Comment by constantius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by constantius | Hacker News Reader

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I can describe myself in the same way as you, and yet, if I lived in a country where ownership is allowed, I'd always vote to keep it so, even without having the intention of owning a weapon myself, because otherwise the balance of power shifts too much in the favour of the State/ruling class.

I disagree with the sibling comments about defending the country against an invader (if your country is facing invasion, weapons will be readily available) and defending yourself against crime (it's a non-issue in any non-failed state, and in a failed state weapons are readily available anyway and rarely make any difference).

But in a world where wealth inequality is increasing, where surveillance is ever more present, the tiny probability of the population being able to resist when it finally rises up justifies the very tangible downsides of an armed population.

I am aware that there are many arguments against this view, but I think the downsides of an authoritarian state with a monopoly on violence are too dire to be brushed aside.

This is the first use case for firearms I can understand. I hate it, I hate even that we have to have this discussion in a so-called civilized world, but here we are, and I understand it.

The world first becomes civilized when groups and bodies of people have tensioned, proportional leverage against one another - lest there's low incentive for the naturally more leveraging group to engage in virtuous action. Of course, we see it time and time again where both governments AND people use the leverages vested upon them in functionally incorrect or anti-social ways, but it is the closest to an equilibrium between two perpetually-unwieldy groups (governments, the governed)

In a nutshell, the tension of existential leverage that the government has on you through their monopoly on violence is thereby "equally" leveraged by your right to own firearms - and the implicit extralegal right to use it against them - in an unjust event. And a government SHOULD be perpetually worried for when you'd eventually consider something "unjust" enough for you to exercise that right - as it creates a chilling effect for them to even attempt it.

Except the people with guns are often aligned with regressive/authoritarian regimes. Which makes the problem much worse.

Is there any country where guns are politically neutral? Switzerland, maybe? Certainly not the US.

Even in states like Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, etc, there are non-GOP registered voters and plenty of them have firearms.

It's probably far more than you think.

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