Too Much Gun Ownership Comes from Leaps of Logic

Could we have avoided all this mess of having too many guns if the nation just knew what a non-sequitur was?  A non-sequitur, you know, is a fallacy of logic. It is reaching a conclusion by making a connection that really isn't there. In this case, it's using as cause for doing something (buying guns) a reason (the Second Amendment) that doesn't necessarily apply.

Yes, the Constitution does say the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon. Now, how does that mean that everyone should go out and buy a gun? Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you should. When a new constitutional amendment came along in 1933 giving people the right to buy alcohol, did that mean everyone was suppose to start consuming the stuff?

I don't know of anyone who considers him or herself a patriot because they throw back a Bud Light every day, but I do believe a whopping lot of Americans buy their guns because they think it the patriotic thing to do. 

To be fair to them, we need to cite the whole of the Second Amendment, for that might give them a little more justification -- or will it? It says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bar Arms, shall not be infringed."

Actually, they do yet more reading of something into the Constitution that isn't quite there. Yes, it does say that the reason the Founding Fathers were granting this right was that having an army was important, or at least having a "well regulated militia" was considered necessary. But, people take that a step further, assuming that "a well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" means (A) that they, the people, are to be that militia, not the government's army, and (B) that if we don't have enough guns,  the government will go unchecked and become tyrannical.

Perhaps they quite like the checks and balances thing, seeing it elsewhere in the Constitution, so they read it right into the Second Amendment.

Now, what, half  the world's guns are in the United States? Maybe after we all read the Second Amendment but before we all went out and bought so many guns, we should have read a dictionary. "Non-sequitur: A conclusion or inference which does not follow from the premises."

 We also call it jumping to a conclusion, and making a leap of logic.