Sirs,
Pacé the ruminations of Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), there should be no question of a general legalization of firearms ownership. My reasoning for this claim is as follows...
There are only two principle ways in which people can interact with each other - the use of reason, or the use of force. That basic choice exhausts all possibilities of human interaction – it always has done, and always will. I dare say it ought to be clear enough to just about anyone, that the use of reason is preferable to the use of, or threat of force. Persuasion and trade are far superior ways to get what one wants from others than violence and theft.
Unfortunately however, we find ourselves in circumstances in which this basic choice, including all its’ implications, is not widely understood.
Within modern society, there are two great institutions – two great powers – each of which operates according to either the principle of reason, or the principle of force: one is the Market, the other is the State. The market operates according to the principle of voluntary trade – buyers and sellers freely agree to exchange value for value according to their own valuations. The State operates according to the principle of force – its’ subjects are taxed for their income and their actions regulated to the smallest details under ultimate threat of overwhelming force.
Firearms are a means of exercising force; maximum, deadly force. They can therefore provide a critical incentive for people to reject the principle of force in favour of the principle of reason.
This is because firearms, unlike any government law, are in fact the greatest force equalizer in human history. Firearms place the weak, the vulnerable and the old on an equal footing with the strong, protected and the young. Firearms eliminate the force advantage of the twenty-something thug over the sixty year old woman home alone. Without firearms, such a woman would end up as nothing more than just another victim of a senseless crime. With her force equalizer however, she can eliminate the threat to her life and limb with the mere pull of a trigger. Private firearms ownership is the single most effective deterrant to human predation known to us.
The current ruminations of Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) are disgustingly insolant. The people of Taiwan ought never to have been stripped of their freedom to defend their lives, families and property from human predation in the first place.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Fagan
(Sent: Saturday 24th October 2009. Unpublished by the Taipei Times)
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