On "Gun Posession" & the Right to Bear Arms

The second amendment is valid and necessary and certainly should by no means be taken away. There certainly is validity in the notion that armed citizenry prevents the state from violating citizens' rights. Without a doubt, this right was granted in large part by the nation's founders to prevent tyranny by the federal government.

To be more specific, the right to bear arms is not about hunting ducks and deer, it's about the right of the citizenry to rebel against their government and prevent the nation's leader's from becoming tyrannical governors. Thomas Jefferson made this position clear when he declared "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. ... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Jefferson's statement, more than anything, reminds us that the government, in the words of Lincoln is "of the people, by the people, [and] for the people." In the Declaration of Independence, the right to rebel against government is seen as the natural right to "alter or abolish government."

Of course, one also needs to understand that such a right was written in the Declaration of Independence as a means of justifying the colonists' rebellion against the British crown.

Nevertheless, even if this "right" isn't directly endorsed by the federal government, though it is at the very least indirectly granted, there can be no doubt that it is the right and moral obligation of every citizen to do so as John Locke explains in "Two Treatises on Government" as part of the Social Contract theory held between the state and its citizenry. According to that contract, the governed give certain rights away in exchange for order and protection from the federal government. When protection and privileges are withdrawn by the state, the governed have the moral obligation to overthrow that government.

Still, the real purpose of this post isn't whether or not people have the right to carry fire arms or overthrow the government. In large part, these rights are not contested, though one would only hope that any rebellion would be of universal interest to the nation's citizens and not merely in the interests of a few men.

In reality, it is about whether or not people carrying guns should be seen as suspicious by the state. Despite the rights and agreement that I have stated above, I do believe, however, that gun possession should always be deemed as a matter of concern.

Without a doubt, however, my belief that gun possession is suspicious in nature does not mean I necessarily do not support the notion that possession should not be legal. On the contrary, I believe it is indeed an unalienable right. However, the very thought that a gun offers it's owner protection is, to a degree, doubtful and not universally true.

At this point, I could easily throw statistics at you proving the fallacy of that argument, but I'm not going to bare that on you as I'm sure that you're already familiar with those statistics and the higher rate of accidental shootings and deaths "caused by gun protection." Now while I won't burden you with those figures, I will remind you that I find those numbers questionable because there is no figure that tells us how many lives have been saved as a result of gun possession, and that number is incalculable [b/c it's hard to prove and the thought of someone having a gun undoubtedly deters plenty of would-be-criminals from committing a crime].


Regardless, there is no doubt that bans on gun purchasing only serves to protect criminals and not the citizens. How many law-abiding citizens would illegally purchase guns when they could just as easily legally purchase a gun elsewhere and legally bring it to their home residence and then legally register it and carry it? No, at the end of the day, only criminals would illegally purchase guns and then use them against citizens, because, or course, they don't want their weapon to be traceable the way a legal gun would be.

Now that that is settled, there is the issue of gun possession laws. According to what the NRA & Co. say, cities that do not allow for legal gun possession and carrying laws tend to have significantly higher rates of homicide, rape, theft, etc. Despite it being the NRA and the most powerful lobby group on K Street, it seems a bit difficult to disprove that notion, after all, how can you argue against those findings?

Well at the moment I can't, but I can certainly point holes in most of what the NRA say. For example, the NRA claims that 49% of American households and 39% of individuals own guns. Now I'm not going to try to disprove the numbers, but I will disprove the significance of those numbers. By far, I can tell you that 100% of gun owners do NOT own hand guns. Furthermore, I can also guarantee you that most guns owned in this country are RIFLES and, the last time I checked, there aren't very many crimes involving RIFLES because, unlike handguns, you can't exactly hide one very well even under a trench coat... [I mean, unless you live on a snow-capped mountain all year long, there's no way you wouldn't look suspicious wearing an overcoat any other time of the year].

Still, I digress again. Back to the point. Since it's now established that MOST people own rifles, not handguns, and that, thanks to NATIONAL and STATE laws, handgun ownership is on the decline, you would expect crime to decrease along with it. Interestingly, crime has decreased, but it still doesn't answer the question largely because it's hard to tell which happened first: a decline in gun-ownership or a decline in crime. In reality, though, it doesn't matter since few registered guns are used in crimes in proportion to the number of unregistered guns.


