With the relatively large number of high-profile cases of mass shootings, leftists are predictably calling for more gun control. When arguing for their position that it should be more difficult for morally upstanding people to build, purchase, keep, carry, and use guns to defend themselves from aggressors, they frequently refer to statistics concerning gun deaths. The implication is that every death caused by firearms is a tragedy, and that if infringing upon the right to keep and bear arms saves just one of those lives, then it is worth doing. While we could dismiss this reasoning by way of reductio ad absurdum by pointing out that it would also lead us to stop using automobiles, electricity, and any other invention which causes people to die on occasion, let us present a sharper defense by examining some cases in which gun deaths are good.

First, proponents of gun control like to point out that having a gun available to a person who is contemplating suicide increases the risk of a successful suicide attempt. The problem is that they assume without proof that this is a negative outcome. A person of sound mind has a strong instinct of self-preservation, and killing oneself is antithetical to this instinct, but there are factors which can override this instinct. One such factor is terminal illness. A person who has a rather short amount of time to live and will be in excruciating pain for the entirety of that time may decide that nonexistence (or going to whatever afterlife the person believes in) is better than existence as a terminally ill person. In such a case, a self-inflicted gunshot wound can act as a form of euthanasia compared to the protracted suffering which would otherwise lie ahead. (And because many governments still violate the sovereignty of their citizens over their own bodies by prohibiting physician-assisted suicide, this is a roundabout case of bad people with guns being defeated by a good person with a gun.) The tragedy in such a case is not the gun death, but the terminal illness behind the gun death.

Another factor can occur during an armed conflict. A person whose position is being overrun by enemy forces may commit suicide to avoid capture, interrogation, and torture at the hands of the enemy. Historically, many women did this to avoid becoming victims of war rape and many people with valuable knowledge did this to keep themselves from being tortured into divulging important information to the enemy. In such cases, a self-inflicted gun death can be the best of a multitude of bad options.

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