The only logically consistent defense of the right to bear arms,
, which is firmly anchored in reality, is based on the right to life, and nothing more.”
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=1957
Along the same lines, arguments in support of right-to-carry, which rely on body count statistics, cite lack of police protection, or correlate decreased crime with the presence of armed citizens, all place the moral foundation of the right to bear arms on the turbulent, outcome-based grounds of expediency. Any change in the variables, whether actual or perceived, and the “need” to carry will be questioned. The only logically consistent defense of the right to bear arms, which is firmly anchored in reality, is based on the right to life, and nothing more.
THE ESSENCE OF SELF-DEFENSE
The most fundamental of rights is the right to life. It is a “self-evident” truth, the evidence being contained within the truth of life itself: awareness of existence as a self-sustaining process. The only “duty” which can not be shirked is that of self-preservation, which entails the acceptance of existence. Our founding fathers believed that all man’s rights were branches of this basic truth. A precondition to the exercise of other rights, life is the ultimate value. As the only “end in itself,” it must be self-perpetuating. Thus, life encompasses both the process that supports it (the means), and the value sought strictly for its own sake (as an end). To separate the means from the end is to deny existence. The right to life is unalienable; it can not be forcibly denied, infringed upon, transferred, or renounced.
Since man is morally compelled to seek life, rejecting an action that would sustain it can not be considered good behavior. For example, arming oneself in the face of unprovoked homicidal assault, as a means of resisting life-threatening aggressive force, would be a virtuous act, while disarming oneself in the same situation would be a contradiction: seeking life (an end) while simultaneously not seeking it (rejecting the means). Also, since the practical consequence of personal disarmament is a denial of individual choice in accessing an indispensable means of self-preservation at the precise moment it is most needed, it becomes an immoral policy. It is most appropriate to viewing life not as an end in itself, but as the means to some other end. In this case, one’s martyrdom, expropriated under the guise of heroic altruism, infuses strength into the embodiment of evil, and empowers it to achieve another victory.
When civilized man delegates a general right of public defense to government, he still retains his unalienable right to life. In his moral space each man remains sovereign, in complete control of his own destiny. There is no liability on the part of government for not defending any individual’s life. It has no obligation to do so. An innocent person has a lawful right to stop any unprovoked attack on himself, by using a force equal to what he perceives is brought to bear against him. Laws that disarm effectively redefine the common law doctrine of equal force, to require that the innocent party use an inferior level. They also place the individual under a form of prior restraint by preventing his moral exercise of free will: that of choosing whether or not he will allow himself to be senselessly slaughtered. Disarmament forces him to live out his life in default of his nature, subject to the mindlessness of barbarians and the capricious whim of bureaucrats. Reasonable men will disagree, but one ought not hide behind reasonableness in order to evade reason, by which one is aware of the difference between self-esteem and self-sacrifice.
