In the end, gun control likely won’t achieve its ends. People are very attached to guns and they aren’t likely to comply with anything approaching confiscation of guns. Making it work would be worse than the alternative. Criminal will still have guns especially, and I’m pretty sure that like on a lot of issues there evidence on both sides as to whether fewer guns means less violence.
So if the President’s gun initiative go nowhere, I don’t think much damage will be done. Armed schools as an alternative? I like that even less. I do like the idea of a less violent world with fewer weapons. Libertarians who sympathize with gun rights, also in the end oppose coercion in all forms, or should. As such, I’m uncomfortable seeing libertarians defending not just the rights to guns, but MORE guns. In the end all that seems likely to do is to insure that the “right” people end up dead.
Guns as a protection of liberty? Likely, its practical in a world where coercion isn’t going away. Under the right circumstances weapons may be a defense of liberty. But lets call a spade a spade. All this righteous talk about liberty is basically asserting a right to terrorism in pursuit of liberty. I get it, but I’m finding the piousness of the defense of tools of violence a little tiresome. Guns and violence are nothing but a necessary evil. Could we be less romantic about weapons?
This whole post is reaction to Reason snarkily dismissing children supporting gun limitations. There are plenty of reason to doubt the practicality of their views, but do we have to so categorically deny the beauty of their ideals unsullied by the cynicism of adulthood.
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