Debating Gun Control: How Much Regulation Do We Need?

David DeGrazia · Lester H. Hunt

Sep. 2016 · Oxford University Press

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Americans have a deeply ambivalent relationship to guns. The United States leads all nations in rates of private gun ownership, yet stories of gun tragedies frequent the news, spurring calls for tighter gun regulations. The debate tends to be acrimonious and is frequently misinformed and illogical. The central question is the extent to which federal or state governments should regulate gun ownership and use in the interest of public safety. In this volume, David DeGrazia and Lester Hunt examine this policy question primarily from the standpoint of ethics: What would morally defensible gun policy in the United States look like? Hunt's contribution argues that the U.S. Constitution is right to frame the right to possess a firearm as a fundamental human right. The right to arms is in this way like the right to free speech. More precisely, it is like the right to own and possess a cell phone or an internet connection. A government that banned such weapons would be violating the right of citizens to protect themselves. This is a function that governments do not perform: warding off attacks is not the same thing as punishing perpetrators after an attack has happened. Self-protection is a function that citizens must carry out themselves, either by taking passive steps (such as better locks on one's doors) or active ones (such as acquiring a gun and learning to use it safely and effectively). DeGrazia's contribution features a discussion of the Supreme Court cases asserting a constitutional right to bear arms, an analysis of moral rights, and a critique of the strongest arguments for a moral right to private gun ownership. He follows with both a consequentialist case and a rights-based case for moderately extensive gun control, before discussing gun politics and advancing policy suggestions. In debating this important topic, the authors elevate the quality of discussion from the levels that usually prevail in the public arena. DeGrazia and Hunt work in the discipline of academic philosophy, which prizes intellectual honesty, respect for opposing views, command of relevant facts, and rigorous reasoning. They bring the advantages of philosophical analysis to this highly-charged issue in the service of illuminating the strongest possible cases for and against (relatively extensive) gun regulations and whatever common ground may exist between these positions.

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David DeGrazia is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, where he has been teaching since 1989. He is a well-respected moral philosopher who is especially well-known for his work in applied ethics. DeGrazia's books include Taking Animals Seriously (Cambridge UP, 1996), Human Identity and Bioethics (Cambridge UP, 2005), and Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life (Oxford UP, 2012). He is also the author of over 100 shorter professional publications, many in leading ethics and philosophy journals. Lester Hunt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He has also taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon University, and The Johns Hopkins University. His books Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue (Routledge, 1991), Character and Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), and Anarchy, State, and Utopia: An Advanced Guide (Wiley, 2015). He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles on the history of philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of economics, and the presentation of philosophical ideas in literature and film.