Gun control laws (or lack thereof) is a bone of contention among everyone in the United States. The political parties take rigid stands on this in an attempt to woo single-issue voters (voters who will vote based on a single issue like either pro-gun-control or anti-gun-control).
Lately, the issue of gun laws has cleaved American politics along partisan lines, with the conservative republicans being liberal about guns and liberal democrats being conservative about it.
I am not a US citizen, so technically my opinion on this issue doesn’t matter. But, I do live in the US, that too in Texas, and I am not exactly enthralled by the prospect of anyone being at full liberty to own a gun that they may point at me for any reason at all. So yes, from a self-preservation point of view, my opinion matters. If you haven’t guessed already, I am all for gun control.
All advocates for liberal gun policies spout rhetoric about the second amendment, and the right to bear arms. In reality, the second amendment is about the right to bear arms to form a militia (This amendment was made to allow Americans to defend themselves if their government turned against them). In other words, everyone who owns a gun in America is now a one-man militia.
Another argument for liberal gun policies is best elucidated by Levitt in his book Freakonomics. To paraphrase, gun disrupts the natural pecking order. In the natural pecking order the physically strong can overpower the physically weak. When you throw a gun into the equation, now the weaker person with a gun can win the outcome of a fight with a stronger person. However, if both have guns, then the natural order is restored. Gun advocates argue that the bad guy will procure a gun from the black market if its not legally available. However, the good guys are law abiding, and hence, won’t. Therefore, with strict gun laws we will have bad guys with guns and good guys without. In order to restore the natural order it is necessary that the good guys also carry guns.
There is, admittedly, merit to the above argument. It is true that America has a thriving gun black market. So even if gun laws were tightened significantly, the criminals would be able to procure guns, and would emboldened by the fact that law abiding citizens are now less likely to carry a gun on them.
Given that the argument is logical, lets go ahead and apply it globally. Lets talk about global gun control, a.k.a. Nuclear (non-)Proliferation. The argument that applied to liberalizing gun laws in US applies to the world as well. You have law abiding countries (countries that honor their international agreements, and uphold international law), and you have rogue countries. You have countries that already have nuclear weapons. Pakistan is an impoverished nation that has nuclear weapons. Kazakhstan is a fast developing country in central Asia, and has mineral, cultural, and economic wealth. In the natural pecking order (i.e., sans nuclear weapons) Kazakhstan is above Pakistan. However, due to the nukes, now Pakistan enjoys certain favors that Kazakhstan doesn’t. So to restore the natural order shouldn’t Kazakhstan be allowed to develop nuclear weapons?
If law abiding citizens of U.S. have to carry guns to protect themselves from armed criminals and killers, then shouldn’t law abiding countries be allowed to carry nuclear weapons to deter rouge countries (with nukes) from attacking them? If terrorist nations can acquire nukes from the former Soviet stockpile for cheap, then shouldn’t other nations living under the shadow of terrorism arm themselves with nukes for their own safety and security? In other words, by lobbying for liberal gun laws, aren’t gun advocates giving credence to the frenzied nuclear proliferation in the world?
One would think so. But the same government that is gung-ho about liberalizing gun laws is also extremely concern about nuclear proliferation and will go to great lengths to keep the pecking order as it is, with the elite ‘have’s and the remainder ‘have-not’s.
Isn’t there a word to describe this? Oh yes of course! Its called ‘Hypocrisy’.
Similar Posts:
(automatically generated)
Well said and a good analogy. But to expect this administration to make logical or non-hypocritical decisions is too much, no?
PS. you might want to lose the border for your Adsense blocks. And your sidebar block doesn’t seem to have the same background (slightly darker). The below title block has the right one though.
Very attractive argument with a fatal flaw in it.
The gun control context is within a society where a government of laws is in control of deciding the playing fields and the settings. In the world, there are no uniformly implementable laws because there is no one World Government. The writ of the UN does not run everywhere, as you know. Hence, rogue states should not be allowed to get N weapons. But who’s doing anything these days? I think the CIA and Mossad have become too effeminate and wimpy (to mix metaphors obnoxiously) to stop all this.
@Rambodoc: That is my point! Just like there are no implementable laws for the entire globe, there are no implementable laws for an entire society (hence the term ‘anti-social’). The writ of UN doesn’t run everywhere, neither does the rule of law in some violent neighborhoods and mafia strongholds (unless there is an all out war with the law enforcement).
I agree with you that rogue states should not be allowed to get nukes, but the fact of the matter is that they can, and there is little to suggest that they are NOT trying to get it. Given the reality of this threat, and any country living with such a threat to its sovereignty will either choose to act in defense and go nuclear, or become planet dust.
This is, in fact, the same argument (applied analogously) used by gun advocates too. Bad guys will procure guns, whether its legal or not, if we have to protect ourselves from them, then we need guns too, hence liberalize gun laws.