QUORA: ‘What is the best argument you have for owning a gun?’
I posted this answer:
The right of self-defense.
Fortunately, we have a government that’s essential purpose is to protect individual rights to life, liberty, and property. This means acting as our agent of self-defense.* The government’s existence derives from our individual right of self-defense, but does not supersede it.
But the government can’t be your bodyguard 24/7. At any time, criminals can threaten or harm a law-abiding citizen[s]. These rights obviously imply the right of a citizen to act in his own self-defense when the option of calling on a government agent like a policeman does not exist, such as during the commission of a crime when the threat is imminent. It logically follows that the citizen has the right to possess the adequate means of self-defense, which includes ownership and use of a gun, and to use that means when it is reasonable to do so. The job of the government is to regulate gun ownership, to define the circumstances under which the private citizen may legitimately use the gun, and to establish oversight of usage after the fact, within the bounds of the individual right of self-defense as it relates to the rights of others. Resolving those issues is the province of the philosophy of law.
* [The government has steadily gone further and further beyond this function, becoming a major rights-violator. But that is a subject for another day.]
Related Reading:
Answering QUORA Questions About the Second Amendment
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ Scary Attack on the Right of ‘Personal Self-Defense'
The Second Amendment Is About an Individual Right, Not a Collective One by Michael Marshall for The University of Virginia School of Law
Burden of Proof is On Government in Concealed Carry Case
Gun Control Should focus On Principles, Not Guns
What does it Mean to Say that Government is the Individual's "Agent of Self-defense?"
Is There a Right to Carry a Gun in Public?
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