Reason First: Did Delawarean Naithan Grzybowski Deserve to Die?

To be gunned down in Wilmington, Delaware ought to not be a regular occurrence. But it is. 18-year-old Naithan Grzybowski fell due to, as of this writing, an unknown assailant’s rounds. The city, which earned the grisly moniker “Murder Town USA” by Newsweek in 2014, continues to see acts of start of force, by way of the gun. The teenager received bullets in his blue car, and later died on the pavement adjacent to the road. Does this require tighter gun laws? Should there be a ban on firearms for citizens? Not even close.

Irrational individuals will always be a facet of a free, or even a semi-free, society, like the one in which we live now. Grzybowski is just the latest in a long line of murders from the muzzle of a firearm. But, that doesn’t mean that the Second Amendment should be distorted or discarded.

Thoughtful Americans who have multiple firearms, including assault rifles intended only to kill humans, would only use them in defense of their property. By restricting the natural flow of the market—which only champions individuals who use pistols, rifles, and shotguns (not flamethrowers or fighter jets)—the government would be mired in irony. Instead of solving the problem of deaths by criminals, the criminality would be profound, due to a black market arising from all of the chaos.

What this young man encountered, sadly, was the swift hand of viciousness. He stood for the shooting victim who can’t tell who his killer happened to be. Like a nightmare playing out in reality, the homicide remains a ghastly reminder that guns in the wrong hands can lead to calamity. While Grzybowski was no saint (he had incurred a year and a half of level-three probation for drugs and stolen money), he did not deserve to be deprived of life. Whatever the issue could have been, he could still be breathing if the unthinking person(s) had not pulled the trigger.

What the Second Amendment secures is the idea that men and women who have the right to bear arms must use force, only if their own lives—or the lives of their values, or what they own—receive threats. In Grzybowski’s case, if he had acquired the proper documentation and been deemed mentally sufficient to carry a firearm, then he could have possibly been able to fire back at his assailant. But, this is conjecture. He is dead because a wicked coward decided to ruin a youth’s life, right at the precipice of adulthood.

While the young Delawarean has been laid to rest, he will join the thousands of other young people who have been silenced by gunfire over the years in Wilmington. As mass murders, serial snipers, and other evildoers mow down people, the Second Amendment ought to be treasured even more. The gunman who cut Grzybowski down must live with the knowledge that he or she chose to end a life that did not deserve to die. Even if they never face justice, they will forever hold onto the guilt.

For those who carry firearms, it is a testament to their resolve and rationality that they seek out only selfish preservation, rather than irrational bloodshed. For the men and women who know that they hold the responsibility of safeguarding all that they treasure—rather than committing atrocities, and leaving family and friends grieving—it is only right that they stand guard, armed and ready. It is up to the citizens of this country who keep firearms to know not only against whom and what—and how—to use these tools of destruction, but also why. There doesn't have to be any more murders like that of Naithan Grzybowski. Let’s keep the guns in the hands of those who possess mind and force.