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First, they came for the hand sanitizer. Then they came for thetoilet paper. Then they came for the guns. The coronavirus is spreading fast,but fear-drivenbuying may be spreading even faster.

The fear of this virus, of course, is all-too-real, and nolaughing matter. And the impulse to stock up on essentials isirresistibleand probably prudent. Butstocking up on firearms for your home isnt, for a number of reasons.

For one, putting aside the risks of spreading or being infected bythe virus from standing in a crowded line and buying guns, study after studyhas found thatbringing a gun into your home is far more likely to endanger youand your family than protect it.

One study, from theAmericanJournal ofPreventative Medicine,found that "for each 10 percent increase in household gun ownership rates,the findings show a significant 13 percentincreased incidence of domesticfirearm homicide.

The risks are great that guns will be stored unsafely andaccessible to children and others who should not have access to them. Andyour semiautomaticcant fend off the coronavirus, no matter how large yourammunition magazine is.

But there is an even more fundamental problem that may be at playwith at least some of the binge-buying of guns. Some have a sense, itappears, thatsociety may break down under the weight of this pandemic, andAmericans will end up fighting each other for supplies, or food, or to maintainsafety.

In thispost-apocalyptic Hobbesian state, guns will be needed.This is the same worldview that the National Rifle Association has been stokingfor decades to fuelthe notion that a gun is necessary for self-protection, evidencedby aninflammatorytweet last week. Some will even add, that is what the Framers intendedwhen they wrote the Second Amendment into our Constitution.

Thats a dangerous notion and its wholly contrary to what theFounders of our nation intended. The Second Amendment, in fact, wasintended to protectwell-regulated militia state armies that maintainedorder and suppressed the sort of anarchic uprisings some gun buyersenvision.

As one court put it in1874 near theConstitutionally-relevant time of the 14thAmendment it would beabsurd to suppose that the framers took it for granted that their wholescheme of law and order, and government and protection, would be a failure andthat the people, instead [of] depending upon the laws and the publicauthorities for protection, were each man to take care of himself, and to be alwaysready to resist to the death, then and there, all opposers. On the contrary,the Court went on, the Framers envisioned a well ordered and civilizedcommunity.

That should be our vision still, perhaps now more thanever.

We dont know when, but we will come out of these strange,unsettling days. Coronavirus will go away. There will be a vaccine. Butthere is no vaccine toeliminate the very real dangers of bringing an unsecuredgun in your home, and the impact on every member of that household, fromunintentional injuries todomestic violence to suicide.

The heightenedrisk of all of those injuries that claim lives every day will be permanentlyincreased by the actions people taketoday.

And when we come out of this coronavirus, we must recommit torepairing the breaches of our society and establishing a caring community inwhichAmericans recognize we are in this together, as a nation and, indeed, aworld. Stockpiling firearms is not the answer and is contradictory to thevery notionsof government and society upon which our nation was founded.

Jonathan Lowy is the chief counsel and vicepresident, Legal Action Project, at Brady. Lowy has been named one of the 500Leading Lawyers in America by Law magazine and has published numerous articleson gun litigation and policy.

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Guns in the coronavirus age | TheHill - The Hill