"To those on the gun control view, this sounds like utter paranoia. Violent crime is committed at lower rates than it was during the latter half of the twentieth century and our government, although imperfect, is not authoritarian. “Why is a gun necessary?” we frequently hear.

A reasonable answer is that a reliable, effective gun is akin to an insurance policy. Am I going to be the beneficiary of my monthly renter’s insurance premiums? I hope not. But I rest easily knowing that I can draw upon my policy if disaster strikes. In this sense, gun ownership can be viewed as an expression of personal risk philosophy. Just as we needn’t all buy insurance in a uniform way, we can each evaluate whether a gun can serve as a personal safety policy.

Interestingly, the statistics often don’t tell the story the gun controllers think they do. As mentioned earlier, advocates for tighter laws frequently highlight the murder rate discrepancy between the United States and our international counterparts, as if to show that our cultural fixation only harms us.

But in doing so, they ignore that within America there is neither a correlation between gun ownership and gun murders across varying state laws, nor between the strictness of gun laws and gun murders. Might it be that the statistics suggest it isn’t gun advocates who have an irrational fear, but the gun controllers themselves?"