I found in a surf the best article I have yet read :
http://ls.wustl.edu/WULQ/75-3/753-4.html
Polsby says why the theory of an armed populace is important. I can find no flaws in the argument he makes. Please disseminate this widely.
It is difficult reading because of the way he sets up objections and then addressed them but it very, very good.
This is an excerpt from the introduction:
(begin quote)
Nor should this be altogether surprising. An armed population is simply more difficult to exterminate than one that is defenseless. This
is not to say that the plans of a government resolved to eradicate an ethnic or political minority would necessarily be precluded by armed
resistance. As elsewhere in life, raising the cost of a behavior, whether genocide, smoking cigarettes or anything in between, merely makes
that behavior more unusual than it would otherwise be, not impossible for those willing and able to pay the price. No specific form of social
organization will ever make genocide or any other evil literally impossible. Nevertheless, because most important questions are matters of
degree, it is still worth inquiring into the connection between the virulence of a government and the degree of its effective monopoly on
deadly force. And it is especially timely to do so now, in the wake of Oklahoma City, the "Republic of Texas" incident, and the increased
public attention these have brought to the enigmatic civic denominations from which these plots evidently emerged, because now the
philosophical and historical context that links genocide with the state of civilian arms has tended to become obscured.
Barry Bruce-Briggs pointed out a generation ago that public controversy surrounding weapons control laws degenerates into the
venting of raw antagonisms between various factions more often than it matures into creditable public policy research.[3] What gets lost in
the contest is a sense of those points that are actually in dispute and those that are not. Virtually every gun control partisan in this country
is, like the typical gun owner,[4] a peaceable, educated member of the middle class who wants to put a stop to the mindless violence that
has engulfed the streets of American cities.
However, the convictions of gun controllers do differ from those of gun owners in several important ways. First, they make different
estimates about the usefulness of firearms for defensive and deterrent purposes. Second, they often differ in how they appraise the morality
of using violence against violence. Third and perhaps most important, they are inclined to make very different guesses about how much
potential for evil to ascribe to the government of the United States. Few if any of those who are hostile to the institution of an armed civilian
populace consider the possibility that our government, with its Constitution, its checks and balances, and its traditions of free speech,
civility, and respect for the individual, could ever degenerate into the sort of pitiless totalitarian instrument that has, at one time or another,
afflicted most of the peoples of the Old and Third Worlds. The question is whether to label this attitude serenity or insouciance. Whichever it
is, the fact remains that from time to time, genocides and other extreme forms of tyranny do occur, even in the midst of high civilization.
In our view, the failure to acknowledge the prospect of rogue government represents a serious failure of imagination. Trusting in the
free press and the right to petition government to redress grievances, firearms abolitionists do not envision a world in which satanic rather
than benevolent bureaucrats possess the effective monopoly of the means of force. Their gaze is not on more-or-less probable future worlds
in which civil atrocities could become just one more idiom of political discourse, but on the world here and now, where criminals and
lunatics find it all too easy to acquire powerful weapons and reasons to use them.
We argue that there is a great deal more to weapons policy than some sort of cost-benefit calculation of firearms' crime control benefits
versus public health costs. The larger point, that no one who has lived through the greater part of the twentieth century may
conscientiously disregard, is that sometimes people in power behave like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao Zedong rather than like President
Clinton. Of course public policy must acknowledge that exceptional brutality is indeed exceptional rather than commonplace. But it is
senseless to pretend that what has happened many times before cannot possibly happen again. Sound policy makes allowances for even
remote contingencies when they are grave enough, and denies opportunity to predators whenever it can.
(end quote)
Please take a look and tell me the obvious, like you all knew of this article and am supprised I did not?
Noel
http://ls.wustl.edu/WULQ/75-3/753-4.html
Polsby says why the theory of an armed populace is important. I can find no flaws in the argument he makes. Please disseminate this widely.
It is difficult reading because of the way he sets up objections and then addressed them but it very, very good.
This is an excerpt from the introduction:
(begin quote)
Nor should this be altogether surprising. An armed population is simply more difficult to exterminate than one that is defenseless. This
is not to say that the plans of a government resolved to eradicate an ethnic or political minority would necessarily be precluded by armed
resistance. As elsewhere in life, raising the cost of a behavior, whether genocide, smoking cigarettes or anything in between, merely makes
that behavior more unusual than it would otherwise be, not impossible for those willing and able to pay the price. No specific form of social
organization will ever make genocide or any other evil literally impossible. Nevertheless, because most important questions are matters of
degree, it is still worth inquiring into the connection between the virulence of a government and the degree of its effective monopoly on
deadly force. And it is especially timely to do so now, in the wake of Oklahoma City, the "Republic of Texas" incident, and the increased
public attention these have brought to the enigmatic civic denominations from which these plots evidently emerged, because now the
philosophical and historical context that links genocide with the state of civilian arms has tended to become obscured.
Barry Bruce-Briggs pointed out a generation ago that public controversy surrounding weapons control laws degenerates into the
venting of raw antagonisms between various factions more often than it matures into creditable public policy research.[3] What gets lost in
the contest is a sense of those points that are actually in dispute and those that are not. Virtually every gun control partisan in this country
is, like the typical gun owner,[4] a peaceable, educated member of the middle class who wants to put a stop to the mindless violence that
has engulfed the streets of American cities.
However, the convictions of gun controllers do differ from those of gun owners in several important ways. First, they make different
estimates about the usefulness of firearms for defensive and deterrent purposes. Second, they often differ in how they appraise the morality
of using violence against violence. Third and perhaps most important, they are inclined to make very different guesses about how much
potential for evil to ascribe to the government of the United States. Few if any of those who are hostile to the institution of an armed civilian
populace consider the possibility that our government, with its Constitution, its checks and balances, and its traditions of free speech,
civility, and respect for the individual, could ever degenerate into the sort of pitiless totalitarian instrument that has, at one time or another,
afflicted most of the peoples of the Old and Third Worlds. The question is whether to label this attitude serenity or insouciance. Whichever it
is, the fact remains that from time to time, genocides and other extreme forms of tyranny do occur, even in the midst of high civilization.
In our view, the failure to acknowledge the prospect of rogue government represents a serious failure of imagination. Trusting in the
free press and the right to petition government to redress grievances, firearms abolitionists do not envision a world in which satanic rather
than benevolent bureaucrats possess the effective monopoly of the means of force. Their gaze is not on more-or-less probable future worlds
in which civil atrocities could become just one more idiom of political discourse, but on the world here and now, where criminals and
lunatics find it all too easy to acquire powerful weapons and reasons to use them.
We argue that there is a great deal more to weapons policy than some sort of cost-benefit calculation of firearms' crime control benefits
versus public health costs. The larger point, that no one who has lived through the greater part of the twentieth century may
conscientiously disregard, is that sometimes people in power behave like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao Zedong rather than like President
Clinton. Of course public policy must acknowledge that exceptional brutality is indeed exceptional rather than commonplace. But it is
senseless to pretend that what has happened many times before cannot possibly happen again. Sound policy makes allowances for even
remote contingencies when they are grave enough, and denies opportunity to predators whenever it can.
(end quote)
Please take a look and tell me the obvious, like you all knew of this article and am supprised I did not?
Noel