Anyone who is a regular user of X/Twitter will know the rules, one of which is – never respond to an American gun nut.  If you are unwise enough to ignore this rule – perhaps after the latest school shooting, perhaps by suggesting that it is unwise to allow mentally unstable people to have access to military hardware,- you will be deluged with responses.

There are two main responses.  One involves saying that gun ownership is a constitutional right.  This actually rather dodgy.  The constitution speaks of not infringing the right of a citizen to own guns as part of a well-regulated militia. To most people, this would involve a coherent organisation with memorandum of association, a membership system (in which you couldn’t own a gun if you didn’t fulfil the entry conditions), and a hierarchy of management (in which action could not be taken without authorisation by a supervisor selected according to the organisation’s rules).  None of this appears to be present in gun friendly states.  It may be worth adding, too, that even this right comes as part of an amendment to the constitution, which implies it could be repealed (as the ban on alcohol was, and denial of votes for women too).  You can surely change a constitution if it helps save lives.

The other main response is also curious.  It defends the ability to freely own arms as a way to maintain the freedoms of the population, enabling them to resist oppressive governments trying to take away citizen’s rights.  The (slightly paranoid) view is that governments are eager to remove freedom of speech and assembly and other rarely specified stuff. You sometimes have the circular argument that guns are needed to resist legislation to control guns.

My problem with this argument is that it is patent nonsense.  Someone equipped with a rifle they have bought from a gun shop could never resist a government, which has tanks, attack aircraft, warships to back up police, FBI and CIA agents.  Even nations with not just guns but (slightly fewer, or slightly inferior) tanks and aircraft have been unable to resist the awesome power of modern weaponry.  I’m sure the French and Polish peasantry of 1940 had plenty of shotguns, but it didn’t get them far preserving their civic rights against the Gestapo.

We can also see plenty of examples of US citizens losing, or failing to gain, their rights, without help from weapons.  Guns were useless in gaining votes for women, or securing civil rights for many black Americans.  Chinese migrants lost their rights to citizenship as part of the ‘Yellow Peril’ at the turn of the 19^th/20^th century. Innocent and patriotic American citizens of Japanese origin were moved to detention camps in 1942. Neither group were helped by gun laws. One suspects that the argument made here is “well, not those sort of rights”, or perhaps even “well, not that sort of citizen”.  Abortion rights, or even the right to access all and any book in a public library or school, also seem to be outside the protective magic of the bullet.

There are other arguments. “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people” is common enough, and could be used to justify selling cyanide, attack helicopters and tactical nuclear weapons.  The idea that a substantial force of guards could be set outside every school to await the next gun toting oddball would be more convincing if there wasn’t evidence of this, er, not working. 

Finding apparently noble reasons for doing what you want has a long history.  Aristocrats tell us they should stay in the UK Parliament because their families have served the nations well.  We are told we don’t need to cut hydrocarbons because, well, it damages the economy and anyway this climate change stuff is untrue.  Millionaires, it seems, don’t avoid taxes because they’re selfish, but to create jobs and boost the economy.  Social entitlements should be cut, not as a miserable attack on the less fortunate, but because they encourage laziness.  Action to reduce speeds and cut road deaths, we are told, is part of a war against the motorist.  Reducing ill health and obesity by controlling fast food is similarly just the nanny state in action. 

A confession: I’ve been out shooting with American relatives, and it’s fun.  I guess the gun lobby actually thinks “I like having my guns”, and will dredge up any apparently worthy argument to keep them.  Even if it results in hundreds of deaths a year, many of them children.