Understanding the Arguments of Gun Rights Advocates
September 27, 2023
An emergent theme among gun rights advocates is the belief that individuals who responsibly and legally own and operate firearms (whom are the majority) aren’t the problem. Being so, they argue that it’s unfair to restrict the access and ownership of guns because it levies an unwarranted punishment on law-abiding citizens. At the crux of this theme, we see two distinct justifications for legal gun ownership, these being sport and industry, and protection. I use these justifications as focus areas to further understand the desire to own firearms in liberal democracies where gun ownership is decreasingly necessary. Given that prior chapters have assessed the illegal reasons for gun ownership, the nexus of these perspectives will lay the foundation for a holistic assessment on the efficacy of current gun control legislation.
Sporting and industry
I consider sporting and industry rationales for gun ownership to be the preservation of culture and tradition. In particular, this is because here, the ownership of guns is rooted in the historical practice of American and Canadian settlers hunting game and gathering food from local and natural resources for self-preservation. During this hunter-gatherer period, most guns were only suitable for farming use. These guns were called ‘fowling pieces’. Fowling pieces were long-barreled guns traditionally used for killing or hunting small game or animals (such as ducks and some game-birds). But as society developed, the hunter-gatherer role transitioned, and so too did the role of guns—shifting from a familial and community need to hunt food, to something that was used for sport. Today, these sports take the form of clay pigeon shooting and deer-hunting in the appropriate seasons.
The maintenance of this tradition through legal gun ownership certainly plays an important role in society from safety and economic standpoints. Morality aside, if we look at deer hunting, it is often used as a method to manage deer populations to prevent habitat destruction and indirectly decrease the amount of deer related car accidents. We can also say that the preservation of this tradition creates an industry, subsequently producing revenue, profits, and employment. In an American context researchers suggest this industry provides nearly 30,000 jobs. So, the combination of the cultural, economic, and safety components to gun ownership act as primary justifications for sporting and industry.
With this rationale, there are some key takeaways. Despite the desire to preserve tradition, there have already been rapid declines in this rationale because of the following: rural and farming populations have declined; leisurely options for rural residents have increased; and land where hunting is authorized has been reduced—ultimately leading to losses in game habitat. Being so, some have predicted that hunting, as owed to tradition, will no longer exist in the future given that the number of hunting licenses have decreased (form 16.4 million in 1893 to 15.5 million in 2019) despite America’s population increasing over the last 40 years.
This idea of the sporting disappearance is further supported by statistics which indicate that in 2011, 73% of all hunters were 35 or older. What this signals is that the sporting and industry rationale is an ever-receding industry and argument for the legalization of guns. Nonetheless, sporting and industry is a reason gun advocates wish to own firearms.
Protection
I consider the most popular reason to own a gun to be for protection. The rationale here is applicable to a variety of danger related circumstances. Advocates argue that during home invasions and overall robberies, a gun could prevent or stop the crime while minimizing potential injuries or deaths to victims or innocent bystanders. This belief is also prominent in conversations after mass shootings. For example, last year after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, former president Donald Trump suggested that legally owning a gun could have stopped the killer, whether teachers were armed or, armed security were at the school.
In the US, the argument of protection is supported by state and municipal governments. This is owed to the application of the “castle doctrine” which gives people the right to use reasonable force (including deadly force) to protect themselves against an intruder in their home. With respect to protecting one’s home, the only challenge to this idea of protection is being able to get the gun in time to respond to an intruder. This is because the defensive effect is diminished by regulations that require safe storage and that the weapon be disassembled.
In some states “stand-your-ground” laws build on this right to protection and self-defense by providing people who believe their life to be in danger with the right to use lethal force in an act of self-defense. So, in open-carry and concealed carry states, it can certainly help to counteract criminals with illegal guns who attack innocent or legal carriers. This proved to be beneficial in this video where 32-year-old Emanuel During was able to stop a 16-year-old shooter who killed one individual and injured three others. The gun used by the 16-year-old was stolen, but During was a licensed carrier. In the news report, it was noted that as the teen looked to escape, he aimed his gun at innocent bystanders to clear them out of his way. The key takeaway here is that During prevented the injury and deaths of other innocent bystanders by being a law-abiding citizen with a legal firearm. Relationally, if we look back at Donald Trump’s comments about the killer in the Uvalde mass shooting, it’s very possible that had an armed teacher or security person been on site, that less people would have died.
Notably, there is a dangerous nuance with stand your ground laws. The scope of stand-your-ground laws allows people in many cases to pursue individuals they perceive as a “threat” to use lethal force. The issue here is that perception allows for subjectivity which can be driven by hate or a form of discrimination. So, as much as it could help to stop criminals, it could unintentionally create another set of criminals with licenses.
Although the protection and self-defense argument provides valuable insights for upholding gun control rights, we have to question whether the prescribed benefits of increasing ownership would outweigh the costs. Here, what I mean is that if more people own and keep guns in public spaces, it will require greater requirements for safe storage but most importantly, individual control as opposed to impulse in using the firearm. Should these things be lacking, the likely result will be an increase in stolen guns, school shootings, youth deaths through accidental use and access to an unsafely stored guns, and potentially trigger happy shootings out fear. It’s quite possibly that by ridding or mitigating one harm, we could exasperate harm in other areas which would be a greater issue.
Final Thoughts
I believe the sporting and protection elements to gun advocate ideals present valid arguments to consider. Being so, it’s understandable why political talks of restricting or outright banning guns often spark outrage from legal gun owners and supporters, given that the bulk of legal gun owners adhere to gun laws and regulations. Being that Canada and the US are democratic nations with prescribed rights for ownership, the question becomes how can we balance the rights and desires of two opposing sides while mitigating harm and the flow of guns? In the next few chapters we will look at what the research on gun control says about what approach to take.