Introduction Opponents of gun control often employ John Stuart Mills’ “Harm Principle” as one justification for owning firearms. They point to statistics that demonstrate that most gun owners do not use them to commit crimes therefore should not be, according to the principle, restricted by law to possess guns. Laws that inhibit or prohibit individual autonomy when their actions are causing no harm are an example of a free state violating its moral obligation to the people it represents and overstepping the limits of legislative powers given to it by the people. However, as Hugh Lafollette argues in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, while using the harm principle to determine whether or not the government’s intervention into personal decisions is legitimate, factors of degree and probability that a person’s actions might harm others must be considered as well. It’s a delicate and arguable balance. For instance, automobiles and tobacco cause many deaths worldwide every day but driving and smoking are legal. On the other hand, the possession of nuclear weapons, which have caused no deaths in more than half a century, is illegal. This discussion presents the ‘harm principle,’ arguments for and against the liberal interpretation of this principle, and presents Lafollette’s reasoning that the banning of guns, particularly handguns does not violate the tenets of this principle. Arguments of opposers To support the argument of those opposed to gun control, advocates point to Mills’ “Harm Principle.” As outlined in his influential1859 work, On Liberty, Mills argued that an adult should be allowed to do what they want to do provided that their action does not cause harm to someone else. The 1957 Wolfenden Committee report, in line with this thinking, recommended that “there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality that is ‘not the law’s business’ (Kipnis, 1977, p. 44). Lord Patrick Devlin, then a British judge, disputed the report published while he sat on the bench arguing for the use of law to preserve morality and thus society itself. Devlin recommended punishment for violating society’s morals which were ambiguously defined as being those behaviors that would disgust a ‘right-minded person.’ Devlin believed that criminal prosecution could alter behavior in both the individual and society in general. If the aberrant behavior wasn’t rectified in a public and punishing way, Devlin believed that society’s moral fabric would simply unravel. It was necessary, therefore, to apply criminal law to enforce the morals of society, thus defending social order itself. Professor and philosopher H.L.A. Hart opposed Devlin’s viewpoint explaining that immorality does not jeopardize society and that Devlin’s stance implies that the morality of society can’t change. Hart maintained that there is a common morality in a multi-cultural society, but that we would have no freedom as civilized human beings if we could do things only of which the collective whole approved (Hilgendorf, 2005). The center of Hart’s argument is the “Harm Principle” extrapolated from John Mill’s composition 100 years earlier. “..That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others