Should civilians be prohibited from owning firearms?

Arguments for

  • Argument for Countries like Australia and Japan have seen their crime rates drop significantly after enacting such a law.
    • Objection In Australia, though crime involving a firearm dropped drastically, most crime did not. Murder and armed robbery rates in Australia increased slightly after its extensive buy-back program in 1997. Japan has never enacted comparable legislation.
  • Argument for Firearms enable people to more easily become murderers, kidnappers, and pose other threats.
  •  Comment Gun crime is often highly controversial. By that, guns can be used by police or any other law enforcement, but guns used by civilians could be used for illegitimate purposes, like murder or assault.

Arguments against

  • Argument against Firearms enable people to defend their home and family from murderers, kidnappers and other threats.
  • Argument against Firearms enable civilians to defend themselves from their own government, if it ever turns into a police state.
    • Objection Non-violent resistance can be as effective as violent resistance, and less lethal.
      • Objection Non-violent resistance is preferable if it works, but the use of force is the basis of authority.
    • Objection Household weapons are no real defense against an organized police state backed by the army.
      • Objection It's not about an all-out war against the entire military. That's a false dichotomy. It's about having the means to hold our government accountable and deter them from abusing their power. Politicians and plutocrats have a vested interest in cultivating the belief that they cannot be forcibly deposed without citizens first having to defeat the entire US military, and so it's a frequent talking point on the news, talk shows, and in debates such as this one. The conversation is always steered toward having to defeat the army, and it goes downhill from there.
  • Argument against Allowing the state a monopoly on the use of force gives politicians and their financiers carte blanch to impose their will on citizens. Violating the freedom of assembly, illegal search and seizure, the quartering of soldiers in private homes, forced labor, wrongful eviction, (to name just a few) all become risk-free propositions and citizens would have no recourse whatsoever.

See also

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