https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upYUFv-0rKY

A dialogue between a private gun owner and an anti-gun rights activist:

Why should the police have more than ten round magazines for their guns? Why should the police have assault rifles?

Because they face violence at an abnormal level and they should be able to defend themselves and enforce laws.

So they should have a superior arsenal so that they can intimidate others into not starting a fight or so that they can win a fight should it come to violence?

Yes. The police should be able to diswayed those that would oppose the state’s laws or to win in a violent battle with those that oppose the states laws. If the police are not dominant then the laws will go unabided.

I wish to uphold the states laws as well but what do I do when the police are not available or fast enough to protect me from criminals who want to victimize me? Why should I not be able to prevent that fight or win that fight?

You should be able to.

So why should I not have more than ten rounds of ammunition in my weapon just like the police? The threats to my life, while less likely, are just as lethal so why should I not be able to defend myself with a superior arsenal to that of the attacker?

Well, we're not worried about you per se. We are worried about guns getting into the hands of psychopaths or terrorists. So if there are less guns on the streets these people are less likely to get their hands on guns and if they do get guns those guns are less lethal because they have less rounds before needed to be reloaded.

Doesn't the government sell assault weapons and other military equipment to foreign countries that end up on the streets and kill innocent people? And those that were once our allies may become our enemies.

No comment.

Do no police weapons end up on the street?

No comment.

So the police, as an arm of the government, should be more capable of defending themselves because they are enforcing laws than those that would be victim to the criminals?

Yes. The average citizen is not trained on how to properly employ lethal force both physically and legally. They should not be able to take the law into their own hands as they are more likely to act irresponsibly and create a worse outcome than those trained to be police officers.

If a citizen employs lethal force in the same manner as a police officer, then they should be as accountable as a police officer would be. Is this not true?

A citizen who employs lethal force justly has nothing to fear in our justice system. Personal defense is not a crime.

If people should be legally allowed to defend themselves and it is possible to be attacked by someone with a gun then why should the innocent, law-abiding citizen be more limited than the would-be criminal? When the criminal can get a 20 or 30-round magazine then why should the law-abiding citizen not be?

No comment.

If the police decide they want to not abide by the laws then wouldn't they have a major advantage over their victims since they are not limited like the average citizen?

No comment.

What makes the police a moral agency with more authority than the average law-abiding citizen? Why should an innocent citizen be a victim when they could be a defender of the law in the same way as any police officer would be? Why should the citizenry, that supports the government with its taxes, be punished because of criminals who use guns toward their nefarious ends?

No Comment.

The 2nd Amendment:

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.

The First Argument

Threats from within:

The police will come first. Slowly and quietly at first. Knocking on doors. Forcing identification and the disarming of households. If the people do not comply it will get loud and eventually it will be the military that steps up to do the bidding of the government. The rebels will gather to form guerilla militia groups that will be hard to find. They will become terrorists among their own countrymen. The politicians may split and loyalties may split and the military may split and then civil war will ensue and everyone will suffer. Better to overthrow tyranny at its source, if its source can be identified at all. For a man living in his house, the concept of espionage are not useful. A man living in his house with his family nearby has only one thing keeping those that would destroy him at bay. That is his chosen weapon. In the past it was swords, now it is guns. Those who choose pacifism will be at the mercy of those who do not.

If the point of the 2nd amendment is to ensure freedom and to act as a power check for the government and its potential to enact tyrannical actions then anyone attempting to take guns out of the hands of the populace is working to make the government more able to enact tyrannical or evil actions. If the second amendment is a right that justifies itself by appealing to the overthrowing of tyranny both foreign and domestic then anyone who wants to take guns out of the hands of free people is creating an environment for tyranny to propagate. The main form of resistance available to the people when force is used against them is the application of a similar force. When government enforcers have guns and the people have guns then there can be a fight. When the people have no guns then they can not fight the state and they have to submit or die.

People who think that their government has no chance of becoming tyrannical are living in blindness and know not of history or psychology. People seek power and use force to obtain and maintain it. If the ruled population has fewer means for resistance then the government has more power to enact the will of the powerful. This is happening in China and other places right now. This is the way of things everywhere really. They are being forced to do something they don’t want to do and they have almost no recourse, the Chinese that is. There are enough of them to revolt in the streets but they are not able to defend themselves or resist effectively. Not to say that violence is the answer in that case and the question of whether violence is permissible is not what this article is about. I am assuming, for the sake of this article and argument, that force is permissible in the case of just defense. There have to be consequences in order to push back against those that wish to enact their will at the cost of others’ moral and personal sovereignty. If it costs the government very little to quell the revolution then the people revolting will never win and the government can go on enacting its will.

