On Firearms Ownership

I was recently involved in a slightly rough-and-tumble firearms debate here, chiefly with the British blogger FOARP* (the "scarlet conservative"). Since my opponents seem to have "bowed out" of that debate in their own graceless fashion, I thought I'd give a brief precis of why I am right and the firearms prohibition advocates are wrong:

The right to own firearms is no different from the right to own any other type of property.

Against this, firearms prohibition advocates will argue that private firearms ownership poses a significant exernality risk to others in society, and that therefore, government should strictly prohibit the private ownership of firearms. Notice that this counter-argument rests on two claims, the first of which is a factual claim and the second one is a contingent ethical imperative. I will first refute the factual claim, and then I will refute the imperative attached to it.

The Facts

The factual claim, that private firearms ownership poses a significant exernality risk to others, may be made on the back of three seperate sub-claims:

• 1) Privately owned guns are more likely to be used in committing violent crimes than they are in self-defense.

This claim requires the abstraction of aggregate statistics from context; it ignores the fact that many gun-owners live in areas with relatively low crime (whether that low crime is consequent to the private ownership of firearms is another question) so of course these gun-owners are less likely to use their guns in self-defence than say, someone living in places where the crime rate is relatively high.

• 2) Homicides tend to be committed by people known personally to the victim, such as friends, family or spouses.

This sub-claim is used to argue that the introduction of private firearms ownership would likely increase the homicide rate, since firearms make it physically easier to kill. This may or may not be true, since it depends on other things, particularly the sort of people who acquire guns; good people don't use firearms in situations other than self-defence or training, bad people use them to commit crimes - either of passion or of acquisition. Yet preventing bad people from acquiring firearms is not going to prevent them from committing homicides.

• 3) Homicides involving the use of firearms are as likely to be committed by any demographic subset of the population and that there is thus no "ideal" gun-owning subset of the population.

This claim is simply not true (which means it is either made in error, or it is a lie). The proportion of the U.S. population estimated as owning firearms is somewhere between 40% and 50%, yet the proportion of murder/manslaughter offenders using firearms is somewhere around 1% of the population. Thus most people who own firearms in the U.S. do not use them to commit murder/manslaughter. QED.

The Imperative

The imperative claimed by firearms prohibition advocates is that since (or so they wrongly suppose) private firearms ownership poses significant externality-risks to other people, government must therefore strictly prohibit or otherwise strictly control the private ownership of firearms.

The principle at work in this claim is unqualified majoritarianism: if a majority deems private firearms ownership "too" dangerous, then the government should prohibit it. The underlying premise is crude, amoral utilitarianism, i.e. that government should act for the "greater good"** on no other definition than subjective majoritarian preference. Yet this can cut both ways; if a majority regard private firearms ownership as fine, then it "ought" to be legalized. Thus, this isn't even an ethical argument against private firearms ownership per se, but rather an argument for the authority of government, and nothing more.

As an argument for the authority of government, however, it is simply amoral, majoritarian tyranny: the government ought to do whatever the majoritarian mob says it ought to do (and perhaps after they have been whipped into a fervour by some demagogue). It does not even include the usual caveats as to the rights of individuals (or, in bullshit Lefty speak "minority groups").

So far as I am aware, firearms prohibition advocates have no other specifically ethical argument for State prohibition of private firearms ownership; correct me if I am wrong.

***

All that being said however, I can certainly think of a subtler, more persuasive argument for firearms prohibition - which is that responsible and peaceful firearms ownership can only occur in places with the necessary socio-cultural prerequisites. These prerequisites would include widespread respect for the rights of the individual, including the right of private property, and the principles of free exchange, free speech and free association. Where these socio-cultural necessities are lacking or suspect, it is easier to doubt the consequentialist benefits for society of private firearms ownership. This argument is especially salient to me here in Taiwan since the broader culture elevates the importance of "face" to what I take to be ridiculous extremes - I can quite easily imagine a couple of locals shooting each other over competing claims to a girl or some other, far more trivial, loss-of-face-issue (e.g. "He called me a 白痴!").

There are two things to say about this. The first is that it is not of itself a trump argument since it is still based on the collectivist "greater good" premise which would still deny to individuals the right of purchasing the most effective means to defend themselves. As an objection however, it still leaves me hungry. The second is more interesting - it is the question of whether we can identify what other actions ought to be taken in conjunction with the legalization of private firearms ownership in order to reduce the risk of any possible increase in violent crime. The low-hanging answers here are obviously things like training, ethics and licensing, but I doubt these are sufficient to overturn many decades of deeply entrenched cultural habit. A training program with a very strict ethical aspect may go some way to moderating the influence of culture, but I'm not sure this is something I'd want to bet on. Reaching somewhat higher up there are the libertarian arguments about diminishing or indeed eliminating the influence of government so as to allow a direct, market-mediated relationship between people and the local police departments that purport to serve them. By allowing the market to restructure the incentives under which police operate - focusing more on violent crime and less on minor traffic violations for instance - it may be possible to more forcefully augment the moderating effect that strict training and licensing would have on the cultural difficulties in resolving personal conflicts without resort to violence.

*I have a comment at his place on this post, which is either awaiting moderation, or which he has rejected. "Scarlet conservative", is, I think, an apt description of him.

**By "the greater good" I mean unqualified majoritarian preference, which is distinct from "the common good" and also "public goods". A "common good" is a good in which it is supposed that everybody in society places some value; typical examples include innoculation against contagious diseases and defence against invasion by foreign armies. A "public good" is one which is made available to everybody in society on a non-excludable basis; radio programs are a standard example since they can be picked up by anybody with a radio receiver. The use of the "common good" and "public good" concepts is common among free-market advocates and libertarians since they are a significant theoretical issue. The use of "greater good" arguments is common in both the Statist wings of the Left and the Right in order to justify social engineering projects such as State education, or the State prohibition of prostitution and so forth.