This is an article I wrote for lewrockwell.com a while back and felt like posting here
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/morales1.html
Gun Laws by Carlos Morales
In the United States, the issues and emotions surrounding gun control often obfuscate what is in essence, a matter of personal choice and responsibility. Currently, a majority of Americans believe that tighter gun restrictions, than those already in place, should be implemented to reduce crime rates and the incidence of mass shootings; and, with support ebbing from the recent Virginia Tech massacre, many politicians and preachers alike have advocated this reactionary policy.
Although this action is merited by adding comfort to victims, such measures do not produce a more peaceful society than presently, and may inhibit law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves.With the first outcries of accidental gun-related suicides of children, the American media along with bureaucrats have jumped on the legislative bandwagon by claiming these tragedies could have been prevented through more gun laws already in the books. Paradoxically, what many Americans would find as means to lower crime rates – tighter gun control laws – has shown to cause the exact opposite in many case studies in other countries. In countries like England, for example, the rate of violent crime declined when more guns were previously available, and has since sky rocketed after the government enacted tighter gun restriction than in the past. Furthermore, in many cases "no-gun zones" (schools, post offices, and airplanes) have been the host to many of the most heinous gun incidences in the nation’s history. In cases like the Virginia Tech shooting, the victims were law-abiding students and professors who were deterred by the no-gun zone policy, and the attacker took advantage of this situation. If these restrictions were not in place, and the assailant expected an armed campus, he may have been deterred. In addition, the economist James Ostrowski attests, in reference to the attacks of September 11, 2001 "…a $400 billion security apparatus of the federal government couldn’t protect us from catastrophic terrorism, but a few handguns in the cockpits, long discouraged by federal policy, might have saved the day." Given this tendency, one must question the validity of gun laws, and their ability to protect the innocent who abide by such laws from the criminals who do not.From ghastly news segments to sound bites from politicians, the public is constantly bombarded with warnings surrounding gun ownership; however, case studies have shown that over two-million violent crimes are stopped yearly by potential victims, with 98% of impending crimes stopped by merely brandishing a gun. While accidental adolescent household gun incidences do happen – about thirty a year – the potential benefits could outweigh these incidences, given that five times as many crimes are deterred by guns, compared to how many are committed with guns. Political proposals for gun safety, such as mandatory gun locks, have potentially harmful effects, as unlocking and unloading a gun gives a victim less time to protect themselves than if the restrictions were not in place. It seems that instilling gun laws equate to less safety, but politicians refuse to let facts intervene in decision-making.Although the proponents of gun laws simply may be voicing their good intentions, this does not justify disenfranchisement nor does it allow for sound policy. Gun restrictions are futile as a deterrent to criminals, and are harmful to the populous. If politicians were capable of actually caring for the welfare of the general population, then they would not pass such reckless restrictions.November 13, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
While I agree with the argument, I dislike the dogma implied by the opening sentence ("what is in essence, a matter of person choice and responsibility"). If, just theoretically, it could be conclusively shown that gun restrictions decreased violence, would you support those restrictions? Or more practically, if certain types of gun restrictions were shown to decrease violence (say restrictions on gun licenses for convicted felons), would you support these restrictions?
ReplyDeleteFirst I would like to point out that if you go to the website this article was originally posted on, you can find all the sources I used in my article.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, you asked a completely logical question, and you have a good point. The argument I'm making in the essay is in an argument from effect rather than an argument from a moral stand point. There might not be a completely 100 % consistent link between gun laws and crime, and I don't think I state that in my article. I don't think it is so surprising to find that most mass shootings are in places where the tightest gun restrictions are passed.
If you look at many of the governments over the last 75 years with the tightest gun restrictions (Cambodia, Soviet Russia, National Socialist Germany, and Communist China) many of those countries have been fraught with the most violence, not by your everyday crazy who buys a gun, but by the government it self . Even today, Mexico’s tight gun restrictions prevent innocent individuals from protecting them selves against criminals and cops alike. Prohibition - whether it be of drugs, guns, or prostitution- doesn’t work because it takes too powerful of a hand to prevent what everyone wants.
