Here Are Some Answers to Often Asked Questions of Anti-Gunners
by Massad Ayoob
Recently
by Massad Ayoob: 10
Commandments of Concealed Carry
It
has become increasingly politically incorrect to be a firearms owner.
This is because trends tend to be set by the fashionable and the
media-connected in metropolitan environments. Gun ownership per
capita is well under 50% in urban areas of this country. Nationwide,
it is estimated that one half of all homes contain at least one
firearm. As the demographics move into rural areas, gun ownership
well exceeds that 50% margin, and on the frontiers and in the true
backwoods home, gun ownership will generally be found to reach the
90th percentile of the population.
When your beliefs
and values are challenged, you want ready answers. The following
have worked for me when debating the civil rights of gun owners
in this country.
- Isn’t
the Second Amendment about the National Guard?
Frankly,
no. Serious legal scholars have almost universally agreed that
the Second Amendment speaks to the rights of the citizens, not
the rights of the states or other communities. Doesn’t
it seem incongruous that the Framers would have written one
states’ rights amendment into a Bill of Rights that otherwise
speaks entirely to the rights of individuals?
Besides,
consider that the document in question was written at a time
when the gunfire of the American Revolution was still ringing
in the ears of the Framers. A “national guard” of
the period would have been Tories loyal to King George, hardly
an entity the freedom fighters who wrote the Bill of Rights
would have wanted to empower.
Historically,
you’ll also find that the constitutions written by the
separate colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence and
the Bill of Rights spoke of firearms ownership specifically
as an individual right encompassing personal protection, and
not just a tool to facilitate state militias.
- Isn’t
a gun just a phallic symbol?
If it
was, no man would ever have bought one with a two inch barrel.
- What
about the argument that people die in domestic arguments because
a gun is within reach of an angry person?
Certainly,
those with uncontrollably violent tendencies should not own
guns. When asked this question, I always respond with a question:
“Could you pick up a gun and kill someone you love because
they angered you?”
If the
answer is No, I reply, “Then how dare you imply that I,
and everyone else, would be that unstable?” If the answer
is Yes, I suggest they stop attempting to counsel well-adjusted
people and immediately seek psychiatric counseling for their
own self-admitted tendency toward acting out impulses of uncontrollable
violence.
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the rest of the article
October
14, 2009
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