The Reasoning of Prohibitionist Busibodies Overthrown

Piers Morgan

The tragic murders of the school children in CT has brought us yet again into the midst of a bombardment of emotional arguments regarding guns. The arguments never seem to change, just the faces, there just appears to be more of them now, and they are getting louder. A group of celebrities have taken up the moral crusade against guns in a recent video calling for government to act, they never get around to telling us what exactly it is they want done. When you go to the web site that the celebrities are touting you will find that it was formed by a group of mayors, of the Bloombergian ilk, and their ultimate goal is a total gun ban. Professional blowhard, Bob Costas, used the unfortunate murder/suicide of an NFL player to lecture football viewers about the evils of guns. The Costasian logic reached its peak as he firmly asserted that if it were not for guns, 2 people would still be alive this day.

Mellisa Harris (hyphen) Perry

Cable news seems to be a never failing stream of irrational arguments regardless of the topic, and they are doing their best not to disappoint on this one. CNN's Piers Morgan is calling for a total gun ban while smearing Larry Pratt with villainous names along with the standard "You don't care about people!" schtick. Others, who prefer the Cultural Marxist staple of group politics, can get a helping of arguments asserting that those who don't support gun control are in reality racists; because blacks are statistically more effected by gun violence than whites. A pristine specimen of this shameless racial agitation, is MSNBC's Melissa Harris (hyphen) Perry's segment, regarding the apparent murder of 17 year old Jordan Russel Davis in Florida. Davis' death was caused by Michael Dunn, a man who got upset over the obnoxiously loud music pouring out of the SUV Davis was a passenger in. After having his request for them to turn the music down ignored, Dunn proceeded to fire a gun wildly into the vehicle. Not to miss an opportunity to inject race into everything, all that the faces on MSNBC could talk about was Davis' blackness, Dunn's whiteness, the evil of guns and stand your ground laws. None of which is relevant to the actual case.

Shane Claiborne

To continue with our examples of the anti-gun frenzy that is being stoked, a news paper which published the addresses of gun owners, in an attempt to shame them, has hypocritically resorted hiring armed guards because the "feel threatened". The NRA is incessantly being attacked and vilified, as though it endorses the murder of the children in CT. Statistics and graphs about guns and violence continue to pour out, which somehow in and of themselves make the case that the State needs to further restrict gun ownership. Even Christians have not been immune to gun fever. Ultra hipster "emergent-Christian" Shane Claiborn has thrown in what passes for his thoughts on the subject of the NRA; the result, yet another tiresome attempt to paint Jesus as a pacifist pinko who hates guns and votes Democrat. Still other churches are participating in "gun buy back" programs (how the State can "buy back" what was never theirs to begin with is a mystery in istself), in an attempt to clean up the streets. In summation, everyone with collectivist inklings is getting in on this gun bashing party.

In response to all of this one phrase strikes it all down, and reveals all the aforementioned rantings, statistics, howls and shrieks, for the sophomorisms that they are:

Abusus non tollit usum

In English, "Abuse does not remove use"

The marrow here is simply that the abuse of something does not eliminate a rightful use of that same thing. Violations of this historically are numerous; one of the most charming examples, in my thinking, is alcohol prohibition. Alcohol prohibitionists had their statistics. They had their vocal supporters, weeping over the evils of booze. They too had many churches supporting their attempt at idiocarcy. They too couched their position in cultural Marxist group think, banning booze you see would uplift and protect women, and keep the husband home. It was even patriotic to ban booze, since this would eliminate the financial support of German (evil) owned beer companies, and in general lead to the betterment of society. Therefore, alcohol needs to be outlawed.

The problem here again is that the abuse of alcohol, which is a real problem, does not therefore mean that alcohol has no legitimate use; regardless of John MacArthur's wild arguments. One can easily imagine a man who drinks a beer or two each night, doesn't get falling down drunk, doesn't beat his wife, provides for his family, cuddles with kittens, and loves Christ through drinking wine on the Lord's Day. The guy who gets drunk regularly, lashes out in violent fits, has numerous kids he doesn't provide for, kicks puppies, and is never home does not eliminate the rightful use of alcohol through his debauchery. The alcohol isn't the problem, the character of the man is the problem.

Luther with his usual charming wit speaks to this very thing when he writes:

“Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?”

Women, tastefully dressed

If you think it far flung to abolish women, the burka is in essence this very thing. The burka is the prohibitionist mindset in action par-excallence. Think about it, a pretty woman walks into a room, men might lust after her, be tempted to fornicate, or commit adultery. The answer is obvious, cover all women in blankets.

We can imagine abuse and rightful use of countless things, cars, antibiotics, drugs, kitchen knives, a moat filled with man eating fish, lawn darts, gasoline, pitbulls, a slip n slide, a nice stereo system and even computers. Many of the aforementioned items have been banned, or regulated for our own good by prohibitionists.

Coming back to the initial matter of guns and the media, we needn't deal with the statistics, the size of ammo clips, Pier's Morgan's accent, or the tiresome race card, none of that is relevant. Just like anything else guns can be misused, but, like anything else they can be used rightly. We can easily imagine a man saving his family from a group of nihilistic thugs attacking his home, or a woman stopping a would be rapist. But if your imagination is a touch weak you needn't imagine, as a gun owner recently stopped a would be mass shooter from loading up mall shoppers with lead. No, the media isn't talking about that one.

The odd thing is that people seem to know that there is a legitimate use for guns intuitively, which is why none of the gun grabbing crowd is calling for disarming the police, secret service, celebrity security guards, or the troops. No one seems serious about making government buildings gun free zones. After all, if it's such a good idea to subject school kids to gun free zones because they enhance safety, why not start with the the Capital Building, or the White House? Why the State gets excluded from all of its enactments is another post altogether.

To conclude, all prohibitionist arguments rest upon the fallacy that the abuse of a thing trumps legitimate use of a thing. This is appealing for the reason that the abuse of a thing is a real problem, a problem we want to solve, and many erroneously jump to the conclusion that banning the object is the solution. Couple that with race baiting, pseudo moral platitudes, statistics, British accents and you have a movement. However, the real problem is not the thing in and of itself, but rather, the heart of man, which is fallen and so radically corrupt that no government enactment banning items or substances can fix.