DISCUSSION FORUM QUESTION:
Explain McMahan’s comparison of the logic of private gun ownership with the nuclear arms race. Do you think that this comparison is a good one? If so, what lessons can we draw from it? If not, what do you take the relevant differences to be? Explain and defend your response.
Answer the above questions with a minimum of TWO PARAGRAPHS (1 paragraph = 6-8 complete sentences) by 1pm, Thursday, August 12.
Read McMahan’s article “Why ‘Gun Control’ Isn’t Enough” and, from my past experience, this is yet another essay that elicits intense and spirited responses among students. I hope it does the same for you.
In the essay, McMahan argues that private gun ownership should be entirely (or almost entirely) illegal. He does so by attacking “the central pillar of the case for private gun ownership”—the idea that “we are all safer when more individuals have guns.” McMahan argues that this common idea is mistaken. First, he points out that if it were true, we should expect violent crime to be lower in countries with lax gun laws. But, in fact, the United States, with its lax laws and high gun ownership, has higher crime rates than comparable countries with stricter laws and fewer guns. McMahan then canvases the perverse incentives that increased gun ownership creates—it encourages criminals to arm, it decreases the power of the police, and it incentivizes gun ownership even for those who do not want to own guns. In many ways, McMahan argues, the incentives mirror those of the nuclear arms race. He closes with some brief considerations about the right of self-defense. While he admits that banning guns eliminates one effective means of self-defense, he argues that this is acceptable because doing so promotes the more fundamental right to security against attack.
READ IT IN THE TEXTBOOK PAGE 390 TO THE END AND ANSWER THE DISCUSSION FORUM
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