People Control
“Gun control” is a euphemism for people control. But guns are supposedly bad. They hurt people and so controlling guns is good right? But there’s still enough of us who believe that people are good that make “people control” a politically risky slogan, even if it is exactly what gun control advocates really mean when they spout their nonsense about gun control.
If you reasonably determine that a person poses a threat to the life, liberty, or property of you or another person, you are justified in initiating the reasonable use of force to eliminate the threat. In a free society, that is the only justification for denying someone the possession of a gun. If you believe most people are good and would not use a gun to threaten the life, liberty or property of another, then you are not justified in denying most people the possession of a gun. Which individuals constitute reasonable threats is a legitimate question. The mentally or morally would be obvious: the young, the old, the insane, the mentally ill. Possession of a gun by any who have acted violently in the past could be reasonably held to be threatening. Should a psychological test be administered to all who posses, or would possess guns? That might be too far as, in the absence of evidence, there is no basis for a reasonable apprehension of a threat and therefore no basis to require such a test. All others have the right to possess a gun.
Unless you advocate the initiation of violence as an appropriate means to an end. That seems like a very strange way to combat violence.
But if you believe people are bad then you can start with the assumption that they will do harm to others with a gun and denying them possession is justified. That is the fundamental belief of the left. People are evil and must be controlled. People are evil. Other people. Not the leftists who are enlightened enough to realize this and impose their goodness, by force, on the rest of society. They are good. They can be trusted with power. Absolute power.
Instances where those wielding absolute power, including gun control, engaged in mass killing.
Dzungar genocide, 1750s
Indian Removal, 1830s
California Genocide, 1848–1873
Circassian genocide, 1860s
Selk’nam genocide, 1890s–1900s
Herero and Namaqua genocide, 1904–1907
Greek genocide, 1914–1923
Assyrian genocide, 1914–1925
Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923
Libyan Genocide, 1923–1932
Soviet famine of 1932–33
Holodomor, 1931–1933
Kazakhstan, 1930–1933
Kalmyks, 1943
Chechens and Ingush, 1944
Crimean Tatars, 1944
Nazi Final Solution Porajmos, 1941-1945
Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles, 1941-1945
Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs, 1941-1945
Serbian genocide, 1941-1945
1971 Bangladesh genocide, 1971
Burundian genocides, 1972 & 1993
East Timorese genocide, 1974–1999
Cambodian genocide, 1975–1979
Guatemalan genocide, 1981–1983
Kurdish genocide, 1986–1989
Isaaq genocide, 1988–1989
Rwandan genocide, 1994
Bosnian genocide, 1992–1995
Srebrenica massacre, 1995
Darfur genocide, 2003–
Yazidi genocide, 2014-2017
Shia genocide, 2014-2017
Christian genocide, 2014-2017
Central African genocide. 1970-
These deaths number in the hundreds of millions. The number of deaths due to so-called “mass shootings” pale by comparison.
If the objective is to save people from being shot dead, the place to start is to deny possession of guns to the state.