Nick Herman

April 12, 2006

Theology

Gun Control in America

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       ìA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.î-The Second Amendment to the Constitution of The Untied States of America.

 

         In America we are entitled to certain rights, protected and guaranteed by the Constitution, but a major debate, particularly in the gun control issue, between the legality of freedoms and the moral responsibility of a government, has divided the believes in America to those who believe in the higher authority of morality. This conflict has yet to be resolved and may always be a concern to the United States.  

         To examine the morality of gun control, it is first necessary to understand the gun itself.  Most guns in the United States are no handguns but rather hunting rifles and shotguns, neither of which criminals find useful for crime nor civilians find useful for self-protection. Handguns only make up 30-40% of the legal guns in the United States. The handgun is the weapon of choice for criminals and those interested in their self-protection because of many attributes of them, which make them attractive to use. First handguns are small and lightweight making them concealable which allows for the criminal to surprise a victim and for the civilian to surprise the criminal. Handguns are required to be simple and low maintenance because those who carry them are usually not educated on the complex functions of most guns used by the military. The handgun is not meant to be an extremely accurate weapon because the people who own them do not take enough time to become practiced enough to shoot precisely, and precision is usually not necessary because they are for close quarter encounters. The average muzzle velocity of a handgun will rarely exceed four hundred meters per second and the effective accurate range of handguns is only about 30 meters.[i]  The ammunition used in handguns are large enough to do considerable damage to a target but the ammunition, because of size and weight constrictions, lacks the powder charge behind the bullet and the muzzle length to accelerate the bullet fast enough to have the ìstopping powerî of some smaller caliber rifles. The stopping power of a bullet depends on two variables, the speed and mass of the bullet.  The speed of the bullet depends largely on the gun itself because all the acceleration occurs within the gun. After the pin strikes the primer of the bullet a combustion reaction, inside the cartridge, causes high temperature gases to rapidly expand. Because gases, especially those at high temperatures, take up more volume than the once solid powder, the bullet is accelerated through the only way it can go which is through the barrel. The bullet is being constantly pushed through the barrel by the still expanding gases and the acceleration on the bullet does not stop until the bullet reaches the muzzle where the gases are no longer contained and disperse through the atmosphere.  Special groves on the inside of the barrel give a spin to the bullet which causes the bullet to move straighter and more accurately. Therefore the longer the barrel of a gun is or the more gases released which then expand down the barrel, the faster the bullet will travel.  The bullet upon leaving the barrel is no longer being accelerated but slowing its velocity due to collision with air particles. The bullet is made of a malleable metal like lead, which upon striking a surface will begin being compressed and having a larger surface area, which is why the exit wound will always be larger than an entrance wound because the metal is ever expanding when it comes into contact with a solid object. The more the surface area the bullet has, the more harmful the wound will be, and the more mass of the bullet the more it is able to expand to take up a larger surface area.

         All the information in the pervious paragraph may seem irrelevant when discussing gun control from an ethical standpoint but the implications of the power of such a devastating weapon make it possible to understand why people would use such a deadly device.  Because killing is morally evil, why would anyone buy a gun, which is designed for killing? Guns are meant to cause extremely concentrated force exerted onto a target and they do this very effectively. Therefore if they accomplish this destructive goal, those who wish to restrict the use of guns state that by their very nature guns are intended to cause harm. Most everyone agrees with this principle but there is the component of justice which gun advocates use to his or her advantage. People who own guns are not necessarily more violent and do not desire to kill because violence is considered immoral to most individuals. The problem occurs when the morality of justice outweighs the immorality of violence as many gun advocates suggest. Guns are considered a means to justice rather than violence in their case. They are in fact a means of violence but if the violence is used to create justice, just as in World War Two where the Allies used extreme violence to create justice for those persecuted by fascism, then the violence becomes justified. The next step in this argument the gun control advocates will state that the end does not justify the means. This is not a common argument because most people would agree that self defense and the defense of justice are justifiable under any means but some very radical and passionate anti-gun advocates have used this argument to open a new front on the issue of gun control[ii] If people do not have a right to self protection as some would suggest than the need for guns is obsolete. Law can support this argument as there is no definition of the right to self-defense in the Constitution or Federal Law but from a moral standpoint, telling the public that they do not have the right to defend their families under any circumstances might not be willing to support such a claim.  Thomas Hobbes and Locke have eluded to this issue that self-protection is a natural right and instinct of all humans and if a government cannot protect even the basic human rights than the theory that people are the source of government is made difficult.[iii]

         Another argument from ignorant members of the gun control advocates is that people should not be responsible for their protection because that is the very reason we have the military and the police. This assumption is logical although entirely incorrect. Most people would assume that the police have a responsibility to protect the citizens of their country. This assumption again is wrong. Take the case of Warren v District of Columbia. Three young female roommates in Washington DC had their apartment invaded by a rapist. Downstairs the first women was sexually assaulted while the others upstairs realizing the danger called 911 and requested help from the police. They waited in fear upstairs for almost an hour until the commotion downstairs subsided and they assumed the police must have come and resolved the situation. As the made their way downstairs they saw their roommate unconscious on the floor with the attacker still present. He then held them captive in their own homes, beat and raped them for fourteen hours. The police never showed up at their apartment so the three women sued the police department who had apparently lost the order for a police officer to make his way to the scene by chain of command. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the District of Columbia because ìthe federal government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services such as police protection to any individual citizenî.[iv] The police therefore have no legal responsibility to protect any one citizen but rather their duty is to prevent, denture, and stop crime and to uphold the stability or the society.

