The Three Sides of Gun Control
According to Associated Press, March for Our Lives was the biggest youth protest since the Vietnam War and one of the biggest rallies advocating for gun control in the capital.
There’s only one catch: their stated aim—stopping the proliferation of firearms and other weapons in the United States—is at its core a push not only towards tyranny, but also towards the future infringement on the natural rights of men. On top of all this, these nonviolent political protests against firearm possession ironically undercut the chance for future Americans to engage in nonviolent protest.
There’s only one catch: their stated aim—stopping the proliferation of firearms and other weapons in the United States—is at its core a push not only towards tyranny, but also towards the future infringement on the natural rights of men.
The perspective taken by many pro-gun activists in the United States is a simplistic, dogmatic stance. Multiple constitutionalists and conservatives cite the Second Amendment to justify their right to bear arms. They simply refer to the text: “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.”
However, a piece of paper does not grant you your right to bear arms. Humans derive the right to bear arms from the unanimously acknowledged right to life and autonomy, and thus the right to defend one’s own life and autonomy. Without the capability to protect oneself against threats to one’s life, the right to life is effectively forfeited.
Whether this protection is against a tyrannical government or against a foreign invader, one thing is beyond clear: preserving the right to defend oneself preserves an essential human right.
Antithetical to the conservative perspective, and misguided, is the stance taken by the proponents of the March for Our Lives: school shootings mean we have to forfeit our right to defend ourselves via the confiscation and restriction of firearms. While the events that transpired at Parkland High School and at other school shootings were tragic, the only reason such incidents have garnered so much attention is because they occurred close to home and at the same time.
17 students dying at once is surely understood by everyone, and will be remembered forever as an invigorating event in the gun debate.
However, hardly anyone remembers that an average of 22 veterans commit suicide each day as a result of untreated psychological conditions, according to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
No one remembers the hundreds of dead children in inner city Chicago, where knives are involved in a majority of attacks, simply because the attention span of the American psyche is too short to recall anything less shocking than a one-day school shooting.
This sudden outburst of concern over school shootings is a reaction to a relatable event that evokes sentiments of self-preservation. This in itself is not a bad thing; it is entirely understandable that students would want to protect themselves. However, the hypocritical American treatment of gun violence with potentially detrimental restrictions rather than the treatment of suicide or inner-city violence with proactive and entirely beneficial measures, is indicative of the bourgeois self-centeredness and single-minded focus of the March for Our Lives.
The historical precedents regarding widespread possession of firearms and weapons in general indicate that the individual capability to defend oneself has been key to the democratic progress of society.
Major societal changes like the French Revolution and the October Revolution tore down tyrannical governments and dragged their respective nations into the age of self-rule and democracy. The few political powers that were already granted to them were only enforced by the guns of the military which defended the authoritarian governments against which they later revolted.
The guns of the people provided them with their ability to protest, thus, this protest against gun ownership ironically self-destructive. Political progress is only permitted within the confines of the ruling class, which is the class that influences or controls government institutions like the military and the police.
Without the political power afforded by the military and other state apparatuses, it is then up to the people themselves to fight for what they believe in.
As the Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung once said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” It is undeniable that, in an age of increasing kleptocracy and the associated formation of what is effectively a capitalist aristocracy in previously liberally democratic societies, it is now critical to ensure that the means to protect ourselves and defend our human rights are protected.
We cannot rely on the support of the simplistic constitutionalists nor on that of bourgeois and hysterical progressives. It is up to true progressives to protect the most fundamental and universal right of humanity: the right to one’s own autonomy.