Gun Rights Lesson #168 – I Feel Unsafe

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope.

“Your gun makes me feel unsafe! I have a right to feel safe!”

If you are reading this essay, you are very likely familiar with the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Say it aloud with me:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Your rights are neither more or less important than mine or anyone else’s in this country. The essence of our individual liberties is that they are individual and neither subordinate nor superior to those of other individuals. The protection of your rights is limited by the exercise of my rights, and vice versa. Your right to travel about is restricted by my right to be secure in my property. Your right to act as you wish is restricted by my right not to be acted upon against my wishes.

This is the problem with your assertion that you have a right to feel safe. That “right” is subjective, and determined entirely by you. You may feel unsafe crossing a street where there are cars waiting at a red light, but you cannot demand those cars not be there. If a car suddenly accelerates and hits you, your rights have been violated, but that has nothing to do with how you feel or felt. Similarly, someone carrying a gun in your vicinity may make you feel unsafe, but guess what? That’s your problem. Your discomfort, or ignorance, or emotional predilection grants you absolutely no authority to demand that my rights be infringed.

Even if we assign some weight to the nonsensical notion that individuals have the “right” to feel a certain way, my “right” to feel safe by carrying a gun does not subordinate to your “right” to feel safe by demanding that I not carry a gun. We are equal in our rights. Unless I do harm to you with my gun, you have no right to demand that the government infringe on my rights.

What’s that? The mere sight of a gun holstered on someone’s hip gives you stress? It’s scary and menacing and thus constitutes an assault upon your snowflake sensibilities? Oh, gee, too bad. I am stressed by seeing a morbidly obese person wearing yoga pants, or a teenager wearing saggy pants and exposed underwear, or baseball caps worn sideways, or people using e-cigarettes (no, I’m not, but these are the sorts of “eye pollution” that people like to complain about). Tell me, does seeing a police officer with a holstered pistol give you stress? How about a security guard? How about a soldier? No? Well, then, I guess the gun itself isn’t the problem. Thanks for admitting that it’s just a hunk of metal, wood and plastic. Now grow up and realize that my gun is making the space around me safer, and that you’re catching a free ride in my safe space.

So, to your assertion that you have a “right to feel safe,” no, you don’t. Your ignorance does not justify your infringement of my rights.

Gun rights lesson #168: You do not have a “right to feel safe.” It is a nonsensical proposition rooted in an unmeasurable and therefore unlegislatable idea, and you cannot claim rights that infringe on the rights of others.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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