No Guardian, No Shepherd.

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

No Guardian, No Shepherd

As humanity moved to twenty first century, violence in society has been remained as an unsolved and international problem and yet the blame for this problem has been put on many different ideas, ideologies, beliefs, international and nationwide decisions, laws, people, politicians, policies, traditions, cultures and so on. Even religions and religious beliefs have been the target of some of this blames and of course some of these blames are fair and right. On the other hand, in most cases these are people and their beliefs and the decisions made by them and the actions taken by them have been considered as the causes of violence or in a wider consideration the causes of any problem or disaster in any scale. But yet there are some people who ridiculously blame the tools, instruments, devices, and equipment for all the problems they face. They consider tools as the direct and sometimes, the only causes of the problems that humanity faces. These people considered firearms as the direct causes of violence in societies and from the last decays of the nineteenth century, in some sort of international action, they began to limit the usage of firearms by civilians by passing laws in almost all over the world which are known as gun control laws. These laws limited or in most cases, forbided using, keeping, carrying, producing and trading firearms by civilians. As humanity arrived the twenty first century, almost hundred and twenty years after passing first gun control laws not only the dream of those who naively believed that gun control will mean violence control has not come true but violence and particularly armed violence has become a bigger and more serious problem in societies and as nations move on and gun control laws become tighter, this problem shows a dirtier and more dangerous face than ever. Ever since the gun control laws have been established there have been many objections against them. And there are many people, from all different layers of society and with different fields of studies and careers who strongly believe that these laws and regulations should be more relaxed and in some cases even removed to control armed violence and for society’s goods. Some of the reasons they state to support their ideas have been discussed in following.

Guns in hands of civilians save more lives than they take. One of the main reasons that people in favor of gun control state to limit firearms, is that firearms in hands of civilians cause deaths and injuries, but this is not true. Over two and a half million citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals just in united states (Kleck 173). This means that each year, firearms are used more than 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. And the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than eight percent of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker (Kleck 185).

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Citizens use firearms more effectively than police or anti terrorism troops or swat teams do. International statistics collected by United Nations show that citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police or other authorities do every year. In United States this rate is 1,527 to 606 criminals a year (Kleck 111). And readers of Newsweek learned in United States in 1993 “only two percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal”. The “error rate” for the police, however, was eleven percent, more than five times as high (George). In 1996, an Arab terrorist group attacked a restaurant in Tel-aviv, Israel. Terrorists intended to kill citizens sitting in the restaurant as many as they could. But they did not succeed. As soon as they arrived and opened fire, all three of them were shot to death by five armed citizens. Only one citizen was killed by the first rounds fired by one of the terrorists, there was no other injuries and the percentage error was zero (New York Times). This shows that the claims against the usage of firearms by citizens which state that civilians do not use firearms effectively and in the right time is completely wrong and has no actual and creditable source. As a matter of fact, untrained citizens use firearms more accurate than trained officers in general and if governments spend a small amount of money and time to train citizens in using firearms, that “two percent” error will be even less and of course that amount of time and money will be nothing compare to millions of dollars and thousands of hours that are being spent to train police officers or swat teams or special task troopers and so on all over the world each year.

Another pathetic fact related to gun control and protection is that police can not protect every individual. In almost all over the world police has no obligation to protect every each individual and only the society. In United States the courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. For example, in Warren v. DC in 1981 the court stated “courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community”. And in fact police can not respond to every call or request for help against violence in proper time. One of the main reasons, is that there not enough police officers to protect citizens. In United States “Currently, there are about 150,000 police officers on duty at any one time to protect a population of more than two hundred and fifty million Americans or almost 1,700 citizens per officer (Kleck 132).” This rate for Canada is even more pathetic and is about 23,00 citizens per officer (Globe and Mail). The Department of Justice found that in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence which were not responded to by police within 1 hour. (Kleck 132). Although there is no similar statistics published by Canadian government, it has been estimated that it is very high and close to statistics published by the Department of Justice in United States (Globe and Mail). Why the writer strongly believes that keeping, carrying and using firearms is a right of every individual is because police is disable to protect every individual and by disarming people, politicians who establish these laws, take away the chance of defense from individuals in society against violence and criminals and actually tell their people to cross their fingers and hope that the police will be on time. This is insane and against any logic.

