BLUF:
T. Patrick Hill Ph.D. is an associate professor at Rutgers University where he teaches ethics and law in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
⇑⇑⇑THIS is why you must take extreme care in selecting which college, if any, you send your children to. Because these are the idiots who will be filling your children’s minds with crap like this⇓⇓⇓
Gun ownership, yes! As a right, no! | Opinion
So, we have to change the national conversation. A basic reason for the interminable debate over gun violence in America has been the general assumption that there is a right to a gun. However, given the nature and function of rights, is it conceivable that a gun as such, regardless of any consequences, good or bad, of its use, qualifies for that status? That is the question that has been and continues to be unexamined.
As long as it does, the very absurdity of such a notion will continue to offend our common humanity. With each new mass shooting, the shooter often possesses a gun to which, he has an unqualified and inviolable right to have, including the consequences of its use. But if a gun can be used with such devastating consequences, how can its possession qualify for the status of a right? A standard response has been that it is people, not guns, who shoot people. The sophistry here should be obvious.
Put simply, a right is a claim made to something perceived as a benefit to be enjoyed. The strength of the claim is derived from the basis on which the benefit is viewed as a right. That basis will also be a measure of the value, relative or absolute, separable or inseparable, of the benefits to be enjoyed. This also enables us to prioritize among rights, as a civil right like the right to vote, and a human right like the right to liberty, with human rights superseding civil rights.
The right to liberty, as a human right is both absolute and inseparable by virtue of its basis, which is being human. In the absence of being at liberty, one’s identity as a human being is at its core compromised. Liberty, in other words, is integral to human beings, by virtue of birth, and is independent for its origination of any authority such as the United States Constitution, which does not initiate but only confirms it. Despite the substantial difference noted between civil and human rights, it is clear that the function of a right in both instances is the same. It justifies the claim to enjoy the benefits of the objects to which a right is asserted, with the consequence that actions taken under the right are rightful actions. If so, then it is reasonable to ask what actions were taken under the right to a gun might be justified.
The most obvious issue that comes to mind is self-defense. But a Harvard study showed that people used a gun for self-defense in 1% only of 14,000 crimes committed between 2007-2011, suggesting that society has more effective alternative means of self-defense. That aside, gun ownership data are decidedly negative for society. A 2018 survey confirmed that American civilians own 393 million guns, even as other research shows unequivocally that households with guns are less safe, and run a higher risk for accidental deaths, suicides and domestic homicides. Compared with Canada’s gun-related death rates of 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people, the rate of gun-related deaths in the United States is nine times higher at 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people. In comparison with Denmark where the rate is 0.15 deaths per 100,000 people, the rate in the United States is 29 times higher.
Coincidently, during COVID-19, gun sales in the United States have grown exponentially, accompanied, according to research at the University of California-Davis, by an 8% increase in violence across the country. Last year, 41,000 people were killed because of gun violence.
Concede the Second Amendment was intended to confer the right to a gun, then in light of the inevitable loss of life in America from guns claimed as a right, one must also acknowledge an unavoidable trivialization of rights generally in which the rights to life or liberty of thousands have been sacrificed to secure the right to a gun. What absurdity is this not? Whatever the Second Amendment means, it must not be such as to allow a right to a gun to offend humanity by trivializing our rights to it.