To Save One Life

Our anti-2A adversaries like to chirp the line, “if it saves one life,” as justification for eliminating gun rights, as if taking guns from responsible citizens would somehow decrease criminal violence. Oddly, they never seem to take into account the lives saved by guns, and never apply the same line…”if it saves one life”…as a justification to keep guns in civilian hands.

Now, I’m not one to balance a human right against a cost/benefit analysis, but if you’re going to take that path and condition the right to keep and bear arms on the basis of saving a single life, then at least be consistent. The fact is that guns take life. They also defend life. So if saving a single life is a justification for anything, it certainly follows that the armed defense of life is a valid position.

As the body count from the Hamas attack on Israel continues to rise, a trending news story is that the Israeli Minister of National Security has now loosened the requirements for Israelis to possess firearms…a little. Israeli gun laws are still very restrictive compared to most of the United States, and as a result, very few Israelis do possess firearms.

Times of Israel/Oren ZIV / AFP

Which leads us full circle to the question: How many lives might have been saved had more Israeli citizens been armed against Hamas’s vicious attack? How many lives might have been saved had Israeli gun rights been respected before an attack occurred? I’m willing to bet there would have been at least one life saved, and if it saves one life….