Anarchy, State, and Gun Ownership

[Draggingtree]

Ludwig von Mises Institute :

 

 

 

 

Anarchy, State, and Gun Ownership

 

 

Mises Daily:Tuesday, February 26, 2013 by David Greenwald

 

The controversy over whether the Federal Government should ban the possession by citizens of certain types, or all types, of firearms has been raging back and forth for a very long time. I remember as a child seeing news coverage of horrific acts of violence involving firearms. I also remember the seemingly interminable “national conversation” that inevitably followed these events. It seemed, and still seems, to rouse people’s emotions in a way that few other issues do. My parents, like most of their friends, firmly supported gun-control legislation, which meant that I did as well. When I was ten, our Buick LeSabre sported an anti-NRA sticker on the rear fender. I should know—I put it there.

 

Not much has changed since then. The LeSabre is long gone, but the occasional mass shootings continue, each followed by yet another acrimonious round of national self-flagellation and soul-searching. The first time guns were featured on the cover of Time Magazine was in 1968. They ran the same cover again in 1998.

 

The arguments, for and against, gun control also don’t seem to be any different under Barack Obama from what they were under Lyndon Johnson. Then as now, there were:

To Ban or Not to Ban: Guns and Market Law Enforcement

Since everyone’s real concern is security, what is needed is a set of voluntary social arrangements that balances the widely divergent and sometimes mutually exclusive conditions under which different people feel “safe.” As those who self-identify as conservatives on the whole tend to associate security with gun ownership, such arrangements would have to allow for the private ownership of firearms. However, since “liberals” tend to feel threatened by virtually anyone (except the government) owning a gun, these same agreements would also have to promote conditions under which even the most hoplophobic would feel generally at ease, despite living among many potentially armed neighbors.

 

Link to the Time Magazine cover yr 1968 http://ts3.mm.bing.n...465918&pid=15.1