"Este año marcará un hito en la historia. Por primera vez una nación civilizada tiene un completo registro de las armas. Nuestras calles serán seguras, nuestra policía más eficiente y el mundo seguirá nuestro liderazgo en el futuro." --Adolf Hitler, 1935
Todo buen comunista debería saber que el poder político crece en el cañón de un arma. El partido comunista debe controlar las armas." --Mao Tse Tung
In the classical liberal tradition of Locke and Jefferson, governments are created only to protect life and property. It is the purpose of the government to have a legal system that upholds individual rights. That is, to guard against things like theft, murder, fraud, and so on. The truth is that this has not been the case. In fact, quite the contrary has occurred. It is no secret that governments in the twentieth century alone have been the greatest mass murderers of all. Estimates claim that about 200 million people have died as the result of wars and genocide. (Do a Google search for "200 million dead 20th century"). The purpose of this blog entry, however, is not to point this out, but to rather point of the other side of the issue: not only is the State not able to individually protect each and every life, but in many cases –most cases in fact- it prevents the citizens from protecting themselves. This is almost as great an evil as murder itself. If murder is the greatest act of the violation of the right to life, the second greatest violation of the right to life is not being able to defend oneself from being murdered.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve done a lot of research into local, state and federal laws, as well as the laws of other countries, on defensive weapons use by individuals. I want to comment on this issue as well as share some of the research I’ve found. This is a highly debated topic and has galvanized groups on both sides. Some say that giving people the chance to defend themselves will only increase crime and defeat the purpose. Others say that just the opposite happens. As we shall see, statistics are on the side of the gun rights crowd.
A criminal who is about to engage in a crime has to decide who to attack and how. The criminal will have already broken any and every gun control law to obtain that weapon. Surely if someone wants to kill, they don’t care about the laws against murder or any other law. Just as the war on drugs has created a black market, just as prohibition created a black market, such is the case with gun control: when something is prohibited, an underground market is created. The result of this is that ordinary, law-abiding citizens are prevented from exercising their right to life and property. It is useless to have a right without being able to exercise it. In the case of the criminal, we see that in areas where, for example, people in their homes are armed, there is a significant drop in house robberies. Criminals usually go to counties and states where people are not allowed to defend themselves. Similarly, we see the same effect happen when people carry concealed weapons on their persons or in their vehicles. Indeed, even thieves who have been convicted have confessed that they try to break into houses at times when the owners are away, because there is otherwise a greater chance of them being killed at night, since many home owners protect their home and lives with a lethal weapon such as a handgun.
Not long ago I bookmarked some very good articles by Jose Carlos Rodriguez from the Spanish libertarian (called "libertario" in Costa Rica, "liberal" in Spain) web page Liberalismo.org.[0] He wrote two excellent articles called "La libertad de armas salva vidas" and also "Ética y moral de la libertad de armas". In them, he correctly points out several philosophical and utilitarian/statistical arguments to show that as the right of people to become armed increases, the amount of violence decreases. This is due to the deterrence effect. The criminal does not know who is armed and thus opts for not attacking, going somewhere else, or committing crimes in which direct contact is avoided. I urge my Spanish-reading friends to take a look at these two articles. They are very well written, completely referenced, and might make you think of things you’ve never thought before. Rodriguez also deals with subjects of mass killings. He compares and contrasts examples from Russia, Nazi Germany, Guatemala, China, and Uganda, places where guns were outlawed. The result was that their dictators more easily controlled and killed people. In more modern times, places like England and Australia have enacted draconian measures that completely disarm their citizens. Sure enough, the levels of crime have risen as the result. Finally Rodriguez also has a great article on the factual errors and distortions in Michael Moore’s "Bowling for Columbine."
Also, I’ve read what is nowadays the largest and most comprehensive study of gun control laws done. The books are called "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control laws" and "The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You’ve Head About Gun Control Is Wrong," by John Lott, Jr. The study tracks hundreds of statistics over a long period of time in over three thousand counties across the country. No study had ever attempted this before. Each book is about 250 pages long, so I will not quote any specific part (if you want to read them, I can try to make them available to you; I bought them). The results of the study show several things:
There is no time or room in this post to explain why the previous things occur, since it would imply an almost verbatim reproduction of the books. What matters is that there is ample evidence for this. For shorter articles which summarize the findings, you can read some written by Lott himself here. For the more classical liberal/libertarian/natual rights leaning reader, there's a nice collection of gun rights articles here.
What can we conclude? Two things. First: the government cannot possibly prevent every crime; it cannot ever protect every person. Thus, the government, whose very existence is to protect the people (not only from external threats but also internal) fails. Second: the government that does not trust its citizens and takes their ability to protect themselves, family and property, also fails in their responsibility to protect life. Not only that, but if you do not have the right to protect yourself, it means that you are a slave to the State.
The lesson is clear. The prohibition of weapons as a tool for self defense implies that the State gambles the life of the criminal over the victim! True, guns can be used for offensive purposes, but to prohibit people from using them to defend themselves, the State almost becomes an accessory to murder.
I myself plan on trying to fix this situation soon[2].
"It's better to have a gun and not need it, than to need it and not have it! --Jabotinsky
"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." --Mohandas Gandhi
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." --Aristotle
[0]http://www.liberalismo.org/faq/ for more information.
[1] An example of this would be things like waiting periods before purchasing a weapon. There have been many cases when people who have been given death threats and the police cannot do anything about it. They can’t escort a specific citizen every day and night. The waiting period ended up killing the victim. A more glaring example happened during the 1992 riots in L.A. California has a waiting period of several days before being able to receive a purchased handgun. Innocent people who saw that the rioters would enter homes, steal property and kill their residents had no recourse. Many people died as a result. The criminals, who by definition do not follow laws, can easily get their weapons from the street with no waiting periods and no background checks. Examples such as this one abound. For more information check out John Lott’s books, which I mentioned above.
[2] One person told me that I was paranoid. My answer is simple: people have health insurance, car insurance, business insurance, fire insurance, flood insurance, they wear seatbelts, cars have airbags and anti-lock brakes, airplanes have emergency exits and oxygen, most critical systems back backups, computers have backups, companies offer warranties, electronic devices have fuses, families often have safes at home or in banks, they copy and archive their digital photos and music, have car seats for the kids, wash their food before eating, look both ways before crossing the steet, boats and ships have lifesavers, they get shots against diseases, preventitive medicine abounds, there are air and water filters. Everyone is paranoid. And to claim that owning a gun is paranoid and unnecessary, it says that everything I mentioned before is invalid. The greatest right is to live. I don’t want to take chances, particularly if I live in a place where the State has not yet crushed that right. Shit happens in the world. But if you are prepared to avoid it, and, in the gravest of extremes have to resort to defensive violence, then liberty has triumphed. I care too much about my life and that of my family to not be proactive.
