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by David Codrea, Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner
If I’m missing something here, I wish someone would educate me. After all, only a fanatic clings to beliefs that are demonstrably wrong, and I’ve always tried to open myself up to counter-arguments and challenges to my convictions.
If someone violently attacks me or my family, is it wrong for me to resist? Are you saying I do not have an unalienable right to life?
Forget about me. How about your elderly mother?
If someone, say with intent to rob, beat, rape and kill attacks her, would she be morally at fault for protecting herself?
How about it? Does this elderly woman have the right to repel a monster?
Yes or no?
I suspect, if put in those stark terms, the outcome of most polls would shift dramatically in favor of the right to individual defense. This, in turn, opens the door to discuss which means of defense is most effective at deterring an assailant, especially one who can brutally overpower his intended victim.
The message for which those of us in the pro-Second Amendment camp are vilified is no more complicated than this: Each of us has a right not to be hurt by someone else, and if someone tries to hurt us, we have a right to protect ourselves.
The corollary to this fundamental truth is equally simple: We cannot effectively protect ourselves without possessing the means of defense.
Let me ask another basic question. What is a right?
Is it something that is granted by a government authority? If so, how does that differ from a privilege? Can something that is granted be withheld? Can something that is licensed be revoked?
Are rights not unalienable? Do they not precede the establishment of government? Are they not, in fact, outside the authority of government? Does our Second Amendment say the right it articulates “may be infringed” or “shall not be infringed”?
Someone once defined pure democracy as two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. Recognizing the dangers of mob rule, our Bill of Rights defined some of the areas where the individual would be immune to the will of the collective. What this means is, no matter how many of us disagree with you, we cannot lawfully use force to shut you up, to suppress your political views, or to make you worship in the way we see fit. We cannot break into your house and search your property without probable cause and a legal warrant. We can’t torture you into confessing to a crime. Barring behaviors on your part to disqualify yourself through incarceration, we cannot strip you of your right to keep and bear arms.
Still, there are those among us who would decry this right as being the product of a different era, as being outdated, irrelevant, and an actual detriment to life, liberty and happiness in our modern era of enlightenment.
To these people I would ask: what about human nature has changed?
In the past century that has seen two world wars, continual violent political upheaval, genocide and systemic, brutal tyranny and repression, has humanity truly demonstrated a benevolence and maturity that distinguishes our era from those that preceded us? In a culture that breeds gang warfare, rampant violence, city-crippling riots and a national murder rate measured in the tens of thousands, how can anyone credibly claim that the need for individual defense is a relic of the past?
And ultimately, what is this “outdated” Second Amendment really about, if not the preservation of a free people when all other options to defend life and liberty have been exhausted? Against all enemies, individual and aggregated, foreign and domestic. Here is where we must face the core meaning of the awesome power and responsibility that this “obsolete” right places squarely in the hands of We the People. Because, ultimately, what this right guarantees you is not a gun, but a choice. A choice, in the final analysis, to submit to evil or to fight it, literally.
You can’t pass this off on your neighbor who has time for these kinds of things. You can’t hire someone to come out and do this for you. You can’t elect someone to represent you on the green. You must make a choice, and then you must act upon it.
Would you shrink from this decision? If so, can you morally wrest this choice from someone who refuses to relinquish it, and do so under force of state-controlled arms?
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Writer Jack Burton sent me a link to his article “Answers for those who think that ‘gun control’ is the best for America” that rebuts many of the myths perpetrated to justify citizen disarmament. I recommend you consider what he says.
For more commentary by David Codrea: Visit his online journal, The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance.
Topics: Guns , Gun Rights , Second Amendment , General , Morality
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