On Gun Control

The Sandy Hook tragedy has brought questions about gun regulation into the national conversation again, and in their wake a plethora of worn out pro-gun arguments can be heard bellowing from pundits, politicians and Facebook friends alike. We--one of us a professional philosopher and logician, the other a gun owning minister who hunts--would like to examine these arguments, in light of our own expertise, and try to contribute something meaningful to the debate. Let’s look at each argument, one at a time.
 
"You can't talk about gun regulation now. It's disrespectful to the victims."
 
The NRA said this is why they failed to comment on the Sandy hook tragedy until days after it occurred. But talking about what we need to do to avoid such tragedies is hardly disrespectful to the victims. Usually, it's things we find unimportant that we don't talk about; so silence actually disrespects the dignity that the victims (indeed all persons) have.Crises should compel us to address situations, not send us into paralysis of silence. These moments of horrendous pain ought not serve as a silencer but rather as a catalyst for meaningful change. After all, no one said we shouldn't be immediately talking about how to prevent future terrorist attacks after 9/11. The truth is, this is just something gun advocates say because they know, in the wake of tragedies such as Sandy hook, the debate will not go their way.

"Liberal anti-gun activists want to take everyone's guns away."
 
This is a strawman argument; pro-gun activists are mischaracterizing their opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack. In truth, very few "liberals" want to ban guns entirely, and a call for stricter gun regulations is no more a call for universal ban than a call for lower taxes is a call for no taxes. Regulation does not mean total prohibition but is a call for responsible use.

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people."
 
Right, but they do make it easier for people to kill people. This worn-out NRA slogan merely points out that guns are proximate causes to the killings they help bring about. While true, it does not follow that guns should not be regulated or illegal. After all, bazookas don't kill people either – but no one thinks they should be legal. Anything that makes it easier for people to kill people should at the least be regulated. The government requires us to wear seatbelts--and we can’t blast our stereo’s at 3am, or grow our grass above 24 inches. How could we see the regulation of such mundane things as acceptable, but think the regulation of guns not?  

"It's not a gun issue, it's a mental health issue."
 
Actually, it's both. (A logician would say this argument presents a false dichotomy.) The Sandy Hook tragedy does bring to the forefront issues regarding how we as a nation deal with mental health, but we also need to do something to keep guns out of the hands of those with mental health issues—especially the kinds of guns that can kill massive amounts of people in mere seconds without needing to be reloaded. And as long as such weapons are legal to buy, and can be stockpiled, not even background checks will keep them out of the hands of the mentally ill.  
 
"If we criminalize guns, won't we have to criminalize cars? After all, they can kill too."
 
A logician would call this a fallacious slippery slope argument based on a false equivalence. Making one thing illegal does not entail that we must make all remotely similar things illegal as well. Of course, if two things are nearly exactly alike (e.g., AK-47s and AK-74's), illegalizing one would entail illegalizing the other. But cars are nothing like guns. Cars can kill, but that is not their sole purpose or intended function. Our entire society does not depend upon individuals owning and using guns. And, most of the time, when cars kill, it is not intentional and premeditated. Guns, on the other hand, have but one purpose: to kill--and it’s usually intentional and premeditated. In truth, the use of this argument is mere hyperbole, and seems to demonstrate a weakness and desperation on behalf of the pro-gun proponents.
 
"Criminalizing guns will just make it harder for decent citizens to get guns. Criminals will still get guns illegally – just like they do now."
 
No, criminalizing guns will make it harder for criminals to get guns too by simply making them less available. Will it make it impossible? Will it eliminate gun crime? Of course not. But when things are criminalized, they're harder to get, and if guns are harder to get they will be less likely end up in the hands of those hell-bent on killing large numbers of people and there will be less gun related crime. It's not rocket science; states with stricter gun regulations have less gun related crime.  

"If everybody carried a gun, there would always be someone with a gun around to stop things like Sandy Hook from happening.”
 
