This is more of a philosophical question as there really isn't any way to quantify the value of freedom. It's the root of the gun debate happening now, and I have serious issues with analyzing it.

My foundation in ethics is "it's wrong to harm others." My foundation in politics is "Freedom is something we should maximize, within the framework of ethics." and is *strongly* influenced by the modern "Liberal" ideals and interpretations of Enlightenment concepts. This give me a knee-jerk "Small l" libertarian bent. You should be allowed to do what you want, as long as it doesn't hurt people. I oppose (generally) prior restraint. You are innocent until proven guilty and it is wrong to stop an innocent person from doing something that isn't hurting others. This isn't unlimited, we can have safety standards and require they are met to reduce the hazard and harm to all people, even if that harm isn't direct or is only probable. My example here is explosives. I think that generally, people should be able to buy explosives, BUT, they'd have to prove that they can store them safely, not have any reason to suspect that they will use the explosives to harm others and other restrictions too detailed to get into.

I've been able to integrate socialism into this framework by having it as a social good to make people free of hunger, homelessness and health issues at the cost of taxation and government force to acquire those taxes.

My problem is that It's quite likely I'm wrong, and the current gun debate illustrates this in ways that are making me very uncomfortable with myself. Firstly, my political basis is inherently flawed. The writers that those Enlightenment ideals came from were sexist bigots. The society that has arose from these ideal is sexist and bigoted therefore. Secondly, I can't quantify the value of freedom. 70-100 million people exercise their freedom to own guns (in the US) and it has a cost of ~38 thousand lives and ~85 thousand injuries a year (CDC data, 2016). It is easy to quantify the *cost* of gun ownership.

Aside from defensive gun use, (Which may be less important if there aren't guns to enable people to do harm and therefore is an argument in itself), I cannot quantify the value of people owning guns. I cannot compare the two. The sentiment that I am seeing is that the lives and suffering gun ownership costs far outweighs the value of peaceful ownership. Since peaceful ownership cannot be quantified, the opposite cannot be argued, except as an appeal to freedom. The appeal to freedom resonates with me because of that political foundation, but it is likely wrong.

Which makes me question my entire position on freedom vs security. I can quantify security, I can't quantify freedom. I cannot say that a prison, where all of our needs are met, but we are unable to do anything that is harmful, or have any autonomy (The Dollhouse in "Dollhouse" for example) is "Bad" except by saying that "freedom is valuable". Evidence based policy could lead us to a security utopia. And aside from saying that this would almost certainly stifle innovation, the life of the Eloi is attractive, especially in a world without Morlocks.