A January 20th weekly edition of the Wilmington (Delaware) edition of The Dialog had an interesting but unconvincing article on gun control. The author of the article tried in every vain to state that gun control should be limited to individuals to advance peace. While peace is the end result, preventing individuals from firearm ownership is inherently wrong and violates natural law on self-defense and for hunting.
Catholic Canon law vastly differs from natural law, of which natural cannot be granted nor taken away by any sovereign government. Natural law is inherently given to us by our Creator, and bestowed upon us for our very existence. There are two facets of natural law that refute this Catholic doctrine -the natural law of self-defense and the natural law of survival (e.g. food to live).
With regards to self-defense, humans have inherent natural right to defend themselves. In doing so, we are bestowed with the right to leverage what ever tool including guns may to protect us from the harm of others. The argument that in order to have peace we need to remove guns from the streets. That is false as it is not the gun that kills, it is the person. It is like stating in order to cure obesity, you must ban spoons. Spoons do not people fat, overeating does.
Humans also have an inherent natural right to live, and part of that includes eating. Hunting is one method for providing food for an individual, a family or a village. Hunting with a gun is an method to reach those means of providing that food.
So while the Catholic Church is noble in trying to advance peace, it is fundamentally wrong biblically as God has bestowed natural law in all of us. The natural law of life, and the preservation of life against attacks and for nourishment override the reactive stance to ban individual gun ownership. The author of the article and the Catholic Church also fail to realize that when the Founding Fathers leveraged natural law in the crafting of the Second Amendment to individuals, it also meant oppression or attacks from government.
OK, so owning a car is a tool that could help us defend ourselves, like say positioning ourselves in a place to defend from an attacking enemy. THEREFORE we have a natural right to own a car? (NO, I don't think so.) You have to make a helluva leap from natural rights to ownership of the tools needed for self defense for that argument to stand up.
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