Some freedoms rest uneasily with one another. Freedom of speech and freedom from slander. Freedom to medical privacy and abortion. Freedom of personal privacy and national security. And the freedom to feel safe in a public place and the right to bear arms.
The whole concept of the right to bear arms has gotten completely out of hand in this country. The idea behind the constitutional right to bear arms is that a person has a right to defend his own property and his own life with lethal force if necessary. I could dissect that issue in multiple ways, but for now let's leave it alone.
The more important issue is that, while it may be appropriate for a person to have a lethal weapon to protect his or her home, that doesn't mean there is a need for people to have weapons in places that are not their homes, such as malls, grocery stores, restaurants, and God forbid, even churches. These places are not homes. It seems to me that if you're going out into a public place, you have given up your right to protect your property, for the simple reason that you are no longer on your property.
As for your right to defend your life, that right is limited by two things. First, the presence of police who are there to protect you so you won't need to protect yourself, and second, theoretically, laws that should limit others' ability to carry and use weapons in public places. Simply put, if no one else has a gun in a mall, you shouldn't need one. And besides, malls are privately owned, almost all of them, and your right to bear arms does not extend to someone else's property.
In many states, including the one I live in, there is been a liberalization of gun laws, while at the same time an increase in the security at government facilities. The upshot of this is that no one is allowed to go into a government facility with so much as a nail file, but according to many state legal codes it is perfectly all right to go into a barbershop with a concealed semiautomatic pistol that has 50 rounds of 9 mm ammunition in it.
In other words, we are now in a society where the government is actively protecting itself from citizens with firearms while at the same time encouraging them to go into movie theaters armed to the teeth. This is ridiculous.
I don't know what most people think they live in a civilized society for, but I live in a civilized society precisely so I don't have to carry a gun everywhere I go. Give it some thought: the purpose of living in society is that you can enjoy the benefits of various services without having to do them yourself. For example, I don't necessarily have to cook my own dinner tonight. I don't necessarily have to learn how to play a musical instrument if I want to listen to live music. I don't have to own an expensive work of art myself to get to see one. I don't have to find a place to dump my garbage. And I don't have to worry about supplying my own police protection.
That's the entire point of living in society. We enjoy the benefits of living together and taking advantage of one another's skills for the benefit of all. If we wanted to live in a society where everyone carried a pistol and people settled their differences by shooting each other over where the garbage gets dumped or who has access to the water well, I'm sure we could have that option. We don't have it, because none of us want it.
The point is, we live in society precisely so we don't have to carry guns. I don't want to live in a society where I have to carry a gun to go see a movie. If I have to carry a gun because I am worried that the guy who steps in front of me in the line at the supermarket might have a gun too, then there is no point in having any kind of government whatsoever.
This is a pretty basic concept. No one wants to get in a firefight at the Piggly Wiggly. If the government can't make me feel safe enough to shop for bread and milk without taking a pistol along, why have a government at all? Why have a society at all?
I have a feeling this is what some of the most radical gun nuts really want. They want to destroy the fabric of society, or at least to undermine it with suspicion and paranoia so they can have more of what they want at the expense of everyone else. It should be obvious to anyone who lives in a society like ours that the whole of a society is greater than the sum of its parts, but the gun nuts refuse to accept this. They seem to think America is at its best not when our assets are shared, but when it is every man for himself.
In an age where it is becoming commonplace to watch people shoot each other in movie theaters, malls, restaurants, and even our public schools, it has become incumbent upon those of us who enjoy society the way it is to defend ourselves from the selfish fools who are determined to take it away from us.
For those of you who are wondering exactly what this means, this doesn't mean (at least not for me) taking guns away from every one. It means making concealed handguns illegal just like they used to be, limiting the firepower of weapons that are clearly designed to kill people and not to hunt animals, making sure that every firearm is registered, and finally, banning of all weapons that can be easily concealed.
If that's too much for you, maybe you need to ask yourself what you live in society for. Guns may be protecting certain individuals in their own private situations, but larger society is suffering for it. The cost is fear and distrust, the kinds of things that bring great empires to dust.