Thank you! I hope to go visit the States this winter itself (friend's wedding), but I'm not entirely sure if the visa stuff will get done in time. I should have been on that, instead of futzing about in London. If I do, I'll try to ensure I do a lap of the country, and make time to shoot the shit (semi-literally) with you.
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