Licences to kill are moral
It must be morally acceptable to defend oneself against an intruder, and it is a moral duty to defend one’s wife.
Two nights ago, I watched a video that made me want a gun.
It appeared to show a group of at least six men, one of whom was carrying a large Palestinian flag, approaching the Birmingham house of a British ‘YouTuber’. The person filming says": ‘This is for that dirty dog Abu Layth, who disrespects our brothers and sisters of Palestine.’
Immediately after, the group started furiously smashing the downstairs windows while yelling: ‘Come on, you motherf****r!’ The upstairs lights came on, the sound of female screaming was heard, and the gang started battering the front door.
Once the door had given way, the gang burst into the house. One of them walked up the stairs while shouting ‘Where the f**k is Abu Layth?!’ There was more female screaming and the video ended.
The YouTuber later wrote a post on Facebook that seemed to confirm the authenticity of the video, adding: ‘We are safe… although my daughter has been traumatised.’
I want a gun – and I write that as somebody who hates firearms. I have shot handguns, assault rifles and a sniper rifle. Every moment I held one, I was possessed by a deep sense of unease. I do not think I enjoyed a single trigger pull. I even felt uncomfortable filling the magazines with bullets.
Yet I think I should be allowed to have a gun in my flat – and I would have no moral problem using it to kill an intruder. That is not to say that I would avoid a lifetime of crushing emotional turmoil if I did so; simply that I would be convinced that my decision to shoot him, knowing that it could end his life, had been moral.
It is true that I have no possessions worth killing a man to protect. This is certainly the case for items like televisions or computers, but is even true of those things that have irreplaceable sentimental value, such as my inscribed wedding ring. The punishment for burglary is not summary execution in any fair society.
However, two things in my flat are worth killing for: my life and, even more importantly, my wife’s. It must be morally acceptable to defend oneself, and it is a moral duty to defend one’s wife.
The instant an intruder enters, I would have to assume that the situation might be deadly (and possibly worse) for my wife and me. This would especially be the case if there were multiple intruders. I would not know if they were high on drugs, psychopaths, otherwise mentally deranged, or just hot headed pro-Palestine youths with the potential to get carried away in the moment.
It is ridiculous to expect anybody in a potentially lethal – and probably terrifying – situation to make a disinterested, in-situ assessment of whether she is about to become the victim of simple burglars or of a pair of crazed rapist-murderers.
Furthermore, nothing other than a gun is a credible defence for most people. Even somebody good at fighting would likely face defeat against more than one man, and would be taking his life into his own hands against an individual armed with a blade. The average person can forget about defending himself with the kitchen knife or a cricket bat.
Finally, we must understand that it is highly unlikely that the police would save us. Even in a world in which our constabulary took home invasions seriously and were funded and organised in a way to respond rapidly, they would almost certainly fail to reach us in time to make a difference.
Therefore, it is entirely justified, in moral terms, to use a gun to fire potentially deadly shots at any intruder the instant he enters your property. And it would be moral for a society to afford responsible citizens the option to do so.
Britons often view the levels of gun ownership in the United States with a mixture of bemusement and derision. ‘What sort of people,’ we wonder aloud, ‘could possibly imagine it reasonable to have so many guns in society?’ Many of us look at Second Amendment-supporting Americans as uncultured and borderline immoral Yosemite Sam figures whose boyish obsession with firearms has the side effect of causing great misery and violence in their country.
However, the alternative is to leave one’s family entirely at the mercy of those who might wish to do them harm, which does not seem moral either.
Two nights ago, Mufti Abu Layth had to trust six furiously embittered thugs – veins swelled with adrenaline and testosterone (and who knows what else) – to stop after they had smashed up his home and made some verbal threats. Perhaps there is a utilitarian argument to be made that this is a price worth paying to keep guns out of broad circulation.
But strictly in terms of morality, our cousins across the Pond have a point when they disagree.
