The End of Gun Control: 5. Protect Private Property: Arms are private property.

Ending the tyranny of gun control can only come by securing private property as the central standard of legal order; a standard of equal justice no ‘public official’ can stand above or encroach upon.

Almost everyone is familiar with the famous phrase from the American Declaration of Independence stating that governments are instituted with the consent of the governed and derive their just powers to secure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yet most people may not be aware of the subtle trickery involved in substituting the pursuit of happiness for the original Enlightenment concept of property.  The real purpose of government is to secure private property because human life is only expressed in material terms, i.e. the physical body and other “things” used to sustain life.  Pursuing happiness is inherently subjective to each individual and impossible for external observers to discern.  Putting government in charge of securing an individual’s pursuit of happiness cedes an illimitable authority, an invitation to totalitarianism.  Further, many might fail to see how this substitution has opened the door to all sorts of perversions of justice happening today, including modern gun control.

Ending the tyranny of gun control can only come by restoring the security of private property as the central standard of legal order, a standard of equal justice in which no ‘public official’ can stand above, encroach upon, or aggressively violate. 

A free society cannot tolerate anyone, regardless of the offices they hold, uniforms they wear, or justifications they claim, being above this universal standard of law.  Property is civilization.  Disrespect of property is barbarianism. Property, in the form of “arms”, is the very means by which “good people” secure the blessings of liberty.