The recent attempt on the life of Donald Trump shows that America has a gun problem, and we can’t avoid dealing with it any longer.
The problem is that the government has guns, which it is willing to use to allow whatever temporary majority holds power to exert nearly total control over everyone else.
Why else would anyone try to assassinate a presidential candidate? Listen to the rhetoric surrounding our elections. On any issue, half the country abhors what the other half wants to do, or not do, or prohibit, or make mandatory, or take from some people, or give to other people. Elections aren’t about governing. They’re about winning. And increasingly, the stakes are winner takes all.
But it needn’t be this way.
In a country that takes seriously the idea, expressed in our Declaration of Independence, that governments are formed to protect rights, and derive their just powers from consent, it wouldn’t matter all that much who is President.
In a country that takes seriously the idea, expressed in our (written) Constitution, that all legislative power is vested in Congress, which can exercise only a small, strictly enumerated set of powers, it wouldn’t matter all that much who is in Congress.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in that country. And in the country where we live, the absolute worst idea we could have is to say: Hey, whoever happens to be in power at the moment is free to use violence, or the threat of violence, to make everyone else go along with whatever they want… at least until the next election.
But that’s exactly what we do.
And so campaign rhetoric, instead of being about discussing rational alternatives, becomes about whipping up irrational fears.
But again, it needn’t be this way. Take the guns away from government, and this is no longer viable.
Take the guns away from government, and the only option is to govern by consensus and cooperation, rather than by conquest and coercion.
Take the guns away from government, and law can only be a means for cultivating and documenting consent, rather than a means of ignoring and eliminating it.
As Frederic Bastiat might put it, we have only three options: (1) The few coerce the many. (2) Everybody coerces everybody. (3) Nobody coerces anybody.
We fought a war to get away from (1), i.e., monarchy. We are currently in the throes of (2), i.e., democracy. Can we please, for the love of God, finally try (3) — the option we said we were going to pursue when the country was born?
Yes, America has a gun problem. And it’s time for American government, at all levels, to take bold, common sense action to fix the problem by disarming itself.