People have made a habit of citing a story, coming out of Texas, to support this notion. Supposedly an armed gunmen in a theater showing of The Hobbit, not long after the Sandy Hook shootings, was thwarted by a concealed gun carrier thus preventing another Aurora type shooting. But none of this is true. In reality, an employee of a Chinese restaurant went there looking for his (ex)girlfriend. He produced a gun when he found she wasn’t there. His gun jammed when he tried to fire in the restaurant, some patrons ran into the parking lot (where he did shoot and injure one person) and eventually into a nearby theater’s lobby (where the Hobbit, of course, just happened to be playing on one of the screens). The theater’s security officer, an off duty police officer, prevented the shooter from entering the theater by shooting and injuring him. Clearly, this was nothing like the Aurora shooting and has no bearing on the consequences of arming everyone.

In reality, placing a gun in everyone’s hands, or even liberal concealed weapons laws, would make things so much worse. Life is not so straightforward or simple, and the above notion would be true only if the we always had full knowledge of every possible situation...and perfect aim. Think about it. Let's say you are carrying a concealed gun at a midnight showing of Batman, and all of a sudden shots start ringing out. You duck behind the seat in front of you, but the man next to you stands up and pulls out concealed gun. Ask yourself—is he a good guy, about the take out a lone crazed gunman? Or is actually a bad guy, a part of a team of crazed gunman strategically placed throughout the theater? If you conclude the latter, and shoot him, what's to stop someone else from thinking that you are a crazed gunman? If instead you decide he's friendly (and you are right) and try to help him take out the bad guy, how successful will you be in not shooting innocents  in the pure chaos and panic that situation would be? Those of us who hunt know that you can miss a deer  in the complete calm while they are standing still and you have perfectly sighted scope. How do you think the average person would do in that situation? After all, very few would be highly trained and skilled marksmen.

Besides, a world in which everyone carries a gun is not exactly a world in which free speech could flourish, but is a world where every lost temper could result in a lost life. We’re thankful we don't still live in the Wild West for reason.  

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

This is what NRA president LaPierre said the week after the Sandy Hook shooting, in a call to place armed guards in every school in America. But you can stop a crazed gunmen without a gun (by preventing him getting the gun in the first place), even trained professionals can shoot innocent bystanders (or be shot themselves), this solution is not cost effective ($5.5 billion a year) and wouldn’t solve the problem anyway, since we can’t put armed guards everywhere mass shootings occur. (You can find a blow by blow rebuttal of LaPierre’s comments here.)

"We have a constitutional right to own guns to protect us from the government."
 
First of all, the stated purpose behind the second amendment is maintaining "a well regulated militia," which would have been used to protect us against foreign powers – not our own government. Since now, unlike then, we have an organized and government-funded military, a right to bear arms is no longer needed for its stated purpose. Secondly, the idea that we need protection from our own government is rooted in idiotic conspiracy mongering; we live in a first world democracy--not a third world dictatorship. Third, the idea that we could somehow protect ourselves with firearms, from our government turning our own military against us is ludicrous. Every civilian in the country could a own fully automatic assault rifle, and if the military wanted to instigate martial law – they still could. (Other national armies can’t stop them; how could we?)

But, most importantly, no constitutional right is without limits--and the right to bear arms is no exception. Of course, how much any right should be limited is a complicated issue; we must take into account the importance of the right and the price of protecting it. But the simple truth is, the right to own military style assault weapons, with or without expanded clips, whether automatic or semiautomatic – or to stockpile weapons of any kind – has a very clear price: the inevitability of tragedies like Sandy Hook. And that price is simply not worth it.

What’s ironic is that those who most vehemently push these pro-gun arguments also quite vigorously profess to be Christian. The way of fear is not the way of Christian hope, yet the current level of fear mongering that is so often the flying buttresses of the anti gun control crowd, does but one thing: it compels us to encounter each other,not with hope, but with fear.  In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is recorded as saying ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”  It’s time for us to put guns back in their place; we are perishing by them.

Our proposed solution? The most guns anyone can own, after a thorough background and mental illness check, is three: one small handgun, one shotgun, and one hunting rifle. That is all anyone would ever need to participate in every legal legitimate gun activity – small and large game hunting, going to the shooting range, and home protection (although the turn-the-other-cheek pacifists ministers among us would not find the latter a legitimate gun activity).