Sometimes I really wish more people read, and understood, Taleb’s groundbreaking work in The Black Swan and Anti-fragile. Gun legislation fits that perspective like feet in a pair of walked in hiking shoes (yes, I am suffering some serious mountain cravings right now).
The naive point of view, as demonstrated by the notoriously naive and shallow thinker Dawkins, is as follows:
Country A (and B, C, D, E) has fewer gun-related fatalities than country X. Therefore country x should mimic the legislation of country A.
Libertarians are, including me, unfortunately always baited by this kind of argument and then we get the endless debate about whether or not the statistics used are correct. Perhaps, we wonder, we get a different result if we look at region q vs region g within country x or maybe we should adjust for culture or ethnicity or all other kinds of nuances. By falling into this trap libertarians let the progressives set the agenda completely. It is just a form of nerd sniping. What I am here to tell you is that it does not matter if the statistics are correct or not! That entire discussion is a sideshow orchestrated to avoid the real issues (for people interested in the sideshow anyway read this for the best look through the statistics that I have come across)
So let’s ignore of such heavily politicised research and instead take a wider perspective. I also want to avoid the ideological tangent about the inalienable right to own weapons, even though I fully stand behind that idea, because I think the fragility argument is much more interesting. Gun laws are one of those cases where you make the entire system more fragile, you might at best buy yourself less gun-related homicides (depending on the statistics used, nerd snipe) at the cost of catastrophic risk for the entire system.
The fundamental issue is the balance of power and the founding fathers of the US seemed to have a keen sense for this. Most (progressive) people scoff at the idea that armed plebeians are a good counterweight to a tyrannical state, what can a bunch of hillbillies do against tanks and fighter jets? However, this month gave us the perfect opportunity to contrast armed vs unarmed peaceful uprisings towards the state. I am of course speaking of Kurdistan vs the Iraqi state contrasted with Catalonia vs the Spanish state. Both Catalonia and Kurdistan had referendums about secession, both secession movements are angrily contested by the state but in only one region could the state send its henchmen to try to beat the plebeians into order.
It is well known that the Kurds are armed to the teeth and have their own armed forces, the only thing Baghdad could do against the Kurdish secession vote was to throw them the stink eye, the Kurds could peacefully tell Baghdad “up yours!”. In Catalonia, however, the population had no means to defend themselves with force, thus Madrid could send its henchmen to beat old women with batons, shoot rubber bullets into crowds and stomp on people already lying down. The violence was far worse than anyone could imagine in a modern democracy. The vote could take place anyway simply because 6000 corrupt thugs could not prevent the will of several million people, but the contrast is stark and the story of Catalonia is not over yet. Madrid is now sending in the army to prevent Catalonia from acting on the yes vote.
Imagine the future in an ever more fractured world. If the citizens of Jämtland would turn away from humorous resistant and start a real secession movement then it would be easy for Stockholm to stomp it out. But if all Texans went to vote with a handgun in their belt it would be rather hard for Washington to subdue that with its federal police forces. These kinds of situations will become more and more relevant as time goes on, the vote in Catalonia has already encouraged secession movements both within Europe and all around the world, since the state is built on violence and only knows violence that is what the states will use to try and subdue those movements. For everyone that thinks armed civilians are no match for a modern army please explain why the US is still in Afghanistan.
History is full of rebellions against the state when the state does something the population dislikes (usually raising taxes), one should not discount the moderating effect a well-armed population has on state power. The guns are primarily not there so the population can overthrow a tyrant, the guns are there to make sure no tyrant appears in the first place! You can’t figure that out from statistics.
It is not only about secession, rebellion or balance of power with the state though, many nations in the world are completely satisfied being ruled by the state they are under, it is about having an insurance for when the state fails. As we can see in Sweden today very large parts of the country have no police presence anymore and former police admit the areas are “lawless lands”. The effects of this can still not be determined from the crime statistics, violent crime is on the rise but other crimes are going down, but anyone with a head for incentives can predict what will happen when the criminals fully understand the situation.
One only needs to ask a simple question, if you live in a house deep out in the woods in Northern Sweden and you know the nearest police is 200 km (120 miles) away, would you not prefer to be able to protect yourself? Right now nothing stands between people in those regions and the kind of crimes being committed against South African farmers. Fortunately, a significant fraction of the people up north are hunters and have hunting weapons, it is not so far-fetched to assume some of them will start to keep their weapons outside of the lockboxes if things turn darker.
Gun laws make society more fragile even if the state remains benign, all it takes is that the state becomes incompetent or short on money for things to turn ugly. People that assume the state will always (or has ever been) efficient and good at its job are truly living in a fairytale. It doesn’t matter if the statistics show gun ownership decreases or increases crime right now, what matters is how the situation will look when the day inevitably comes when the state can no longer enforce its will. Just ask the South African farmers or in the future, if we are unlucky, Swedes in the rural areas.
Source: In the Madhou.se – Is is not about total gun deaths!