Medical mandates, concealed carry, and active vs. potential rights
As a supporter of gun rights who argues on Twitter, I have been confronted during the COVID-19 pandemic over the question of the medical guidelines by people from all along the political spectrum who perceive an inconsistency in my positions. How, they ask, can I support a mask or a vaccine requirement if I hold the view that each of us has natural rights? Or how can I see a value in safety measures during a pandemic, when I balk at imposing controls over restrictions on the legal possession of arms?
To make things clear, I will state up front that I support the vaccination of everyone who is medically able to receive them and the requirement for wearing masks during the spread of an airborne pandemic illness. I have had a total of four Pfizer doses (no endorsement of the specific company is implied), and I wear a KN95 mask whenever I am inside populated buildings. I also support, assert, and exercise the right of individuals to have and carry personal weapons and oppose restrictions on the same.
This may seem contradictory. Multiple gun rights groups, for example, have expressed their objections to vaccine mandates on the argument that if the government can force us all to take a shot, it can remove our guns. And as I said above, it astounds some people to find out that I do not share the belief that gun control would make us safer, given my recognition that epidemiologists know what they are talking about regarding the spread of viruses.
What I say to both is that my rationale for my position on these two subjects comes out of the nature of rights. If I am acting alone and am involving no one else, no one else has any business giving me commands about what I am doing. If, by contrast, my actions affect the whole of humanity, the entire species gets to have a say.
Most of what I and everyone else do falls somewhere in between. I am not allowed to test my shooting skills by firing rounds at a chosen spot in the pavement of a busy highway, nor may I send bullets flying in the direction of my neighbors’ dwellings. Rules of that type are the same as stop signs at intersections. Yes, they restrict the range of my possible legal choices, but they make many more choices possible even with the constraints of society around me.
At the ground of this is what is meant by the concept of rights and their exercise. The question that I keep in mind when sorting through the competing claims among rights is how much will my exercise affect others, willing participants or no. My AR-15 locked in my home or my CZ 75B in my inside-the-waistband holster are not by themselves doing anything. They might potentially be employed in acts of wrongdoing or of benefit, but their mere presence at rest and not in my hands is morally neutral. If I point at them and suggest a willingness to use them, if I take hold of them and wave them about, or if I start firing off rounds, the situation has changed. But as long as they are at rest, all I am doing is engaging in a potential exercise of gun rights, regardless of where I am.
Now consider the act of breathing. I am sharing the common atmosphere, a gaseous blanket that we all depend on. If I say “et tu, Brute” in my home, some time will pass before you take in a molecule of that remark, though our homes of necessity are not perfectly airtight. But in a grocery store, what’s mine is yours and vice versa. Yes, there are mitigation measures, but they can only do so much. Whatever airborne virus I have will travel through the intervening vapors to find new hosts unless they are somehow impeded. My pistol in its holster stays there, as do the bullets.
This is the difference between potential and actual exercise. Firing cartridges at random is the same as spreading infectious agents without limit. In the gun community, we would typically treat with disdain someone who sprays rounds without thought as to their points of impact. I am suggesting here that the same attitude is appropriate for the unrestrained spreaders of SARS-CoV-2.
Ah, but masks and vaccines are not perfect, I am told. This is true, but masks and vaccines reduce the transmission of the virus. In other words, they are analogous to the pistol in my holster. An honest advocate of the carry of handguns will acknowledge that possession of the weapon is no guarantee. It is a means of improving the odds of one’s survival and of the survival of other innocent people. The logic is the same.
I realize that many who are against guns or against pandemic mandates will not agree, but I invite them to consider just why they do not find my position convincing. And to reply in the comments or @HopliteMagazine on Twitter.