Brief Answers for People Who Are Against the 2nd Amendment 

Massad Ayoob is an internationally recognized lethal-force expert with more than 40 years of experience as a police officer, author, and firearms and self-defense instructor to law enforcement officers and private citizens. He says the defensive use of a firearm is a direct analog to the use of a fire extinguisher.

In the mid-20th century, fire extinguishers were not prevalent in private homes. Today, fire extinguishers in homes are as common as smoke detectors in homes; fire extinguishers are also even in cars as a precaution. What happened to cause this change?

The public finally became aware of how a fire extinguisher is an invaluable tool to instantly stop a fire emergency and save lives before the fire trucks expend multiple minutes just to arrive on the scene, let alone begin extinguishing the blaze and rescuing people. Similarly the defensive firearm is an emergency safety rescue tool for the citizen who is on site to responsibly use when a deadly danger breaks out. The sooner the individual can stop the threat, the more innocent lives can be saved.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Worldviews and Emotional Assumptions in the Gun Civil Rights Debate ]

In the following video (with time stamps below), Mr. Ayoob offers soundbite answers to frequent broad stroke statements against the 2nd Amendment:

1:50 — The 2nd Amendment is a relic of the past. How is it relevant today?
Answer: Ask a Ukranian.

3:10 — The 2nd Amendment only pertains to the National Guard.
Answer: Read the Bill of Rights. The entire document speaks to the individual rights of individual citizens.

Answer: In 1791 when the Bill of Rights was crafted, the people who created the document were there during the American Revolution; the gunfire of the Revolution was still ringing in their ears. A National Guard in that period of time would have been Tories loyal to King George, duty bound to crush the rebellion by killing their fellow colonists. Can anyone seriously believe that is what those great men sought to empower?

[ Read the SemperVerus article, USA State Constitutions Providing for Armed Self-Defense ]

5:30 — Gun owners are potential murderers.
Answer: Are you capable of, overnight, deciding to commit malicious murder? [If their answer is “no”]: Then how dare you imply everyone listening to you is an incipient potential murderer. The people on my side of this debate have more trust in their fellow citizens. [If their answer is “possibly”]: We normal people aren’t like that. If you seriously think that tomorrow you could start murdering people, you need to be seeing a psychiatrist instead of pretending to give wise counsel to normal people who don’t think like that.

7:10 — Gun owners are only compensating for their sexual inadequacy.
Answer: If guns were phallic symbols, no man would buy a gun with a two-inch barrel.

7:40 — 38,000 deaths a year by guns are unacceptable.
Answer: That number includes criminals justifiably killed by police in the line of duty and criminals legally killed by their intended victims who fought back and prevailed representing innocent lives saved.

Answer: That number also includes a minimum 60% that were suicides, many of which are classified as “rational suicides” for people with agonizing terminal illnesses resulting in “self euthanasia.” At least 10 states have declared euthanasia to be legal. To correctly reflect reality, those numbers should be removed from the total number of homicides by firearms. For emotionally related suicides, the firearms industry works to improve the quality and availability of mental health resources to gun owners to reduce suicide by firearm through such programs as Walk The Talk America and the NSSF Suicide Prevention Toolkit.

10:00 — Guns in the hands of civilians aren’t effective in stopping crime.
Answer: Research in 2021 by Georgetown University political economist William English indicated 1.67 million defensive gun usages per year and in the vast majority of those cases the crime was thwarted by simply displaying a gun without any blood shed, resulting in innocent lives saved.

11:30 — Gun registration will stop violent crime.
Answer: Criminals don’t obey laws and they don’t register their guns. Gun registration is a precursor to government gun confiscation from responsible law abiding citizens—infringing on Americans’ civil rights—as repeatedly proven by historical tyrants.

Also watch the video, The Truth About Gun Violence by the Numbers by Colion Noir.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Important Judicial Decisions Regarding Self-Defense Law ]

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