This site is all about becoming more free and how to go about it. One of the biggest hot topic issues surrounding freedom in America is the gun issue. Here in America, we still have the right to own guns, but for how long? There’s a constant debate on whether people should own guns, what kind of guns they should own, and what contributes to gun violence.
I thought I’d lay out my thoughts on the subject and try and present logical arguments. Before I get into it though, let me preface my statements by saying that I am making arguments through the lens of someone who has never fired a gun. I am not some gun nut whose statements are biased by the fact that I’m personally invested in guns. In other words, I don’t have a dog in the fight.
Before you make any judgements on guns, put yourself into this scenario. You’re out getting food at a restaurant and a gunman comes in and starts shooting everyone. Would you rather have a gun on you to defend yourself, or not have a gun and try and hide?
I believe in self defense
The number one reason I believe in gun ownership is because I believe in martial arts. I did martial arts for years. After a while I felt much better about walking around and exuded a bit of confidence knowing that I can hold my own in a fight. There’s a certain confidence you gain by relying on yourself to get out of a tough situation.
I believe that people have the right to defend themselves to the best of their ability if faced with danger. I also believe this right supersedes the general danger of guns. Guns in of themselves don’t pose any danger in my mind. They are just a hunk of metal. What poses a danger is the crazy minds of people who misuse them. The real danger I see is crazy people, and I believe I have the right to defend myself against them with appropriate measures.
Guns are really good at self defense
Guns are a force multiplier. It doesn’t matter how much karate you know, if someone is coming at you with a gun, there’s only two defenses that will work. Either you run and take cover, or you shoot them before they shoot you. I don’t care how many movies you have seen with people disarming other people with guns, if the guy has any idea what they are doing they will just shoot you from a distance. Since bullets are much faster than people, running and taking cover has it’s problems too. In any case, having a gun yourself will increase your potential self defense.
Guns level the playing field in terms of ability to fight. It’s going to be hard for anyone to fight someone who is much stronger and taller than you. Put a gun in those combatants’ hands and it’s a battle of who is a quicker draw with the sharper aim.
Destroy all guns
Perhaps instead of learning self defense with guns, or taking the responsibility of our own security, we should just ban all gun ownership. That way we’d never have to live in fear of getting randomly shot by a wacko. Besides the fact that there are more guns than people in America, and that people looking to find a gun usually find a way, I’m willing to listen to this point of view.
Let’s assume for a second that it was possible to actually destroy all guns. We’d gather them all up and throw them in a pit to be vaporized. Everyone then went under mass hypnosis and forgot how to make them. Would the world be suddenly plunged into a new era of peace? Or would we just go back to killing each other with swords, spears, and crossbows? Guns make it slightly easier to kill people now, but there isn’t any difference in human nature. In fact, it has gotten much less barbaric than times before guns. Back then, people in wars would have to run at another line of people who were all holding spears.
No more guns!
What about cops?
In this fictional world where we got rid of all the guns, would we also get rid of the guns of cops and military? Gun control advocates always talk about banning guns, but they never mention the guns of the military and police. Are those guns somehow less dangerous because they are being handled by someone of Authority?
Take a conspiratorial view for a second. What if a big corporation took control of a city’s police force? Perhaps it goes good for a while until the corporation decides to then get into real estate. They decide that some area of town is too dangerous and allowing the building of new properties and publicly funded parks would raise the city’s tax revenue. This corporation then uses the police to enforce eminent domain on all the people who lived in the dangerous area and kicked them out. Would the people who lived there have a better chance at saying no if they were armed or disarmed?
Hey, it’s possible! I saw it happen in Robocop 3! The people arguing for gun control are essentially saying that they would rather leave their own security to the authorities. I’m against this because it goes against my philosophy of taking responsibility for your own safety. I’m also against it because it doesn’t work. If there was ever some emergency of someone attacking you, cops won’t get there in time. Even if there is a small chance they will get there, I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
I’m not saying there isn’t a reason to have cops and military. Those bodies essentially enforce societal control. People are less apt to break laws if they know they could get caught and go to jail. That being said, there will always be a small group of people that don’t care. For that small group, I advocate relying on yourself for defense, and that includes the use of guns.
