I often disagree with The Economist, but I read the venerable British magazine because their opinions are generally well argued and supported by credible studies and documented facts. There is one area, though, where they become as irrational as a bull in front of a red rag: guns in the hands of ordinary individuals instead of government agents. I was reminded of this by their article “More Americans Are Trying to Take Their Weapons on Planes: Loose Gun Laws Lead to More Interceptions at Airports,” August 11, 2022.
Consider two polar models of the state. On one side, you have a Hobbesian-like state, which needs to be all powerful to control its subjects, perhaps for their own good. The latter are disarmed and Leviathan comes as close to a practical monopoly of force as humanly possible. My late friend George Jonas went to visit Hungary as a tourist two decades after fleeing the country. One night, as he was walking with his woman companion in the pitch-black Grand Boulevard of Budapest (pitch-black was the color of the night in Eastern European capitals), she became apprehensive. George recalled in his memoirs (Beethoven’s Mask: Notes on My Life and Times [Key Porter Books, 2005], pp. 263-264):
She reached for my hand and huddled closer to me. “Relax,” I said. “You’re in Hungary. Here you’ve nothing to worry about, until you see a policeman.
On the other side, consider a model similar to what Anthony de Jasay calls the “capitalist state.” It does not interfere in the activities of its citizens except to prevent illegitimate violence among them, protect their property, and enforce their contracts. It does not “govern” but only prevents any takeover, foreign or domestic, by a more invasive state. It does not have all the guns. Indeed, the existence of “private force” enforces the limits of the capitalist state. As far as guns are concerned, this state might vaguely remind us of New York City in the mid-19th century, where there was no restriction on the carrying of guns by private individuals. Professor Frank Morn wrote about the 1844 professional reorganization of the New York City police somewhat along the London model (“Firearms Use and the Police: A Historical Evolution of American Values,” in Don B. Kates, Ed., Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy [Ballinger/Harper & Row, 1984], p. 500):
At one party in 1845, it was reported that four fifths of the gentlemen present were armed with pistols for protection against thieves, yet for nearly a decade of its formative years the New York police was neither uniformed nor armed. In 1853 the officers were officially uniformed, but gun carrying was still forbidden. The truncheon was the official weapon.
In the article cited above, the Economist‘s underlying theory is, perhaps unconsciously, much closer to the first than to the second model of the state. It reports with alarm on the number of Americans caught at airports with guns they mistakenly brought in their hand luggage. These errors, it is suggested, happen more in the South because of “loose gun laws”:
They crop up far more often in states with loose gun laws. People in Georgia or Texas often carry a gun as others carry their keys.
In April Brian Kemp, Georgia’s governor, signed a “constitutional carry” law, allowing people in the state to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
The magazine fears that someday, a gun will get on a airplane and accidentally discharge because (can you imagine?) people usually carry their pistols loaded (instead of, I suppose, carrying them in little bundles of disassembled parts). I suspect it did not cross our usually imaginative journalists’ minds that, if people could board planes armed, the terrorists on the 9/11 highjacked flights might have been stopped at low or lower cost. And note that air marshals do carry loaded pistols on flights, for a purpose.
The Economist ignores that the right of ordinary citizens to carry guns is not an eccentricity of the American South. I would recommend that its senior editors and its American correspondent read about their own home country where, until about a hundred years ago, ordinary individuals could carry concealed handguns without a permit. They could start with Colin Greenwood’s Firearms Control: A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control in England and Wales (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), and Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Guns: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Harvard University Press, 1994). It is interesting that, for part of the 19th century until the early 20th century, the freedom to own and carry guns was generally better protected in the UK than in the US. That violent crime was already lower than in the UK suggests that Americans are more violent, with or without guns.
For all their critical spirit and investigative prowess, the journalists at The Economist are also unaware of some important differences between southern states and other more liberal places in America. One of these is that significant handgun controls appeared first in southern states after the Civil War and were largely meant to prevent freed blacks from being armed. Many tricks were used so that whites or Klansmen could themselves remain armed—the police deputizing them was one way. (See Don B. Kates, Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out [North River Press, 1979], pp. 12-20.)
