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John Quiggin 
i am going to gazump the hypothetical Callathumpian criminal mastermind by removing all guns from Callathumpia.
I will offer a one-off payment for the handing in of guns, set at cost price plus 50%.
From June 30th possession of a gun is an automatically jailable offense for minimum 3 years.
There will be a high security gun museum for people to look at historical examples and an associated exhibit showing the effects of guns.
All but the most elite of the police will be gunless. They will get their guns from a government factory operated with the same level of security with which diamond processing plants currently operate.
i wil also institute most of the recommendations from many royal commissions about how to improve the police force which have been ignored by successive governments.
Coercive? you bet.
Against individual freedom and the free market? oh yeah.
@Andre
Doubtful. Many of the guns in use by criminals are stolen from people with permits. Some are contraband of course, but that’s an argument for tighter controls at major choke-points. Yet even if this were so the most serious concerns are to do with misuse of guns by non-criminals — domestic violence, spree shooters, accidental homicides. Cracking down on the notionally law abiding public would improve these areas as well as make the pool more shallow for contraband weapons.
Probably not. There’s very little evidence that most criminals think about the consequences of their criminal acts beyond the need to escape. In 27 states, felony murder — with or without a gun — can be a capital crime. In California they have a three-strikes rule where you get 25-years in jail. Does this stop many criminals? Nope, though it does fill the jails.
Though it is not much less likely than being able in practice to thwart a gun crime using a gun. There’s also the distinct possibility that if you have a gun and try to thwart a guin crime, regardless of whether you succeed, someone (possibly the intended beneficiary) will suffer a life-altering injury. If someone produces a pistol and says hand me your cash and you do and you survive, you’re better off than if you thwarted the crime but got seriously injured in the process.
I was once confronted by two kids with knives. I had no gun, just my wits. I talked them out of it. Nobody got injured. The kids got counselling and are now in year 12 with no repeat incidents I understand. If I’d had a gun, it might not have turned out that way. You do tend to use your best weapons.
when i grew up in england, police didnt carry guns, they had to defuse situations by negotiation and by building up good relationships in the community,
you dont need to do that when you have a gun strapped to you
The argument in favour of guns for protection (as it relates to Australian cities) has IMHO parallels to the arguments in favour of using torture to discover the whereabouts of a theoretical bomb – no one can point to an actual instance where this has happened (in the case of torture). I’m sure there are plenty of historical instances where brave members of the public carrying guns have foiled criminals, but how statistically significant are these episodes when they are weighed up against the costs and misuses? It would be great if good samaritans got into the habit of bringing well maintained portable defibrillators everywhere and were trained to use when people suffered cardiac arrests. It might save lives and make people feel safer but it might also be expensive and dangerous if people used them improperly. Would this be a realistically effective and economically sensible practise to allow and regulate?
I see the whole thing as like what you do about sharks. Every summer season some people get mauled/killed by sharks. So should there be shark netting, remembering that shark netting has to be maintained, and shrakj netting can entrap things that attract sharks?
Probably not. Better to keep a watch out and stay out of the water where it is unpatrolled, avoid swimming at dusk and dawn etc.
So far, in 50 years there have been three occasions I’ve been in where having a gun might, with hindsight have made a difference, but on each of these I was forced to adopt a non-gun strategy and it worked. Hardly anyone is murdered in this country with guns and gun use in crime is pretty low by international standards. That’s largely because we have effective laws restricting guns. And since 1996, no spree killings.
We’ve had murders since then of course using guns — the gangland murders in Melbourne most spectacularly, but these people all had access to guns as they were criminals, so here the debate is moot.
The other murders we have had have been “family annihilators” (to borrow the US term) but not all of them have used guns. Had they not had acess to guns, it is possible they would have found another way, though not certain. Some methods require a lot more planning and more compex implementation, during which time the intended victims can escape.
