why the gun is civilization.
Human beings only have
two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do
something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or
force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction
falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force,
that’s it.
In a truly moral and
civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no
place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes
force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to
some.
When I carry a gun,
you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade
me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun
is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a
220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old
gang-banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys
with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size,
or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of
people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the
people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from
society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of
course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed
either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a
mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms
ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the
exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only
make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force
monopoly.
Then there’s the
argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only
result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns
involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting
overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or
stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings
and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes
lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the
stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only
weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands
of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it
wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I
don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be
left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I
don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It
doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason,
only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the
equation…and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
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