Lawrence Kennon asks:

In your discussions with Ayn Rand, did she ever indicate whether she agreed with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms?  How would that be compatible with her view that government properly “holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force”?

Nathaniel Branden responds:

While I don’t recall ever discussing the Second Amendment with Ms. Rand, I am certain that she would support the right (for adults) to keep and bear arms.

What needs to be clarified here is what is meant by government holding a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.  Ms. Rand’s choice of words may have been unfortunate, but if one looks at this issue in the full context of all her writing, it is not difficult to grasp what she intended.

No Objectivist would ever deny an individual’s right to self-defense in contexts where no other option existed.  Thus, if you are alone on a street and someone attacks you—tries to rob or physically harm you—you have a right to protect yourself.  However, suppose that in doing so you kill your attacker.  In an Objectivist society—or any society I know of—you will be obliged to account for your action and satisfy the police that your response was justified.

The purpose of government, Ms. Rand wrote, was to bring the use of physical force under objective law.  We cannot reasonably claim the right to use force “at our own discretion.”  If we are rational, we don’t want to live in a society where someone can legally shoot at us because our smile appeared menacing.  There are standards by which our use of force is judged to be appropriate or inappropriate, and these standards are laid down by the government, as part of the body of law.

In an Objectivist society, presumably, these standards would be fair and rational; in another society they may well not be—but that is another story.