2nd Amendment is a red herring
Before I get into why the 2nd Amendment is a red herring, I would like to point out that I believe the 2nd Amendment gives individuals the right to own guns. The whole point of the 2nd Amendment is a defense against tyrannical government. The reason I believe this is because I have read the works of the people who wrote the constitution. In all their other writings they talk about gun ownership. They talk about it being pretty important for everyone.
Think about this for a second, they just got done fighting a revolution against the British government. They didn’t do it with pitchforks, they used guns. So it was fresh in their minds that they wouldn’t have independence unless they had the guns to take it with. The militia in which the 2nd Amendment refers was at their time every able bodied male not in the military. So if you were a dude, you were expected to know how to use a gun in the chance that you would be put into service. However, all of this stuff doesn’t matter.
When arguing about gun control, advocates will always point to the 2nd Amendment to have an argument about the meaning of the words. The real argument is only about having the right to defend myself with the use of guns. This is where I draw the line with people. I believe people have the right to defend themselves. If you don’t believe that, you hate freedom.
If you are in favor of gun ownership and find yourself arguing with a gun control advocate, draw the line right there. Just ask, do you believe I should be able to defend myself with a gun. There isn’t any need for arguing after that.
Let’s talk amendments!
The 1st Amendment is a pretty popular one out there on the surface. You don’t see many people arguing against the 1st Amendment…until they start hearing stuff they don’t like. Based on my scientific analysis, I have always found that people who are vocal about free speech, namely the type of people who protest stuff, are usually the ones for gun control.
I always thought that arguing against the 2nd Amendment lessened the impact of the 1st Amendment a bit. I always thought it was curious that someone would be for the freedom of words, but not the freedom to defend yourself.
My favorite thing about the amendments are that they are essentially useless now. Go back to the days of prohibition. It wasn’t even that long ago that our government was acting the way they were supposed to. Now, I always thought prohibition was a load of shit, but at least it was implemented in the correct manner. What I mean is that they went though the trouble of having an amendment to the constitution passed. They then had to go to the trouble of passing another amendment to essentially nullify prohibition.
People who are advocates of gun control never seriously argue to amend the constitution. The reason for this is that it’s easier to go around amending the constitution with contradictory laws and executive orders. Who cares that that it’s in violation of current law, the authorities will just do what they want and let it get settled in court down the line. Interestingly this has also destroyed the 1st Amendment. Go try actually protesting something sometime. You will get tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets for violating “free speech zones”.
Rights don’t exist
Rights are a nice concept to believe in. We think we’re such an advanced civilization that no matter what happens, we’ll always be guaranteed certain things. Unfortunately all that we really have are privileges. Can we really call it a right if it can be taken away at any time from the authorities?
Anyone arguing the point that they have rights is either a lawyer arguing a case, or just doesn’t get it. I have heard over and over again from people on both sides about something called “Constitutional Rights”. Constitutional rights don’t exist as the constitution was never meant to give you rights. It was just a document listing what your supposed rights were. The fact that you were born gave you those rights.
Being born doesn’t give you rights either though. I generally take the George Carlin point of view regarding rights. Either we have full rights or no rights at all. This means you have the right to shoot me in the face, but I have the right to shoot you first.
The only thing that gives you rights is your own ability to fight for them. This is why I believe guns are a threat, because they give you the power to fight for your rights.
Criminals don’t care about laws
Right now it’s illegal for felons to own guns. What that means is that if for whatever reason you did something crazy to become a felon, you can’t go out and buy a gun. Does this stop felons from owning guns? Think about it for a second, if they are bold enough to try something to get convicted of a crime to become a felon, chances are they are bold enough not to care about being a felon.
So there’s already laws on the books to stop crazy people from buying guns, and they found a way around it. Do you really believe the answer is more laws that restrict guns from everyone? It’s my belief that they will just find another way around it.
During prohibition, criminal elements not only became super rich, but they also became entrenched in our society. They did this by selling liquor on the black market. If the authorities banned guns, this criminal element would undoubtedly take over the market of selling guns. I don’t think this is a good idea.
I don’t support home ownership of nuclear bombs
Gun control advocates will eventually take the argument to the ownership of nuclear bombs. Logically I see their point. Big supporters of freedom like me should support nukes because eventually the technology will allow smaller and smaller nukes to be available to the everyman.
