[Dwight55]

A friend sent me this, . . . thought I would share.

**WHY THE GUN IS CIVILIZATION**

by Marko Kloos

**Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another:
reason and force. If you want me to do something for you,
you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or
force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every
human interaction falls into one of those two categories,
without exception. Reason or force, that's it. **

**In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively
interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid
method of social interaction, and the only thing that
removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as
paradoxical as it may sound to some. **

**When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You
have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a
way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is
the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on
equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree
on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a
single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys
with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in
physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential
attacker and a defender. **

**There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the
source of bad force equations. These are the people who
think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed
from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a
[armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true
if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either
by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when
most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who
argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the
young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact
opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed
one, can only make a successful living in a society where
the state has granted him a force monopoly. **

**Then there's the argument that the gun makes
confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in
injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without
guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically
superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't
constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take
beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The
fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in
favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If
both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only
weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as
it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't
work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal
and easily employable. **

**When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for
a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun
at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I
don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me
to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who
would interact with me through reason, only the actions of
those who would do so by force. It removes force from the
equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.**

May God bless,
Dwight