In the recent Feller decision, the Supreme Court struck down a fairly long-standing gun ban in the District of Columbia, holding that the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms of a sort in general common use.

I would not elect to own a gun of any sort. I absolutely would not elect to possess a gun since I have crappy eyesight and a crappy temper, which do not combine for successful gun possession. Furthermore, I would not want a firearm of any sort ever in my residence where two bright, persistent autistic children live 2 days out of 14. Period. Any secure method of storage of such a firearm here would defeat my purposes in possessing such a gun. The only way I would consider owning a firearm would be to store it either with a gun-competent relative (such as one uncle whose skill with rifles and with a bow stands evident and mounted upon the walls of his den) or with a licensed gun dealer or range with a secure locker.

That said, I am very pleased that the Supreme Court has recognized that the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are in fact rights, not state powers. Only individuals or those receiving ultimately from an individual have "rights"; states have powers and duties, but no "rights." The Bill of Rights is a tool for the restraint of the state, not restraint by the state of individuals. I am also pleased practically that the risk of home invasion is likely to go down for the home occupant and up for the invader, adjusting the decision-making on both sides for the better. I am pleased to be a free-rider on the fact that my neighbors (generally, not here in this building where we have contractually agreed not to bring firearms onto the property) may be armed; their and my power to arm ourselves protects me even without actual arming.

I don't like "gun culture;" accordingly, I elect not to participate in it, just like I don't participate in tattoo culture or other subcultures. But my and other liberals' dislikes should absolutely not be the law. I think that a lot of the gun control movement involves a sort of Kulturkampf against the rural redneck, far more so than against the urban thug who can arm himself easily despite gun control laws. We do not need "guns off the streets"; we need thugs off the streets and one way to reduce thuggery is to add an aleatory risk of dying or (worse) getting shot in the groin to thug calculus. A few thugs will stop thugging; others will stop when shot; still others will revert to mere property crimes like shed breaking or stealing car stereos.

I already feel slightly safer, though happily my apartment is not at ground level anyway and a thug would have to pass an electronic door lock, a security guard and my deadbolt to get to my laptop or my 13" "big screen" TV.

When I argued against gun control at a poorly-attended but enjoyable debate at Princeton's Whig-Clio debate society as an alumnus in 1998, I argued that we as a society needed to become somewhat more like Switzerland and less like Brazil in terms of our attitude towards firearms. While Switzerland is not exactly a libertarian model, its citizens routinely carry rifles openly in the streets and most Swiss men must keep a long firearm and 200 ammunition rounds in the home for military defense. I would not want to live under that requirement; the government should not get to pick the amount of firepower that one's home must contain, whether zero or one gun and a box of rounds. But the irrational allergy to firearms even being owned and lawfully maintained is simply that: irrational.

In extremis, gun control can make it easier for tyranny to take over a country. I don't refer to stopping the tanks at Tiananmen Square with a couple of Mossberg pump action shotguns, but rather to the relations between more ordinary operatives in a police state and the citizenry that such corrupt thugs torture. People who love freedom should be prepared not only to own weaponry but to use them to shoot a tyrant's local thugs or Kommissars in the face in specific or general self-defense. No one should forget that the purpose of all amendments in the Bill of Rights is to restrain the state from inflicting tyranny by protecting due process, free speech, free religion (including by the plain meaning of the word "free" irreligion, non-religion), free assembly, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom from compelled self-incrimination, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, freedom from judicial arbitrariness through the preservation of the right of trial by jury in specific cases and yes the freedom to keep and bear lethal weaponry for the purpose of killing four- and two-legged varmints in extremis, even if this freedom makes local public servants uncomfortable.