Just a brief exchange of munitions this time as I am up to my eyeballs in editing something for Natalija (which she keeps changing every 15 minutes).
Esteemed ace meta-blogger Tony Adragna from Quasipundit replied to my remarks below thusly:
Of course, rational libertarians don’t advocate “chaos or pious hopes”, but that is precisely where “spontaneous ways of deriving order in which guns tend to feature rather prominently” lead us sans some form of regulation. Even in Switzerland – every gun rights advocate’s favourite model of an armed citizenry – GUNS ARE REGULATED.
Quite so. But I have never been against the regulation of the actions of armed people (as in ‘a well regulated militia’) because I do not want to see my neighbour’s teenage son riding down genteel Cheyne Row on his mountain bike firing off a Kalashnikov in a fit of youthful exuberance. What I oppose is anything that would inexorably lead to prohibitions on ownership. I have no problem with seeing unreasonable endangering behaviour with weapons punished severely, just as my support of free speech does not extend to support for fraudulence and criminal liable… I have no desire to see voices licensed, just their misuse punished.
The key difference between Switzerland and the USA, is that the Swiss state does not pose a serious risk to the right of its citizens to be armed with military weapons… I am not completely uncritical of the structure of the Swiss state either but there is no Swiss version of a powerful figure like Senator Charles Schumer or his myriad of political and media supporters. The same cannot be said of the USA circa 2001 AD.
Perry takes me to task over my contention that we have at least de jure if not de facto protection from an overreaching state. Again, I admit that it’s a difficult argument for me to make, but then the real world is a difficult place to live – absent de facto protection from anything, I’m happy to at least have the de jure protection of my Bill of Rights.
As it clear from your own remarks that you are aware of your precarious position over exceedingly thin ice, I shall resist the urge to heave a stick of dynamite out onto the lake. Let me put it this way, you have just convincingly made my case for me: I support private ownership of arms because I do not actually think the state can ever be a reliable guarantor of my intrinsic rights. By agreeing that de facto protection from the state by the state does not in reality exist, you are actually saying the same thing I am, which is why I contend the state cannot be trusted to control to whom weapons are doled out.
Then you say you are happy with the de jure protection provided by the Bill of Rights, which in the previous sentence you admit means, de facto, not much. Tony, should you ever find yourself in a war zone, I strongly recommend against straw flak jackets that look good when worn and promise you invulnerability to the flying metal fragments of reality. I recommend the kevlar of objectively derived rights defended by a well armed culture of liberty. Accept no paper substitutes.
