Critics of self-defense and gun rights have noted that for many, “the gun is the premier mark of individual sovereignty.” Yet many progressives see individual rights and individual sovereignty as a threat to the collective good; so the rights of individuals must be curbed and subordinated, as Trudeau has done with recent gun control legislation.
Unfortunately, placing the “collective good” above individual rights is a path toward dystopia and dysfunction. Individual rights — including the right to protect oneself and one’s home, and also to bear arms — are the wellspring of freedom. And freedom is the fountain of prosperity, civilization, and progress.
Departing from this tradition is how you end up with a society where individuals are unable to legally protect their own homes from violent criminals. Many will argue that this is why we have police, but the obvious problem is that police cannot protect everyone, certainly not with the immediacy that is needed in the midst of a burglary.
Unlike the citizens in RoboCop, Canadians can’t count on a cybernetic policeman to defend them from violent actors.
Even worse, they’re being discouraged from protecting themselves and their homes by a government so hostile to individual rights and self-defense that it’s advising them simply to turn their property over to their attackers.
— John Miltimore in Why Cops Tell Homeowners: Just Give Criminals Your Car Keys
8 Responses
Armed self-defense is a far greater threat to the concept of a unitary monopoly of physical violence.
That terrifies fascists more than anything else, that someone may have the enforceable power to say ‘no’ to when someone else tells them to do something, even when the one telling them to do something sincerely believes “It’s for their own good”…
And, what’s Grace doing up at 2:30 AM, infant feeding?
Dan wanted a couple of posts to be available first thing in the morning without having to bother with it at 6-7 am. The next post was done at the same time.
Now I wanna watch Robocop.
And I want an all-female, non-binary, shades of brown only, Robo-social worker remake.
I could be hip to the porn parody of Robocop… 😉
@Shire-man
Pure genius. Imagine how many movies could be made without coming up with original content while simultaneously pushing the girlboss narrative…
Try a brown girl sometime, I find some of them quite delightful… 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DqvweTYTI0
Well, being pedantic (as I usually am) anyone who “fears” or dislikes the idea of an individual, inherent right of self-defense, and the RKBA to assist in exercising that right, simply values “the collective” more than the individuals who make up the collective. The whole is not (and cannot be) greater than the sum of its parts. Likewise, my existential right to self-defense outweighs your “right” to feel comfortable. While there are tactical reasons why open carry might be superior to concealed carry (certainly in some situations), concealed carry is the practical answer in today’s world – too many GFWs around who freak the eff out if they see someone carrying openly, and a call to the local gendarmerie is almost certain, and even if the responding cops know their ass from their elbow, it’s STILL a hassle to deal with.
So, basically, by definition, unless you are an experienced LEO or firearms tactics instructor, you have NO FRICKIN’ IDEA whether I am carrying or not . . . so WTF are you “uncomfortable” about??? The whole “let the police handle it” mindset simply makes no sense – we all know the saying “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away” is trite, but true. When I was living in the LA area, in a bougie, “upper class”, gated community, with 24 hour patrols from uniformed, sworn LEOs, we STILL had an average response time that was never less than 5 minutes. For most real emergencies, the only thing that responding LEOs do is . . . clean up the mess, and bag and tag the bodies.