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Notes -
Axiom: One of the fundamental rights of man is the right to effectively defend himself, innocent others, and his community from unjustified force levied against those targets.
The ability to effectively defend himself, etc. is very unevenly distributed in nature; an elderly woman, for example, will usually find herself on the losing end of a physical confrontation, while a young and strong man will be at an advantage most of the time.
Firearms have an extreme leveling effect in the context of effective self defense. Yes, there are degrees of skill, but the differences in terms of credible threat are trivial compared to the "no one has a gun" case. A young man with a gun poses somewhat more threat than without one, but an elderly woman with a gun is orders of magnitude better off than in the non-gun case. There are no other tools that provide anything close to this leveling effect.
Unjustified violence is commonly the province of the young and strong. If the government removes firearms from the equation, it denies the ability of the elderly and/or those physically weak to provide for their own defense effectively, thereby violating the initial axiom. I do not think it is much of a stretch to say that people whose government denies their fundamental rights are not free in that context.
The above is the summary of an argument. No doubt you can find points in either the axiom or the logic following where you disagree, but I believe it is sound.
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