On a side note, we can argue this for ever, bickering from one post to another, but in the end we are arguing about social and societal organization. The question of social organization is key... to how the world is going to work... to how virtue is going to be both enacted and encouraged within society. When it comes to trying to decide future actions, future plans, how society is going to be structured and organized, there really are only two approaches that can be taken (or some combination of the two). The first approach is the approach called "principle".
ReplyDeleteWhat that means, is that we reason from first principles, from evidence, using Socratic [and] Aristotelian logic to make sure that the... ideas that we come up with are rational, consistent with reality, and consistent with their own principles. It's the same thing that we'd do in the realm of engineering, the realm of science, or in the realm of mathematics...
So we need to work from principles, because the only other alternative is to work from pragmatism. Which is to say, a non-moral, non-principled approach to social organization....
...Society has very often been designed in some combination - some sort of highfalutin ideals, like the Declaration of Independence, followed by some very pragmatic compromises against those ideals. The voluntaryist - the man or woman who subscribes to a free society - what we do, is we say, "No. We do not organize society according to pragmatic principles [misuse?]. Because that is a state-of-nature, that is Lord Of The Flies, that is piggy-off-a-cliff, that is not the way that we organize society."
The way that we organize society, is the way that we organize moral choices within our own lives. Which is to reason about ethics, about right and wrong, from first principles. Such as the principle of universality. The fundamental principles...
ReplyDeleteThe principle that, to me, seems first and foremost in the organization of... a just and virtuous society, is the principle of Non-Aggression. The Non-Aggression Principle. The non-initiation of the use of violence - and when I use the word "violence" here, I'm going to mean "the initiation of violence" .
So, all societies that are reasonable, just, valid, and moral, must be against violence, as a principle... as a universal, ideal and absolute principle.
Now, the definition of "The State" that I'm going to propose for this debate... is a group of individuals who have the legal right to initiate violence within a geographical area... within a society. This violence generally takes the form of two things. The first, is taxation, which is the initiation of force - through a "gun to the head", "give me your money" - to pay for services which some people in the society may want, some people may not want. (In a democracy we assume that some of the majority may want them). It is the initiation of force, to extract money from people, for purposes of paying the bills of the government. That is taxation.
The second aspect of violence which is associated with statism, is the violence that is initiated against those who would compete with the state's offerings... The government will initiate force against... peaceable action, in order to prevent me from competing.
Those are the two aspects of statism that seem irrevocably entrenched within the very definition of the state: The initiation of force, with regards to taxation; the initiation of force with regard to preventing peaceful competition with state services...
...Really, the reality is, either we're going to go with principles, or we're going to go with pragmatism. Now, if we're going to go with pragmatism - "the greatest good for the greatest number", or some sort of cause-and-effect pragmatic goal - then we're not going to have any principles. And then, it really just becomes who's he most eloquent, who's the most persuasive, who can raise the most money, who can convince the masses of his or her plan the most effectively... that is how society will be organized.
If, on the other hand, we look at principles, and we say that the opposition to violence is sacrosanct, fundamental, and must be consistently applied in any formulation of how society is to operate, then we are inevitably led toward a stateless society. Because, you can't say violence is bad, and then create a group with the right to initiate it's use. That is a complete contradiction. So, I simply could not sustain that position, in the face of that contradiction
You can't just throw out the state and leave us in the cold!
ReplyDelete(I don't think the world is tidy enough to allow an uncompromised principle to drive political structure - I think the structure that results will be one that few people choose to live in. Morality and human nature are not science and math, and as appealing as the idea is, I don't think there's a golden function to be found to make it so.
But I would love to be convinced otherwise. Or more realistically, I'd love a better model for how to do things.)
So, if the state's not there doing stately things, what does the world look like?