A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.)
The right to bear arms is extremely important when it comes to the safety of our nation. As the old saying goes, “good fences make good neighbors.” The same is true when it comes to guns: they create boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not. Criminals are discouraged from committing crimes if they know there will be instant repercussions.
If we, for example, pass a law that outlaws guns, then the people that respect that law will hand them in. The same cannot be said for criminals – they will not turn in their guns. Not only that, but they also will not be deterred – they’ll be all the more incentivised to acquire and use weapons because their victims are left defenseless.
The gun has been called “the great equalizer” for good reason. To put this in perspective: I am a small 100 lb lady. Almost everyone I encounter in the world is bigger than me, and should they choose to, they could take advantage of that, be it theft, assault, or worse. If someone larger than me intended to harm me, my having a gun is an equalizer, in that my ability to inflict harm becomes equal to theirs.
Gun control advocates often imply how compassionate they are for people who are harmed through the use of firearms, but they completely ignore that they would be disarming people like me, who would otherwise be unable to defend themselves.
We can see the effects in the UK, who has taken away guns, demonstrating that removing firearms does not remove violence. They now have a stabbing epidemic.
We cannot remove anything and everything that can cause harm. The problem of violence has and will always exist, but it will not be solved by making the weak weaker by removing the opportunity to battle evil as equals.
To this one might say, “But what about the police? If there’s a crime occurring, we should be able to depend on them to help us.” Police play a very necessary role for our society, but it’s not realistic to expect them to interject on our behalf in a timely manner when we need our physical security insured. This points again back to the importance of being able to defend yourself.
Often when arguing against the use of guns, people will bring up the statistics on violence involving firearms. According to the CDC, in the year 2023, 46,728 people died from gun-related injuries. Something that is often overlooked is that most of these deaths are actually suicides and not just murders. In 2023, 58% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (27,300), while 38% were murders (17,927).¹ ² This is not accounting for gang on gang violence.
This goes against the narrative that violence involving guns is almost always murder.
Another reason why guns are so important is because not only do they aid in defending you from attack against other citizens, they also help to keep the government in check. A disarmed population is a weak population, one that is easy to control by tyrants. An armed population is a force to be reckoned with, one that is not so easily pushed around by corrupt elites and unjust laws.
Our country also has plenty of enemies – it would be naive to think attacks couldn’t be made on American soil, where our civilians would need to protect and defend themselves.
Why would anyone want to remove our right to bear arms?
Again, a disarmed population is much easier to control than an armed one. An authoritarian cannot easily deal with bunch of armed people that are set on defending their rights and liberty.
You see this time and time again with evil dictators such as Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler. Disarming their populations was a prerequisite to mass genocide and oppression.
All governments are made up of humans, and thus all can succumb to this same tragedy. The Founding Fathers knew this, and arming the citizens goes a long way towards mitigating corruption.
Guns are an important defense against crime and tyranny. Not only is it highly unconstitutional to remove this 2nd amendment right, it’s also a dangerous move that leads to disaster everywhere you look in history.
We need to defend this our right to bear arms in order to keep a stable society.
Excellent article!