Balance in Societies - Weapons v Freedoms

Freedom is perhaps the most misconstrued word in the english language.

Freedom to me can be the ability to do without something, and to you it might be the capacity to have the very same thing.  We can both scream and claim our need (and rights?) for freedom on the very same topic, and be 180 degrees apart on a subject, black and white, right and wrong.

Freedom means choice, or not being controlled in the sense we hear it used frequently in the debate over weapons in society.  But it doesn't infer, directly support, anecdotally mean or even imply one choice over the other, it is by definition the nature of having choice. Nothing more.

The history of our political gatherings, both as tribes and nations has meant most have been fraught at some point with periods of tyranny and oppression, with one person or a small group trying to impose their will on a larger group.  (It says much about about us that this political pattern keeps repeating, and we don't seem to learn from it).  In this context, freedom is often embraced as the ideal of throwing off the yoke of oppression to be able to rule ourselves, and hence the first and second contexts of the word "freedom" are often mixed up, and used interchangeably when discussing freedoms around weapons.

A modern open society, built on a framework of laws, created by publicly accountable, elected individuals who serve at the public's request are tasked with maintaining order.  While there is often some element of crime or disorder in a society, by and large its considered manageable enough that we still defer to the mandate of society to enforce order, while doing smaller, personally-motivated things (like locking the car door in a public place).  The consequence of that is that citizens in many places have the ability to have the freedom (read: choice) to not own weapons that would otherwise be needed to maintain order.  They have outsourced that to society at large that they live within. 

This is where it gets interesting I think.  Where that faith in one's political structures doesn't exist, where I as a citizen don't believe that order today and tomorrow can be maintained in the political structures we make a choice. In that situation I may decide that the same freedoms (read: choice) inferred on me in that same society allow me to second guess society's ability to manager order, and hence I'll arm myself with weaponry to provide a degree of personal confidence that order can be maintained.  The implication is that if society can't manage order, then I can still look after myself.  They are 'an insurance policy' in that sense, and driven from insecurities.

Both of these perspectives are understandable as human responses,  and both are arguably legitimate use of freedom, but neither create more or less freedom, or are done in the name of freedom.  A weapon is a tool, designed to make a task easier to accomplish, in the same way a shovel assists us should be we need to create a hole in the dirt.

But here's the challenge with the pro-weapon argument I think.   Dynamite is also a tool that might be used to create a hole in the dirt.   It has specific use-cases (mining), but isn't something most of us might use to plant a rose bush in our garden.  That's because it has the capacity to create significantly more damage/impact that a another tool for the same task might make. So the utility element of the tool needs to be weighed against both it's effectiveness to perform the function and its' potential to cause other damage, hence there are laws in societies around the personal use of household dynamite.  The same rules apply to gun ownership in many cases, for exactly the same rationale, especially 'assault weaponry'.  My need to hunt a deer doesn't extend to dealing with a special forces attack squad of deer.  The tools' capacity for harm in a society is outweighed by its utility to create unnecessary harm in society.

Freedom (and the need for it) as an excuse to own personal weapons that could cause significant negative impact isn't valid.  The argument itself and intermingling of the concepts of freedom are also disingenuous and transparently incorrect.  While those are true statements,  there is some context here.  Where one's society is at risk, and effective governance isn't in place - think about Syria today, or the wild west of North America 150 years back - then the risk may warrant the response.  But the gun control argument isn't being held in those situations, its being held with your neighbour today. Guns don't equal freedom, and never have.