Natalie Solent has some striking gun-control analysis from Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, Here’s a bit of the bit she quotes:
There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that. Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.
Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers – say, three per citizen.
Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing’ and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. …
Natalie concludes her comments thus:
I suppose Pratchett might say that Vimes’ opinons are not his own, but, even so, Vimes is not just a one-off hero but a much loved character who stars in several books: this shows at the very least that Britain’s best selling living novelist sees where we’re coming from.
I guess it’s a case of read the whole thing.
This is a good read, I got it for a fiver at sainsbury’s yesterday and was going to bring the very section to wider attention. As ever, I am a day late and not a full shilling.
One of my favourite Pratchett quotes (from the very early Equal Rites) “The river flowed slower than a planning enquiry”.
“If you’d stop telling people that it would all be sorted out after they died, they might try and sort it out while they’re still alive” – from Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
I’ve been reading and admiring Mr. Pratchett for some time now, especially the Discworld novels. And bits of the Disc’s Granny Weatherwax’s philosophical asides – “Sin is just where you start treating people like things.” Granny Weatherwax, Carpe Juglum
A little more: On page 105, Sergeant Vimes muses:
What was it Vetinari had said once? ‘Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.’
My guess is that Pratchett started out Guardianish, and then when he, quite suddenly, began making a lot of money and really attracting the attention of the Revenue, realised what Government and taxes are all about.
He has a good bit about The People as well in there. Can’t quote it, mind, as I’ve loaned the book to my brother.
Out of the context of the *actual* crime control mechanism in Ankh-Morpork, the quoted section doesn’t stand alone.
Dave O’Neill, you wrote: “Out of the context of the *actual* crime control mechanism in Ankh-Morpork, the quoted section doesn’t stand alone.”
…Of course it does Dave!…
The quoted section stands up and shouts … “Hey Look at this… this is the *actual* crime control mechanism of the UK… this is exactly what the UK lawmakers have done”!!!
Joe,
The quoted section stands up and shouts…
Yes it does, which the problem with leaving out the context from a quote.
It does not gell with the politics and criminal control in Ankh-Morpork. From conversations with Terry on the occasions we’ve met I’d not necessarily draw too many conclusions concerning his stance on this subject. Like many people his political stances are very very complex and cover a wide range of features. I know Eric S Raymond has him pegged as a Libertarian, but I’m not convinced based on things he’s said to me in the past.
Pterry’s long-standing political stance, as expressed through his books, seems to be reactive rather than proactive, as in seeing how people are and dealing with that rather than deciding they should be a particular way. Beyond that, the most you can say is that he has respect for individuals and for those who do right depsite the circumstances. I wouldn’t draw any further conclusions from his writings.
It is not quite clear where PTerry stands on this. On the one hand, he seems libertarianish, pushing a “personal responsibility” and minimal government agenda, on the other hand, his “Men at Arms” book has quite an anti-gun message. To thow another author’s catchphrase into the works, on the gripping hand, he doesn’t seem to have much problem with his characters using crossbows to shoot people up. (And in the last book of his I read, Vimes does end up using a spring-loaded gun [but seems to be disapproving about it]).
Rich
Context, context. Vimes disapproves of the spring gun because in that society, the default weapon is a sword – the main purpose of that gun is that nobody recognises it as a weapon. It’s a sneaky underhanded murder tool, useless for bluff.
Terry Pratchet won this year’s Prometheus Award for Night Watch. I was there when he accepted it. He said explicitly in his acceptance speech that he is a libertarian, although he seemed somewhat hesitant to use the word. He didn’t go into great depth, but my best guess, both from his writing and some of the things he said is that he would best be classified as a minarchist. I suspect that he is not completely comfortable with anarcho-capitalism, and I believe he has had some exposure to it through Eric Raymond. I thought it was particularly odd that Eric wasn’t there at the Prometheus Award ceremony, since I saw him at Torcon.
Eric Raymond hsa called PTerry a libertarian, but I’ve got to be honest its not something that leaps to mind from the conversations I’ve had with him over the years.
OTOH, ESR did say that PTerry enjoyed shooting his (ESR’s) guns.
I don’t see how Night Watch (which is one of the best in a canon of exceptionally good books) can be read as anything other than a libertarian text. I got an eerie feeling of deja vu when I read it. Suddenly it struck me that I was recalling how dismal life was before Margaret Thatcher came to power and swept away the union-infested gloom of the seventies. Hmm, Maggie/Vetinari, interesting…
Vimes disapproves of the spring gun because in that society, the default weapon is a sword
As an aside, words are the ideal weapon for elites wielding power over peons.
They are enormously intimidating (you really can’t know unless you have faced someone holding a live blade. I have, in a strictly controlled training environment, and it is scary as hell).
They are a pure weapon, not really much good for hunting, cooking, eating, or most of the other uses of edged tools (sure, in a pinch you can use one as a hatchet, etc., but . . . )
Finally, it takes vast amounts of time and training to be expert with a sword, meaning that a member of the military elite, who has the resources for weapons training, will have a big advantage over an ordinary member of society. Similarly, a good sword presses the limits of metallurgy and forging in pre-industrial societies, making them very expensive and out of reach of most people.
Sword-wielding elites always, always despise innovations like crossbows and guns that democratize the ability to engage in mayhem and undermine their privileged position.
