The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)(theatlantic.com) |
The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)(theatlantic.com) |
Guns fill a role in society that allows any person, no matter how weak, to execute deadly force against another. For many, this is the height of idiocy. Why would we allow individuals to have such power?
But technology is doing the same thing that guns do -- it's giving every person unprecedented power over his fellow man. DDOS attacks can bring down banks. Bio-research could unleash a deadly plague. As technology increases, the powers that one person has continue to grow.
So the issue of gun ownership is the same issue as freedom in technology. How much power should one person have? Every time somebody commits a crime on the internet, we're going to hear the same cries: why should individuals have so much power over others?
I don't have a facile or slogan-worthy answer. As a libertarian, I always want to err on the side of empowering individuals. But I can see a powerful argument to continue to take freedoms away from all of us. The issue of gun control was just the first shot fired in the larger war that is now upon us.
Who is this "we" that has either the power, right, or wisdom to overrule people on such things?
> So the issue of gun ownership is the same issue as freedom in technology
Wonderfully said.
Power is a zero-sum game. Either I have the right to { own a gun | duplicate a file | mix acid and water in a test tube | print a part on a 3-d printer } or someone else takes that right from me and holds it themself.
There are wonderful deontological arguments as to why it is wrong to take rights away from me (or you, or you, or you), but even at the utilitarian level: why should we expect better outcomes if a right is removed from individual A and given to individual B? Was Germany better off when the Jews and Gypsies had their right to firearms ownership transferred to the state? Was China better off under Mao when individuals had their right to plant, grow, harvest and sell their crops transferred to the state? Was the United States better off when each person had their right to make decisions about alcohol consumption taken away and transferred to the state?
I argue that restricting rights is wrong on both deontological AND utilitarian grounds.
The utitarian argument for these sorts of things tends to be "give me the power, and I'll make better decisions". The incentives don't usually support the fulfillment of that promise.
The same "we" that has existed since the beginning of our species, when groups of humans decided to live together.
"We" is an expression of all people - not biased by East or West, Black or White. In all societies the price of living in a group, and enjoying the benefits thereof, are concessions to personal freedom, and the recognition of some authority that is capable of making the decision.
It's also important to note (because it's so frequently confused) that "we" is not necessarily a government. In the absence of a government, "we" will manifest itself in other formats, most frequently tyrannical.
The only way for you to extricate yourself from this (by your implication, malevolent) "we" is to live entirely without dependency on any semblance of society.
I think that many of your examples are good ones and that arbitrary restrictions of freedom are wrong, but restrictions on the possession of weapons by the general public is not arbitrary and if you want to make a utilitarian case you are going to need to talk about the pros and cons of gun control itself not more generally about freedom and rights.
In time there probably will be something of that destructive power that small organizations or even individuals could create.
For example, a majority of Americans think that owning a handgun should be on the "legal" side of the line, while owning a cruise missile should be on the "illegal" side of the line, and owning a nuclear bomb or stockpiles of chemical weapons should be even more on the "illegal" side. People in other countries may draw the line somewhere else, for a variety of fairly complex reasons, but afaict it's still the same basic framework everyone's operating under.
Now, maybe MAD works better with nations than it does with individuals, but maybe we've just been getting lucky.
You are also talking like a paranoid; incidences with internet used to release deathly viruses are so far only videogames stories and DDOS attacks have more similarities with an electricity outage than to killing someone. And not a single bank got broke because some DDOS attack.
A year or so ago I watched a 60 minutes segment on so-called "sovereign citizens." The segment made them out to be relatively deranged, on my own cursory research supports this.
One part DID stick in my mind, though: in an interview with someone with weak ties to the movement (I believe a radio host?), the interviewee said something akin to: "The Second Amendment is not so that we can go duck-hunting." I took this to mean, (and in light of the circumstances around the American Revolutionary War, I think there's a strong case to be made) that the Second Amendment was specifically intended to protect the possibility of armed rebellion.
