It is About Gun Control

Who controls the guns? – that is the key question when dealing with guns and gun control.

Guns are, first and foremost, tools – they are complex mechanical instruments with various parts to achieve an action of which ultimately is completed when its components are in order: the necessary springs, hammers, levers, and all else, including ammo, being locked-and-loaded, having enough pressure put upon the trigger in order for the tool to fire.  It will not fire on its own.  Leave a firearm on a table, and it will remain there unless it is moved.

If you give up control of the weapon to leave it on the table, then another can take control of the weapon.

It is to the owner of a weapon to have control of it, including how to handle it when it is being carried, or place it where it cannot be put in the control of someone undesired to have it.

Some may say ‘what about the children?  They may get ahold of a gun and injure or kill themselves, or someone else.’  This is an example of who controls the gun.  If a child gets behind the wheel of a car, puts it in gear and the vehicle moves, is there an expanded call for vehicle control? – no.  The ones who get the blame are the child, the parent who should have been supervising the child, and the one who left a vehicle in a state that the child could get control of it.  Levels of culpability are to vary in accordance to context of roles.  The car is a tool of transportation and appropriately, is not blamed for how it was (mis)used, just as a gun is a tool for shooting, is not agentic, and cannot have blame placed upon it.

Others will say ‘if we ban guns, or restrict them enough, then we can stop all the gun deaths.’  Let it sink in for a moment, the foolishness within that claim.  In order to do this, we must first look at ‘all the gun deaths.’  All the gun deaths include suicide; suicides are included in these calls about gun deaths, for as PEW Research shows, suicides with guns outnumber homicide using guns.  If the suicide itself is not the issue, but the gun is, then methodology is the concern – so much for compassion.  Accidents are also included in gun deaths, but true to the word ‘accident’ the act was unintentional, and an exception to the norm.  Again, if one was using a car had an accident that resulted in the death of someone, new regulations would not be called for because of a loss of vehicle control. 

That leaves homicide.  Recent numbers from the CDC showed a total of homicides at 16,000.  Census data out to 2010 shows 114.8 million households in the United States.  PEW research shows 37% of those households (42.4 million) have a firearm of some type within them, holding between 270 and 310 million firearms.  That leaves 0.00038 of households involved per homicide, which includes gang and drug-related homicides.  This shows that if the vast majority is not taking every precaution possible, they have taken enough control of their own tools to not be used to inflict harm, to not violate the rights of another.  Statistically, that is insignificant; practically, a foolish base to implement new standards upon the rest of society; morally, irrelevant to free individuals being able to direct and defend their own lives.

Personal gun control involves proper grip of the weapon.  ‘Social’ gun control involves responsible individuals (people in a society) being able to shoot back at the one who decides to violate individual rights. 

Laws introduced to control guns will only be obeyed by those who follow the laws – one who is intent on murdering someone will not be concerned about a lesser law violation of possession, as an example see Suzanne Gratia Hupp who left her pistol in the car in accordance to the law, and was in Luby’s where a shooter killed 23 (including her parents) and injured 27 before killing himself.  In her testimony before congress, she said “I’m mad at my legislators for legislating me out of the right to protect myself and my family.  I would much rather be sitting in jail with a felony sentence on my head, and have my parents alive.”

Gun control laws simply restrict the possession of arms to those who have been granted the authorization to initiate force: government agents.  The greatest mass murder was not perpetrated by 

an individual in Orlando, FL; the greatest mass murders were repeatedly done by government agents: Waco, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek to name a few, and in the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, 50 unarmed people were shot, 10 were killed, and another 100 were beaten with clubs by the police.  While the overall violent crime rate has been decreasing, the number of homicides and violence perpetrated by police have increased: 500 individuals killed and 40,000 no-knock raids in the past year by police against citizenry. 

The Constitution is to be the supreme law of the land, but through nuanced interpretation (i.e. rationalization) to justify State expansion, such as domestic spying, arrest without a warrant for being ‘under suspicion,’ restrictions on firearms with repeated calls to expand what is and is not allowed for free people to possess, an ever decreasing standard for when police can search for ‘drugs’; there are still people alive today who were put in internment camps for being deemed dangerous for being Japanese.  In either case, it will be those who control their guns using them to achieve their ends, setting up situations where you will lose your liberty in the best scenario, or in the worst be not judged by twelve, but be carried by six.

If free people do not control their own guns, then they will be more vulnerable to those who control their own, illegally or legally.