One fault with the NRA-cited gun possession and ownership figures, however, is that they often include weapons owned by the government put held by government employees. Case and point: 25% of all guns in the US are owned by the military. Add to that another 10% which are held by law enforcement and the total of all weapons owned by citizens who are not agents of the state is actually only 65% of the totals quoted by the NRA. [1]


Still, I should probably mention that MOST guns are owned by Americans in RURAL, not urban areas and that MOST crime happens in URBAN areas. Now the NRA likes to link that trend with the distribution of firearms, however, they conveniently forget that a higher population density ALWAYS leads to a higher crime rate for a whole host of reasons:

1. There are more police per person in the city than in rural America
2. The likelihood of a cop being within walking distance or a minute or less from your house is more likely in an URBAN setting than in a rural one where a LOWER population density consequently means a LOWER density of Law Enforcement protection. This explains why RURAL areas possess more guns that are not used for hunting than URBAN areas because the likelihood of a cop arriving in time to protect them is SIGNIFICANTLY less likely.
3. Crime rates in RURAL areas haven't declined NEARLY as much as URBAN & SUBURBAN areas.
4. The likelihood of a RURAL victim knowing their attacker is 3 TIMES more likely than an URBAN victim. That's 21% to 7%!
5. The intimacy of victim & attacker makes it LESS likely for RURAL victims to report crimes, thereby making URBAN rates seem more significant


THUS, without a doubt, I believe RURAL Americans are in greater need of gun protection than URBAN Americans and that RURAL handgun and rifle possession are more likely to save lives than they would in an URBAN setting. Not only that, but I firmly believe that URBAN crime rate statistics by the NRA FAILS to take into account severe budget cuts and shortages in CITIES which is MORE LIKELY to lead to crime than the decline in handgun ownership. Not only that, but not every city with handgun bans has seen a rise in crime. Washington, DC, by far proves that bans on gun possession actually leads to a decrease in crime.

FURTHERMORE, it goes without saying that a man with a gun is more likely to use it than a man without a gun. Now that is obvious, after all, if you don't own a gun, you clearly can't use one because you don't own one. That, and you probably wouldn't aim very well if you came across one. STILL, if you possess a gun, why would you not use it? What utility would it serve if it was never fired? Surely the "so-called" "protection by mere possession" could be cited and is partially true, but at the end of the day, it would have served no LITERAL utility since it WASN'T used. You can't exactly claim that PSYCHOLOGICAL pre-thoughts qualify when a FAKE gun will yield the same externalities.

On that note, I can at the very least draw from familial experience. In the 1960's my grandfather's business was robbed. He lived only about 2 blocks away from the factory and was alerted by our guards that the nearby factory grocery store had just been broken into. Nevertheless, at two in the morning he got out of bed, dressed, walked 2 blocks with his unloaded gun and succeeded in apprehending BOTH armed thieves with another UNARMED guard. Now you can certainly say he risked his life, and he even later use to make jokes about how "aiming at the thieves succeeded in terrifying both him and the thieve," but at the end of the day it shows that an armed gun isn't needed to protect anyone and that an UNLOADED or FAKE gun can yield the same desired effects.


NOW, for all of those people out there that despise the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX of the United States, I would like to remind them of one of their very own arguments. A nation that CONSISTENTLY spends more on its military infrastructure than any other segment of its budget is more likely to use its weapons than a nation which places greater attention on developing infrastructure and education.

I ask you, how is the likelihood of the US using force against an otherwise "innocent" nation any less likely than a GUN POSSESSOR to use his gun?

The answer is that they are both equally likely to use force to justify their acquisition and development of their weapons. After all, why should a person be any different in justifying their accumulation of weapons than a nation that devotes 21% of the federal budget to National Defense?




[1]http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2007/09/13/News/Survey.U.s.Has.Highest.PerCapita.Gun.Ownership.Rate-2966141-page2.shtml