In a column about the latest pushes for so-called gun control, Chris Cox makes this point about the moves to raise the legal age to purchase long guns:
“Blameworthiness and moral agency are irrelevant to the modern gun control movement. If you have guns, they want them, whoever you are. And if they are willing to claim that young adults as a class are not safe enough to have them, who’s to say they won’t eventually paint the elderly and others with the same broad brush?”
In those few sentences Cox hits at substantial intellectual problems the gun ban, or control, advocates have with their arguments. They look not to the causes of murder and violence, only to inanimate objects used by perpetrators.
In largely overlooking behavior of perpetrators’, blameworthiness is no longer an issue.
In largely overlooking behavior of perpetrators’, blameworthiness is no longer an issue. The anti-gun crowd simply blames guns and those who support the Second Amendment for murder and crime even when there is no moral agency, or human responsible agency, of gun rights supporters in the crimes they decry.
Then you have the arbitrary and general painting of young adults as being unworthy to possess guns to defend their lives and property. If that argument is extended then eventually any trait of people can used to lump people into a class, or group, and then have them denied their constitutional rights.
Maybe everyone who has ever broken the speed limit shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns…
Maybe we could argue that everyone who has ever broken the speed limit shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns because they’ve shown an inability to act within traffic law.
There is no end to this idea that one class or another of people are not sufficiently responsible enough to own guns and to elitists that usually includes most everyone else.
Cox’s comments underscore intellectual problems with gun control arguments
“Blameworthiness and moral agency are irrelevant to the modern gun control movement. If you have guns, they want them, whoever you are. And if they are willing to claim that young adults as a class are not safe enough to have them, who’s to say they won’t eventually paint the elderly and others with the same broad brush?”
In those few sentences Cox hits at substantial intellectual problems the gun ban, or control, advocates have with their arguments. They look not to the causes of murder and violence, only to inanimate objects used by perpetrators.
In largely overlooking behavior of perpetrators’, blameworthiness is no longer an issue.
In largely overlooking behavior of perpetrators’, blameworthiness is no longer an issue. The anti-gun crowd simply blames guns and those who support the Second Amendment for murder and crime even when there is no moral agency, or human responsible agency, of gun rights supporters in the crimes they decry.
Then you have the arbitrary and general painting of young adults as being unworthy to possess guns to defend their lives and property. If that argument is extended then eventually any trait of people can used to lump people into a class, or group, and then have them denied their constitutional rights.
Maybe everyone who has ever broken the speed limit shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns…
Maybe we could argue that everyone who has ever broken the speed limit shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns because they’ve shown an inability to act within traffic law.
There is no end to this idea that one class or another of people are not sufficiently responsible enough to own guns and to elitists that usually includes most everyone else.