In defense of self-defense

1. The right to bear arms is grounded in the right of self-defense. The right of self-defense not only includes the right to protect yourself, but to protect your family, and, indeed, to protect innocent lives generally. So I'm using "self-defense" as shorthand for that larger principle. 

2. There's a prima facie right to life. That's not absolute. For instance, a murderer forfeits his prima facie right to life. But all things being equal, there's a standing right to life.

3. Apropos (2), a right to life implies a right not to have your life wrongfully taken from you. 

4. Apropos (3), that, in turn, implies a right to protect your right. You don't really have a right unless you're free to exercise your right. 

I'd add that self-defense isn't confined to life and death. You have a right to protect yourself from wrongful physical harm–especially grave physical harm. 

5. Now someone like a pacifist may deny the operating assumptions. But that's the basic conceptual framework. 

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, Ben Witherington did some posts feigning outrage at the availability of guns. But he's weeping crocodile tears. As a pacifist, he denies that we have a duty to protect schoolchildren from a sniper. He thinks we should leave them defenseless. So he's not entitled to be indignant. 

6. Another implication of the right of self-defense is the fact that the ability to defense yourself is calibrated to the abilities of the aggressor. If the aggressor has superior weaponry, then he can overpower you. So what you need to exercise your right of self-defense is variable in time and place. The means are vary, depending on the threat-level. 

Self-defense assumes a principle of disproportionality. If the aggressor has disproportionate ability to inflict harm, then the defender is at a disadvantage. The right of self-defense reverses the disparity. It's not supposed to be a fair fight between two equally matched opponents, where each side has an equitable chance of winning–for the aggressor is not entitled to harm the defender. Ideally, the defender should be better armed than the assailant. He needs to be sufficiently well-armed to fend off the assailant. 

There's an upper limit on that principle insofar as the defender doesn't have to be massively better armed. He just needs to be better armed. Have a margin for error. So the principle is not unrestricted. 

7. Let's consider an objection. A critic might agree with this up to a point, but counter that if gun ownership does more harm than good, then the common good overrides the right of the individual to defend himself. 

But a problem with his objection is the fact that the justification for self-defense is a matter of moral principle rather than pragmatics. To take a comparison, consider a thought-experiment in consequentialism. Suppose five deathly ill patients need organ transplants to survive. Is it permissible (or even obligatory) to seize one healthy young man, euthanize him, and harvest his organs for their benefit? That takes one life to save five lives. 

Yet most of us deny that the needs of the five sick patients supersede the right of the involuntary organ donor not to be murdered. The common good doesn't override his right not to be killed. By the same token, even if (ex hypothesi) private gun ownership did more harm than good, that doesn't nullify the right to bear arms. That's a necessary cost to exercise the right of self-defense. A proponent of gun-control can deny that principle, but he thereby exposes how radical his own position is.