Righteous instruments of people management

Shane said it most memorably in the 1953 film of the same name: “A gun is a tool, Marion, no better and no worse than any other tool—an ax, a shovel, or anything.  A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it.  Remember that.”  This sentiment has become, for a great many Americans, popular wisdom: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  True enough, but the same can be said of bricks, baseball bats and chopsticks.  Generally speaking, however, people kill other people more frequently and reliably with guns than with any other tool.  Just ask yourself, if you knew there was an active killer at each end of a corridor you happened to be in, but that one had a gun and the other a brick, which end would you stay furthest from?

But suppose we accept the claim that a gun is merely a tool.  We would still have to ask ourselves: what is the purpose of the tool?  What end is it designed to achieve?  A tool is recognized as a tool by its fitness for accomplishing a specific purpose.  Any wise chimpanzee knows that a narrow branch is useful for extracting termites from a nest, though a vine is not.  A carpenter realizes that a palm-sized rock is serviceable for driving a nail into a piece of lumber.  A hammer does the same job better.  Most builders prefer them even though rocks are free and easily available.  What is a gun for?  A gun is a tool for killing.  That is its purpose.  To be more specific, a handgun is a tool useful for killing other human beings at close range.  That is a handgun’s designed use, really its only purpose.  It’s not much good for anything else.

But no!, you object, the purpose of a handgun is protection.  Indeed, this may be the purpose in the mind of the many individuals who purchase one, though these folk might wonder exactly how a handgun is a fit tool to protect them.  It does not conjure an impenetrable force-field.  It does not magically render its bearer impervious to spells and curses.  It is not much use warding off skin cancer or common viruses.  It provides little warmth on a cold night.  Nor does it, by its visible presence, nullify external threats against the bearer.  It can only protect you if you are willing to employ it against the life of another.  You must bring about the very sort of harm that you are trying to avoid.  Consider—if you were a vendor trying to sell a handgun to a customer with the boast that this particular model is guaranteed non-lethal, how likely is it that the prospective buyer would actually buy it?  You might then pivot and say, Ah, but it’s their life or mine!  Certainly, the involvement of a handgun in any confrontation raises the probability that a life will be extinguished.  It may be the life of the other, though your flourishing of the gun will probably increase the odds of your own demise.  But every successful handgun sale seems to imply the answer, I’ll take my chances, thanks!

But wait, you say, it’s not really killing if it’s self-protection, right?  Indeed, it may not qualify as murder, depending on your local laws or the sympathies of a jury.  But a killing it certainly is.  The unspoken assumption behind the purchase of any sort of defensive weapon is that not all killings, even of human beings, are equal.  Shane himself tripped right over it—it’s the man who uses the tool that is good or bad.  Sounds right.  And surely it’s better that a bad man die instead of a good one.  So good people arm themselves to do the righteous work of killing bad men.  After all, they’re bad.  They deserve a bad end.  A gun, then, is a moral instrument, a tool of righteous judgment—so long as it remains in the hands of a worthy citizen.  This argument is an easy sell to those who believe in indelible character traits.  Such people are better known as conservatives.  Good men know that they are.  They know who the others like them are, and who the bad ones are.  So they arm themselves with righteous tools.

Hold on there, don’t lump me in with that lot!  I’m not trying to be self-righteous here, I’m just trying to protect my family!  Right, and if that is really the scope of your intention then you will have to ask yourself if the presence of the handgun in your house is likely to achieve that end.  Is it more likely to protect your family or to be the cause of harm?  You would be obliged to investigate the number of gun-deaths caused by accidental discharges (“Hey, don’t worry, it’s not loaded!”), cleaning accidents, domestic disputes, childhood discoveries, impromptu suicide attempts.  Then you would have to balance these figures against the number of armed intruders brought down by vigilant householders.  If the latter number outweighs the former, then you are reasonably justified in buying a gun to protect your family.  If not, then your own gun is a greater threat to your family than any stranger is likely to be.  If you have not undertaken this calculation based on reliable statistical evidence, then your declared intention of protecting your family is poorly supported.

And if you argue that a tool is innocent in itself—since the benefit or harm derives from the mind of the user—then you have already bound yourself to judging the tool by its intended purpose.  The purpose of a handgun is to kill or intimidate other people.  If this particular tool were ill-suited to these specific purposes, what justification would be left?  So there are only two questions remaining.  Is this tool fit for its intended purpose?  And is the purpose worthy?