In fact, constitutional carry for all, also called “permitless carry,” came very late in the South (as defined by the federal government), when it came at all. Here are the dates:
- Alabama, in force in 2023;
- Arkansas, 2013;
- Delaware: no constitutional carry;
- Florida: no constitutional carry;
- Georgia, 2022;
- Kentucky, 2019;
- Louisiana, no constitutional carry;
- Maryland, no constitutional carry;
- Mississippi, 2015;
- North Carolina, no constitutional carry;
- Oklahoma, 2019;
- South Carolina, no constitutional carry;
- Tennessee, 2021;
- Texas, 2021;
- Virginia, no constitutional carry;
- West Virginia, 2016.
Compare with more liberal states—for example:
- Vermont, 1791;
- Alaska, 2003;
- Maine, 2015;
- New Hampshire (2017).
In Maine, where I live, like in many liberal states, obtaining a carry permit was easy before constitutional carry. There are very few exceptions where an American resident older than 21 may carry a handgun, openly or concealed, in Maine: federal government buildings, schools and universities, state parks strangely (but the federal equivalents are not restricted), and private property where the owner visibly posts that guns are not allowed. These privately restricted places are very rare. For example, I visit my bank armed. (I just made a quick calculation, obviously too simple to provide a reliable proof of anything: in Maine, in 2020, there were 12 bank robberies per 100,000 inhabitants; in California, the number is 113, nearly 10 times more.)
Perhaps the journalists of The Economist should revisit America (and their own country) after reading the books recommended above, especially those of Greenwood and Malcolm? It would at least help them ask the right questions.
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P.S.: Warning about the featured image of this post: Don’t hold your pistol like the person on the image does, except if our are ready to shoot immediately. If this is not meant to describe the situation of the pictured woman, she should keep her index finger off the trigger. The apparent position of her other index finger is also questionable.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Aug 14 2022 at 12:02pm
It’s less about loose gun legislation as it is about the onerous restrictions of the TSA. Almost every time I have flown, my bag has gotten pulled aside because of something mistakenly brought into my hand luggage. Once it was a weapon (A small pocket knife I had forgotten I left in my backpack from the previous weekend’s hiking trip). But all the other times, it was nonsense that the TSA deemed a weapon but was actually no threat to anyone:
cross-stich needles
A shampoo bottle that was precisely 3oz as opposed to less than 3oz (that was a long fight with TSA that ended up getting a supervisor involved who had to look up the rule).
A tube of toothpaste
God knows what else.
So, my point here is that the Economist is putting the blame in the wrong place.
Craig
Aug 14 2022 at 4:02pm
I had some souvenir lighters seized because they were the ‘torch’ variety. It was shaped like a dolphin and I thought some people in NJ would get a kick out of them.
Just as an aside this did exist prior to the TSA. I remember Steve Howe, reliever for the Yankees getting in trouble for a firearm in a bag which they discovered. No prison time, but he did plead guilty and was placed on probation.
Craig
Aug 14 2022 at 4:03pm
Sorry, didn’t actually mean this as a ‘reply’
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 14 2022 at 4:37pm
I agree with this about TSA. As is all too common, the rules do not appear to have been drawn up using cost benefit analysis. In the specific case of TSA I think the issue is a political economy one. The agency does not suffer the consequences of the inconvenience imposed on passengers (but presumably would be “blamed” if passenger did serious damage to a flight.) And improvement would be to allow each airport to set rules for what could and could not be arrived onto a plane (i.e. privatize and sell TSA to the respective airports). This would allow “competition” among airports to find the most passenger-satisfying set of rules.
I have accidentally carried my Swiss Army knife onto planes in Indonesia and Nigeria but in both cases they were returned to me after the flight. That is also a service that a privatized airport security system might offer.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 15 2022 at 10:37am
Thomas: Let me introduce you to the state as it is, instead of as it should be.
Jon Murphy
Aug 15 2022 at 11:27am
My point is not about cost-benefit analysis. Every single regulation could pass a cost-benefit test and my point would remain. The point is that the discussion isn’t about loose gun legislation, but rather strict TSA regulations.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 14 2022 at 4:23pm
A state need not be a “Leviathan” in order for it’s citizens to wish that only people with good reasons and adequate training in the use and safe storage of guns are out carrying guns, especially concealed guns. I think that the national government should assist states and localities that so wish, to prevent unregistered and unvetted people from possessing guns. This is especially the case with the possession of guns capable of firing multiple rounds in quick succession (“assault weapons.”)
