Whenever there’s a violent tragedy, someone immediately starts using it as an excuse to restrict civil liberties. Many on the left understand this when it comes to the Patriot Act, but not when it comes to gun control. (Conservatives have selective blindness in the opposite direction.)
In deontological terms, the right to self-defense is the foundation and presupposition of all other rights; and forbidding private citizens to own guns while allowing police and soldiers to carry them is a violation of moral equality – a reserving of weapons to the powerful while denying them to the powerless.
In consequentialist terms, gun control is a perfect example of the broken window fallacy. Deaths caused by gun use are seen, because they happen. Deaths prevented by gun use are not seen, because they don’t happen. (By “gun use” I mean not just firings but also mere brandishings.) First, preventions are underreported (since few are eager to be victimised twice – first by a freelance attacker and second by the cops), and second, when they are reported, they’re not exciting enough to get much publicity.
People who favour stronger gun control laws focus on the deaths they hope to prevent, but rarely consider the deaths their laws would cause. One useful corrective to this attitude is the Cato Institute study Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance From Citizens.
And although I’m not a fan of the NRA (which I don’t regard as an anti-gun-control organisation), they have a useful blog, The Armed Citizen, documenting lives saved by private gun use.
Damn..that comment was meant for the entry before this one.
I will see if I can switch it.
You just cross posted it to both posts, so I trashed the one here.
One point that often gets brought up in these discussions is the contrast between Europe and the US where, so the argument goes, citizens owning guns might make them safer but also makes cops more likely to shoot them for fear they might be criminals. This often gets cited in cases where cops basically just kill someone and later claim they were afraid, but also applies to legitimate situations where all evidence points to someone being armed when they actually aren’t and get killed. (Of course, black men reaching for their wallets are much more likely to be seen as “probably armed” in these cases.)
From an anarchist perspective, if gun control was rigidly enforced it might actually be easier to get rid of an oppressive government when the time came because there would be an initial hesitation to shoot the citizens once they decide to take over government buildings and armories. There is a cultural component here; in western countries there is generally some hesitation on the part of police to just outright shoot their own citizens, whereas in Arab states like Syria or Egypt that hesitation is less or nil.
It’s probably too late for that. They just shoot anyone they feel like and claim they were armed, now. Or that they felt threatened even if the victim was plainly unarmed.
(By “gun use” I mean not just firings but also mere brandishings.
Isn’t the name spelled “Branden”?
No, “Brandish” is short for “Brand Blanshard.”
“Arma Virumque”
I see what you did there, Vergil.
Menin aeide theia.
Isn’t there an element of circularity in this argument? How many brandishings would have been necessary if the weapons hadn’t been so widely available in the first place?
I’m speaking from a UK perspective of course. In theory the police in the UK are civilians in uniform, not a separate force. That was deliberate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles)
In particular:Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
This is why police were not normally armed in the UK – so as not to set them apart and create the appearance of an occupying force. This isn’t of course an argument one way or the other for easy access to firearms, only an indicator that for the UK at least making such access available would be a significant change from the historical status quo.
This view of the police is however being eroded, by police and politicians alike. It is the nature of power I suppose that those who have it will seek more, and this is what is happening under the cover of the so-called War on Terror.
Even so, given the levels of drunkenness that prevail in the UK among just that segment of the population most prone to violence – young males – I shudder to think what would happen if easy access to firearms was added to the mix.
I don’t understand the circularity claim. The brandishings I’m describing aren’t primarily against armed assailants.
Not quite. Lack of easy access to firearms is traditional for UK police, but lack of easy access to firearms for UK civilians is comparatively recent.
But, armed or unarmed, they’ve always been set apart, and they’ve always acted like an occupying force — at least toward the “underclass” — ever since Peel’s day.
Well, the experiment has been tried.
Just a quick thought; it seems that in the gun debate, the mistake is often made to suppose that there is no other alternative than 1) believing it to be good that only cops are armed and other people are not, and 2) believing it to be good that everybody is armed. My point is that it is fully possible to be opposed to the state monopoly on violence, while simultaneously thinking that it might have disastrous consequences if everybody armed themselves. From where I’m standing, it would appear that this disaster has already taken place in America, with its 0.88 per capita gun ownership and staggering rates of gun violence.
The notion that guns are necessary seems to me to imply a rather authoritarian view of human nature; on that says that peaceful ways of resolving issues is not attainable, and that the only way to stave of the aggression of other is by violent means. Legalize guns, by all means. Then melt them down and make something useful of them, like paperweights.
Culture and the social acceptability of violence seem to have a bigger effect on rates of violence than widespread gun ownership.
But given a society with a high acceptance of violence (like the US, relatively speaking), what is the benefit of doing away with guns? Less violence may be committed specifically with guns, sure, but people have been hurting and killing each other for tens of thousands of years; guns have only been around for a small portion of that time. Doing away with guns simply shifts social power on the street towards physically stronger/more ruthless individuals, and to bigger gangs.