Freedom, like any other features of civilization, has its own price. Humans or in a larger scale, earth, have paid and still are paying the prices of civilization. From air pollution to use of nuclear bomb, from fascism to aids, an observer can easily see the prices that humanity has paid to rich civilization and its important features such as technology, freedom of speech, right of humans and so on and so forth. In writer’s opinion, keeping firearms by citizens and availability of them in society for civilians and not using them to harm other members of society and abusing them is one of the most important features of civilization and of course freedom. Taking the guns away and saying that the rate of homicide is decreased is against the concept of civilization that states that citizens live in the society together with peace and an attempt to keep the peace with a pervious knowledge and of course not with the aim of chains. Gun control is against the contents of the Second Amendment in Canada and the United States and the Right of humans, about the right of individuals to defend themselves, including their properties.

The price that writer has previously talked about is very interesting to discuss. Official statistics show that just in United States, about one million and eight hundred thousand un-natural deaths occur every year. From this number there are only forty thousand involve firearms and it is more interesting to know that just eighteen thousands of them are homicides and the rest are suicides and yet this amount is discussible because it includes the criminals killed by police and citizens both (National Safety Council). This is as low as 0.97 per cent nationwide. And it is good to know that there 93 thousands killed because of doctor’s negligence and 50 thousands killed in accidents involving motor-vehicles every year. But no body asks to stop people from driving because it is idiotic to blame these deaths on cars and other vehicles, these are people who should take the blame!

Another important consideration is that gun control laws in spite of all suppositions, fancies and feigning and intended ignorances are not practical and efficient and actually have opposite effect on rate of homicide and violence and this is one the facts which is always ignored or intentionally hidden from public by politicians and people who are in favor of gun control. Finland, Switzerland and Israel are three best examples. Although these three countries have the first to third high rates of firearm ownership by citizens in the world respectively (Finland with 67 per cent of population, Switzerland with 26 per cent and Israel with 23 per cent of population), yet they have the three lowest rates of homicide between other nations(Israel with 6 per one hundred thousands of population, Switzerland and Finland with 25 per one hundred thousands of population). And in the opposite direction, countries with the tightest gun control laws and the lowest rates of firearm ownership have the highest rates of homicide. Germany, Romania, Italy and so on are countries from this hand (Kates 42). In United States this is more observable. States with more relaxed gun control laws have lowest rates of homicide. For example New Jersey and Clorado have two of the lowest rates of homicide although they have two of very relaxed laws about guns and firearms in United States and Washington D.C with one the tightest laws and restriction on gun control has the highest rate of homicide nationwide (National Safety Council). In Canada, official statistics collected by the federal government show the same result. British Colombia with tightest gun control laws and lowest rate of ownership and carrying firearms by citizens has the highest rate of homicide between all other provinces and Alberta with the most relaxed laws of gun control has the lowest rate of homicide (Toronto Star).

As it has been mentioned before, blaming guns instead of people who abuse them is idiotic and way far from a healthy way of thinking and analyzing and taking the guns away from the hands of honest citizens not only is against right of humanity and the Second Amendment, which state any individual have the right to defend him/herself with any device, but it is against any logic and reasonable ideology, to prevent people to have equal chance of defence themselves against criminals and the same equipment that their attackers have. Gun control laws are not efficient and in many cases have opposite effect. For all those reasons which are a drop of a ocean of reasoning against gun control it is strongly believed that gun control laws should be removed or in some cases more relaxed. Ever since these laws have been passed, they destroyed the balance that ruled the societies for centuries and kept them in peace and safety and armed violence has become a huge monster whose shadow has covered the sky of lives of million throughout the world and takes more and more victims every day.

And the blame for this and many and many crimes that are related to armed violence is directly put on sick-in-head and insane politicians who established these laws and still trying to make them tighter. And if they have any conscious they should hear the voice of millions of victims of armed violence who shout Shame to You from the bottom of their graves. Basically the politicians and many others at any level who think they have a prophetic mission to save humanity, must realize that people do not need and do not want to have any guardian or shepherd. People know every thing better and think wiser than all of those who think are guardians of people, humanity, civilization and freedom.

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George F. Will. “Are we a Nation of Cowards?” Newsweek. 15 November 1993.

Kleck Gary Dr. “Guns and violence in America”

http://www.gunowners.org

http://www.askjeeves.com/main/askjeeves.asp?ask=canada%3A+gun+control&origin=&site_name=Jeeves&metasearch=yes