Following yet another mass shooting and the annual March For Our Lives, gun control has come to the fore of the national consciousness.  And since this platform leans heavily left, queue the passionate calls for more restrictions and name calling of its opponents. As someone on the right often pegged a tyrant, nazi, idiot, or what have you, I’d like to offer another perspective on the issue of gun control focused on principles over policy.  I hope that at least this can help some understand a little better what underlies the seemingly mystifying stubbornness towards what appears such obvious solutions.  For me, there are basically three principles underlying anti-regulation gun policy: #1: power corrupts, #2: government is not your friend, and #3: decentralized governance is the way forward.

As a note, the men pictured above are Polish resistance fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.  Rebels were severely hindered by the difficulty of accessing arms and munitions during Nazi occupation.

Principle #1: Power Corrupts

The clearest example of this principle in action in extremis is among the great tyrants of the 20th century: Stalin, Amin, Hitler, Gadaffi.  Gadaffi, like other tyrants, began with noble aspirations: a juster society, greater economic equality, more spine to stand up to the predations of colonial powers, and, with that, greater national autonomy.  He even succeeded initially in many of his goals in the early years, but when his grip on power tightened as he bent the country to his vision, his rule became increasingly ruthless.  Enemies were imprisoned or killed for standing in the way of “progress.”  Competing ideas were squashed for fear of corrupting the minds of the people.  The intelligence services and secret police metastasized to both ensure his own continued power and compliance with his edicts.  All, he assured himself and the people, for their long term well-being.  But with his power largely unchecked, he indulged himself like never before – a harem of women groomed to please him, dozens of luxury cars, and sadistic torture of his enemies.  His power ruined him.  Had Gaddaffi’s plans been foiled sooner and, after imprisonment, returned to normal life, he likely would’ve lived his days out as an unexceptional but cantankerous man.  And while Gaddaffi’s an extreme example, his life does show just how toxic power truly is.

This same principle among individuals also applies to institutions, including government.  Power corrupts.  And while the US is a democratic nation and nominally answerable to the people, that’s not actually how US governance works.  The very intractable nature of gun rights in the US, for example, flies in the face of this argument.  There’s overwhelming support for tighter gun laws, yet none have passed thanks to savvy and powerful special interest groups.  Politicians caught red-handed for insider trading during covid have yet to be prosecuted.  Both Trump and Biden’s shady dealings have yet to result in a single conviction for anyone in either’s family. The more and more we bloat government with power through law, policy, and the organizations necessary to enforce both, the more we inadvertently drive corruption. This corrosive effect of power leads on to Principle #2.

Principle #2: Government Is Not Your Friend

The government largely has it’s own best interest in mind, not the people’s.  A classic example of this on display was when the head of Thailand’s DMV was asked by a reporter why they hadn’t updated the antiquated filing system that created warehouses of paperwork, slowed approval times, and employed thousands of unnecessary staff.  His response: “But then all of those people wouldn’t have any work to do.”  As a child of high-level US bureaucrats, I can confirm: this also applies to US government institutions. Everywhere from the US Congress to the EPA is beset by turf wars, big egos, incompetence, and greed.

That’s not to say that the government is oblivious to the will of the people.  Democracy works a lot better than most systems, but it’s still constantly in competition with the momentum of institutional interests.  A clear example of this breakdown is the gross cowardice of the police at Uvalde or instances of police brutality – brutality of the state, like Bloody Sunday when hundreds of protestors were beaten and gassed in 1965.  In both cases, the state failed to provide its most supposed duty: protecting its citizens.  Other examples include the willful ignoring of the inhuman working conditions of Amazon or the indifference to the union busting by companies like Starbucks.  Somehow, government’s values and interests so often align with those of the super rich and super powerful.  Strange, right?

And even more frightening is what happens to governments over time: elites weaponize them against the people.  While Hitler’s Germany was 70 years ago, it happened in a democratic, Western country that, not unlike contemporary USA, was preceded by a period of immense liberty: the Weimar Republic.  At present, Trump’s ongoing campaign to hang onto power and the insurrection of January 6th should be a sobering reminder of just how quickly power and culture can swing.  Both events would’ve been unthinkable in 2012.  We’re living them now.  In five, ten, or fifteen years, America might find itself in another unthinkable place: under the thumb of a tyrant.  But let me assure you, America will be lorded over again by a tyrant one day.  When’s another question.  By divesting power from government, however, we stand a chance of that day coming later rather than sooner.  That leads to the final principle, the alternative to a powerful, central government: decentralized power.

Principle #3: Decentralized Governance

Since power corrupts and the government is not our friend, the answer of what proper governance looks like lies in decentralized power.  Decentralized power means giving local communities and individuals power, rather than attempting to centrally manage through national laws and regulations. There are already dozens of powerful examples to prove how possible this is: Wikipedia, Bitcoin, and even the US military are adopting decentralized command structures.  Why?  Because it’s more efficient and effective than centralized command.

The fear, however, is that in absence of government, powerful, multi-national corporations will then easily overpower local groups and exert their will unchallenged.  Price fixing, soaring inequalities, and unabated pollution are soon to follow.  Good thing these things aren’t happening now.  Oh wait, they are. However, these corporations are most often enabled by governments, rather than stopped.  Excessive red tape drives down competition.  The revolving door of agencies gives corporations an unfair advantage.  A recent example is the egregious exceptionalism offered to vaccine producers in the US: not having to share millions of documents for a period of 75 years, being immune to lawsuits, the infiltration of nearly every major news and government organization through either sponsorships or consultancies, and the fact that companies like Pfizer are making about 1,000% profit on vaccines produced using funding from the US government.

Competition and co-operation, like in any natural environment, leads to increased diversity and resilience.  Unfortunately, US government’s policies since the 1960s have driven a lot of the inequality and monopolies, rather than solved it.

Conclusion:

If you agree that power corrupts, that the government is not your friend, and that decentralized governance is the solution, then it shouldn’t be much of a stretch to see why it’s good to keep the plebs armed: it keeps the elites and the government in check over the long term.  It’s possible that the UK and Australia, for example, will remain fascist free – for another ten, fifteen, or twenty years, but what about twenty-five or thirty years?  And do you think that once there’s widespread recognition that things are trending towards tyranny the institutional integrity will be there to recall all those gun laws and uncouple arms manufacturing from the military?  Unlikely.

Part of having truly decentralized governance includes decentralized defense and the necessity that the plebs remain well-armed to keep the threat of insurrection alive and well for any power that tries to grab more than it ought to.  It also includes decentralizing the police state, a problem which the recent BLM riots/protests brought to light.  Being armed isn’t a privilege, but a duty, one to be shared by blacks, Asians, queers, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and men and women in order to ensure that their rights, their power, their autonomy, their liberty’s given the respect it deserves.  If not, they’ll have the means and the will to take it by force.

I don’t deny that there’s a crises here, but I don’t agree that it should be solved by a shortsighted, unprincipled, overly simplistic response: take the guns away.  It requires addressing the psychological and social forces driving this violence in the first place.  I also support the age of purchase pushed up to 21, but not restricting weapons or limiting it to handguns.  Keep the people armed