This is a fairly out-there idea, but then, it's called "Revolutionary" for a reason.
However, when I hear debates about gun control, this context seems to be missing. Is it such a...well...revolutionary concept that we now shy away from it? Or am I completely misunderstanding something?
In fact, it goes further. The point of the preamble (the part of about the necessity of a militia) isn't there to say that the right to keep and bear arms is necessary so that the state can have an army. Rather, it's positive law saying that citizens should own guns to be able to form a militia in order to fight back against a tyrannical government.
And the start of the Revolutionary War provides more supporting context for this: the British march that begin the war wasn't intended to start a war. The objective was to disarm the citizens. The authors/signers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that the state could never do that to the citizens again.
The Constitution was written by people who had taken arms against a government. It's reasonable to infer that they thought doing so was important and might be necessary in the future.
This amazes me. I wonder how many of those 47% have had training? Or how many regularly practice firing the gun? This is one of the main reasons I'm opposed to people being allowed to own guns. Most probably don't know how to use them and in a situation where the weapon could be useful an untrained person will probably make the situation worse either by shooting another civilian or losing their cool and firing the gun and making a situation worse (e.g. in a robbery where everyone could come out safe if the thief gets the money - but some idiot with their own gun decides they will 'save the day', the thief freaks out and suddenly their are dead people).
Another reason I think guns should be make illegal in the US is the incredibly obvious evidence throughout the world that easier access to guns leads to more gun related crime. Coming from a country where guns are illegal it's very rare to hear or anyone being shot dead. Violent criminals obviously turn to other weapons such as knives but I would rather be up against a man with a knife than a man with a gun.
Still going to be a very large number that are more "active" gun owners, but I think 47% is likely something of an overstatement.
Concealed carry of a handgun, use outside the home, precision rifle, etc. would be a lot harder, but I'd be quite happy if most people just learned minimal home defense with a shotgun and nothing more.
I'd rather not be a helpless victim in either case.
There are already 300 million guns in America, and a deeply entrenched culture in favor of keeping them. That is the initial condition we have to work with. Saying "just be more like country X" isn't a solution at all.
I worry thatI might be coming across as a sock puppet with an axe to grind, so maybe I should take this question somewhere else. I'd be interested to hear any and all responses though; thank you in advance.
It's not an out-there idea at all. The Second Amendment doesn't say anything about hunting.
When we hear figures like 47% ownership, we may tend to think that all of that 47% is of the irresponsible sort that news stories eventually are made about. The reality is very boring and mundane though.
Sometimes with amusing results: http://www.ammoland.com/2011/03/29/pro-gun-activists-outbid-...
Keep in mind that you wouldn't need to collect every single gun. You just need to shut off the supply and make the black market ones difficult to find.
Given the way that humans have handled one group separating into another, I think this might be a devastating experiment to try. But in theory, it seems plausible that after a number of iterations you would belong to a group that fits your ideals perfectly.
The point of that argument is that no individual has the right to do with the government what he would not be right to do by himself. This means that since he can't individually limit the rights of another, he can't use the government to do it either.
This means that there are no concessions at all to personal freedom to live in a group. Not really anyway. I mean, yes, you can't take someone else's life (unless they attempt to take yours.) But that's hardly a restriction necessary only in large groups of people. It's kind-of implied as soon as you have at least two people.
Tyranny implies government. In the absence of government, therefore, there can be no tyranny. It's not clear to most people whether society without government is possible, of course (or, rather, most would assert that it isn't).
(Personally, I think our experience in Iraq shows that any real insurgency or attempt to overthrow a government would take the form of "fuck guns, bring IEDs". Most of the time, an insurgent would actually want to be unarmed entirely so as to blend in with the population. It might sometimes be worth having offensive weapons for specific tasks, but generally unless it was truly open warfare on every citizen, you would want to blend in. Small arms, especially personal weapons vs. crew-served, are basically defensive weapons, or are used to fix the enemy in place for larger weapons to destroy.)