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Some people respond to information about gun deaths with the short reply that information has no place in the American conversation about guns, because gun ownership is a "right." It doesn't matter what guns actually do, the true odds of shooting a bad guy, how many innocent people die, what Norwegians with guns might have managed when Breivik came, how dangerous a gun is to its owner, or anything else. The facts are completely irrelevant, because all that matters is that it is a right to own guns. Period.
If you want to know what's wrong with this way of thinking, then keep reading. If you are convinced by the above line of reasoning, then don't read this. You won't like it.
First, people grant themselves and each other rights. And they take those rights away. They do this when it seems reasonable to do so. When enough of them get together, they call themselves a government.
The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. And the 13th amendment took away the rights of slave owners to own slaves. Until then, slave owners were exercising the right to own them. But the government took that right away. These amendments didn't exist in the original Constitution, but people took notice of the world around them, and they changed people's rights accordingly.
Rights can be created and destroyed by governments. The 18th amendment prohibited the manufacturing and sale of alcohol. And the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment.
If rights meant anything beyond a reasonable assessment of what should and should not be, then there would not need to be amendments to the Constitution. We have to agree on what reasonable assessment are.
Information is what makes reasoned assessments possible. It doesn't mean that people will always come to the right answer. Many people simply can't be helped. But when reasonable people get things wrong, they learn and change their behavior.
Second, rights granted by a constitution are a measure of people's ability to understand one another. The American Constitution is based on "We the people," because it's about valuing people's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. God did not grant these rights, people did. You can ask God about that later.
If the majority of Americans felt that a right was hurting people more than it helped them, then they should work to change that right as they have many times in the past. In fact, they should feel obligated to do so. A government that refused to do this would not be representing "We the people."
Many of America's constitutional amendments recognize the value of people who previously had no rights, such as slaves (the 13th Amendment), women (the 19th Amendment), and young people (the 26th Amendment).
Third, people who unquestioningly believe in something because of its status as a so-called right are dangerous. They are dangerous because they base decisions on some higher authority instead of their own ability to reason about right and wrong. This makes them susceptible to manipulation by others and makes them a threat to themselves and the people around them.
Fourth, and this is the point: People have the right to change their rights.
There is no fundamental recognition of the inherent value of a right. Rights do not have value, except when they are believed in and accepted by a group of people. If most Americans do not believe in the right to health care, then people in America who cannot afford it will not have health care. In many European countries, people do believe in this right, and they grant it to those who would not otherwise have it. There is nothing magical about this. All that matters is that enough people stand up for what they believe in.
Information, the power to predict the future, knowledge of physical laws, and the capacity to understand and value the views of other people, these give us the information we need to have the power and authority to create rights and to change them as necessary.
If governments cannot do this, then people should change the government. It is not just a right to change governments that do not represent their people, it is an obligation.
As S.E. Smith puts, it "Gun ownership is not a human right. Bearing arms is something else: a privilege. And privileges are contingent on meeting reasonable standards of care and respect for others’ right to life." By understanding the facts, we can better insure that our privileges are maintained. We can better insure that the right to bear arms is maintained.
I suspect few of us would interpret the right to bear arms as the right to own nuclear weapons or sarin gas. This is because we all fundamentally believe in the right to protect ourselves, not only against malevolence, but against ignorance. Knowledge about the facts helps us do that.
