The gun control debate is not – and should not be regarded as – a political issue. It is a human rights issue. It is about recognizing the fundamental and inherent human right to self-defense.
Author and rights activist Jeff Snyder states, “to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.”
We already saw the results of what happens when this right is deprived. Defenseless victims are the easiest victims. There have been shootings at Luby’s Diner, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook – all legally gun-free zones for civilians when tragedy struck. Cities like Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. boast the toughest gun laws yet have the highest crime rates.
Despite the fact that over two million Americans use their personal firearms – including weapons like AR-15s – in self-defense every year, the proposed line of action is to implement more gun-free zones. The proposed remedy for tragedy is to strip citizens of their defenses and replace them with plastic signs reading, “No Guns Allowed on Premises.”
Ironically, the very same people who want to ban guns also agree that guns make us safer. Senator Dianne Feinstein and President Barack Obama have directly expressed support for the idea that armed guards make schools safer, and both of them use armed guards for themselves. They believe this, yet they aim to deprive us of securing for ourselves the very same protection that they have secured at taxpayer expense. For their own self-defense, Feinstein and Obama choose the use of guns over the implementation of the gun-free zones they endorse, yet are determined to make the rest of the United States abide by the opposite.
The Second Amendment states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It’s that simple. The right to bear arms, regardless of make or model, shall not be infringed. Had the Korean-Americans in the 1992 Los Angeles Race Riots not armed themselves with Ruger 30s and AR-15s with 30-round magazines, their property may have been destroyed like all the other buildings in the area, and their lives may very well have been lost. Had the American colonists been under strict gun control laws, there would not have been a Revolutionary War.
Jason Cockrell, a senior in applied mathematics, comments, “Does it make sense that immediately after writing down explicit protection for the right to speak freely and practice one’s religion, and immediately before writing down the explicit protection for the right to be safe in one’s home against unwanted occupation by government forces, the Founders took a moment to write down explicit protection for the right to hunt? …The Second Amendment protects the right to kill human beings, when their behavior necessitates it, and to remind them that such a course of action is conceivable, when they tend toward that direction. It is as deeply personal and as vitally necessary a right as those listed immediately before and after it.”
The right to self-defense via the bearing of arms – be it from robbers, rapists or tyrannical governments, and be it by fist, knife or gunpoint – is protected by the Second Amendment. It is a fundamental human right which exists regardless of governments and their policies, as rights do not originate from either.
It is a fundamental right which, when exercised, ensures that the only thing standing between you and a murderer is not merely a little plastic sign.
