Guns and cars: the same or different?

That question is raised in the new Ruben Bolling cartoon.

Tom registers

Cars aren’t mentioned in the Constitution which does, as my husband has pointed out, make them different from guns,  which does not mean we shouldn’t require rules for gun ownership like registration and insurance.

2 thoughts on “Guns and cars: the same or different?

  1. The difference (and the flaw in the cartoon’s analogy/ argument) is that cars make very bad lethal weapons.

    A tyrannical government controlling (or monopolising) the use of cars would not be able to control a population, persecute sections of society, round up dissidents, quash rebellions, commit genocide etc etc . However history has demonstrated over and over and over and over again that when governments control/ monopolise guns this can – and usually does – lead to all of these things. In fact letting governments control or monopolise gun ownership tends to INVITE tyranny.

    As an experiment let’s imagine that the group in society who have done the MOST DAMAGE with their guns was prevented from owning and using guns – how would that work? Well, the first group which would have to disarm immediately would have to be the government itself. They have murdered at least a million men, women, children and babies in the past decade alone – all based on lies, fraud, deception and of course all paid for with money taken from the public …… at gunpoint.

    The government is very good at hiding its violence. It has, through state education, trained us to use a whole vocabulary of special words to describe government’s violent behaviour – taxation (theft), war (mass murder), national defence (attacking other nations for profit and empire), enhanced interrogation (torturing people), democracy (mob rule by force), gun control (gun confiscation at gunpoint) etc etc.

    Government also controls the media (or more accurately, it has gone into partnership with the media). That is why most Americans would be unaware that Bush and Blair have already been convicted of war crimes under the terms of the Geneva Convention, the same terms used to convict Nazi war criminals after WW2. The Nazi’s were big on ‘gun control’ as well if I remember….

    But suppose the government was more up front and honest about its activities. Suppose they actually sent hired thugs round to everyone’s house every Friday evening to demand half of that family’s weekly earning at gunpoint. Anyone who refuses to pay up gets kidnapped at gunpoint and put in a cage. Anyone who resists, tries to defend their person and property, or tries to escape the cage gets shot. This is the current relationship (striped of all those euphemisms) which every modern nation currently has with its government.

    But it gets even more extreme… government spends more money than can be obtained through ‘taxation’ alone (wars are very profitable, which makes them very expensive too). So as well as taxing people today they also take out HUGE LOANS from private banks (at interest) which they will force future generations to pay back, also at gunpoint. Government debt is a kind of deferred taxation – it is theft from the future earnings of the as-yet-unborn.

    Now, I’m not saying we need to condemn the activities of governments, although at the very least we must acknowledge that committing threats of violence, theft, extortion, terrorism, kidnapping and forced imprisonment are all grossly immoral ways to behave – regardless of who is behaving that way. I’m just suggesting everyone be very, very clear about the kind of people who are vying to take control (and potentially monopolise) the right to own and use guns. Government has proved it has no respect for human rights. Drone attacks have a 98% civilian murder rate, many of whom will be children. This means that anyone ordering such strikes KNOWS in advance that 98% of the deaths inflicted will be innocent civilians. By contrast, I bet the average American gun owner would rather shoot him/herself in the leg than shoot another person dead. Gun control is therefore a shift of control away from the most peaceful sections of society (statistically speaking) and into the hands of the most violence sections of society (statistically speaking) .

    The question of whether or not any group has the *moral* right to control or monopolise guns hardly needs asking. If it is immoral for ME or YOU to control or monopolise gun use by force then it must also be true of everyone else, including those claiming to represent the mythical god known as ‘government’. After all, nobody can grant to another person or group a right which they do not have themselves.

    The question of the *practical effects* of state control/ monopolisation of guns by force can probably best be answered by looking at history ….. and hopefully learning from it. It’s a big ask, I know.

    Perhaps the best question of all is this: what *responsibility* do we have to future generations with respect to keeping the world a safe and peaceful place? Is placing increasing control over guns into the hands of provably the most violent and immoral group in society the most responsible way for us to behave?

    There are, thankfully, plenty of ways to license and insure guns and gun owners in the free market, without needing to hand the task over to a government who are, let’s not forget, the ONLY group in society who still claim (and violently defend) the legal right to INITIATE force in order to achieve their goals.

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