Why Pacifists Should Support Private Gun Ownership

There is a dangerous confusion among many pacifists that government gun control will bring us a more peaceful society, but sadly this is far from true. I personally find myself in a rare but growing group of pacifists who oppose any kind of gun control policies whatsoever. It may seem counter intuitive to say that more people having more guns will make us safer, but history shows us that this is actually the case.

When gun control legislation is put into place, every gun in the civilization does not disappear; they are not thrown into some magical vortex where they will never be seen again. Those guns aren’t destroyed, and they are certainly not “controlled”, they are simply moved. They are taken from millions of individuals and placed in the hands of one group.

There are numerous problems with this situation, so let’s just get the obvious ones out of the way first. History has shown us in many different cases that as the disparity in arms between a government and society grows, the more authoritarian that regime becomes. Take your pick of any dictatorship throughout history and you will find that disarming a population is one of the steps that are essential when establishing a tyrannical control system. From Nazi Germany to the Communist empires of China and Russia, and even on the fiefdoms of the Middle Ages, authoritarian rulers made it a priority to ensure that they had their citizens out armed.

The idea wasn’t necessarily to keep the peasants from revolting, although that is a factor that eventually comes to into play as a dictatorship takes its inevitable turn down the path of self-destruction. The main effect that this disparity in force causes is a psychological one; it establishes the general idea that an individual is powerless in comparison to the State and its agents, thus creating an atmosphere where people thoughtlessly submit to authority out of their natural and sometimes unconscious desire for self-preservation. This aspect of gun confiscation has been covered extensively by many different researchers and activists over the years, but what is talked about even less often is the realistic benefits that can come from mass decentralized gun ownership.

One point that is often overlooked in the mainstream discourse is how gun control laws actually empower violent criminals and encourage them to prey on the innocent, disarmed people who are dependent upon the corrupt and incompetent police force for their protection. It has often been said that “when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns”, and this statement rings true for the criminals in the street and the criminals in the government as well. Not only is a disarmed population preyed upon by tyrannical governments, but they are also preyed upon by violent criminals who get surprisingly inventive during times of gun prohibition.

Gun control legislation is sold as a measure to protect the innocent from violent criminals, but like most government actions the outcome is actually the complete opposite of the stated goal. These kinds of measures actually give violent criminals the upper hand by removing the average citizen’s first line of defense. It seems obvious that violent criminals will be more inclined to attack others when they are less likely to encounter any kind of resistance. This being the case we can determine quite easily that gun control policies encourage violence and chaos within any society.

Even if you believe that the police are put here to help and protect us, which they are not, you must at least admit that they rarely prevent violent crime from happening; their job is only to hunt down and punish the accused party after the fact. Therefore, they cannot be depended upon in a random encounter you have with an attacker, you need to have some means of self-defense.

Even more importantly, the fact that anyone walking down the street could be armed, makes any mugger think twice before attacking someone. On the other hand, when very few people in a society are armed, the reward far outweighs the risk for those who seek to violate the rights and property of others.

J.G. Vibes is an author, and artist — with an established record label. In addition to featuring a wide variety of activist information, his company Good Vibes Promotions hosts electronic dance music events. You can keep up with him and his forthcoming book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, at his website. AOTMR will be released in March 2012, thanks to Leilah Publications. This project features nearly 100 different essays, just like this one, that cover a wide variety of topics. These essays give historical and philosophical insight into the many important issues that our generation faces. From banking cartels and alternative currency to eugenics and the drug war, AOTMR offers a complete and comprehensive breakdown of the counter culture’s struggle.

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