I realize that this imposes some degree of inconvenience on responsible gun owners, but I would hope that they would accept this in order to reduce the the very high levels of gun misuse (crimes, crimes of passion, suicides, and accidents.)
john hare
Aug 14 2022 at 8:38pm
The problem being that it is a wish and not a workable plan. See War on Drugs.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 15 2022 at 6:40am
Could you elaborate? I do not see a parallel. A vast parallel market would develop to avoid some paperwork?
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 15 2022 at 10:47am
Thomas: A few rejoinders:
There is already a lot of “vetting”: except for the rare cases of expunged criminal records, nobody with a felony record (8% of the American adults, which includes lots of non-violent “criminals”) may be “in possession of” any firearm. “In possession” means that you would be in a position to use it if you wanted to, like if you are delivering packages for Fedex or UPS.
What is “inconvenience” to some is crucial to others. Pick up any Amendment in the Bill of Rights (not only the 2nd), and you will find some people who would not mind if it were repealed. For example, free speech is of little concern to many not in the chattering classes and a big inconvenience to others (think about religious fundamentalists). It is not impossible that a cost-benefit analysis of the 1st, 4th, or 5th Amendment that would be well-done (assuming of course that any cost-benefit analysis can be theoretically and practically doable) would show that their costs (count the externalities in!) are higher than their benefits. Just think of the problem of all those who speak non-stop (“semiautomatic” speech like assault weapons or the pistol on the featured image of my post) without any training or registration! Shouldn’t people have a reason when they speak?
In a sense, extended cost-benefit analysis is what Soviet jurist E. Pashukanis meant by his ideal that classical law must be replaced by administration. He wrote that “In a socialist community … all law was converted into administration, all fixed rules into discretion and utility.” (He was executed in 1937, as Stalin presumably thought that it would maximize social utility. He was rehabilitated in 1957, perhaps creating a second boost of social utility?)
The important idea here, well defended by James Buchanan and constitutional political economy, is that there are fundamental rights that many people think are crucial protections for them and that need to be placed out of reach of post-constitutional politics.
Jose Pablo
Aug 17 2022 at 11:08pm
“there are fundamental rights that many people think are crucial protections for them and that need to be placed out of reach of post-constitutional politics.”
Pierre, if “carrying guns for self-defense” is one of the “fundamental rights” you are referring to, it is relevant, I think, to point out that it is far from clear that the “constitutional right” in question was intended as you are reading it.
In United States vs Miller (1939) the Supreme Court ruled that “because possessing a sawed-off double barrel shotgun does not have a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, the Second Amendment does not protect the possession of such an instrument”
The District of Columbia vs Heller (2008) that stablished that “the first clause of the Second Amendment that references a “militia” is a prefatory clause that does not limit the operative clause of the Amendment.” was a 5-4 decision. Enough to become the “right interpretation” but very far from being a unanimous/crystal clear interpretation of the constitutional meaning of the right to carry guns enshrined in the Second Amendment.
Craig
Aug 18 2022 at 12:06am
Interesting the Miller court would write that in 1939 when memories of the trenches of WW1 were not too suppressed. Trench guns in WW1 were relatively common.
Jim Glass
Aug 18 2022 at 12:08am
What is “inconvenience” to some is crucial to others
Yup. Certainly. But not to everybody always. There has to be some sort of crucial circumstance making it so.
The important idea here, well defended by James Buchanan and constitutional political economy, is that there are fundamental rights that many people think are crucial protections for them and that need to be placed out of reach of post-constitutional politics.
Of course. And transporting a gun as checked baggage instead of in the passenger cabin is loss of a “crucial protection” for … somebody? Who? Exactly how?
I mean, they can still shoot it when they pick it up at their destination.
In a sense, extended cost-benefit analysis is what Soviet jurist E. Pashukanis…
Wow, you are comparing 49 U.S. Code § 46303 and § 46505 not just to Stalinist but to 1924 Leninist law!
Jim Glass
Aug 14 2022 at 10:36pm
Back in 1989 my then-wife and I and our one-year-old son were taking a flight home from Frankfurt, Germany to New York (after visiting friends in East Berlin for the last time, as “East” Berlin was soon to disappear).
In those pre-9/11 days flying across the USA was free and easy as it never will be again. But in Germany … wow. Before boarding, each passenger was individually searched in a separate cubicle while overhead on a catwalk guards with submachine guns pointed them down at you. Talk about being “under the boot of the state”!
So we get on the plane, there’s a delay, we sit and wait, and after a while a couple of these very-armed guards come walking down the aisle, not smiling. Did you ever have that ominous feeling about what is about to happen? Yup, it did. Those guards pulled us off the plane and marched us into detention. My wife had a battery-powered little travel flashlight and had packed it in her checked suitcase.
