Why Gun Control Is A Class Issue

By Sam Hoober, Alien Gear Holsters

Believe it or not, gun control is just as much a class issue as it is an issue of the abridgement of freedoms for misguided reasons.

Naturally, those who advocate for increasingly tighter restrictions on firearms ownership insist that it’s in the name of savings lives when anyone who actually knows anything can tell right away they just want fewer people buying guns, period.

What isn’t always appreciated about the role of firearms in human history is that they democratized the use of force.

Most people have heard that old saw about “God made all men, but Sam Colt made ’em equal.” While it’s not strictly speaking completely true, it’s not entirely an exaggeration either.

Historically, the weapons of the common man (certainly in a military context, but outside of one as well) were the bow, the spear and improvised cutting or bludgeoning instruments.

The sword was the weapon of aristocracy. You can learn to use a spear in a rudimentary (but effective) fashion pretty quickly, but the sword takes time to learn and large standing armies of professional soldiers get expensive in a hurry in any century.

Sure, a pike or a spear is deadly, but imagine a peasant with a pike trying to fight a nobleman or knight who had years of time and training with a sword while said peasant was toiling in the fields.

In other words, the elites of society had an edge (so to speak) for much of human history. They were the ones who could afford to take the time to become proficient with a weapon that requires great proficiency to use well.

The gun changed the equation.

A rifle in the hands of a peasant is as deadly as in the hands of the bluest of blue bloods. They may be less effective with one than a professional soldier who trains all the time, but represent more of a threat proportionally to a modern soldier than a pike-wielding peasant did to a knight.

Look at the history of modern warfare. How many wars have professional armies failed to win against peasant insurgencies? Granted, guerilla peasant armies tend to lose far more in numbers, but they typically have more numbers to lose in such conflicts.