_
To the last question: yes. Have you ever heard of “automated external defibrillator”? They’re actually quite safe and they give step-by-step instructions on what to do next. Basic first-aid courses teach you how to use these things. Personally I think they’re a great idea, as they have been proven to save lives. Many businesses and airports now have an auto-defib device on hand in case of an emergency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillator
@Fermi
Great – I love well designed useful technology. I obviously picked the wrong analogy because guns aren’t failsafe in this respect because they can be used to harm innocent bystanders and their legitimate owners. My point is that having guns for protection is a difficult thing to justify from a society wide perspective and I think Fran has made a better case than me in support of that.
I’m actually one of those crazy libertarians who prefers to think in terms of individuals and individual rights as opposed to the collectivist goal of trying to engineer the populace to make society as a whole “better” 😉
My view on guns is that the case for banning them is not nearly strong enough to justify the impact on civil liberties that said banning brings. Guns are used for protection every day and they can also be used for crime, but just because criminals and psychos misuse guns doesn’t mean the government should disarm law-abiding citizens, any more than we should ban cars because there’s hoons out there that kill people. Cars are also a deadly weapon and it’s very easy for deranged psychos to get a hold of one, so why not make it harder for people to buy a car?
As for the guns causing more or less crime, I don’t think there’s any proven correlation either way, but an example of a country with liberal gun laws as well as very low crime rates is Switzerland. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nf1OgV449g
Switzerland is not a good example of anything, it is a pseudo-state that exists as a black money hub and nothing more,
resorting to Switzerland as example demonstrates the weakness of any argument,
there should be a law like Godwins that states that in any argument over monetary or legal matters invoking the name of Switzerland means automatically losing the argument.
anyway
i am one of those crazy people who dont know quite how to define myself, who think that holding individuals rights as the most important element in an environment where you have 5 million people living in close proximity, is so divorced from reality as to be almost clinically insane,
in the modern city it is surely easier to attempt to solve problems by starting from the communal or collective good and then attempting to fit individual rights into that,
rather than the opposite of starting from individual rights and then attempting to work out the communal issues as secondary
Myths of the Global Market – John McMurtry
What about out in the country, are an individual’s rights ok then, or are individuals still slaves to the tyranny of the “common good”? I bet you sided with the government bureaucrats in The Castle, huh? 😛
And who decides what the “common good” is anyway? A dictator or a government bureaucrat?
OK. Check. I didn’t realise who I was in conversation with.
I could go along with that. I have to share a street with dangerous hoons who routinely break the law by racing each other, doing burnouts and generally putting everyones safety at risk…… if only I had a gun…..
Ah Switzerland…… I’d gladly go there.
I’d be happy to see our gun laws liberalised so we were more in line with New Zealand laws. They seem to have done a much better job at getting the balance right. Most firearms in New Zealand don’t need to be registered but owners do need to be licensed. There is good evidence that requiring owners to be licenced does increase safety which is why gun groups generally support it but no good evidence that firearm registration adds any value.
Yeah, same. They have a sweet particle accelerator! 😀
@Fermi: “I’m actually one of those crazy libertarians who prefers to think in terms of individuals and individual rights as opposed to the collectivist goal of trying to engineer the populace to make society as a whole “better”. My view on guns is that the case for banning them is not nearly strong enough to justify the impact on civil liberties that said banning brings.”
I am curious to know how be libertarian position supporting gun ownership is operationalised when deciding who’s rights are more important: those who wish to own guns versus those who suffer the adverse consequences of gun ownership (either directly or indirectly).
My guess is that there is some calculation (implicit or explicit) comparing the loss of utility for those who would like to own guns but are prevented from doing so, with two things: the positive utility of people who approve of low levels of gun ownership and the likely negative utility of a future adverse event involving guns.
So I guess the libertarian gun supporter claims that overall utility would be maximised by allowing near universal gun ownership because either:
a) the chance of adverse events is low and the sum of the associated negative utilities is less than the sum of the positive utilities from those who like guns and are allowed to own them, or
b) the sum of the negative utilities for those who want to own a gun but cannot is greater than the sum of the positive utilities of those that don’t want others to own them.
