Opponents of the right to bear arms like to talk as if they are just using common sense.  Surely, they say, it is reasonable that people not be allowed to own fully automatic machine guns, tanks, and military aircraft.  Pushing it to the extreme, they ask whether you would really trust your neighbor if he had a nuclear warhead.  Well, if we're going to use that argument, the United States government has more weapons than anyone else on the planet, and I sure as hell don't trust them.

Proponents of the right to keep and bear arms often respond with standard Constitutional arguments.  The Second Amendment is the "reset" button for the country, and so people must be able to have the means to execute the Big Change, whenever that may be necessary.  Aside from the issue of general rebellion, the Founders secured the right so that people would always be able to protect themselves from criminals.  Other common arguments for the right to bear arms are that an armed populace reduces crime and that firearms are needed for hunting.

These are all good arguments, but they do not really strike at the root of the matter.  The Constitution is a piece of paper; it does not legitimize aggression, nor is it any more relevant what it says about my rights than the back of a napkin I find in the trash.  It is true that an armed populace generally does greatly deter crime, but even if it didn't my rights would still exist.  The hunting argument is so weak that it is mostly gun control advocates who use it to show that only some firearms are permissible.

The root of the matter is simply this: The right to bear arms needs no more justification than the laws of gravity.  Both are natural laws of nature, not to be legislated or devised, but discovered and observed through reason.  The right to bear arms is merely a subset of all property rights: You have the right to own any object you want, provided that you have ethically acquired it.  The ethical requirements for acquiring property are that you either appropriate it from a state of nature or obtain it from voluntary trade.  Property can include any imaginable object, whether it is food, a piece of land, a computer, or a missile launcher.  An equivalent way of stating your property rights is that if you ethically own an object, you and only you may justly exercise control over its use.

Given the correct definition of property rights, one may properly own any sort of weapon he wants, provided he acquires it ethically (this rules out all governments as legitimate owners, since they can only acquire weapons by stealing money to pay for them).  Of course, the right to own property does not give anyone the right to infringe upon the rights of others.  You have the right to own a gun; you do not have the right to shoot me with it.

At this point, the opponent of the right to bear arms (are there any opponents to the laws of gravity?) might introduce the following situation: An individual points a gun at you but does not fire.  Isn't he just exercising his right to bear arms?  What right do you have to disarm him if he is merely pointing the gun at you and saying words?  He has not aggressed upon you yet.

The situation of someone threatening you with a gun is supposed to show how ridiculous the right to bear arms is, since then according to the right anybody could threaten anyone else.  This is the basis of the "trust" arguments.  We are supposed to envision frightening people like Al Gore living across the street, with missiles directed at our property and absolutely nothing we can do about it.

This argument is fallacious, though.  It rests on the idea that pointing a gun at someone is not aggression.  At first glance it might seem feasible, since, provided that everyone is standing on his own land, no one's property has yet been damaged.  However, we may employ a concept that is used in contracts to show that real aggression is being committed in the present when one person threatens another with a gun.

Many people make conditional contracts that specify a physical exchange of property to be made in the future.  For example, Smith might trade a cow to Jones, provided that Jones delivers a couch in a month.  Although the physical trade of property might not occur in the present, the real exchange of property does.  This is because the contract represents an exchange of ownership rights.  Individuals may elect to trade a portion of their ownership rights, or place any degree of conditions on the ownership rights that they trade.  Therefore, title to property is always defined at the time of the contract, and it is the specifics of the contract that specify when the property is to be used and by whom. 

Likewise, a threat of violence is equivalent to transferring aggression in the present, even though the physical aggression may not be committed until the future.  It is analogous to a conditional contract, but one that is forced upon one of the parties.  For example, Smith points a gun at Jones and tells him that he will shoot him in one minute if Jones does not transfer ownership rights of his couch.  The physical aggression does not occur until the future, because it is not until that minute is up that Smith will actually harm Jones' property.  But even though the actual damage is not done until the future, the aggression is committed in the present.  Jones is attempting to force Smith into an action that he would not perform voluntarily, and he must use aggression in the present in order to accomplish this.  If Jones were not aggressing in the present, then there would in fact be no basis for Smith to acquiesce to his demands.  Execution of the violence, just like physical delivery of property in some conditional contracts, will occur at a specified time in the future.  Given such a situation, where one party is committing aggression in the present, to be physically carried out at a time in the future, the other party may properly defend himself at the time of aggression.

The logical conclusion of the above discussion is that any weapon may be properly owned, but no weapon may properly be used to initiate violence, which includes the threat of violence.  A threat of violence is equivalent to committing aggression in the present.  If your neighbor possessed a warhead, that would be fine.  You might want to move away, but that would be your problem, not his.  But if your neighbor used the warhead in any way to threaten you with its use should you not transfer ownership rights of something to him, then he would be acting unethically.  Only at that point would you properly be able to disarm him.             

December 19, 2002