On the futility of gun rights

Economics Political Theory
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The second amendment to the constitution of the United States reads as such:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Until well into the 19th century, firearms did not have much individual use. The effectiveness of firearms was only truly realized in large groups performing highly disciplined fire drills, hence the reference to a well regulated militia. A militia had to act like clockwork, and had to come upon the battlefield with sufficient drill experience, hence the need for it to bear arms in peacetime.

What the second amendment recognized was the critical value of organization in the defense of of the people, for which the right to bear arms was recognized. The reality, when it comes to war, is that arms are simple to acquire, but organization is complicated to establish. Any sufficiently organized mob can seize the weapons stockpile of a state, and so the state has an interest in keeping the people as disorganized and isolated as possible.

The same principle applies to the other use for firearms, protection from petty crime. While a single armed homeowner can scare off a thief, an armed gang can easily outgun him and rob him unless he can call for assistance from a militia. (A function that is today known as police and is a state-owned monopoly.)

How does the right to bear arms factor into a liberation strategy? It is relatively unimportant compared to the need to organize militias for mutual protection, even if these militias have nothing more than home gardening tools as arms. Should they ever face an enemy who bears weapons that outclass the militia, weapons that counter these can easily be purchased and smuggled, but in order for this to be done the militia needs to have a structure that can employ these weapons.

This should be another short-term goal for Libertarian: organizing volunteer neighbors into a system where they can deploy large numbers for mutual protection. If this is done, the community will become much less dependent on the state and more receptive to Libertarian ideas. This should not officially involve firearms in order to stay under the radar and not attract a confrontation with the state. Firearms should remain a hobby.

A two-stage strategy for freedom
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Ther commin for your guns!!!

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Great post, and I agree wholeheartedly. I really think it is time to revive the notion of brotherhoods and lodges with a focus on community mutual aid.

4

I’m tempted to ask what you have been smoking.

You haven’t by any chance been reading Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture by Michael Bellesiles? Your arguments remind me of his. He won the Bancroft prize in 2001, but was stripped of it when it turned out his research had been faked.

The original intent of the 2nd amendment was to deny the central government the ability to claim a need for a standing army (a.k.a. police). It’s an argument that dates from the reign of James II and played a role in the negotiations between Parliament and his successor, William, before he was handed the throne. From the standpoint that it was supposed to prevent the central government from being able to govern by force the 2nd amendment has been a failure. It was always about individual gun ownership though.

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I’ve always interpreted the US gun rights in a more broad and more ancient optic.

Back before the age of gunpowder came into being there was a saying in England which went more or less like this “Liberties are guaranteed by a bow and bill in every cottage”. It’s probably something that stemmed from the days of the “Warring Kingdoms” when each petty king needed to put as many men on the field as possible (the Saxon fyrd) to cut his neighbours to pieces but was developed over time, culminating with King John being forced to sign the Magna Charta. The key to keep the king’s power in check laid in each baron or earl being able to muster armed support among his subjects and the various capitulars encouraging common men to own weapons, armour and to train must be viewed in this optic. The king had little or no use for this “armed rabble”: he had his household knights and sergeants and always preferred (up to the days when England started to supply well trained and lethal bowmen) to hire “Continental” mercenaries from his French dominions or Burgundy, if and when he had the money. Of course a farmer or burger armed with a sword and protected by a gambeson was a poor match for a trained knight in full mail but it was better than nothing and, more importantly, was very cheap. A knight was unbelievably expensive to equip and mantain and, more importantly, knightly training had to start very early in life and lasted years. By contrast even the poorest farmer could buy a bill or a bow and practise with it in his spare time. When guns came in widespread use after the Hussite wars it was soon realized by European powers that they needed to be closely controlled because even a farmer with a primitive gun could be a deadly foe for a well armoured and trained knight. And so it has been ever since. In the following centuries the British learnt their lesson the hard way when their well drilled soldiers were cut down by farmers’ gun first in North America and then in South Africa. The Soviet in Afghanistan were other who learnt the meaning of the lesson: for all their tanks and warplanes they were brought down by shepherds wielding light weapons.

Or as one of your Founding Fathers put it “The best warranty against tyranny is a musket on every mantlepiece”.

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The problem with organized militias, be they government funded organizations or independent, is the same problem as that of the police (well one of them), namely that they cannot be everywhere at once. If someone breaks into your home, by the time you call a militia or any group to help you and they arrive it may well be too late. Even the police have noted this point in the defence of gun rights. Check out the LEAA website for instance.

While I think the idea of putting some focus onto creating privatized police forces or militias is certainly a worthwhile one, I do not think that in doing so we have to take focus away from the right of an individual to bear arms.

As Libertarians, we claim to believe in personal liberties and freedoms. There is no more basic freedom than the freedom to defend your life from attack. And perhaps at times you may well be outgunned so to speak, but the answer to that is not to take away your only means of defense and leave you completely vunerable.

Even for those whom gun rights are not so much an issue of defending their loved ones and themseves and their property, even for those who merely enjoy shooting at ranges or hunting, that too is a freedom. The government has no business telling us which hobbies we can and cannot enjoy, they have no business telling us what we can and cannot do in general so long as our freedoms and rights do not infringe on the freedoms and rights of others. The government should safeguard our liberties, not regulate us to the point that we barely have them.

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Doesn’t militia consist of gun owners in the first place? The second amendment clearly recognizes this: people have a right to own guns and then form militia, if they want to.

As for defending against gangs - for some reason, I don’t see any gangs in places with armed homeowners. On the other hand, urban areas with restrictive gun control are ripe with them.

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I own several firearms and am big on individuals being armed to the teeth. I just wish so many of my gun-toting brethren weren’t such “law-and-order”, police/military-worshipping GOP hacks.

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Here are the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, polkers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

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That is a tremendous passage, Stranger, I thank you for posting it.