“The state” wouldn’t tolerate a small travel flashlight in a suitcase, so it frog marched an innocent family with a one-year-old under armed guard off their flight and across the airport into detention. Americans used to freedom all their lives don’t feel happy having it stripped away from them like that, I can tell you.
Although, the reason why we were in the airport at all was because of the very deep discount air fares then available that we were using after the Lockerbie Bombing, Pan Am Flight 103, out of Frankfurt, 270 dead when it was blown up by a battery-triggered bomb in a checked suitcase.
(No point to this story, except perhaps a hint as to how my then-wife is now my ex-wife.)
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 14 2022 at 10:52pm
Jim: Oh I thought you wanted to explain how you lost the flashlight.
Rebes
Aug 15 2022 at 1:39am
Every time I go through an airport, I am annoyed by the TSA screening. BUT, I also remember how after 9/11 most people expected further terrorist attacks in the US, and guess what, there haven’t been any. Or, as Tony Blair said back then, let’s have two flights, one with security screening and one without, and then let’s see which one people will board. I can tell you which one I will be on.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 15 2022 at 10:52am
Rebes: Blair did not know how good was his idea, although he was probably unable to imagine that choice being anything else than collective choice. If you are right, why doesn’t Leviathan allow each airline or airplane owner the freedom to choose the level of security it thinks there is a demand for on the market?
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Aug 15 2022 at 3:53am
With the exception of a brief episode during which they were disequilibrated by the work of John Lott, my experience of the Economist is that they have always treated gun-control as the only policy that any right-thinking person could possibly embrace, and that (even during the aforementioned span) they have never deigned to offer a reasoned critique of the best arguments of their opponents. For the most part, their response has been Oh those Americans and their bloody guns!
Even when the term “common sense” is not explicitly used, many policy questions are begged by treating various propositions as common sense, such that no objection is brooked.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 15 2022 at 11:05am
Daniel: Right. And the supreme irony is that, to use a bit of collectivist-speak, those Brits are the ones who taught those Americans to be jealous of their self-protection! In the meantime, those Brits have forgotten, and now often get tougher sentences when they use self-defense than when they commit aggression. Let me remind our readers interested in this topic that reading Greenwood (a former regional police chief in England, who died in 2017) and Joyce Malcolm (an American economist) is essential.
KevinT
Aug 15 2022 at 2:49pm
I have subscribed to The Economist since the early 1980s, so have seen their views undergo subtle, but fairly substantial, change in more than just gun control. What was, 40 years ago, a relatively libertarian/free markets editorial stance seems to have migrated some distance toward a “government/ experts know best” philosophy. They have not moved entirely toward the statist end of the spectrum, but they are getting uncomfortably (for me) close.
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Aug 15 2022 at 11:22pm
KevinT, I began reading The Economist in the mid-’80s; I would not have categorized it as libertarian, but none-the-less certainly as liberal. As it drifted ever further into embracing technocracy, I went from reading every article in every issue to more casual reading to finally ignoring it except when someone whom I respect recommends a specific article.
David Seltzer
Aug 15 2022 at 6:37pm
Pierre: I live in Georgia. A Georgia resident can legally have guns in their home and by extension of the Castle Doctrine, keep a firearm in their vehicle or their business. Those safeguards provide for a rather peaceful existence in our community.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 15 2022 at 11:23pm
David: You could not persuade Suzanna Gratia Hupp. B0th her parents were killed because the state of Texas obliged her to leave her revolver in her car. Here is a Washington Post story on that tragedy. Prohibitions of self-defense are a serious matter.
Craig
Aug 15 2022 at 11:53pm
While he did not note concealed carry. GA does have concealed and reciprocity most importantly for me that includes FL and TN.
David Seltzer
Aug 16 2022 at 10:30am
Craig, good point.
David Seltzer
Aug 16 2022 at 10:38am
Pierre, my reference to a weapon in my car was to forestall a possible car jacking. With a carry permit, I can take the weapon with me. Sadly, Hupp’s family were victims.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 17 2022 at 2:34pm
David: OK, thanks.
Jose Pablo
Aug 17 2022 at 10:38pm
The main reason why Suzanna Gratia Hupp’s parent lost their lives was not that Suzanna was not carrying her gun, it was that an idiot with an “explosive temper” was carrying theirs.
