Pro-Gun Absolutism: The Gun Lobby’s Push to Privatize Law and Order

[billh58]

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In the gun lobby’s America, you’ll have to kill if you don’t want to be killed. Will Marshall on the delusional project of outsourcing public safety to private vigilantes.

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As the endgame approaches, it’s important to understand the radical vision that underlies pro-gun absolutism. Forget about the Second Amendment—the gun lobby, abetted by timorous Republicans, is trying to privatize law and order.

Maintaining public order is supposed to be government’s job. The sociologist Max Weber considered a “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force to keep order” to be the defining characteristic of a competent state.

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In the gun lobby’s dystopic view, Americans can no longer rely on government to keep them safe, so they have to do the job themselves. When everybody is armed and dangerous, the predators among us won’t be able to find any victims. Banning assault weapons and high-capacity clips is tantamount to unilateral disarmament, since it would leave law-abiding citizens outgunned in their confrontation with thugs and criminals.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/09/pro-gun-absolutism-the-gun-lobby-s-push-to-privatize-law-and-order.html

The right-wing gun lobby and its Republican supporters and backers are pulling out all of the stops to enable vigilante justice in this country in order to promote more bigotry and street violence. We, as Liberal Democrats, can and must fight them and elect sensible representatives who will enact sane gun control laws. As the author of the above piece goes on to say:

"Once again, Republican pusillanimity in the face of gun fanaticism threatens to gut sane gun legislation in Congress. Yet progressives shouldn’t despair, because there is a saving grace—American federalism. New York, Maryland, and Connecticut have passed reforms that do not infringe upon the right to bear arms. In some states at least, lawmakers understand that commonsense restrictions on lethal weapons are part of government’s fundamental responsibility to assure public safety and order."

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. A piece of infantile silliness masquerading as thooughtful opinion piece.

There is so much wrong with it simply in terms of writing skills -- or, rather, lack thereof -- that I will start by noting that the writer relies on adjectives and pejoratives in such overabundance that the article doesn't even make for a good polemic; it's just a rant by someone straining to sound intellectual.

Let's look at just the merest sliver of this silliness: the Max Weber citation.

First, Weber was being descriptive, not prescriptive. He was making an observation. If two or more parties are contending for the sole ability to exert violence within a given community then there is war, whether between powers foreign contesting each other or factions within the civil body.

But that's nothing more than a definition. To mistake -- or perhaps more accurately, misrepresent -- that as a moral unction is ridiculous. Thomas Paine made similar observations in more prosaic terms when he noted that government, like dress, was the badge of innocence lost; a necessary evil in the best of times but too often an intolerable one.

Second, even though the definition may be essentially true that is not the same as saying it is desirable. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were making similar observations all the while making the argument that the state should not be granted a monopoly on power.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

-- The Declaration of Independence

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

-- James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51

To them the government only gained it's authority to exert violence because the people licensed it to do so on their behalf. However, the governed were the only ones who could rightfully consent to such exertion and as such they retained the right to revoke that authority and the power to make good their revocation (or, more importantly, the power to deter any situation that might provoke a forfeiture of authority).

Third, this is nothing more than an appeal to authoritarianism at the expense of the individual. Supposedly, the state serves the people rather than the people serving the state. People defending themselves from violent attackers is not vigilantism. No one is legally or morally obligated to allow themselves to be beaten, raped, robbed and/or murdered until such time as the police deign to arrive on scene. If that is the definition of the author's properly ordered state then the author does not deserve the power of a state nor does the author deserve a moment's peace.

But let's examine what happens when a person does employ lethal force to defend themselves.

* The police arrive and collect physical evidence and witness statements
* The evidence is forwarded for review by the prosecutor's office
* If the prosecutor believes charges are warranted then the citizen is brought to trial
* A trial with opposing council, rules of evidence, a judge and -- most importantly -- a jury of peers convenes to examine the evidence and circumstances in order to render a verdict

All of these actions and elements are things outside of the citizen who defended herself or himself. The same cannot be said of the state. The investigators, prosecutors and judges are all members of the state and the state seldom acts in opposition to itself but is always -- by the habits of its very nature -- acting in opposition to the citizenry.

