However, I would like to suggest that the Catholic Church is very solidly, very calmly against gun ownership and that this is very clear and consistent in Catholic teaching. I have written something about it
here outlining my argument and providing references and I would invite you to review and please, comment and help me to understand where and if I’ve got this wrong.
Your argument is very strange and I get the impression that it isn’t complete. “Very solidly,” first of all, would seem to imply the Church has spoken authoritatively on the matter. Of course, it hasn’t. So at best you could say that opposition to gun ownership is implicit in Church teachings. But that’s a tall order and one you don’t fill.
For instance, your argument mainly relies on what you call your “fundamental gut feeling” backed up by some discussion about double effect (semi-relevant) and punishment (completely irrelevant). You get that punishment is not the same thing as self-defense, right? Why, then, bring it up? Are you trying to paint gun owners as aspiring vigilantes? Nothing you say about double effect really touches on gun ownership, so again, I’m wondering why you brought it up. What’s your actual case?
Actually there’s more material in the Magisterium to recommend licit gun ownership than to forbid it. As you point out, the Church recognizes there is a legitimate right to self- and other-defense and in some cases even a grave duty. But there is also a right to private property, which is understood as the right to possess without unjust interference whatever is necessary for us to do our duty. Since guns would seem to be necessary for us to carry out that duty, there would seem to be a solid case to be made for gun ownership.
Of course, private property is always subordinate to the common good, so if you can make the prudential case that social order is better served by gun control, than gun control is ipso facto perfectly licit. But you don’t make that case and don’t even try. All we get is your “fundamental gut feeling” followed by quotes from Catechism et al. that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
We’re also left in the strange situation of wondering why your vision of what civility ought to be should prevail, since no society predicated on it has ever thrived anywhere in history. Civility always relies on the maintenance of just social order. Always. Everywhere. That’s human nature. So at best your “fundamental gut feeling” is irrelevant, and at worst it’s disconsonant with human nature, deeply disordered, and in need of serious reexamination. And no amount of irrelevant quote-bombing from the Catechism can change that.
Finally, you cite the Church’s current stance on the death penalty, which is interesting. Where does that stance come from? The Church acknowledges that the death penalty is licit in principle but also says that the modern state, having devolved into degeneracy and apostasy, does not justly wield the sword. In short, it cannot be trusted with that sort of power. Why, then, can it be trusted with the power to disarm people? You get that the people currently running Britain (and America too) are direct ideological descendents of the people responsible for the Holodomor, right? That they’d happily drop white phosphorous on you and your mother if they thought they could get away with it and it would eliminate homophobia or whatever? That they gleefully butcher babies by the millions? And you not only want to trust them but expect the rest of us to trust them, too?
Thanks James
I have to say, I have read the second amendment, and indeed quote it in my article there, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with personal gun ownership for self defence. It’s about the British invading and being able to raise a militia quickly to defend the States. But that’s just my outside, objective perspective
Bearing in mind that I don’t care for the Constitution…
“Being necessary for the security of a free state” is a subordinate clause. It explains, it doesn’t limit. “I like ice cream, which is tasty” doesn’t mean tastiness is the only reason I like ice cream.
But even if we grant that it did so limit, “being necessary to the security of a free state” does not preclude legitimate individual self-defense. Security doesn’t just consist in protection from external threats but also in the maintenance of just social order. So even if we grant your assumptions, you’re still wrong.
) would be better? The evidence is that the more guns there are in society, the more gun violence there is: guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/22/gun-ownership-homicides-map?CMP=twt_gu
