We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata slogan of the day The dumbest idea is to suppose that an inanimate object can turn a noncriminal into a criminal. To believe that guns cause crime is as stupid as believing that hammers and saws cause houses. It is the grossest kind of mindless superstition to suppose that some magical qualities of an inanimate object can overpower the human will.
– Charley Reese
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Ah, you lot really do love your straw men, don’t you?
Ok, I’m against gun control just as much as everyone else but this quote is a little “dumb”: Try building a house without a hammer or a saw (or over on this side of the Atlantic a cement mixer!).
I don’t accept the arguments of cun control lobbyists but it is unfair to characterise them as simply as “guns cause crime”. I would think what they mean is that guns make crime easier, assist “spur of the moment” violence or accidental violence.
The classic error of gun control advocates is not in thinking that “guns cause crime” but in assuming that criminals will abide by the new laws they want to introduce when those laws will only hamper responsible law-abiding persons defending themselves or their property. That is not the same error that Charley Reese describes.
Frank: I think you give anti self-defence advocates far too much credit… I have heard exactly that simplistic ‘more guns equals more crime’ argument made many times.
Fish around on gun control websites, and you will find many variations on the meme that guns cause crime. Perhaps not in so many words, but the thought is the same.
Deal with these people in person, and you will find that they do indeed have an irrational fear of guns. Many have never handled or fired one.
On the UK gun control network site:
“Homicide rates tend to be related to firearm ownership levels. Everything else being equal, a reduction in the percentage of households owning firearms should occasion a drop in the homicide rate”.
That statement is based completely around the ownership of an inanimate object. Worse than that, it fails to take into account the fact that firearms are as capable of being used for good as they are for bad.
Ah, the “Gun Control Network”… Perhaps I’ll take a look at the site, but do you know if it still has around, at the last count, 6 or 7 members? Pretty modest network – though that doesn’t stop these people from being represented on the Firearms Consultative Committee. Headed by Gill Marshall-Andrews, wife of NuLab MP Bob (?) M-A who inhabits an underground house somewhere in wales – no doubt to be safe from all those trigger-happy gun-nuts. GMA and other vociferous anti-gun types cannot all be clinically insane or incapable of weighing up statistics and historical precedent, which is what makes for the weird Alice-in-Wonderland quality of much of what passes for “debate” on guns in this country. Many of them are intelligent people. But where guns are concerned, their grasp on reality seems to slip, leading them to utter such bizarre statements as that quoted by JohnJo, a statement which flies in the face of a great deal of evidence – like the fact that while gun ownership stats have been driven down hugely in the UK over the last century, gun crime has mushroomed in a completely converse way, or the fact that those US jurisdictions with the highest (and most liberal) gun ownership tend to be the most peaceable…
It would be nice to agree with Frank that what gun-control advocates “really mean” is that ready access to guns can facilitate gun crime, but it’s an observable fact that they really do seem to believe – in a way not altogether removed from superstition – that guns have a malign aura that can corrupt anyone who handles them. Weird.
but it’s an observable fact that they really do seem to believe – in a way not altogether removed from superstition – that guns have a malign aura that can corrupt anyone who handles them.
I own several guns, and I cannot confirm the “observable fact” that they have a “malign aura.”
No link due to laziness, but I remember reading of studies showing that, in the US, firearms owners tend to be better educated and better off than non-owners, and to have lower crime rates. If we are postulating auras emanating from guns that affect their owner’s characters, this would suggest that the aura is benign, if not positively beneficial.
Perhaps we could refute the guns-cause-murder argument if we could garner the figures for gun deaths per gun rather per capita. I wonder if Britain would top the list?
Guns don’t cause crime, but they do make it easier to commit certain crimes. It is easier to rob or murder with a gun than with a knife or your bare hands. Anything that makes it easier to commit crime is going to increase the crime rate, other things being equal. Now having guns for self-defence will have a deterrence effect, and may foil certain crime attempts, but the truth is that we can’t conduct controlled experiments and so we will never know if these factors balance out the increased availability.
Besides, if you look at the figures, murders per capita correlate broadly with the percentage of households with guns.
I think gun advocates are onto a loser trying to deny the link between prevalance of guns and higher crime rates. If we follow that line, we have fallen into the trap of debating gun ownership on utilitarian lines – which means that we lose the debate if a utilitarian benefit can be proven. The case for self-defence, like all libertarian causes, should be based on rights, not utility-maximisation. Even if widespread gun ownership does lead to increased crime, we still have the right to use them to protect ourselves. It is wrong to punish a law-abiding person for the crimes committed by another.
