Certainly the nuclear non-proliferation treaties (essentially international law making it illegal for anyone other than the Big 5 (USA, UK, France, USSR, China) to own a nuclear weapon didn’t work so well. Now that Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, India, Taiwan and possibly others have nukes. I would argue that the proliferation of nuclear weapons generally makes wars of aggression less likely.

The proliferation of private firearms ownership makes aggressive personal behavior less likely as well. Except to those who want to take them away, of course, who ascribe all sorts of nefarious behavior to individuals.

There, as they say, is the rub. Until a crime is actually committed, malevolent intent is usually very hard to discern – and until such intent is identified, the law must treat everyone equally. That is, either anyone may legally procure any given type of weapon, or no one may.

Given that we are rapidly approaching a future when the first evidence of someone’s malevolent intent might be a mushroom cloud over a wiped-out American city, one can be forgiven for very strongly preferring the latter option.

Think about it this way. If the private ownership of nuclear weapons is legal, who is going to sell it to you? The US Government certainly won’t. So, those who wish to possess such weapons to use them, are going to have to purchase them illegally, or build them on their own. That sounds kinda like the world we live in today. Hmmmm, so what’s the difference?

The key difference is whether we actually believe in the philosophy that underpins the US Constitution, or not. That philosophy holds that the individual is more important than the collective group. It says that individual rights trump collective utilitarianism. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is not granted by government, rather it is protected by government. There is a significant difference between those two positions.