Guns 4 All

I hope everyone enjoyed the Blocked & Reported episode I was on! As plenty of folks have pointed out though, my response to Herzog’s question on guns at the beginning was uncharacteristically weak. In my defense, I did not expect the question, I wish I had more time to make a better pitch as the time constraints clearly made it deficient.

I did get to cite my favorite essay ever, which is called The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights which I heartily encourage everyone to read.

The elevator pitch I made (and echoed in the essay linked) is that guns are power, and that power is best widely distributed instead of concentrated. So the debate isn’t on whether guns should exist; that horse has long left the barn. Rather, given that guns do exists, who should have the right to possess them? Only a miniscule minority earnestly would say “nobody”, so the battle lines of the debate tend to center around the civilian ownership of guns.

I personally find it insulting that the gun rights of civilians gets such an intense scrutiny, often in the form of being required to affirmatively assert it and defend it. In contrast, the right of the state and its agents to arm themselves generally never gets scrutiny in our discourse (police militarization and nuclear weapons are notable exceptions). What I find repugnant about this rubric is the underlying assumption that the state either deserves or is entitled to a default expectation of access to tremendous firepower by right, while civilians are heralded to a much higher standard and given access on a piecemeal fashion. My opinion is that by virtue of the inherent power dynamics at play, the opposite (guns for the people, none for the state) should be the reflexive default. Any other position strikes me as inherent elitist and authoritarian.

There's an argument to be made, however, that only the state should have guns. Broadly speaking, it takes the form of "If everyone is armed, things get too chaotic" so a monopoly of violence is argued for as a form of curtailing and limiting where and who is able to participate in violence. Fair enough, but I would hope that this argument gets paired up with an argument that the individuals who are entrusted with this monopoly are also heralded to an exacting standard in how they exercise this power. What I observe is nearly the opposite. If a civilian uses force, they risk serious criminal liability. If a cop does, it barely passes muster.

If we had governments as careful and judicious in their exercise of lethal firepower as Iceland, I would be far more amenable to arguments that civilian ownership is too dangerous. We generally don't, and that's why I find arguments that only the state (an institution with a dodgy track record of judicious exercise of power) should have exclusive right on guns to be so repugnant.

We had an entire episode on this topic a while back on our podcast The Bailey.