Case in point, how many innocent people have been terrorized, if not outright killed, by police exerting force in the name of the law only to learn they were mistaken in matters of fact or arrived at the wrong address? Yet, despite the news being littered with several such stories each year for the last several years none of the responsible parties are being held to account. Yet, if an armed citizen were to burst into another citizen's domicile seeking recompense for some slight, perhaps even one that reached levels of criminality that citizen would feel the full wrath of the law. The state does indeed enjoy a monopoly and they are using that fact to escape justice for their moments of gross incompetence.

Fourth, how does the author extol the virtue of a monopoly in one party and then condemn absolutism in another; particularly with regards to the state and the people. If ever we should err in one direction or the other it should be in the favor and advantage of the people over the state. Yet, the author would have use believe the absolutism of the state is the highest virtue.

It is as intolerable as it is hypocritical.

Fifth, even if the argument were to be made that the definition is correct and the monopoly of violence were desirable we would then be compelled to ask why do we care about Weber? He is, after all, just one German social scientist. He is not a prophet and I doubt he would present himself as one. Bottom line: the author is simply name-dropping in an attempt to sound erudite and well-read to an audience that is presumptively less so.

From there the article heads down hill in a rather predictable fashion.

I give it a C-

[jimmy the one]

2. refute these

nuc uni: People defending themselves from violent attackers is not vigilantism. No one is legally or morally obligated to allow themselves to be beaten, raped, robbed and/or murdered until such time as the police deign to arrive on scene.

Subjective rant - you're progun & unsurprisingly live in denial & spin but the author Marshall makes credible points (the article is a year old now, orig apr 9,2013, written shortly after newtown shooting).
You make a specious premise that American gun use is not vigilanteism (well duh not all of it is of course, just some), & tacitly suggest rather it is admirable & warranted. No, American gun use is generally unnecessary, too often creating larger problems than preexisted.
More of your speciousness - that 'no one is legally or morally obligated to allow themselves' to be violent crime victims, as if the only alternative were firearm ownership, & that the author marshall et al of us were trying to outlaw guns.

nuc uni: ...why do we care about Weber? He is, after all, just one German social scientist.. Bottom line: the author {marshall} is simply name-dropping in an attempt to sound erudite and well-read to an audience that is presumptively less so.

No, Marshall is not 'name dropping', he's using the weber quote to develop his premise, that gunnuts wanna be armed, & vigilante if necessary. This ties in with republicans blocking the background check bill, for vigilantes don't need no bg check, it could prevent them from getting a gun.

Refute these from marshall, his 'developments' from his weber preface: The Republican Party exists to elect people to run the government. Where are the Republicans who will stand for the civilized principle that the government, not private vigilantes, should provide basic law and order? Apart from a few honorable exemptions, such as John McCain, they have been intimidated into silence.

The NRA has a schizoid attitude toward government. In fundraising appeals to members, it fans fears that jackbooted feds are coming for your guns. In the political arena, it depicts government as pathetically weak, overwhelmed by the orgy of violent criminality and insanity engulfing our society.

.. the NRA-GOP vision for maintaining civil order in America: turn every public school into Fort Apache. And if our children’s lives are disfigured by a pervasive climate of fear and mistrust, well, at least they will be safe in their educational bunkers, and no American need ever be deprived of the “right” to own an AR-15.
Of course an assault-weapons ban wouldn’t have stopped Adam Lanza. But don’t we have a responsibility to try to limit the carnage psychopaths can inflict? Is forcing them to stop and reload really a threat to American liberty?

I think a national assault weapon ban may indeed have stopped lanza, or rather an extension of the 1994 awb which expired in 2004.