My root reason to support the ability of people to keep and bear arms is the right of self-defense. I have a romantic yearning to support the right of the people to violently oppose the government, but the reality of modern warfare, the current state of police and National Guard equipment and organization and other factors make that more of a philosophy then something that would ever work.
Self-defense I believe is the only morally defendable for anything close to our existing gun control state. I believe that self-defense is a fundamental right of all people. I also believe that firearms are a useful tool for self-defense, as they are effective, easy to use, often compact and unobtrusive enough to be carried where self-defense may be needed without causing harm or panic.
With self-defense being a right of all people, we need to not unnecessarily deny the tools of self-defense to people. I believe that people are innocent until proven guilty and that prior restraint on people that haven't been proven dangerous will deny more people that need to protect themselves then it will stop those that want to commit harm.
I enjoy sport shooting, and generally think that people should be able to do it as it's a fairly safe activity as typically practiced. But just because people can safely use dangerous things doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reduce the damage those things cause in other situations. If sport shooting was the basis for gun ownership it could be significantly regulated with little harm to lawful use.
If you are only taking your gun to the range and competitions, waiting periods, interviews, licensing and more are all reasonable as you can still do what you want, it just take more time and money. You could easily make the argument that no sport is worth the death and injuries that guns can cause when used criminally or negligently, and that much of sport shooting could functionally be replaced with airguns and other non-lethal equipment.
The issue I have with gun rights is that my morality is based on evidence too. And the evidence I've seen is that more harm (measured by injuries and deaths) is caused by our current system then is prevented (measured by lawful acts of self-defense). It's a difficult comparison to make as many acts of self-defense are unreported and there is probably a deterrence effect that is difficult to measure. Also harm is often caused by people who have obtained their firearms in an illicit manner. However, there wouldn't be that secondary market if our primary market of guns to lawful people didn't exist or was significantly more heavily restricted.
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