Anyone who has debated the Second Amendment on social media has probably been told that their right to own a gun doesn’t supersede someone else’s right to live. The argument, they make, is that your ability to purchase a firearm is somehow a threat to their very existence, thus your right needs to be curtailed.

However, that’s not even close to being accurate.

Now, do they have a right to live? Of course. It’s one of those inalienable rights that the Constitution didn’t bother to protect because it was too obvious to warrant it. Their right to live isn’t up for debate.

Yet their right to live doesn’t empower anyone to supersede your rights.

For example, there’s no lawful way someone can compel you do donate a vital organ like a heart or even something like a lung or kidney without your consent. To do so would violate your rights, even if that violation might save someone else’s life. That other person’s right to life doesn’t supersede your rights as an individual.

Now, most would willingly donate an organ they could live without if it would save another. It happens fairly regularly, particularly with kidneys, because people genuinely want to help others. The key part here is that they do so willingly. No one’s rights get violated.

So no one’s right to live gets to supersede your rights.

However, the argument that you owning a gun somehow supersedes their right to live is a fallacy all on its own.

You see, their right to live is already protected by law. It’s illegal for someone to kill another except in self-defense. It’s illegal to threaten or otherwise risk someone’s life maliciously. All of these are encoded in law and no one’s talking about changing that, and for good reason.

My guns, however, don’t threaten anyone’s life. My owning firearms doesn’t represent a threat to anyone anywhere save those who would threaten me or my family.

What the entire argument is predicated on, however, is fantasy.

You see, those who are advocating gun control and using this line of “reasoning” are doing is living with a delusion that somehow disarming me makes them safer. Yet I’ve already illustrated that I’m not a threat, so why persist with trying to live within this willful self-delusion?

The answer is simple. It’s easier to pretend that my owning a gun is a threat than to actually deal with the real threats.

Law-abiding gun owners aren’t at threat until threatened. Such is as it has ever been.

Criminals, on the other hand, represent a real threat to all decent, law-abiding people. Those are the people to be concerned with. Yet the delusion ignores this truth, a truth that anyone should be able to see as clearly as their own hand. More clearly, in fact, since actual vision isn’t required.

Your right to live should never be threatened. It should never be intentionally risked without your permission. You should be free to live as safely as is possible in an uncertain world.

But your imaginary sense of safety doesn’t supersede my right to take more proactive steps to keep my family safe and sound. For me, that includes firearms.

If you want to live in your delusion, that’s your right. I’ll stay right here planning my next range trip.

When the barbarians come to the gates, though, we’ll see who is more able to maintain their safety.