Is There a Moral Right for Civilian Gun Ownership?

Abstract

The topic of firearm ownership is a current and topical one, with compelling arguments both for and against. In this paper, I set out to prove the existence of a moral right to civilian firearm ownership. In order to achieve this, I selected the strongest (and only) rights based argument for the complete banning of firearms as put forward by Jeff McMahan, and proceeded to analyse and critique his arguments, with the intention of presenting flaws in the arguments, and thus proving the existence of a moral right for firearm ownership through discounting the strongest argument against it.