With Election Day now closer than Doug Emhoff to his kids’ nanny, Americans are grappling with a myriad of issues. Gun violence and gun control have become one of the most pressing issues over recent years, due to skyrocketing crime rates and high-profile mass shootings.
The anti-gunner lobby has been hard at work trying to convince the public that imposing more restrictions on firearms will somehow save lives and protect public safety. So, as a radical gun rights advocate, I figured I’d give them a chance to convince me. After all, I could be wrong, right?
So, anti-gunners, if you want someone like myself to support gun control, I’m going to lay out the case you will have to prove.
Good luck!
Let’s start with the primary reason the Second Amendment was created in the first place: To ensure a check on a tyrannical government. For me to support gun control, anti-gunners would have to convince me that our government will never descend into authoritarian tyranny, as have many other governments.
Here’s the problem: It already has many times over.
The United States government, in its current iteration, has existed for almost 250 years. Since its inception, it has violated the rights of countless Americans and grown to a bloated mass of bureaucracy and unnecessary legislation.
At numerous times in our nation’s history, the government has presided over and supported the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery and Jim Crow laws specifically aimed at oppressing Black Americans. Politicians supported policies preventing Black people from voting or even participating in society under the threat of violence. It used police officers to physically assault and even kill Black Americans in the streets during the Jim Crow era and beyond.
Anti-gunner progressives tell Black men like me that our government is committed to upholding white supremacy while keeping African Americans down – even through violence when necessary. In the same breath, they will tell folks like me that we don’t need to be armed because this same white supremacist government will protect us.
This alone is enough to show me that there is a very real chance that our government could become even more tyrannical. But let’s fast forward to February 28, 1993, when the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and other federal agencies decided it would be a stellar idea to lay siege to a compound full of religious folks in Waco, Texas.
The result was the longest gunfight between the government and civilians in modern history. The siege ended with the brutal murders of 76 people, including 25 children, when a fire broke out at the compound. Their crime? Having guns the government said they shouldn’t have.
What about the massacre of students at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a group of unarmed college students, for committing the unpardonable sin of protesting the Vietnam War?
These represent only a minuscule sampling of the atrocities our government has committed over its history – and I haven’t even gotten to more recent examples.
Anti-gunners, can you guarantee that none of this will happen again? Can you assure folks like myself that federal, state, and local governments will not abuse their authority in this manner – or even worse? What’s keeping them from becoming more like Russia or Iran?
Even further, haven’t you been telling me for the past few years that former President Donald Trump is the second coming of Adolf Hitler and will enact authoritarian rule if he is elected? Shouldn’t I be armed to protect myself from the Orange Man What Is Bad™?
Let’s move on, shall we?
For anti-gunners to convince me to join their ranks, they would also have to guarantee that the government will always be there to protect us if dangerous criminals seek to take our lives and property. Despite what Democrats want us to believe, violent crime has increased over recent years, which has prompted many Americans to become gun owners.
I have written countless articles about cases in which regular people used guns to defend themselves from home intruders, carjackers, and other bad actors. Can you tell me why these people shouldn’t have been allowed to have firearms? How would it have been a good idea to make it harder for these individuals to arm themselves?
Several studies have shown that defensive gun uses occur quite frequently. In fact, a gun owner is far more likely to use their firearm to defend themselves or others than they are to commit a crime. In each of the articles I’ve written about defensive gun uses, the police were not present at the time of the incident, meaning that if the civilians had been unarmed, they might have been seriously hurt or even killed.
In light of this, what is your plan to guarantee that everyday folks will never have to worry about violent criminals, anti-gunners?
Perhaps I should wrap this up for you in a neat little bow. The reason why folks like me own firearms is because we do not trust the government. We do not trust that the state will always respect our rights – and we have almost 250 years of history showing that we are right.
Secondly, we understand that while the role of government is to protect our rights, they will not always be able to do so. As the saying goes: “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
If you can’t give me a compelling reason to trust the government’s integrity and its ability to protect me, you have no business using the state to prevent me from arming myself. If you are concerned about gun violence, then stop making it harder for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.
Instead of trying to hinder my right to carry a firearm, why not focus on the issues that lead to crime in the first place? Can’t we work together to find solutions to these problems, or is your true motivation something other than public safety?
Here’s your job, anti-gunners: Convince me the government won’t abuse its power and crime will vanish—then, and only then, will I consider your gun control laws. Until that time, leave me and my guns the hell alone.