Besides, if you look at the figures, murders per capita correlate broadly with the percentage of households with guns.
I would be interested to see a link to the global figures that say this, please.
I would be very interested to know if countries with high availability/access to weapons, such as Israel and Switzerland, also have high (non-terrorist related) murder rates.
Besides, if you look at the figures, murders per capita correlate broadly with the percentage of households with guns.
That is odd, because in the US murders tend to be clustered into areas with strict gun control and low gun ownership rates. Go into rural America, where every house has guns, and you will find extraordinarily low, indeed positively European, murder rates.
Although Lott’s book “More Guns Less Crime” focused on concealed carry laws and crime rates, I believe he also documents the American correlation between, well, more guns and less crime.
It is easier to rob or murder with a gun than with a knife or your bare hands. Anything that makes it easier to commit crime is going to increase the crime rate, other things being equal.
Of course, one of the things that is not equal is the ability of the victim to defend herself. Countries that try to reduce the level of gun ownership invariably accomplish this goal primarily in the victim class, not the criminal class. As a result, crime is made easier, regardless of whether the criminals have guns because fewer victims are armed. And, of course, the last group to give up their guns are the criminals, giving them even more of an advantage and making their crimes that much easier.
Further, I think history shows that the criminally minded were fully capable committing crimes even before firearms came into widespread use. I would love to see some kind of historical study, but I would bet that the introduction of firearms into a society tends to be associated with a reduction in crime. Criminals tend to be young males with significant physical advantages that are negated by firearms, after all.
“..one of the things that is not equal is the ability of the victim to defend herself. Countries that try to reduce the level of gun ownership invariably accomplish this goal primarily in the victim class, not the criminal class,” writes R.C.Dean, and though he’s too polite to say so a prime example is the UK.
The first modern survey of gun crime in Britain is one conducted in the Metropolitan (London) Police area for the years 1911 – 1913, and as related by Blackwell (on whose report the original 1920 Firearms Act was based) it was found that firearms had been “used” 123 times in that period – fired, or simply brandished – in connection with crime. This at a time when there were no effective gun controls, Brits could buy whatever weaponry took their fancy, and guns were very widely owned by ordinary people.
Fast forward to the late 1990s, and armed robberies were running at about 3000 per annum – following decades of civilian disarmament to the point at which only a quarter-million people owned a rifle or a handgun.
This underlines the fact that when Cobden Bright points to the prevalence of guns equalling high crime rates, he is correct – but this prevalence is among criminals, whom gun laws do not affect…
As for Mr Sark’s query, I don’t know about Israel but Switzerland, with far more liberal laws on gun ownership, has murder figures very close to those of the UK.
Guns don’t cause crime, but they do make it easier to commit certain crimes.
I think this addresses the broader issue that I think libertarians should be concerned about. While debating this subject several times the issue seems to come down to technology. How much can be left free to the individual and how much needs to reserved to the State? The anti-gun lot usually trot out the old chestnut “you wouldn’t let someone have a nuclear bomb”. While a little far fetched, given the level of sophistication necessary to create one, and the expense if trying to buy one it is beyond the average individual’s reach, it still raises the spectre of the technological upsurge in our society on into the future. Now I’m not a unibomber in the making, but I do worry that technology will become so prolific and cheap that left in the hands of individuals would create too much risk, beckoning in the State and curtailing liberty. I also note that much of the ‘dangerous’ technology that we have today is a product of the increased role the State has played so far in our lives, sowing the seeds for further invasion in the name of protection and security.
A little overheated perhaps but there does seem to be some correlation between the State spurring technology with diverted funds, the technology is vented into the public domain, and new restrictions and regulations result. I don’t even think that it is a controlled process in the sense of a conspiracy, but the process, as is, still has the same results; a call for State interference.
One non-gun example I can think of is electronic movement of money. We are so removed from specie and hard currency that money is merely a concept to be moved with finger strokes on a keyboard. With the technology we have in place, and the low level of sophistication required to do major damage, the State is asked to increase the monitoring of all transactions. The danger increases as does the ability of the State to snoop at the same time, and the individual shrinks even more.
For every ying there is a yang, and while technology brings us closer together in a positive way, it may bring us all too close together in an extremely negative way. So am certainly not against technology as used by an individual to advance in living their lives, but am concerned about the types of technology that seem only to rise from collective efforts, usually with confiscated dollars.