Debating Gun Control
David DeGrazia and Lester H. Hunt
Abstract
Lester Hunt presents his case against (more-than-minimal) gun control and then David DeGrazia makes his case for (moderately extensive) gun control. Readers are left to decide for themselves which position is more defensible. The core of Hunt’s argument is rights-based: the right to own a gun is a necessary consequence of the more basic right of self-defense. It is an example of a wider class of rights to the means of exercising a more fundamental right. Thus, the right to own and use a gun is related to the right of self-defense. Admittedly, guns are dangerous objects and there are strict lim ... More
Lester Hunt presents his case against (more-than-minimal) gun control and then David DeGrazia makes his case for (moderately extensive) gun control. Readers are left to decide for themselves which position is more defensible. The core of Hunt’s argument is rights-based: the right to own a gun is a necessary consequence of the more basic right of self-defense. It is an example of a wider class of rights to the means of exercising a more fundamental right. Thus, the right to own and use a gun is related to the right of self-defense. Admittedly, guns are dangerous objects and there are strict limits to one’s right to subject others to risk. But no reasonable account of such limits is strong enough to prohibit law-abiding adult civilians from owning and using firearms. DeGrazia’s ethical case for gun control begins with critiques of appeals to physical security and of appeals to various liberties as bases for opposition to gun control. The chapters proceed to consequentialist and rights-based arguments for gun control measures. The discussion of American gun politics that follows helps explain the extreme state of American gun policy. DeGrazia concludes with suggestions for a morally defensible gun control policy.
Keywords:
guns,
firearms,
gun control,
gun policy self-defense,
rights,
liberties,
politics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190251253 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190251253.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
David DeGrazia, author
Professor of Philosophy, George Washington University
Lester H. Hunt, author
Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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