Yesterday was the long awaited “March for Our Lives”, where people took to the streets and protested against gun violence all across the US and Europe. And the rhetoric from the speakers certainly didn’t disappoint. With a myriad of celebrities in attendance and the survivors of the Parkland shooting setup as headliners, almost every anti-gun argument was heard as they ignited a crowd carrying a never-ending array of signs filled with witty commentary, inevitably used as a self-congratulatory means of virtue signaling across social media. What was also in attendance was the cruel irony of the realization that this wasn’t a march for our lives, but rather a march for our tyranny.
The anti-gun narrative faces an assortment of inconsistencies in its quest for moral superiority, all of which showed themselves during yesterday’s march. For starters, there appears to be a spectrum on which anti-gunners choose how honest they are in their intentions, although all of them seem to have the same end goal. It is for this reason we saw speakers tripping over their own rhetoric as some proceeded to claim they weren’t coming to take guns, while others were honest in their intentions of “when they give us an inch, we will take a mile,” as Delaney Tarr so eloquently put it.
And therein lies the problem: the anti-gun crowd wants solutions to their perceived problems, but how can we begin a discussion with a group so disingenuous about their intentions? It’s like trying to speak to a pickpocket as they reach for your wallet. As you ask them what they’re up to, they may reassure you they mean no harm and accuse you of being paranoid, but the truth is that in the end they want your wallet, regardless of what they say. Masking that intention only serves to harm their stated goal of solving those issues.
Where we also encounter a roadblock is in their misconception of what constitutes a human right and where it derives its value. This inherent misunderstanding makes dialogue nearly impossible, even after their true intentions have been uncovered. Simply put, all rights are derived from property rights, which stem from the reality of self-ownership. This realization exposes the inconsistency in thinking one’s right to life is either stymied or superseded by another’s ability to own property in the form of a firearm. Your right to life is based in the same principles that justify gun ownership; they don’t exist at odds, but rather are one in the same.
The idea that one person’s misuse of a right ought to result in that right’s subjugation is extremely dangerous when those advocating for it don’t grasp what they’re really arguing for. It’s been at the heart of almost every atrocity humans have carried out against one another, yet that underlying principle is continually draped in new arguments to revive its campaign. And, unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’re seeing; a group of demonstrators using their First Amendment rights so that they may destroy their Second Amendment rights, the same right that protects and makes possible the former, while completely missing that they both stem from the same principle.
And this is why it should be regarded as the March for Tyranny. Whether through purposeful manipulation or sheer happenstance, what we witnessed yesterday wasn’t a march for solutions, security, or morality, but rather a march against their own right to life and self-ownership, and with that, inevitably comes tyranny.
Thomas J. Eckert
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