In relation to point (a), I don’t see how this can be borne out in practice. For instance in Australia there have been a couple of low probability events of multiple killings involving guns, most infamously Port Arthur in Tasmania. It seems hard to reconcile how the negative utility of all those associated with that event, both directly as partners or relatives, indirectly as friends, or even the much broader negative impact on all those who read about and saw images of the event (including children) can be considered to be of less weight than the negative impact on those whose gun ownership was restricted because of that event.
Putting aside those events involving multiple killings, which naturally attract quite a bit of media attention, it is also hard to see how the negative utility from the year on year gun related injuries and deaths (eg women in domestic violence situations, accidents involving children) could be considered to be of less relative weight than those who are missing out on owning the gun of their choice.
doesnt big government pay for the LHC?
i would have thought that would have made it bitter to a libertarian,
or is it alright if massive government organisations with vast budgets do pointless research looking for non-existent particles as long as they dont do anything frivolous like health, prisons and education,
cos once again, i am baffled
Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less of an awesome feat of technology, as well as the frontier of modern particle physics. The LHC cost about 9 billion (US dollars) shared over about 20 member states, which relatively speaking isn’t that much of a cost compared to the amount spent on government health care and education.
Libertarians generally argue that the private sector and the free market can provide higher quality health, prisons and education at lower cost than the government can. I’m not a really a hard-core libertarian, and I don’t let my political views run my life, so no, I’m not bitter about the LHC being funded by government.
By the way, research isn’t pointless if it is likely to bring about a revolution in physics, which in turn would bring about a future revolution in technology.
Thats demonstrably false in relation to health care (see the USA and others for some real world examples).
i would like to point out that this is a faith based point of view,
there is no real evidence that Higgs-boson exists, it is only being searched for because the standard model in particle physics predicts it, and more importantly requires it,
it is, like the collider itself, circular.
My own faith based position is that the big bang is bogus, a lot of modern physics research has come to resemble the wheels within wheels of centuries ago,
and the real revolution will come when some of the basic assumptions are thrown out the window,
as a result i see the LHC as a colossal waste of time and effort
This would be true if it was consumer choice and competition that created the problem in the US health care system, but unfortunately the system over there is set up such that market forces simply cannot function.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I don’t agree with it. Have you got a better explanation for the observed expansion of the universe and the cosmic microwave background then? The big bang model is supported by quite a lot of experimental and theoretical evidence, you know.
well you have used the key phrase there, observed expansion
Hubble himself was deeply uncomfortable with this and described it as apparent expansion, things look smaller in the distaance, they are not though eh?
we know so little about the physical space around us our attempts to declare the riddles solved seem neanderthal to me,
even the fact that we look into space and see the ‘furthest’, ‘oldest’ light sources and think of that as the edge seems absurd,
and universe? one god, one favoured species, one universe
i see a familiar pattern here,
it looks like the universe is epanding, therefore run it in reverse and it must go back to a single point,
first there was ?, and then there was the big bang,
comic i think
going off that, anyone notice how little media play the ongoing horrific violence in Nigeria gets,
Congo for that matter seems to be awfully quiet on my tele considering the scale of the murder there in the last ten years,
any theories?
@Fermi
If the strawmen in here could all mate we could have enough for a strawbale suburb ina month or two …
I’m also a libertarian, though I’m the kind who sees liberty as being enlarged in practice rather than narrowed when society as a whole is “better”. And I don’t think that is crazy. Purely notional liberty is of no value. And practical liberty that is created by denying a greater quantum of the practical liberty of others is pernicious and bound to leave any honest person unable to enjoy it. So making society better in my view entails making society more equal in practice. Let everyone have the same practical liberty, or if they do not, enable them to fairly trade one liberty for another through a bona fide system of consent.
