Can Guns Protect Your Life?

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are the most commonly recited of out fundamental, natural rights. It seems fitting that the right to life would be mentioned first. Without the right to remain alive, to be safe from attack, to defend oneself against attack, the other rights become meaning less. It is impossible to enjoy liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or anything else if one is not alive, or if one’s life is threatened. As a society, we have taken steps to try to protect this most basic, and most precious right. Our Constitution including the Bill of Rights, was intended in part to protect the lives of U.S. citizens against the use of government power. Additionally, state and federal laws have enacted to punish individuals who take others lives without justification. Together these laws, along with the threat of capture and punishment for breaking them, are intended to prevent people from wrongly taking others lives. Despite these efforts, murder, manslaughter and assault will still occur. Our system of law enforcement, and punishment serves to prevent crimes, not to eliminate it entirely.
When these efforts fail, and one is under criminal attack, there is only one alternative left: to preserve one’s right to live. If we don’t protect ourselves we are leaving our lives in th hands of others for protection. To have the ability to carry a handgun we will be protecting the one thing we have Life. While we want to protect ourselves from crimes such as robberies, rape and murders, we may not always depend on the law to be there for us. While we should trust the government to protect us, everyday we take responsibility to protect ourselves. Without delay, every state in the nation should modify its handgun carry laws so that, in a world where the government fails to protect victims, the victims can choose to legally carry their own means of self-protection.

   In an article to enhance gun safety Michael McNeil states that, “The weight of evidence, suggests that gun bans and draconian restrictions will not reduce criminals’ access to guns, but will instead disproportionately disarm good citizens who cannot be effectively protected by the police.”(McNeil pp1 of 1) He has a strong opinion on the fact that gun control will do more harm then good.
I think it is important to remember that the purchasing of a gun legally is much harder to get then an illegal weapon. He makes a good point by saying “… More lives are protected by guns than taken by guns”, I agree with him because even though there are crimes committed and accidents with concealed weapons do occur, without the use of guns where do we put our lives? We can no longer protect ourselves with the trust of government actions, its sort of like taking the law into our own hands. Since the right to life implies a right to the means to protect that life, the individual’s right to his own life necessarily implies a right to keep and bear arms suitable for self-defense. In this place and time, that means a handgun, small enough to be carried at almost all times. A

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