B.D. McClay, on “The Phenomenology of Guns“:
A person who keeps guns around to go hunting knows why they’re there. And hunting itself isn’t simply spree-killing wild animals; when you can go hunting is carefully regulated, certain animals are off-limits, and obligations to the animal—like a clean death—are enforced. In imbuing guns with a clear purpose, hunting also gives them an ethical framework.
But the United States is full of guns—including not only those owned by private individuals, but also the police—that have no purpose at all except to be used, one day or another, on human beings. How or why or when they will be used is almost impossible to answer. When they are, the only ethical guide available to consult at that moment is the user’s fear. If you’re sufficiently afraid, you can shoot a woman through the door. If you’re sufficiently afraid, you can shoot a man at a traffic stop for no reason at all, or a child who is doing nothing but playing outside. […]
I didn’t buy a tool to defend myself because I knew it would make me afraid—not that it would admit fear, but that it would transform the world around me into a world of potential threats. And while in fact I’ve had my share of low-level ugly encounters walking around my neighborhood—from nasty comments to someone blocking my way across the street with his car—I never wished that I had a can of wasp spray sitting in my pocket. If I had to say what I wished, it would be for the people who made it their business to intimidate me to see me as a person, too.
But if I had come to meet them armed, I would not have seen them as people either. They would have been unreal targets of potential violence—mine. And all I really know is that price is too high to pay.