On May the 4th, The Gospel Coalition released a video of a debate on gun-control between Bob Thune and Andrew Wilson.

Thune’s case is as follows:

1. Human beings have a basic right of self-defence or put another way a basic right to preserve their own existence
2. Christians have a moral duty to love our neighbours by protecting this right
3. The right to self-defence in the modern world includes the right to bear arms

Thune then says that to overcome his arguments his opponent would need to do the following to overcome his arguments:

1. To show that humans do not have a basic right to self-defence
2. That Christians do not have a moral duty to protect that right
3. Or that, that right does not include the right to bear arms

On the whole I think Andrew does a decent job of taking aim at the clear weak point of Thune’s case which is #3. I think in the general discussion afterwards he gets a little sucked in to pacifism (which I’d mostly be on board with) and loses his focus on this key issue. I think where the discussion goes off is because the discussion moves to war and national defence and not just arms within civil society which is the heart of the gun-control debate in America.

I fail to comprehend how anyone can say that the right to bear arms is a successful strategy in defending the life of others. I think that’s where I’d absolute hammer in – the prescription to bear arms as a direct response to self-defence has clearly failed while all the evidence shows that gun-control as a means of protecting life is far more successful.

So Thune says ‘the right to bear arms is a derivative’ of his previous points but I would argue that it is counter to the previous points and that a far more compelling case for civil engagement is to create a society where a resort to violence is safe and increasingly rare (and Andrew does make that case: 31 minutes).

All I say in conclusion is on May 15th a gunman killed ten in Buffalo and on May 24th a teenager killed 21 in Texas and that between the release of this video and the end of the month there were 51 mass shootings in America with 237 injured and 51 dead.