Don’t tread on me.
There’s a couple differences here though. For one, it takes a lot of smarts and expertise to make and operate a nuclear bomb. Second, nukes can take out whole cities. I don’t believe guns reach the threshold of weapon of mass destruction. As tragic as some shooter going crazy and killing a bunch of people, it’s relatively small scale destruction compared to a nuke going off.
I think there is an absolute limit to what people should be allowed to have, but in my opinion guns don’t come anywhere near that limit.
Founding fathers would have imagined the advancement in technology
One of the arguments I’ll hear gun control advocates make is that the founding fathers never would have imagined the guns of today, so we need to rethink the whole 2nd Amendment. This is a very silly argument in my mind.
I already pointed out that the 2nd Amendment doesn’t matter. It’s all about the question of self defense and whether you think you should have that ability. But just for the sake of argument, I’ll address this. In one sense I agree that they wouldn’t have imagined the specifics of the AR-15 or the Glock 17. What does this matter? I have to think that they imagined the advancement of technology.
Let’s remember that the founding fathers weren’t a bunch of idiots. They certainly weren’t perfect people, but you can’t call them idiots. They had an understanding of history. Having that understanding I’m sure they saw that back in the day at some point people used bows and arrows. They went from that to muskets of the revolutionary war period. So they saw advancement of gun technology. It’s kind of silly to think that they wouldn’t have imagined guns getting better in the future.
Can I personally imagine what guns will be like in the future for myself? I have no idea, maybe they’ll be some kind of laser gun or some kind of magnetic propulsion system. I’m pretty sure that they will only get better and more deadly in the future though.
Manosphere’s thoughts on guns
I have no idea what the manosphere at large thinks about guns. I haven’t really seen anything posted about them anywhere, but I suspect that they would generally agree with me. I asked one prominent blogger in the manosphere what his thoughts were on guns, and he responded that he owned a bunch of guns and believes in individual ownership. I thought it was interesting because on his site he didn’t talk about guns at all, but I could just sense it by what he thought about other things.
Like I said at the start, I don’t own guns and have never shot a gun. It’s just a general mindset that led me to think this way. Guns are just one medium in which my mindset can be explained.
Final thoughts
I’ll finish with the same question from the start. You’re out getting food at a restaurant and a gunman comes in and starts shooting everyone. Would you rather have a gun on you to defend yourself, or not have a gun and try and hide?
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I think you’ve got some good points here man. My take on it is this, the founding fathers insisted on gun ownership in the event the president decided to raise standing armies to protect their hard earned freedom. That freedom is now dead and the founding fathers would not recognize the country. With thats said in many ways its better not to have the average guy carrying a gun, the problem is by restricting ownership you ensure that only criminals have them.
Here in communist Canada, gun ownership is not even a debate, we can’t own them unless you go through miles of read tape and only then by keeping the gun in the house with the bullets in a seperate area so that you can’t defend yourself in case of an attack.
Yeah, that’s why I hate all the arguments surrounding the gun culture. It get’s caught up in what the 2nd Amendment actually means and like I said, I believe that’s a red herring. That is crazy stuff about Canada. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t even thinking of people outside the USA when I wrote the article. I’m sure it’s much worse everywhere else.
Here’s an interesting thought though, once bulletproof skin technology becomes widely available, it will usher in a new era of sword fighting making all of these arguments moot.
Really well written and some good ideas. I personally have never even lived in a country where gun ownership is legal, therefore I see this whole debate from even a more distant perspective.
Just like you I do believe in self defense and guns are pretty much the most efficient way to protect yourself. However there are just too many retards out there that can´t even use a spoon correctly. I don´t want them walking around with guns. I guess it would be fine to keep a gun at home against burglars but not allow them on the streets.
I understand why it is such a controversial topic. Nice post 😉
Did you know btw that cops in the UK don´t carry guns?
Cops in the UK carry guns, just not the ones on the every day street patrol. If some people started shooting up a mall, I’m sure the calvary would arrive. A lot of cops on the street don’t carry guns and it works out fine. Japan is like that. Could be like that in America as well.