Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?

Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards pages 18 and 19
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.

If I could get an anti-gun person to read just one book it would be Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control. I’m thinking I should buy a few copies and have them handy to give out.—Joe]