Consequentialism in Gun Control

In class last week we discussed how Shafer-Landau describes consequentialism as choosing the most optimific act.  An optimific act is a scenario where you have weighed the pros and cons for either choice you make and picking the one with the best overall outcomes.  Following a consequentialist mindset means the optimific act is obligatory in happening regardless of how the outcome will affect your own individual life.  This notion of sacrificing your own self interest for the benefit of the aggregate tends to be the deal breaker for many philosophers, myself included.  While I absolutely value happiness outside of my own and want others to attain success and achieve their goals, at the end of the day all individuals are intrinsically motivated through their own subjective biased and that is something I find to be hard to practically overcome.

A very controversial consequentialist debate in mainstream media is dispute over the 2nd amendment rights and to what extent should gun control be involved in federal regulations.  The standard consequentialist approach is that increased gun control leads to reduced availability of guns and as a result less gun related injuries and deaths should occur just by sheer probability of less guns possessed by civilians.  Opponents of gun control tend to support the litigation of the 2nd amendment to its fullest extent of "bearing arms" and ignore the consequentialist mentality.

The New York Times just released an article three days ago that highlights the importance of gun control from a consequentialist viewpoint.   But uniquely not from the argument of increased public safety, but instead from a reduction in half of gun related deaths. The article argues that suicide is "an impulsive act" and "therefore difficult to predict" and that "more than half of gun deaths in the united states are suicides".  So by taking preventative measures we can ideally stop an irrational impulse decision.  On the con side of the debate, the individual will have to self-sacrifice some small liberties in owning their fire arm, but in all reality will still be able to own a gun none the less.

I find this stance to be very interesting because the author of the article never directly addresses the argument of gun control and in fact makes very certain to only address the concern of preventing suicides and valuing life above all else.  This appeal to the audiences pathos about preventing suicide and therefore saving lives absolutely helps to achieve the authors greater purpose of wanting increased regulations on fire arms.  Something that is usually a heated topic in American politics.

Personally, I think if the argument for gun control is to be made, appealing to the publics emotions and human desire to preserve life will be the most effective.  And for that, I would imagine this approach to justifying a consequentialist mentality to suicide prevention and gun control to be the most impactful to the reader.

Seupel, Celia. "Blocking the Paths to Suicide." The New York Times. March 9, 2015. Accessed March 11, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/health/blocking-the-paths-to-suicide.html?ref=science.