Neglected in the gun rights debate is the idea that the defense needs of people who live in functional states might differ with those of the people who live in dysfunctional ones. This contrast can exist within a nation, like the difference in the law enforcement abilities of New York City, (The NYPD is larger than the US Coast Guard) versus Detroit. Detroit is hollowed out and bankrupt, and they are reverting to a classic American, decentralized, civilian-led model of law enforcement. It can come as a a cultural shift, and we see this play out in one of the most functional states in the world; Germany. With the perception of crime (myth and reality) eroding the German people’s confidence in the functionality of the state to protect their persons directly, applications for weapons of self defense are rapidly on the rise.
It is easy for people living among disarmed citizens to want their fellows to stay disarmed, but when an arms race breaks out, disarmament becomes more abstract the further you move away from the actuality of having to defend yourself. The states’ priorities and the threatened citizen’s interests become increasingly mismatched, since few politicians anywhere in the world have to concern themselves with their own defense. After all, even if you disarm a prisoner and search his living space every day, he will still make weapons out of melted-down toothbrushes if the prison is full of other people carrying shanks.
And what government in world history has ever conceded its dysfunctionality? During the occupation of Iraq, in the midst of a guerrilla war, American policy was to allow an AK-47 in every Iraq household for personal defense. American military planners knew that, otherwise, they would leave the Iraqi populace naked to their many enemies, all of whom were carrying military grade automatic weapons. Why might someone need a modern battlefield weapon for their defense? When their adversary has one.
The circumstances of self-defense really should drive the gun control debate. It would be on the front page of the New York Times if a man sauntered down Broadway with a 12-gauge shotgun on his shoulder, but this was so common in Alaska that my wife, who lived there for a time, told me not to stare. Same human beings, same human nature, different circumstances. The circumstances can change overnight (I remember the stories of my Brooklyn Diner owner friends standing armed vigil through the night of a blackout. Not being as-fat looting targets, the people living in apartments nearby didn’t need to concern themselves thus). Israel, one of the world’s least corrupt and functional states, still depends on their civilians to instantly respond to mass shootings. In this, they are honest in telling their citizens that, for the first few minutes at least, they are on their own.
Would that our own government be as frank. I asked a friend of mine, an Emergency Services Unit cop (New York’s SWAT team equivalent), why the police counter-assault team lingered for so long outside the school during the Columbine massacre. He said “pure cowardice.” Watch footage from mass shooting events and see the same ass-covering (the Columbine SWAT team were rightly worried about bombs, but that was far from a concern to the unarmed kids being hunted down by Harris and Klebold). The same goes for the Indian government’s response to the terrorist assaults on Mumbai. The government dithered ridiculously while the disarmed people were put to slaughter.
Government can be dizzy with indecision, but you can bet your last dollar that, to the people under fire, there will be clarity. In arguing basic facts about gun control most people simply do not realize that the state does not, and cannot, directly protect their persons. We would have a different self-protection debate the day this fact changes, say with a drone escorting everyone everywhere, all the time. But in the meantime, it had been assumed for almost the entirely of mankind’s history that personal safety is that person’s responsibility. This notion that a state is all-powerful enough to do it is modern, not applicable everywhere, dependent on the conflict level, and only accepted (somewhat) in nations that are civil and functional to begin with. And the assumption of wise all-power is largely, like most notions of government power, a myth. If government wisdom and competence was a given, there would be no need for the rights of man, no need for any change to government since the era of the wise King.
It seems like an anachronism that Americans should retain their final right to armed defense against the state. But look at dysfunctional states around the globe to see that this is no relic: In Mexico the apparatus of the state is an active participant in supporting the drug cartels. Some of their parties are political wings of their drug gangs (America’s culpability in this situation is a topic this blog has covered many times). At what point do we call the people’s resistance to this a revolution? Do they need a Betsy Ross flag? Can resistance be a continuum? This reality is heartbreakingly shown in the movie Cartel Land (It’s on Netflix, highly recommended). El Chapo Guzman is as rich and powerful as John D. Rockefeller ever was (maybe we should hire his tunnel engineers to run our Bridge and Tunnel authority). Towns all over Mexico are defenseless against the aggressions of the cartel and co-opted hollowness of the police. Where is the townsfolk’s remedy, but in taking the personal defense risk that should be theirs to take. About that: the law enforcement authorities have been compromised by an irresistible threat. An occupational hazard is one thing, but a credible threat to make soup of a man’s family is a risk no reasonable man should accept; our first duty is the safety of our family. I’d do the same.
In Iraq, the government is so venal that it abandoned the nation’s second largest city, Mosul, to a convoy of ISIS terrorists in pickup trucks. Who is taking the city back? Militias of civilians. Who can doubt that these militias would have made a better fight for their homes if given the right and ability? All over Africa millions have been displaced by heavily armed entrepreneurial gangs of quasi-political affiliation. All over Africa central governments are too hollow to respond. What might work but an African 2nd Amendment?
In places like Mexico and Iraq, gun control laws are reduced to near-irrelevance, like most of their state’s writ. Their citizens are as much entitled to flout their gun control laws as Americans are to flout the EPA when we dig holes in our yard. A person’s first duty is to protect his or her family. Even in Germany, highly clean and functional Germany, the number of illegally owned guns exceeds the number of registered ones four to one. Laws have to live in culture, and in reasonable effectiveness, for them to live in application.
An all powerful, all knowing, defense requires an all powerful, all knowing state. Our state is undeniably becoming more powerful, but all knowing? Imagine President Drumpf when you think about it.
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