I've written previously about my thoughts on guns and gun control, and my views on "good" and "bad" people in regards to gun use and ownership. I want to follow that up with my thoughts on calling guns "just another tool" and why that perspective concerns me.
Tools are objects that we use to serve a certain purpose, to aid us in completing a task, to do things we would not be able to do with just out bodies. Tools are designed for a specific purpose or multiple purposes, but can often also be used for actions and activities they weren't initially intended for. A spoon is a tool used for scooping and stirring food or other liquids, gels, and granular materials. Because it is designed for scooping, it can be used for digging or scraping if you don't have a shovel. If a tool designed specifically for prying is not available, it can be used for that purpose as well, depending on the material and design. A spoon can be made into art. Under certain circumstances, it can be used to injure or kill someone. But it is designed for scooping and stirring, and learning to use a spoon means learning to use it to scoop and stir effectively and without hurting yourself or others.
A knife is a tool used for cutting. Even moreso than with a spoon, there are many utilitarian uses of knives, and knives and small blades are often designed for specialized uses: kitchen knives, scissors, pocket knives, scalpels, filet knives, rolling blades. Each of these have an intended use that they are best for, but each can be used for other things if necessary. Including hurting or killing someone. Thus, learning to use a knife typically means learning how to use it to cut without getting hurt or hurting others.
So, if a gun is "just a tool," then what is its purpose? It's purpose is to hurt and kill. It is not "just a tool," it is a weapon, with no utilitarian use. Now, of course, similar to tools, training with weapons in intended to also decrease accidental injury and death, but with the intent of getting better at only causing wanted injury and death. This is the opposite of tools, where improved use means not causing harm. The better you get at using a gun (or knife designed for fighting/killing, or certain explosives), they better you get at hitting a "target," the better you're intended to get at hitting a living person or animal. If guns (and other weapons) are "just tools," then they are tools with a dangerous purpose that gives the wielder a "responsibility" no one deserves: the "responsibility" to decide who lives and dies.
Now, of course, people will make the case that self defense is necessary when someone else decides to take on that "responsibility" and uses it to kill others. But the more invested the "self-defense" advocate is in "needing" a gun for this purpose, the more they insist guns are the most reasonable form of self defense and not an absolute last resort, wanting to take it everywhere as if day-to-day life in most of American is that dangerous, the more they minimize the actual ethical and "responsibility" implications of using a weapon by using it for "fun" or calling it "just a tool," as if killing a person or animal is just as utilitarian a purpose as and equitable to cutting a piece of fabric, the less I trust them to understand the "responsibility" they claim gun ownership teaches; the less I trust them to not become the person who makes a decision to kill another. They already have decided that it's OK as long as that person is the "other," and I don't trust how they're going to define the threat from this "other" when they talk and behave as though their personal safety is constantly a risk even when it's not.
As I've said previously, I don't trust people who think causing injury or death is not simply sometimes necessary, but reasonable, who think "every man for himself" is an effective way to maintain order when we are social beings living in a society that should be able to provide structure to minimize violence without using a threat of more violence. Otherwise, what's the point of living in a society?
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