When the people are not free to defend themselves the government is free to force them to do things or not do things. There are no arguments that change the fact that if people do not have access to defensive tools they can be killed or forced to do things that they feel are wrong by any group large enough or violent enough to force such things. This is why a balance must be struck between the ruling class and the ruled class. The ruled class can rebel but their power only exists when the government fears their revolution. Every major atrocity and massive loss of life from violence has been due to ruling classes enacting their desires. Sometimes justly and sometimes unjustly. Wars against others and wars against self have taken more lives than anything other than maybe mosquitos.

The cost of having guns in a society is that they will be used for purposes that they are not intended for and for interpersonal grievances or crimes that we agree should be crimes. These illegal activities are insignificant compared to the potential harm a government can do if it has no consequences for its actions. School shootings do not make up a significant enough threat to ban guns because the reason for gun ownership is to offer resistance to a tyrannical institution which can cause much for death than any and all school shooting incidents combined. There are alternative solutions to random violence in America that are more in line with the reality of power dynamics than taking guns away from free citizens.

Freedom is not a concept that exists for the individual only. It exists for sake of one group of people not being tyrannized by another group. Freedom means being free from taxes that don’t make sense. From conscription for unjust wars. From home invasion and forced marriages. Freedom is for those that can’t defend themselves as much as it is for those that can. We are free from foreign warlords because of our military might but we are not free from the potential tyranny that the military could inflict on the internal population.

A free people must have the means to remain free if the powerful decide to enslave them. This is the reason citizens own guns. The threat of violence has to mean something from both sides of the power struggle or one group will enslave the other. This is the threat that everyone should be worried about. The powerful should be concerned with their own use of power and the ruled should be concerned with their ability to fight back should the time come to do so. The rulers should be concerned that revolution will affect them in their homes and the ruled should be able to affect the rulers in their homes if the need should arise. The most harm to humans is done on the scale of the state either from foreign states or from the state on its own people. Large-scale destruction depends on large groups trying to force other large groups and the balance of that power is what keeps people civilized. Mutually assured destruction is a powerful deterrent to those that want to continue to live.

The “then shouldn’t we have bombs and jets?” argument or the argument that says we can never beat the military anyway so if comes to it what’s the point in having just guns:

When the government starts to become increasingly tyrannical it uses the police force first and goes door to door. This is the first place in which the people will have to decide whether it is worth fighting or not. The more the police and civilians are separated the easier it is for this conflict to escalate. If the police are part of their communities then it is harder for them to enact violence against their neighbors. But if they do enact violence, civilians with guns create a viable threat to this initial form of tyranny.

When the police are not enough then the military will be employed and the military is not universally hated by the populace. The military is comprised of the people from the communities in which they would be employed to tyrannize. There would likely be dissent and fractured loyalties. This would likely depend on the justification for the tyranny. A sufficiently polarizing policy might split the military's allegiance and a civil war might result. Then the civilians and the military would have to decide what side they are on and move forward. This is another argument for civilians being armed and skilled in warfare.

Even if the military decided to put its weight against the civilian population the fact that militias could form and wage guerilla warfare would create a strong resistance to the government succeeding quickly, if at all. Middle eastern countries have done this when foreign nations have come in to take their power away. They hide and strike back and are very hard to get rid of. This is because they have weapons.

Also, there is the destruction to the infrastructure if the military just started bombing shit. This infrastructure is useful to the government and if they have to pay to rebuild that goes into the cost of the war. So it isn’t a given that the military will just start bombing cities and such. If this did happen then we are all screwed anyway and if there is any chance to sabotage this violence a resistance group would want to have guns or if it is super bad then the people might want guns to kill themselves.

In conclusion: The only gun argument that matters for the justification for the right for the individual to have guns is the argument that weapons are necessary for defending freedom and because the government is the arbiter of freedom it cannot be trusted to control this right. A nearly all-powerful entity can not be expected to diminish its own power so it is the ruled that must retain its own ability to push back against that power. If the government is capable of tyranny then the people should have a means of thwarting that tyranny. Anyone, especially politicians, who seek to diminish the rights of civilians to defend themselves is knowingly or unknowingly empowering the already powerful. The power that the ruling class has is only curtailed by the ability of the population they rule to fight back if necessary. This is the argument that anti-gun rights people should contend with. Try to convince me that the government is moral and would never hurt me and only wants to see me be free and happy. Good luck. After that convince that there are no other reasons to own a gun.

Links:

List of anthropogenic disasters by death toll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

Massad Ayoob on registering guns (Youtube Short)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5M1NKaVLgXI

Beto: People can't fight a Tyrannical Government nor do they have the right to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIINmv54O24