Jose Pablo
Aug 18 2022 at 12:07pm
… was carrying HIS guns (two actually).
Jim Glass
Aug 15 2022 at 7:58pm
I do believe they were. NYC in the 1800s was a famously violent and crime-ridden place. Gangs, arsonists (both: gangs commonly started fires then held hydrants for ransom), Five Points, Hell’s Kitchen, riots one after another, daily life. The New York Times had Gatling guns on its premises and used them on rioters.
Altogether, not a world today’s libertarians should long for.
Don’t confuse “not gun carrying” with being civil, nonviolent, honest. See: New York City Police Riot of 1857 There were two NYC police forces. The riot was one vs. other vs. State Militia.
Or, we can read the magazine as fearing that someday a gun on an airplane will accidentally discharge “because people usually carry their pistols loaded”. Period.
Accidental gun deaths in the USA run around 500 annually, with multiples of that injured. Gun discharge in the close confines of a crowded airplane seems particularly dangerous. No?
So it seems a reasonable concern to me. (Of course, alcohol is a most common contributor to accidental gun deaths. And it is served amply on airplanes. Would the state mandating “no drinks for gun carriers on airplanes” be a restriction of liberty?)
Limited as my imagination is, it crosses my mind that, if people could board planes armed with guns, the 9/11 terrorists would have been armed with guns – more, better, and prepped for specific use. No?
Craig
Aug 16 2022 at 9:39am
“Limited as my imagination is, it crosses my mind that, if people could board planes armed with guns, the 9/11 terrorists would have been armed with guns – more, better, and prepped for specific use. No?”
If you ran the Glass Aviation Insurance Company and were contracting with American Airlines, what terms would you include in the agreement?
The point of course is that absence of regulation from the administrative state does not mean an absence of regulation. Above I am obviously alluding to contract, but there’s also tort law, the evolution of the common law and in the common law there are duty(ies) of care. What are they specifically? Well, I don’t need the administrative state to define that, we have judges and juries defining the contours of the duty of care on a case by case basis. If you buy a ticket on a plane and it doesn’t get to its destination because its hijacked and crashed, there’s both a tort and a breach of contract with respect to you and the airline, I’d even say you’d have a claim against Boeing/Airbus for insufficiently fortifying the cockpit door, a form of product liability. I might even suggest criminal liability might be imposed for some form of reckless endangerment, but I digress.
The cost benefit analysis of is expressed by Learned Hand’s ‘Calculus of Negligence’ — US v Carrol Towing, interesting for a brief perusal on wiki.
I don’t believe in this lock, stock and barrel, I think public policy can be guided by this and indeed 9/11 is a black swan event. Before 9/11 one of the worst disasters in NYC history was the sinking of a ferry carrying a bunch of recent German immigrants out to a weekend getaway on Long Island. I think 1000 people died on the General Slocumb and at some point you just have to say, “Look, you’re just gonna need to have life jackets on the ship”
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 17 2022 at 2:39pm
Craig: Do you think–is it reasonable to think–that Kia does not exercise a proper “duty of care” because the occupants of its cars are not as well protected than those of Mercedes in accidents? Why do insurance companies insure Kias?
Craig
Aug 17 2022 at 5:47pm
I can argue either way, but ultimately that’s why we have judges and juries, right?
Look at the Ford Pinto case with the gas tanks, the Ford bean counters did the math and applied what they thought was the Calculus of Negligence as I briefly explained and came to the conclusion that replacing the gas tanks would cost more than the claims from the exploding gas tanks.
The jury agreed except they told Ford, “You did the math wrong”
“Do you think–is it reasonable to think–that Kia does not exercise a proper “duty of care” because the occupants of its cars are not as well protected than those of Mercedes in accidents?”
At present we have government minimums here, right? All those crash test dummies going into airbags, etc. If the government isn’t going to answer that question then that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis.
“Why do insurance companies insure Kias?”
If I buy insurance for my Kia, I will pay a premium based on the insurance company’s actuarial analysis, right or wrong. Whether Kia the manufacturer is liable for the product is a different question and is about whether Kia the manufacturer can get the likes of Zurich to offer product liability insurance.
Insurance companies absolutely DO offer lower premiums if you engage in less risky behavior and can impose higher premiums for people who engage in riskier behavior.
Jim Glass
Aug 17 2022 at 11:58pm
If you ran the Glass Aviation Insurance Company and were contracting with American Airlines, what terms would you include in the agreement?
