Reason versus Force

It is ironic that in Canada many would consider me a Conservative while in the United States many would consider me a Liberal. That I believe says more about the politics of those two respective countries than it does about me. One thing I do agree on though is the right to bear arms. Sadly that is a right we do not have in Canada. In fact, despite the steady increase in gang violence, as a Canadian you are no allowed to arm or defend yourself in any way. In fact it is now illegal for you to even own Kevlar.

The only people who are legally allowed to arm themselves and wear Kevlar are the police. Do the police represent the cream of our society? The most mentally stable, the most altruistic, the most intelligent, the most honest, the least likely to abuse their authority, uh no.

Police, like our politicians, are just as good and just as bad as the rest of society. Many police and many politicians are extremely hard working honest and decent. Others are corrupt thugs who routinely abuse their authority, some are even sociopaths.

A well educated population (something the US tends to lack given their poorly funded public school system) and a well armed population (something we are legally prevented from being in Canada) is I believe the best combined defence against an abusive state government. This is where my Libertarian streak tends to come into play.

As Mao wrote all authority is derived from the end of a gun. He should know, this man slaughtered 60 million of his fellow Chinese making him the most prolific mass murderer of the 20th Century.

"The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force.

Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion.

Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations.
These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job.

That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury.

This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst.

The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force.

It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.