Gun ownership is a civil right

Vincent J. Curtis

13 A[r 2019

[Written in response to an opinion piece in which a group of surgeons call for stricter gun control, saying that gun ownership is a medical issue.]

Once again we see glittering credentials used to add a false weight to what is a political opinion.  Because the spokesmen of this opinion are surgeons we are supposed to be blinded to the fact that they are arguing utter nonsense.  It is, flatly, utter nonsense to say that gun ownership is a health issue.  You only have to apply the same logic to sharp instruments and automobiles to get a sense of the reductio ad absurdum of the argument being made.  Death through drug overdose is orders of magnitude larger that death by gunshot, and yet the medical profession is cool to the legalization of the gateway drug marijuana.

Gun ownership is a rights issue.  The right of self-defence has long be recognized in English Common Law.  The right to keep and bear arms was established by statute in English law in the 1689 Bill of Rights.  That established right is why the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is written the way it is, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  Justice Antonin Scalia in the famous Heller decision explained the connection between the two laws: that the right was already in existence in American law as a consequence of the 1689 Bill of Rights.

The reason for including the right to keep and bear arms in 1689 and in 1791 both arose from the acts of tyrants.  To assure his despotic rule, Catholic King James II deprived protestants of their arms of self-protection.  In 1773, the British tried to confiscate the firearms of the American colonists to quell the rising rebellion against despotic English rule.  The lesson is that privately owned firearms are the first things a tyranny takes away because it denudes the people of the means of resistance against the taking away of other rights.

The right of self-defence is meaningless if a person is deprived of the means of self-defence.  Women in particular ought to be sensitive to this reasoning.  This is not to say that the keeping and bearing of arms cannot be regulated by law, but the entire deprivation of arms under the colour of regulation is a betrayal of trust in government.

The glittering credentials of doctors has no bearing on matters of law, rights, and history.
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