Isn owning a gun inherently evil?
No. Evil and good are moral terms that apply to entities that can make moral choices. A gun is a non-volitional object. Guns have no power of choice; they simply act according to their identity, their nature. Unlike a gun, the user of a firearm possesses free-will, and can be morally judged for his actions. It is only the user of a gun who is good or evil: a woman who uses a gun to shoot a man wishing to rape her is acting selfishly to save her life — and is judged as good; a bank robber using a gun to rob a bank is acting irrationally and selflessly (by placing himself in such a predicament, and attempting to achieve values by theft) — and is judged as evil. To say that a gun is intrinsically evil, because it can be used by criminals — and corrupt governments — to rob peaceful citizens, is like saying water is evil because people can drown in it.
