You know, before I became one, I thought libertarians were like the survivalist gun freaks from the much loved B-Movie classic, “Tremors.” They were people who, generally speaking, wanted to go live in the middle of nowhere, cut themselves off from the rest of the world with a heavily armed fortress and generally sit around cursing and waiting for the end of the world.
Actually, as it happens, most of the libertarians I know have more in common with IT nerds (which, in fact, they often are) – people who live their lives in the domain of the unrestricted, unregulated free world of the internet where all that matters is skill, ability to deliver and giving people what they want. And everyone, it seems, gets what they want from the Internet. Libertarians look at this, and they compare it with the way the flesh and blood world works, how stifling, rigid and controlled it is and they find the comparison unflattering.
But, it’s true, there’s still an association between libertarianism and guns, and the shootings yesterday and the announcement by the libertarian alliance that they want significantly less gun control has opened this little kettle of soon to be boiled fish all over again.
The argument usually breaks down like this: Criminals get guns no matter what, and they’re more willing to use them when their victims are not likely to shoot back. Ergo an armed citizenry is safer than one where only criminals are armed.
Yet if we accept that an armed population is a population less likely to be victims of crime, this somehow doesn’t come across as a compelling argument in favour of gun liberalisation for most. The debate isn’t even about proving it might work – it’s that most believe that gun liberalisation is not an acceptable means of reducing crime, end of story, case closed, shut up and stop being a nutter.
For the lives saved by gun control – and I don’t actually doubt there have been lives saved – gun control has resulted in a population legally bound into helplessness, creating a toxic environment of fear of crime which drives increasingly irrational responses from Governments – egged on by the Tabloids – to deal with it. When it comes to crime the only option left to the Government is to increase their control and monitoring of us – something we’ve struggled to fight against with the last Government and will no doubt continue to fight all future Governments over too.
So by closing down one particular line of debate and inquiry, one particular approach to maintaining law and order, we leave something just as objectionable and awful – perhaps worse, in fact – as the only option left. Are we really utterly convinced, beyond reasonable doubt, that we have the perfect solution here? Is it really beyond the pale to even question it? The more people say, “You can’t say that” the more I feel the urgent need to say it. Is a sane, rational debate about Gun Control really so impossible? Has the well been poisoned so much that one seriously cannot even discuss it without having to defend accusations of compromised mental health?
No, no subject is beyond debate. No line of inquiry should be ruled out.
We need to understand that whenever a Government steps in and says, “You can’t do this” it changes the population, it has an impact, and that impact is nearly always a mixture of some good with a great deal of negative unintended consequences which demand yet more “right, okay, er…. you can’t do this, either” and round and round, forever and ever. It seems unthinkable that people can believe that gun control is exempt – it’s not.
As a sort of postscript, I’d like to say that the dream of a peaceful society free from guns isn’t achieved simply by passing a law. The law creates a pleasant, reassuring fiction – nothing more.
If we’d truly become that sort of society, if we’re really changed and evolved beyond the need for violence, such regulation wouldn’t be necessary at all. It’s only considered necessary because we’re not civilised enough, not mature enough, not sane enough to be trusted enough to take the decision ourselves. It sends a profoundly cynical, depressing message about what kind of people we really believe ourselves to be.
