Got this, allegedly from a retired United States Marine, in an e-mail today. It's probably bogus as to the authorship, but philosophically it does make a number of salient points. Firearm ownership reinforces civilization and morality and, conversely, firearm prohibition by big sister government harms society and empowers the morally inferior of the criminal element. Intersting take and I found myself agreeing with most of it:

HOOO RAH!
The Gun is Civilization
Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

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 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 [armed] 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 weight lifter. 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.

By Major. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

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Fairly simplistic reasoning, which has numerous pifalls, but it's no more geared towards the simpleton than most liberal thinking which automatically assumes that criminals and bullying thugs who invariably attempt to do the most harm to whomever they desire can somehow be magically cured of deviancy if the rest of us would merely be "nice" to them. Of course, the liberal argument then becomes that if gun ownership defended the civilized then the United States with it's massive numbers of privately owned firearms would be the safest society on the planet, which it clearly isn't. Too bad that particular argument can be easily countered by the evidence that the United States only became dangerous when the legal system was subverted to allow criminals to more easily behave like criminals.

Either way, state your piece. As with all things gun-related it oughta be a doozy. All I know is that I want to get my hands on that Lee-Enfield 303 sooner rather than later.

   

e-mail spam = Fail

   

All that gun ownership adds in a non-hunting context is veiled threat, not reason. It's the extension of the club and will eventually be trumped by some other portable lethal weapon which all and sundry will race to have the best and most lethal of.

That email is validation for the simpleton who can't argue from reason and sees threat at every turn.

   

God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal.

   

Yup! and even this fine American man could not have done it without the help of a chinaman.

   

The articel would imply that societies that practice gun control are not civilized. In reality there are several relatively prosperous and peaceful socities that practice gun control.


Also, a problem with the argument is that it can be extended to absurdity. The writer says that "When I carry a gun you cannot deal with me by force." In fact I can--if I have a tank. So therefore the basis of civilization becomes a tank. And so on.

I'm all for the right to bear arms, but let's not overstate the case. I prefer the philosphical lens of the social contract myself.

   

Same here, at least when it comes to the Social Contract.

That said, I hate what the idea of everyone carrying a firearm says about our society. To me, it says that we no longer trust each other and that we've gotten to the point we are living in perpetual fear of our fellow citizens. It's a very Hobbesian view of the world (which I do subscribe in part) but it's also a very depressing and fear-inducing view as well.

   

And when you have to deal with him, it would help to have a gun

   

The problem with the social contract is that it runs about a mile wide and only an inch deep. Scratch beneath the surface and you find that the vast majority of human societies are essentially still in the aforementioned Burkean state of nature, i.e., remove the overwhelming authority of the State to prevent chaos, and chaos invariably results from the deliberate actions of the selfish and murderous. 99 out of every 100 people might follow the societal code but without the ability and right to self-defense against the 1 out of 100 sociopaths who care about nothing but themselves the contract becomes void. It becomes even worse when there are active elements in a society that deliberately make it more difficult for recognized authority to contain or prevent the deviant from doing harm.

Interesting responses so far but I've yet to see one that convincingly debunks the premise of the original posting.

   

The only absurdity though is your own with this extreme extension. You aren't ever going to have a tank or a nuclear weapon at your own personal disposal. Neither is the criminal or sociopath. You are plausibly, however, able to possess a personal firearm. That the criminal might also have one does not refute the argument because your possession of the same ensures that the field of potential battle is never worse than level for both sides. Your loss that would occur if you were unarmed is no longer a given but also the victory of the criminal over you has essentially been aborted.

Your point about various societies with firm gun control being safer than ours is noted. But I'd counter it with the argument that the societal damage done to Western society by unhindered post-1960's individual selfishness and rampant drug use/trafficking does not apply to the generally more disciplined and societally responsible cultures in place like Japan or Singapore where bogus expressions of "individuality" are not allowed to manifest themselves via criminality. More often than not I've wished that the West had the same rigid cultural framework of these other societies. We'd all be safer and much better off for it.

   

God made you, make him regret it!

   

If I have to deal with him, there's a whole fuck of a lot more wrong that'll likely preclude me meeting mano a mano with him than all that. My guess is that stealth and a good shot with a baseball bat would take care of the necessaries.

   

I suppose what brought me to this line of reasoning was an American explaining to me that the necessity of gun laws was related to the recognition of the founding fathers that a people should be able to fight back against their government. That struck me as an odd argument, 'cause I pictured this guy firing his Winchester at an F-18 (or whatever the latest and greatest is).

Don’t get me wrong. I support the right to bear arms. I didn’t use to. I have for the last five or ten years. But I just don’t subscribe to the notion with the same visceral intensity a lot of right-wingers do. I think it’s a good idea (unlike most of my fellow liberals) but I don’t see it as a sine qua non of civilization. (That’s right sine qua non. Frickin’ Latin. Christ, you people should pay me to be here, seriously).

So that said, my objection noted above is more principle than practical, I grant you.



Well, maybe I’m a pawn in the mighty propaganda machine and you’ll never beat it out of me that Canada isn’t the best country in the damn world followed by the US and then England. OK, Scotland and England are tied. Iconoclasts like me--and yourself for that matter--don’t fare well in culturally structured environments like Japan. Though I haven’t been there so I really have no clue what I’m talking about. Which, of course, will not stop me from expounding at length on the subject.

   

So the guy in Michigan taking out people in a retirement home is emblematic of the "inch deep" crowd? Assume the worst at all times, eh?

   

I'd say about 99.99999% of human interaction is sans force. So for all these interactions where force was never intended, wouldn't the knowledge of one party having a firearm bring fear into the equation? And for so few instances where a gun would negate the use of force, it hardly makes the gun the basis for civilization.



It totally does... muggers don't normally announce that they're going to mug you. Having a gun won't help when you already have one to your head. You know what also removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender? Having competent law enforcement, having common sense enough not to walk down dark alleys at night by yourself. We all know the dangers.



See, the battle is far from over. The confrontation is won when the attacker is punished for his crimes under societies laws. Why does this guy keep forgetting that we have laws? Also, if both are armed the field is NOT necessarily equal as some are faster and better with the gun.



It brings fear into the equation. This would all make sense if we lived in total anarchy, but we don't. Also... what if you can't afford to own a gun?