The analogy here is very common, but specious all the same. Firstly, in both cases, I favour a set of binding obligations that reflect the nature of the technology, the scope of its hazard and the principal usages attached. What is controlled in the case of cars is not ownership, since anyone can own a car, but car usage. You may not use a car except as provided within the relevant jurisdiction. In my opinion, car usage ought to be much more tightly regulated than it is now, and public policy arrangements should make not using cars a lot more practical. Cars and other motor vehicles ought to be tracked in real time and non-compliant vehicle behaviour registered. People should not be able to set vehicles in motion without biometric ID, and without some in-car measurement of blood alcohol levels. It ought to be made possible to bring vehicles to a safe halt remotely. In short, the privilege (not the right) to operate a vehicle should entail very serious compliance measures enforced in practice in real time.
That said, the use of cars as weapons is far less common than the use of guns. The primary purpose of a car is transport. Depriving someone of the opportunity to avail himself of such a basic service ought not to be taken lightly, especially in places where provision is scant.
OTOH, very few people will be seriously inconvenienced by not having access to a gun. I am 51 years old and can attest that it has never inconvenienced me. I’ve only known two persons in my entire life who have owned a gun. To the best of my knowledge, none of my current acquaintances owns or has access to one. Outside of the internet, the topic never arises in any conversation where I am present. IMO, the bulk of humanity can do without them. It’s probably the case that even the police, for the most part, probably don’t need them. Other less lethal weapons could suffice.
That I can say this means that in practice I feel more free. It never occurs to me that I or anyone I know could be collateral damage in some shoot out. If I felt I needed a gun, I’d probably believe I needed to move somewhere more secure, with a really large fence and secure off street parking and an internal alarm system with CCTV. I’d probably want a bullet-proof car and be taking carefgul note of people looking sideaways at me. In short, I’d be forced to conclude that I was in practice, a lot less free than I am now, and the “freedom” to own a gun would be a terrible commentary on the unfreedom of almost everyone.
I feel really sorry that so many Americans feel that they need a gun. For some of course, it is an expression of their perceived cultural needs — a kind of affirmation of 2nd Amendment fundamentalism where the artefact is similar to the flag. I recall that “soccer mom” a while back who caused a ruckus wanting to the right to display her piece at the kiddies soccer game. Eventually, she won her right. It was sad, but somehow predictable that in the end she would be killed in her own home by by her own gun wielded by her gun advocate husband, since it was hanging near the door, shortly before he killed himself. A small child has been orphaned, and but for the fact her parents were so whacky, I’d be a lot more sorry for her.
Perhaps she will not grow to be amongst those who think guns make you safer.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Yes, owners do need to be licensed in NZ, and microchipped with little aerials and transmitters attached. Do you really want this? They also have to make little beeping noises to warn others of their approach.
I notice that in Tennessee another homeowner has found that buying a gun to protect his family did not protect his three year old.
http://www.abc2news.com/news/local/story/Tragic-Toddler-Mistake/o202FrbZCk-T5Do0YX3OPQ.cspx
This accident may lead to a ban on the Nintendo Wii.
Fran @2
“Gun control laws will have minimal impact on the behaviour of criminals”
“Of course a law that issues the death penalty for gun wielding criminal may change how much the criminals “care”.”
I disagree that the current laws will reduce crime unless the deterrent is a substantial threat to the criminals or future criminals life. Given that the death penalty is out of the question I would still advocate what I said in my original comment.
I think that a black market would grow rather then shrink with heavier regulation of guns – if there is a demand a supplier will emerge. I would need more evidence then what you have included to change my mind. There are also many confounding variables that would determine the sucess/failure of gun laws, even some we are unaware of. For example it is quiet possible that an increase in gun regulation may increase non-gun crime and the overall effect zero.
On your third point, I think negotiation is an excellent approach to such matters when you have very little alternative especially when your lifes at stake. In fact learning how to negotiate is a crtical life skill that has been neglected. I always make a point of negotiating with my kids in day to day life matters.
