Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Firearms, drugs are my right
By Ross Miller
UWM Post (U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
04/22/2007

(U-WIRE) MILWAUKEE — I want my full freedom, but I am being denied it by our government.

There are laws in the books that tell me I cannot posses certain items but can possess others. The central examples in this ideological debate are the mistakenly polarized arguments over guns and drugs.

People should have the right to possess whatever firearms or drugs they want as long as they are not hurting anyone outside of themselves. It is amazing how many progressives and, paradoxically, right-wing nuts conspire to take away yours and my rights.

John Locke tells us that we should have the right to seek happiness in whatever way possible as long as we are not exploiting other people. This, I believe, is a basic tenant of this country, but unfortunately, it has become corrupted. People have started to use generalizations as a way to solve issues. "Oh, people are dying because of gunshots — ban guns!" "Kids are doing drugs and some die from them — let's ban drugs!" It is the exact same narrative, folks. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Car-Accidents.com, "there are about 43,000 people killed in fatal car accidents each year in the United States," with around "40 percent of the fatal crashes [being] alcohol-related. In addition to fatal accidents, about 2.9 million people are injured each year."

So why don't we ban alcohol and cars? I understand the risks involved in allowing people to buy Uzis and opium. But, if you TRULY believe in freedom (yes, I am calling on your patriotism and absolutism), you would understand that freedom is all about choice.

People should be allowed to make choices as long as they don't pose obvious, direct and dangerous threats to society. Now, what defines these different and loaded values is up to interpretation, but I will try to explain here ... "Dangerous" are groups like the Ku Klux Klan because there is evidence that they have murdered individuals and committed other crimes against people. They have violated other people's rights and should be sanctioned legally. "Safe" is the hunter that has a few rifles in his house locked up; "safe" is even the national radio personality that has a drug problem.

They only have the possibility for crime, and a capitalistic free country should not sanction people for possessing the possibility of negative outcome.

By trying too hard to protect our society, we could destroy it. Freedom can be pretty scary at times, especially when our media extols certain positives and negatives over others. We must be allowed to do whatever we want to ourselves, believe in any God in this universe, and say and write whatever we believe in.

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