Assault on defense: Guns do not belong in civil society

I really love guns, don't get me wrong — I love to look at them, read about them, hold them, shoot them, clean them and then ogle them some more (I do draw the line at talking to them, stroking them or singing them lullabies, so please don't be too alarmed). Obviously, I really like guns, but like most of my favorite things in this crazy world, I realize that mankind would be better off without them. I shudder to imagine what some enlightened space-faring race would include in their galactic field manual about Earth: "Earth is absolutely covered with lethal weapons that any human can use to murder another with a single flex of his or her preferred index finger.” There might be a little "fun fact" box in the corner with a little blurb like: "Parts of Earth actually exist where it’s cheaper to get your hands on an assault rifle than on a quarter-pounder with cheese!" Alien textbook conjecture aside, it blows my mind that almost any American can walk into Walmart, a store that also sells pool noodles and inflatable slip n' slides, and buy a lethal weapon.

You can't do this in the land down under. Australia issued a comprehensive firearm buy-back and effectively banned gun ownership for the average citizen after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, and there hasn't been a single mass shooting ever since. The typical Second Amendment advocate on the street might contend that "anyone can buy a gun on the black market if they really want to" — to which I would retort that no, they absolutely can't if those guns have just become hot contraband, and black market gun rates just soared several hundred percent. Imagine if "clean guns" (legally registered weapons that have not been used for criminal activity) were so expensive on the black market that the average petty criminal could never actually buy one. If you were able to afford an AR-15 in Australia, you should probably just make a sizable down payment on a house and keep on being a productive little member of society. Seriously, if you have enough financial security to feel comfortable putting tens of thousands of dollars into a briefcase and cruising down to the friendly neighborhood black market on the wharf, you're either obscenely wealthy, a complete imbecile or both.

That Second Amendment advocate might then use his trademark "but it’s in the Constitution, and you can't change the Constitution" argument. To this I would respond that first, you are defending something called the Second Amendment, and second, this only made sense in the age it was ratified — the age of muskets. The Second Amendment was proposed to ensure that citizens could always defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical government. So when the government also only had a bunch of muskets, the average militia might have a fighting chance. However, as the years have gone by, I believe the disparity between the average citizen's gun rack and the government's arsenal has grown just a little bit. By the rhetoric of the Second Amendment, the citizens must be able to defend themselves against tyranny. So why can't I stroll into Walmart and buy a tactical nuclear war head, Tomahawk cruise missile, drones, Abrams tanks, Apache helicopter gunships or even just a casual bazooka at the very least? Under the current state of affairs, any potential citizen militia would be bringing Nerf dart guns to a rocket launcher fight. Clearly, the American population stands no chance against our government, so the original purpose of the Second Amendment is no longer applicable.

The Second Amendment advocate might suggest as a final argument that he uses his guns to defend his family. Luckily, Dr. Arthur Kellerman released a famous study in 1993 that offers a brilliant rebuttal to this argument. He concluded that having a gun in one's household multiplied the possibility of being involved in a gun-related homicide or suicide by a figure of 4.8. In other words, humans are a mercurial race who can sometimes get a little mad and a little sad. If we all accounted for the fact that sometimes we may act a little irrationally, nobody would ever entertain the idea of having a lethal weapon in his or her house. In the slight chance that you do actually find yourself awake with an intruder inside your house, chances are high that they're not trying to hurt your family; they're trying to shuffle as many used electronics out the door as possible without waking you up and possibly getting shot.

Guns are like hard drugs, drag racing or prostitution: There are people out there who can dabble responsibly — but many cannot. Those who treat these things irresponsibly can easily become the very agent of tragedy in the blink of an eye.