In a Libertarian, better, world where there was no federal law against carrying loaded guns onto planes? After 9/11? While the tort lawyers were all straightening out the consequences of that day?
Well, maybe my first rule would be “no terrorists in passenger cabins, especially with guns.” But as that was the rule already when 9/11 occurred, and it proved unenforceable in the pre-9/11 world, GAIC still would be faced with insuring potential deca-billions of liabilities for future things like the WTC getting destroyed and who knows what potentially else? (Plus the costs of all the just occurred things!) That would require premiums that the airlines really really wouldn’t like, requiring fares that their passengers really really wouldn’t like, and that destinations like Orlando really really wouldn’t like …
The result no doubt would be GAIC ganging up with the other insurers and the airlines and consumer groups and destination cities/businesses (Disney) to lobby for federal legislation prohibiting both guns and terrorists from planes, and for a federal-funded police force to enforce the prohibition as was impossible before. As that would benefit every single party, with the cost being socialized. With all the parties voting for it, who’d be against it? Market actors in united action!
Well, a few might protest: “Stalinism! Here comes the Stalinist police state!”
But the answer to that would be: “No, terrorists flying planes into buildings and others shooting guns in passenger cabins is illegitimate violence. The Anthony de Jasaya ‘capitalist state’ protects its citizens from illegitimate violence. This is a legitimate police action like any other, properly enacted via the legislature in our ‘model’ of government, which is liberal democracy (not Leninism)”.
No, torts ‘n courts aren’t the answer to everything, contrary to all the anarcho-libertarian dreams. There are problems they just can’t handle. In real life there were $30 billion of claims of every imaginable kind against the airlines and none of them went to trial. Congress set up the 9/11 Victims Fund to cover most (Communism!?? No, liberal democracy!) and bulk of the rest went through government mediation mechanisms at deep discount. (Though my lawyer compadres still made out like bandits.)
Jim Glass
Aug 17 2022 at 11:48pm
Or, we can read the magazine as fearing that someday a gun on an airplane will accidentally discharge “because people usually carry their pistols loaded”. Period.
Of course, what the The Economist story really is about is just wondering aloud why so many more American dumbutts are trying to get on planes with obviously illegal guns. (Half the population has an IQ under 100.) I get that. My dumbderriere German-speaking former wife packed a battery in her luggage in spite of 100 signs in the airport saying “PACK NO BATTERIES!”. Our liberty wasn’t violated, she asked for it. (And she was smart, she had a masters in economics!)
🙂 !!
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 18 2022 at 11:30am
Jim: Perhaps there is a very valid safety reason to ban batteries from airplanes. Perhaps they work like time bombs set by monkeys. (Don’t reply that it is the same thing with a loaded gun in the hands of a human person.) But there is something wrong with the general idea that
The liberty of an East-Berliner to jump the wall was not violated because, after all, they had told him that he would be shot if he tried? Perhaps this is what your wife, with her economics MA, was thinking?
Andrew_FL
Aug 16 2022 at 9:20am
The correct date for Vermont is 1777. Their Constitution guaranteed the right before the US recognized their independence from New York.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 17 2022 at 2:31pm
Andrew: Thanks. Interesting to know.
Jim Glass
Aug 18 2022 at 12:16am
Sounds like a decent model to me.
So let’s say “the state” requires guns on planes to be transported as checked baggage. This to keep loaded guns out of the passenger compartment, and thus out of the hands of the alcohol drinking and other angry folk responsible for 6,000 “unruly” incidents a year (plus of course unpleasant types such as felons fleeing the law, hijackers, terrorists, etc., not known or identified as such when boarding.)
All these people would be capable of violence using their guns, intentionally, or rage-angry-drunk spontaneously, or accidentally, in those crowded close quarters.
Would any such violence be “legitimate”? I think not! It would be illegitimate. Thus, by requiring guns to be in checked baggage, thusly preventing this illegitimate violence, “the state” acts four square in line with the “capitalist state” model. No?
Yea, “the state”! Doing the job!
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 18 2022 at 11:18am
Jim: The Capitalist State would not forbid any airline to allow guns on board, or only low-velocity calibers (.380, for example; by the way, air marshals apparently carry 9mm, which is of much higher velocity!), oe only frangible bullets, or only allow regular flyers to carry, or only the holders of their credit card, or only persons it had vetted (privately), and so on, and so forth.
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