There is no place called Utopia

 Tom Knighton has a post at Bearing Arms entitled 'Your Right To Feel Safe' Versus 'My Right To Feel Safe' that asks the question: Does your right to feel safe trump my own? It's an interesting question, for as Knighton points out, if your right trumps mine, you can impose all sorts of things on others. Indeed is that not what people mean when the call speaking ideas they don't like "violence'?

Every so often, someone brings up their “right to feel safe.” They argue that our right to keep and bear arms infringes on their right to feel a certain kind of way.

Now, first, we need to acknowledge that this “right to feel safe” doesn’t actually exist. If it did, such a thing could be exploited to restrict, well, almost anything.

But some people persist in pushing this idea. They’re firmly convinced that they have a right to restrict the actions of others, even restrict a constitutionally protected right, all so they can feel “safe.”

Knighton makes an important point. The right to "feel safe" does not actually exist, or if it does, it is entirely in your personal control. You alone determine how you feel about extremal stimuli. No one "makes" you feel anything.  what you feel is entirely in your own control. But the other reason that the "right to feel safe" does not exist is because it requires someone else to do something for these people to exercise the "right." But that is not how rights work. A right is something you can exercise without someone else doing anything. For instance, the right to keep and bear arms requires only that you and no one else choose to acquire and use arms.

Yet I’m not going to debate them anymore about whether the right exists or not. They’re not likely to listen to that argument, anyway, so why waste the oxygen?

Instead, I’m going to ask them one simple question: Why does your right to feel safe trump my right to feel safe?

See, by owning and carrying firearms, I feel safer than if I didn’t. I understand that criminals break the law, which means they’re likely to break any gun control regulation you care to put in place, much as they have all the other gun control laws already in place.

I also recognize that the police, despite their best efforts and intentions, often get to the scene of a crime just in time to draw a chalk outline around the body. When seconds count, help is just minutes away.

So, I don’t feel safe with restrictive gun control laws in place. Someone else might, but I don’t. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. I feel far less safe than I did without them.

It is not unreasonable to feel safer with a weapon. The news reports crimes taking place every day, and they seem to take place pretty much anywhere. Now, recognizing that doesn't mean walking around expecting to be attacked at any moment, but at the same time, one should be constantly ware of ones surroundings. And one of the things one must be aware of is that criminals often carry concealed weapons, and unlike law abiding, they don't bother to obey any gun control law. They obtain their guns by illegal means and you will never know. How safe do gun-grabbers feel about that, or is ignorance bliss?

Gentle readers should go read Knighton's post. Frankly, Knighton's position seems to be to be more realistic and more balanced. In light of the understanding that mankind is a fallen creature, it makes more sense to be prepared that to constantly be asking why these things keep happening. Hint, it's because there is no such place as Utopia.