"Mass shootings create a pervasive sense of insecurity and anxiety that politicians and policymakers will inevitably seek to address," senior policy analyst Jay Stanley insists on the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project blog. As a result, he argues, "those who support expansive gun rights as a protection against excessive government power should strongly consider how much government intrusion and expanded power they're willing to trade for those rights."I have considered the question, and the answer is, "The government is too strong and intrusive already." However, I reject the idea that disarming the law-abiding population is likely to make them less so -- or even to stop mass shootings. There are plenty of places like Brazil that have strict gun prohibition and also massive gun violence.
Reason magazine notes that, in addition to the Americas, there's the example of the UK:
Officials in the U.K. have already implemented probably every restriction on firearms that Stanley could imagine. The country has no "expansive gun rights," nor much in the way of advocates for them (not that London's rising violent crime rate cares). So there's no push for "government intrusion and expanded power," right?
Wrong. The British government has adopted what Edward Snowden calls "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies." The UK also requires Internet companies to take down "extremist" content and threatens legal penalties if they're not quick enough to do so.
Which liberties should our friends across the Atlantic stop advocating so that the government will stop hitting them, Mr. Stanley?
3 comments:
From the cite in OP: "those who support expansive gun rights as a protection against excessive government power should strongly consider how much government intrusion and expanded power they're willing to trade for those rights."
Like Grim, I have strongly considered the matter. My answer is a bit more blunt that Grims's: none at all. The question the ACLU posits is a non sequitur. I don't have to trade anything in order to have that which is mine as a result of my existence. Government has nothing at all to say about my having and bearing of weapons or about my purpose in the having and bearing. Government needs neither intrusion nor expanded power in order to say nothing.
Full stop.
Eric Hines
Let me see if I can get this straight. I should support a government program to disarm me in the hope that bad guys also will be disarmed, so I'll be safer, so the government won't have to take away my rights to keep me safe.
Well, sign me up. Safety is everything.
Whenever they have evidence that any of these things actually work to reduce violence, rather than just hope to because...something, I will listen again.
Until then, go pound sand.
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