A tragic story – a 3 year old girl is dead after accidentally shooting herself.
it is incredible the way these stories are portrayed, just a tragic story
Her mother says that 3 year old Cheyenne was used to playing a shooting game on the family’s Nintendo Wii. Her mother thinks the toddler likely got confused by the real gun and the toy gun.
the three year old is used to playing shooting games … confused the real gun and the toy gun,
i wonder what she shot on the game, probably starts with something like bubbles or stars, goes onto ugly weird alien things that dont luke humanoid, and ends up with totally realistic first person shooters where you are hunting arabs through bagdhad streets,
i was recently at a harvey norman deveoloping photos and right near the photo machines was a massive screen with a dark, apocalyptic shooter game on it,
my 8 year old son wanted to have a go like the other little kids and i said no,
i went to the counter to complain and was referred to a manager,
he said to me that they were allowed to show MA15 games in the store so it was fine,
barely restraining my frustration and anger i complained that it was not alright with me as a customer and father, he seemed embarrassed and kind of laughed to the other workers
i was the strange person you see, not him,
i was strange because i dont think it is alright to let small children play dark, violent games
Was it Fallout 3 perchance? I love that game 🙂
i wonder if libertarianism is an adolescent fantasy theory, that then appeals to men who are trapped in a pre-adult mental state?
the rallying cries are not dissimilar to those of small children, “i want, i want, i want” and “no, it’s mine”
we know from experience here that libertarians want to play with guns, are they also quite keen to play with poo i wonder?
(sorry john)
If you take individual tragic accidents as the basis for policy decisions then we would ban everything from peanuts to pools. Three year old girls die all the time from all sorts of things. Of course each case is tragic but not generally material to public policy.
And more recent incidents of mass killings that didn’t involve guns. Motive not means is what drives such things. In statistical terms mass killings are very rare and hard to qualify in terms of statistical trends.
In basic terms the libertarian position is that we should default to freedom and only alter that went a clear cost benefit analysis shows that non-intervention leads to a greater abuse of rights.
peanuts already are banned in schools terje, no peanut butter sandwiches either
am perplexed by this wild statement
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Except Terje, that under my policy this three year old would probably have missed out on killing herself. The gun would have been locked in a gun safe, assuming that the applicants had had a bona fide reason for having a weapon.
@Andre
You assume ceteris paribus, but are you entitled to?
Perhaps the people who miss out will simply accept it. Going illegal is a significant step and if the culture is changed by the move, then maybe interest in guns will decline.
Let’s ban all Nintendo Wii’s before it is too late. But let’s not infringe on our God given right to bear arms.
I am personally aware of one suicide that had profound effects upon those who eventually had to clean up the gruesome shambles, after the police and ambulance had finished with the scene. Personal access to a firearm in this case allowed an easy death for a severely depressed individual. With treatment such a person would have had a decent chance of living a reasonably complete life, rather than completing life prematurely.
The two points I wish to make are:
i) People are fairly lazy when it comes to (optional) training in the use of firearms from the risk perspective. Well trained individuals get it and follow the safety protocols; however, the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” rears its ugly head once again – people feel that they know how guns work and on that basis they make the mistake of over-estimating their competency in handling and using a firearm safely. Even someone who is a good shot may be lousy with gun safety, and I’m guessing that they wouldn’t initially believe it if an expert marksmen told them. It is damn easy to lose a bullet in the tube, and then to horseplay with some mates and the unfortunately still live firearm. One such case happened fairly recently in which the victim was shot through both arms with the one shot – XouchX
ii) I don’t understand the position of any Libertarian who demands the right to open carry (as the USA guys ‘n’ gals are calling it) and then concedes that some regulation/training/oversight is required and is desirable for societal reasons. Surely if the freedom to bear arms (and open-carry) is so important, presumably as a demonstration of the individual’s freedom as paramount to societial freedoms, then it is utter hypocrisy to concede the need of constraints upon the freedom to bear arms and to open carry. Would a Libertarian also concede that some firearms are too cruel or too dangerous or too lethal, and having conceded that would a Libertarian be willing to ban or severely restrict such firearms to those people with a specific need – national guard for instance? If so, I don’t get it, I don’t understand what the Libertarian philosophy is.
I personally am comfortable with firearms for specific uses, which implies that only certain categories of people – police, some farmers, military for sure – have access to firearms. That could be expanded to people who use a firearm recreationally on a firing range, but with real constraints on the type of weapons and how they are to be secured.
