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A crime control measure from the new president of Brazil PJ Media, quotes the Wall Street Journal, to the effect that in Brazil, the new far-right (meaning: not-left) President is going to crack down on gun crime by allowing the law-abiding citizens of Brazil to have guns too, to defend themselves. At present, Brazilian citizens are defenceless against armed criminals.
This news did not surprise me. I had the pleasure of hosting an excellent talk about recent political dramas in Brazil, given last November by Tamiris Loureiro and Bruno Nardi, Brazilian libertarians who now live and work in London. They flagged up this policy then.
It will be interesting to see how this defiance of conventional expertise will work out. Experts say: badly. But they would, wouldn’t they? Root causes of gun crime, blah blah. My prediction is: well.
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But,but,but!!!
Won’t someone think of the children???
Guns cause crime! That snake in the Garden of Eden had a gun, and made them eat that apple!!
Every time I hold a gun, the gun speaks to me, and says”Go on! Use me! The world has too many socialists as it is!!!” It’s the Gun, not me! Or maybe it’s the bullets….
This has played out any number of times in the US. When another one of the States would liberalize (in the classical sense) its laws on carrying guns, opponents would howl about how badly it would turn out. Then the result would generally be a modest improvement.
Except in the eyes of those who consider it a malum in se crime for an ordinary peasant to carry a gun. They saw a massive increase in crime, as thousands and tens of thousands of criminals walked the streets with impunity, untouched by a pathetic failed government that had actually legalized their criminal activity.
I spent a couple of weeks in Brazil on holiday a couple of years ago.
The police had recently gone back to work following an extended strike during which the murder rate had spiked.
The local I was talking to explained – while on strike the cops had used their free time to settle numerous old scores.
Never felt safe the whole time I was there…
97% of gun scientists agree that Acceptable Gun Wielding will result in a human catastrophe.
(ETA: It will not surprise me if there is a rather large spike in killings in Brazil once weapons become ubiquitous. It will also not surprise me if the bulk of that spike consists of roundly-hated criminals, to whom local citizens are finally able to deliver justice. Then, once some cleansing has been done, things should settle down nicely.)
bobby. What an excellent point!
I’m sure you are right, because I know one of them personally. One who agrees with both of your conclusions, I mean.
We are DOOMED.
These are the same “experts” who unendingly hash the U.S.’s appalling gun murder rate every year – 32,000 – 37,000 usually. But they won’t tell you – in fact they’ll furiously deny – the following two contention-deflating factoids:
1) 20,000+ of those are suicides; and
2) almost all the rest are gang violence in Democrat-controlled, heavily gun-lawed cities; the rest of the country is ~as crime-free as a country with a heavily-armed citizenry can be expected to be, sorta’ like Switzerland.
The other “funny” I “enjoy” would be the experts who carp loud ‘n long about fewer guns = fewer suicides; Japan’s and South Korea’s statistics would disprove this rather conclusively.
Yes, but in Japan isn’t there a legacy cultural bias against gun suicide?
Whenever I try and write a proper comment something goes wrong – perhaps I am hitting the keys of my computer too hard (I do that sometimes).
So I will just say – very good post Brian.
Paul:
If you are writing a long comment, it pays to open your word processor program – or even just Microsoft Notepad from the Accessories folder – and write the comment there, and then copy-and-paste it into Samizdata.
That way, if the comment gets eaten, you just copy-and-paste it again.
Good point bobby b – but I tend to get a little irritable as a type things, in the way that the ocean is a little wet.
Brazil has about SIXTY-FIVE-THOUSAND murders per year – so what the “liberals” (such as the Economist magazine) are saying to the ordinary people of Brazil is DIE. They want (yes WANT) these people to be slaughtered like sheep – unable to defend themselves. Why? Because it is about POWER – it is always about POWER.
The international “liberal” establishment elite know that “gun control” does not work – they know what has happened in Gun Control Brazil and Gun Control Mexico and Gun Control Chicago. A violent criminal is not interested in “gun control” regulations – and the establishment elite know that, they support “Gun Control” regulations to make ordinary people helpless and terrified, and if quite a lot of people have to die to achieve that result….. well the victims are not the sort of people that the editor of the Economist magazine (or some other such creature) is likely to have met at some exclusive (and expensive) social gathering.
Remember when they, the “liberals”, supported Barack Obama (twice) “in spite of” his Marxist background – their sneers when his background was pointed out. “Show us his Communist Party card” (as if a modern American Marxist would have such a thing – although Nancy Pelosi’s hero in San Francisco, the head of the Longshoreman’s Union, was actually on the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA and worked for the Soviets), well BRAZIL is interesting.
Last year (the 2018 elections) no one could pretend that the “Workers Party” was anything but socialist – and the Vice Presidential choice of the Economist magazine was indeed a “card carrying” member of the Communist Party. Anything rather than “right wing” candidate. The elite are partly made up of bankers and other such, but also partly of Marxist “intellectuals” – what holds these two groups of people together? The desire for unlimited POWER – to reduce all ordinary people to helpless pawns, mere raw material to build the “perfect society”.
It does not matter if you are a rich banker or other such, or whether you are bomb planting “intellectual” – what holds the left together is to destroy traditional society (no matter how high the casualties in doing so) and creating a “perfect” society in its place – the dream of (for example) the Silicon Valley cartel, who think they can “plan society” if only their computers are powerful enough (“Star Trek: New Generation”) and look with admiration at the “Social Credit” system in China – where by about 2021 what people can buy will be determined by their opinions – by what opinions they express, how they behave and-so-on. Many (NOT all – but many) Corporate Mangers do not want to be “mere money grubbers” they want to build a perfect world – the world they were taught to believe in by the education system.
And if anyone gets in their way?
Bomb their officers, and have the head of a middle aged organiser kicked to a pulp by three Marxist thugs – this has happened to the AFD in Germany.
In the future this will not be “necessary” as political dissenters will be made into “non persons” by the leftist control of the financial system – for example the “payment processors” such as Mastercard.
Most of the great cities of the West are already not really “capitalist” – as they do not actually produce anything.
Well the great cities do produce – they produce DEBT, debt on a scale that is very difficult to even grasp.
^What Paul Marks said. The following (attributed) quotes pretty-well sum it up:
KIP’s LAW “Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.” http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1195619277.shtml
” – And everyone else as shmucks, it might be added.” Amit Varma: http://indiauncut.com/iublog/