The last couple of months has marked the period of greatest international experience for me. I have not traveled the world but, to my fortune, many parts of the world have so kindly come to me. I have only traveled to one country outside of North America in my entire life and only stayed there for a week–not much cultural immersion from that.

I have spent every weekend in the last two months with them going to a variety of restaurants, bars, and clubs in New York City. These are some of the most interesting and fun people I have ever met–certainly some stand out above the rest. I can say with absolute certainty that the last two months have been the best time I’ve had all year.

One of the things I find most dear is the difference in opinion we have on social, political, and economical issues. In this period of global economic distress and an America that is generally despised around the world, these are inevitably topics of much discussion. It is certainly important to note that I am not some American nationalist or statist and I will never stand up for the American government or empire. I only defend the principles of liberty.

A recent topic of debate was about guns. One of my French friends had walked around one night looking for his friends and was greeted by a man with a gun at a psychic reading shop. No one knows if this was some sort of criminal, an off duty police officer, or other government official. The only fact is that he showed his gun as a means of intimidation.

The debate was certainly not in my favor as I was the only American and apparently every European nation has strict gun laws. They had a stereotype in their minds that every American is for the Second Amendment and obssessed with Wild West stories of cowboys and bandits. The reality is that I have had debates about guns with many people native to the States–especially in liberal New York.

My position on guns and gun laws is simple. An individual has the right to own anything they want as long as it does not intrude on the property rights of another individual. The government has no right to take away a person’s right to private property. There only job is to enforce contracts and rectify situations where one individual violates the rights of another individual.

I am not for guns but, I am also not against guns. This conundrum was too difficult for my European friends to grasp at the time–it may have been the alcohol.

If it was possible to remove all guns–or any weapon–from the face of the Earth and stop them from ever coming back and no individual’s natural rights are violated in the process, I would be in favor of it. The problem is that this is not possible. How can you remove every gun in the entire world, the knowledge behind that technology, and not violate people’s natural rights? It may be possible in a police state to confiscate all the world’s guns. It may be possible in an Orwellian world to brainwash people to such a degree that the common man would not even know what a gun is. But, all of those actions will require destroying all kinds of personal liberties.

Of course, even in a police state or an Orwellian dystopia, someone will have the guns. It might not be you or me but, someone in power will. I certainly don’t believe it is better to live in a gun-free world as a slave.

If we can agree that it is impossible to create this utopian world where guns do not exist and people can still live freely, what is then the next best thing we can do? Some might argue that passing laws banning guns or putting some sort of heavy punishment for having a gun will work. I argue that it will not.

Those of us who are law abiding citizens will obviously not have guns. We are also not the people who are going to commit crimes. The problem is in stopping the criminals from getting guns. They are criminals. By definition, they break the law. We have laws against thievery, yet they rob people. We have laws against drugs, yet they sell it. If the means to solving all our problems could be accomplished by passing laws, the world would already be a utopia.

In all my debates with people who are in favor of gun laws, they have never proposed a means to stop the criminals from getting the guns. Some people simply do not understand why passing a law is not enough to stop the criminals. I consider those people to be a lost cause. The others simply revert the argument back to a moral or philosophical one. The problem with that is that there is no disagreement there. I agree that the existence of weapons makes death easier and more likely.

In my experience, those who want gun laws feel that those who do not agree are in favor of death and destruction. I am against war and violence in general. The fact of the matter is that reality is not so black and white.

My solution to the gun problem is fundamentally the concept of a stalemate. It is most important that an individual’s rights are never violated in an attempt to create a sense of security. In a society where there are no gun laws and people can freely buy guns, it is possible that every person will own a gun. Some people will choose not to and that is their right to do so. Those of us who do not currently own a gun will not suddenly decide that they are going to buy a gun and kill everyone they see tomorrow. That is completely irrational.

The criminals who were already buying guns will still have guns so nothing changes for them. However, they now have to consider that the next person they intend to commit a crime against may also have a gun. Their risk to reward ratio has now changed dramatically. The risk was low when gun laws existed because your average person who abides by the law will not own a gun. Now, the risk is unknown to high because no such laws exist.

Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that no more crimes will be committed or that no one will die because of guns. Passing a law against guns also doesn’t guarantee any of that but, it does guarantee a violation of individual liberty.

It appears the United States is the capital for school massacres. The Columbine incident and the more recent Virginia Tech incident come to mind. It is easy for people to blame an inanimate object like a gun for these horrible events but, they are in fact blaming the symptoms and not the causes. These killers could have used a gun or a knife or a baseball bat or even a rock. They so happened to have used a gun but, how many murders by weapons other than guns occur on a yearly basis? Just recently in Japan, seven people were killed with a knife.

Passing laws willy-nilly is a lazy person’s way of dealing with a much bigger problem: why are people motivated to kill other people? Why do suicide terrorists blow themselves up? These are the real questions that need to be asked and problems that need to be dealth with. You can’t just pass a law and hope the problem goes away.