Finally, even if the Libertarian arguments and/or TerjeP’s arguments have substance, just what risk is there if we allow the general public to open carry in Australia? The answer is that we don’t really know. In this particular case I see little reason to conduct such an experiment in Australia, for instance. If it becomes a political issue and a major party used the right to bear arms and to open carry then my vote is against it.
Call that prejudice or bias if you like TerjeP…
@smiths
LOL smiths…we know some people get trapped in a sort of post pre pubescent state…all their lives (like bikies still wearing the colours at age 60…its a problem).
@Donald Oats
Don
When I was trained as a nurse many years ago…they marched us down in our first week to the clinical edication building…sat us in a chair and showed us as many gruesome slides as they could…they gor rid of the anuseaous and fainters that way.
One Ill never forget…seared into my memory…the profesisonal man who invited twelve friends to dinner and in the middle of it pulled out a gun and shot himself through the roof of his mouth hoping to die.
He didnt. The bullet deflected off his upper nasal and forehead bone structure and ricocheted out without damaging his brain. Instead it blew his face off and he spent the next fifteen years having facial reconstructions.
Guns in private hands? Fools and libertarians.
@Alice
Yes, it is not a pleasant sight. I know both nurses and police, and have a great deal of sympathy for the ones who have to deal with the initial aftermath of a tragic suicide, or even worse a tragically attempted suicide. Probably only car crashes where multiple cars and individuals are involved, are worse.
In any case, the question in my mind is to what end? Why would we give any old member of the public to firstly own a gun, and to secondly be able to carry it around ready for action (at Starbucks, or so it would seem, given that they have agreed to accept firearms – no smoking though – on their premises and even the slickly holstered ones of the open carry contingent.
The bottom line: strutting around with a holstered gun, ready for action, is either some kind of Freudian subtitution – pity those with snub-nosed revolvers; or, it is a paranoid loon, or someone hoping that in spite of the incredibly low probability of occurrence, to one day be the hero that shoots the robber/asassin/innocent bystander. How does a Libertarian reconcile the right to bear arms with the reciprocal duty of care towards fellow citizens? Or with banning children from the right to bear arms? If it is a right then all citizens share that right – to discriminate against children or teenagers seems to counter that right and opens up the government to compensation and redress claims.
Regards,
Don.
I really like this post. The point is well made. Like the two to four year old, while cute and excusable at that age, its all about me. “i want” “it’s mine”
Donald you are getting basic facts wrong. It is gun control advocats that are against conceal and carry and insist on the open display of weapons. Gun control advocates want them visible.
In terms of suicide all the evidence I have seen indicates that suicide rates are determined by motive not means. Reducing the number of guns in society will reduce gun related suicides buy it is offset by an increase in suicide by other means. It doesn’t reduce harm.
in the years after the Howard reforms total suicide rates did fall. However the Howard reforms did not reduce the total number of guns in society nor did it even aim to or claim to. Annecdotal evidence suggests that there are in fact more guns in Australia now. What they did do was convert some people from semi-automatic firearms to bolt action firearms. As I’ve said it only takes one bullet to commit suicide and if your a little off with that bullet then your generally not in a state to take advantage of the automatic reload anyway. I think the decline in suicide is more readily explained by declining unemployment rates and an aging population (suicide and homicide is mostly a young mans disease).
Fran, I would be happy to prepare a report you as outlined. Since I am not a HSC student though, and not your slave, I will charge you the standard rate of $1.50 per word. How long would you like it to be?
Orders of magnitude more 3-year old are killed each year in Australia by home swimming pools. Unlike guns, home swimming pools are purely a luxury and serve no purpose either as self-defense or in control of pests.
Should we ban them?
I personally am comfortable with firearms for specific uses, which implies that only certain categories of people – police, some farmers, military for sure – have access to firearms. That could be expanded to people who use a firearm recreationally on a firing range, but with real constraints on the type of weapons and how they are to be secured.
If regular people don’t need guns then why do police need them?
Either there are dangerous people in Australia to defend against whom guns are required, or there are not.
