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Gun Control and the War on Drugs
Many opponents of gun control support the war on drugs, and many critics and reformers of America's drug laws tend to believe in gun control. Conservatives tend to fall into the first category and liberals into the second.

In reality, these two issues are more similar than many people might think.

In both cases -- laws that restrict which guns people may buy, own, and carry; and laws that restrict which drugs people may buy, possess, and ingest -- what we're dealing with are possession crimes: victimless offenses against the state, whereby merely having something is branded a crime and punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Both types of laws are terribly immoral, as they are affronts to basic personal liberty. In a free society, all individuals own themselves and the products of their labor and exchange, and are free to do as they wish so long as they do not commit violence and fraud against other people. Arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating people for the weapons they choose to own or the drugs they choose to consume are immoral violations of the rights of self-ownership, and the corollary rights to control one's own body and property.

The right to self-ownership necessarily implies the right to self-defense and the right to peacefully acquire the means of self-defense. Hence, all gun control immorally violates the right to self-defense and self-ownership.

The right to self-ownership implies the right to self-medication and also the general right to decide what to put into one's own body. Either you own yourself or you do not.

Gun laws have rendered millions of Americans defenseless; and drug laws, as in the case of medical marijuana, have left thousands of cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma patients helpless without the medical benefits of their preferred treatment. The interference with the right of people to choose their own medicines and means of self-defense has been a tragic matter of life and death for all too many peaceful Americans. The most fundamental argument against drug laws and gun laws is moral: people have a right to own themselves, defend themselves, possess property, and control their own bodies. In practice, when this right is thwarted, disaster ensues.

Because of the particular nature of possession crimes, the similarities between gun control and the drug war do not end there. ...