One of the most common misconceptions about firearms is that they are only “weapons.”
Now, don’t misunderstand me; they are weapons in that they can be used to inflict violence, and unlike some other tools (like a hammer) which can be used for violence, firearms can’t be used for much else. At least not directly (scaring off a threat is an effective use of a firearm even though that often happens without a single shot being fired).
But that doesn’t change the fact that firearms can, and often are, used in very practical ways that have absolutely nothing to do with killing people. Mollie Engelhart gives us a very real world example of this. She writes,
The last day we didn’t have a gun on the farm, I watched two sheep bleed out while my husband stood empty-handed. That moment ended my illusions about guns forever.
It was 2018. I was nursing my baby on the porch when my uncle came racing in a golf cart toward the property where our sheep were grazing. I knew something was wrong and followed with my children and assistant. What we found was devastation: two German shepherds had torn through the entire flock, killing for sport, not food. Two sheep were still alive, bleeding out in the dirt.
My husband—who had grown up in Mexico, where owning a gun is almost impossible—looked at me with frustration. We had no firearm to end their suffering. We had to knock on our neighbor’s door and ask to borrow one. This was unfair to the suffering sheep and unfair to my husband, to be put in that position. That was the last day we didn’t have a gun on the farm. Well—one of the last days, since in California there’s a 10-day waiting period after background checks.
Why were they in this situation? Engelhart continues:
I hadn’t always seen guns this way. I was raised in a world of magical thinking—the belief that guns were unnecessary, that if we simply put them down and loved one another, peace would follow.
And that’s true of anti-2A people in general: they live in a world divorced from reality, a world of magical thinking.
The fact of the matter is that we would all like to live in a world in which people were peaceful to each other, a world in which people (including governments) wouldn’t try to force other people to comply to their will under threat of violence.
But we’re not there, yet. We live in an imperfect world. To those of us who are Christians, we live in a fallen world.
And while we still live in a fallen, imperfect world, firearms are tools to be used to defend ourselves and others, and in the case of those with livestock, tools to end the suffering of animals, at times, too.
Remember, the tool is never the problem. The person with evil intent is.