By only allowing police to have guns, you are in effect saying that private citizens do not have the right to defend their own lives. 99% of the time there is not a policeman around to shoot someone for you when required.
@Donald Oats
Don – on this comment
“How does a Libertarian reconcile the right to bear arms with the reciprocal duty of care towards fellow citizens?”
I bet if we looked we could find the arms industry funding “right to bear arms” campaigns, like big tobacco funded “smoking doesnt harm you” campaigns and the way big coal and big oil funds campaigns against climate science.
Some people are just plain gullible.
@Yobbo
You do like your strawmen. I support adequate pool fencing. I also think having a suitable pool cover that is easily retractable would be good for preventing evaporation and chlorine loss and underpinning the heat of the water, keeping out leaves and so forth, so I’d support that too.
Implementing these measures would cut the deaths of toddlers in pools.
As I didn’t call for a gun ban in any event, the analogy fails.
@Yobbo
If your post above indicates your level of receptive reading ability, I doubt $0.015 cents per word would be justified.
Noted, you haven’t thought this through … Follow your own advice.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Nope TerjeP, I am not getting my basic facts wrong. You say that I’m wrong and present this as your evidence warranting your claim:
I’m sorry, but the issue isn’t that simple. Since Amendment 2 of the US Constitution has not been incorporated, each State of the Union may decide for itself (subject to legal challenges and the rest of the US Constitution) the suite of gun laws that apply in their jurisdiction. It is easy enough to apply the WKSE to look up cases where groups are using open carry as a means to also get the law onside with concealed carry, and yet in other States groups have concealed carry and yet the gun carriers want open carry as well.
Perhaps there are some gun control advocate groups doing as you say TerjeP, as some kind of political wedge. But, there are cases where the group pushing open carry is doing so to expand their right to bear arms to be as liberal as possible: for example, opencarry.org. Read the blurb on their front page and ask yourself TerjeP, why didn’t you look them up before firing at me from the hip 🙂
Donald – I had a look at your link and another look at what you previously wrote and I accept that I was wrong and the basic facts are a little less basic than what I inferred. Thankyou for correcting me and please accept my apology for my blunt remarks.
Unless, of course, one also wants to include the means of defending oneself against the police themselves in extremis. That was the thinking in the USA when entrenching gun rights in their constitution, and it was certainly no hypothetical case for my own family when I was a child in the newly independent former Belgian Congo. There, it was the paramilitary police (“Force Publique”) that was trying to kill us along with the rest of the European community in Luluabourg. Certainly, we were eventually rescued by Belgian paratroops – but we had to hold out on our own for three days first, and the paratroop commander had to disobey his own orders not to intervene. The authorities were no help, and their standard enforcement arm was itself the threat.
Before you say Australia isn’t like that, let me point out that nowhere is until it is, so any plans to prepare oneself with weaponry always take place in a peaceful society. If the Belgians hadn’t had guns to spare, my father wouldn’t have been able to borrow one when he needed it. The important point about such preparedness is whether it imposes an unacceptable cost for its benefits, not whether it is bound to be needed. And, in cases like the USA, the main idea was that being ready would head off the need arising – si vis pacem, para bellum and that.
That’s not the way to do it. Try reading Giving up the Gun by Noel Perrin, describing how the Japanese did it.
p.m. some of your comments do relate to why i said i would strip most police of their guns as well,
but thanks the book sounds interesting although the period in question is not exactly contemporary
@P.M.Lawrence
No, it wasn’t. It was directed to entrenching the effective jurisdiction of the states against the then Commonwealth of America, which power of course was still not secure against foreign intervention.
It is worth noting that even when early America was the victim of pirate attacks in which their citizens were kidnapped, the states resisted creation of a navy, because they feared the Federal power.
State parochialism explains the “well regulated militia” provision and the fact that the states themselves can, if they wish, utterly set aside “gun rights”. Only the Feds are bound not to infringe.
anyone watching the EU/US stoush over financial services regulations,
Geithner is lobbying for hedge funds and PE funds against the Europeans, whoah
as Yves notes