         The police are given certain means to do their duty as police officers. They are given handcuffs, nightsticks, pepper mace, and guns. The government and the police see guns as a necessary way of stopping criminals but the police have no obligation to protect any citizen and if the citizen is denied the right to self protection by a means that is essential to that self protection then the government in effect does no support the basic natural rights of the individual. The response made by Handgun Control Inc is that handguns create a society in which normally morally good people are given the opportunity to become morally evil very quickly. If a person were to leave his or her keys in his or her car while he or she goes shopping it would create an obvious temptation for normally good people to become evil. An impulsive adolescent walking by the car may see the keys and take the car. Therefore because gun owners who desire guns create a society in which guns are valued the criminal sees the obvious temptation of being allowed to take what he wants with the mean of the gun. He has the opportunity because the law allows his to own a gun and with the gun the means to get what he wants.[v]

         The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Department of Justice have found that only 10% of violent crimes included the use of a firearm and that 93% of firearms obtained by criminals are not purchased legally.[vi]  The number of legally purchased guns in the United States is estimated at around 200 million. The use of these legally bought guns in crime is so insignificant that it cannot be accurately calculated.[vii] Based on this information gun advocates conclude that with the restriction of legal gun purchase law-abiding citizens are disarmed while criminals will still have guns at their disposal with less fear of a the person they are assaulting to defend themselves. Criminals who are willing to use guns in a violent crime and are willing to accept the consequences of being in jail for the rest of their life are surely not deterred from the possession of an illegal firearm which carries at maximum a five year sentence.

         It is clear that guns cause more damage to people physically than other weapons might. Gun control advocates state that guns are a means to serious physical harm, which causes greater damage to the body than another weapon like a knife would. Gun advocates believe guns are just a means by which violent people commit violent acts and that if guns did not exist the same violent people would still be committing violent acts just with a different means of doing so and also that in violent crimes other weapons are more often used. Although different weapons are more commonly used in assaults the damage done by guns is far more devastating to the human body. In 1993 the medical costs for those just injured by guns was estimated at $14 billion with much of the cost falling into the hands of the government and subsequently the tax payer. In 1983 the medical community made the move into gun control advocacy when the Center for Disease Control declared that firearms were a significant health threat to Americans. Guns now became associated with other dangerous and deadly activities like tobacco use and automobile accidents. When guns are used in violent crimes the chance of serious injury or death rises dramatically as compared to the use of a knife.

         The fear that a gun creates may also precipitate violence itself in a situation in which it may not have existed before. Because guns are deadly the mere existence of them around people make even criminals afraid. Fear, like any intense emotion, can lead to irrational thought and people will often turn off thought and act on basic instinctive characteristics of their human person. A criminal who points a gun at a potential victim is most often not attempting to harm the victim but use the weapon as a show of dominance over the other persons mind and their physical wellbeing hoping that because they are in complete control of the other person just with the presence of the gun that they will be able to take from that person whatever they want.[viii] Harm usually befalls those victims upon seeing a gun act irrational and much to the surprise of the criminal fight back. Likewise civilians who try and stop criminals from victimizing themselves or other citizens put themselves in grave danger. Criminals have a similar reaction upon seeing a weapon. Because they are the criminal, the law-abiding citizen who points his or her gun at the criminal is legally justified to shoot the criminal which gives more reason for the criminal to be frightened for his life. Obviously seeing no way in which he, the criminal, can maintain his control over the victim and his own safety acts out of fear and will react violently. The mere threat of a gun provides an ominous sensation of fear inside everyone around the weapon.

         Guns are not only subject to the harm of criminals and civilians but also to the harm of their owners. While accidents are relatively rare and non lethal, the use of guns in suicide creates a deadly combination. In those who attempt suicide some will choose to poison themselves, which has a 20-30% likelihood of being fatal, while those who attempt suicide using the means of a gun have a 90% chance that their attempt will end with their death.  Adults usually consider all their options and try to solve their problems before resorting to suicide. Minors however are much more impulsive and influenced by emotion than adults. When a gun is present in the access of a minor they are almost five times more likely to commit suicide that when a gun is not present. Under a time of extreme emotional insecurity a suicidal teenager is likely to act on impulse first rather than to think of the consequences of his or her actions. Guns are a terribly destructive match for suicidal teenagers, because it gives them a means that is deadly which they want and quick, which adds to their already impulsive nature. A gun allows them to be more impulsive and more suicidal while the lack of a gun may make them think their decision out longer.[ix] The existence of guns around minors falls in the moral responsibility of the parents of the minor. Even if a gun is properly hidden and secured minors can still find them, but some parents argue that when an intruder enters the home they do not want to wait to open the security measures on the gun while the intruder could be killing their families. Usually the criminal is the one who initiates the encounter so it is hard as the victim to react quickly enough to the criminal. This presents another problem. Since the criminal has the element of surprise on most victims even if they are carrying a weapon they will most likely never have the chance to draw it because the criminal will already have them in a position where the criminal is in control.

         The Christian response to the issue of guns can be supported from use of the Bible on either sides of the argument. A common passage sited by gun control advocates is during the sermon on the mound Jesus tells his followers to ìturn the other checkî which they interpret as a clear statement against retaliation and the use of violence. Others state that God gave us the gift of life and to not protect and hold sacred our life is to be in contempt. The main question behind the gun control issue is when does achieving justice justify the use of violence against another human.