“In Men-at-Arms, I didn’t know Cuddy was going to be the one who died. When it happened, I realized a character you liked had to die. Its not like The A-Team with machine guns and no-one gets killed. I had to say guns kill, that’s what happens. That’s the thing about guns; that’s what they’re there for.” — Terry Pratchett
The mother of all typos! That should read “SWORDS are the ideal weapon for elites wielding power over peons”, not “WORDS are the ideal weapon . . . .”
“Britain’s best selling living novelist”?
Is your source for this claim the Whitaker BookTrack? That would leave it highly questionable, as J. K. Rowling is omitted.
Does Rowling qualify as a novelist?
R.C.Dean, HAHAHAHA! That slip is truly worthy of Discworld… or the UK … I swear that the current weapons laws are based on the fact that someone in the UK government policy dept made that typo many years ago and it’s just that nobody’s noticed it yet!
David Giles,
I read that ESR piece, although, as a caveat, I’m not convinced by mass gun owner arguments but that doesn’t stop me shooting guns when I get the chance :-/
Interesting thought about Maggie/Vetinari. The thing about the Patirician though, is while he runs a lean ship at the top, he has created a behemoth of a civil service in the “private” guilds which are effectively under his direct control.
He encourages lots of rules and controls and keeps them fighting each other, so they leave him alone…
Hmmm… maybe not libertarian, but certainly like Maggie… 🙂
Rowling might have displaced Pterry after the last book, but there was no doubt until recently.
RC Dean; Pratchett makes pretty much that point to highlight the tensions arrising from the arrival of the Dwarves in Ankh-Morpork with the resulting drop in the cost of cross bows and the like.
I’m frankly amazed that this is even up for debate. Terry Pratchett’s writing is the most obviously libertarian fiction I’ve read apart from Robert Anton Wilson’s.
“I had to say guns kill, that’s what happens. That’s the thing about guns; that’s what they’re there for.”
Absolutely correct. How is this not libertarian? I don’t think the pro-gun libertarian position is that guns aren’t dangerous. There’s a difference between being against guns and wanting to ban them by government fiat.
At the end of the same book, Carrot cuts the head of the assassins in half with no hesitation whatsoever, and Pratchett explains to the reader that this is proof of Carrot’s essential goodness. The book is not anti-killing. I think Pratchett has a thing against long-range impersonal killing, but that’s not unusual, and it’s perfectly compatible with libertarianism.
“The thing about the Patirician though, is while he runs a lean ship at the top, he has created a behemoth of a civil service in the “private” guilds which are effectively under his direct control.”
Nonsense. The whole point is that they’re not the civil service. All the guilds are entirely at the mercy of supply and demand. And they aren’t under his direct control; they just have to meet his quotas. Vetinari has created a city in which nothing whatsoever is really illegal, because he realises that forbidding things doesn’t stop them happening. He sees the productivity and enterprise of people as being of utmost importance, and ruthlessly crushes anything — including regulation — which might diminish them.
Throughout all the books, the bad guys are always the authoritarians, and the good guys are always the ones who fight against authority, or ignore authority, or disapprove of authority.
I’m sold. What’s a good Discworld book to start out with? There looks to be a ton of them.
R.C.D.:
Pratchett’s Discworld books divide into 3 approximate groups (not isolated, however; characters frequently turn up outside their “home” group). They are: Witches, Wizards, and Watch (clever, huh?). More recent books build on the earlier ones, but it’s not like some Robert Jordan epic where you’re totally lost if you don’t start with volume one. Concensus suggests starting with any of these: The Colour of Magic, Equal Rites, Mort, Small Gods, Guards! Guards!, Moving Pictures, Pyramids.
If you’re obsessive about it, there are charts of suggested reading order at the L-Space Web, which also offers far too much information for a beginner. You’d think these people had nothing else to do! 😉
The New York Times Book Review carried a review of Monstrous Regiment, the latest Discworld book, on September 28th.
RC Dean,
Guards! Guards! One of the best to ease into.
Squander Two,
I’m not entirely convinced by your description of the Guilds myself. There are lots of things which are illegal in Ankh-Morpork – the Troll drugs trade and Mime artists springing to mind.
I’m also not entirely sure how this description fits around the character of Sam Vimes either.
One of the interesting things is contrasting the character of Sam Vimes as seen from his perspective as protagonist with that of Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh, that we see in The Truth.
I’m frankly amazed that this is even up for debate. Terry Pratchett’s writing is the most obviously libertarian fiction I’ve read apart from Robert Anton Wilson’s.
One of the reasons I’m not convinced is I’ve met him on many occasions and had a long dinner where a lot of politics and current affairs got discussed.
I didn’t get the feeling he was all that much of a libertarian, maybe around the edges, but certainly not in a the class of Eric S Raymond.
Dave,
Fair enough. May he’s not very libertarian. But, like I said, his writing is.
“There are lots of things which are illegal in Ankh-Morpork”
Not when compared to any city on planet Earth.
R.C.,
I would say to start with anything from Mort onwards. The first three aren’t up to much, and the first one, The Colour Of Magic is just dreadful. Wyrd Sisters is a very good one to start with.
Not when compared to any city on planet Earth.
What’s the capital of Somalia called? 😉
The Colour of Magic is fine as long as you accept its a mikey take of several other writers and the fantasy genre on the whole. He really got his act together with Mort, which is roughly when he decided to go full time with the writing lark.