Pro-Gun Absolutism: The Gun Lobby’s Push to Privatize Law and Order

[billh58]

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In the gun lobby’s America, you’ll have to kill if you don’t want to be killed. Will Marshall on the delusional project of outsourcing public safety to private vigilantes.

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As the endgame approaches, it’s important to understand the radical vision that underlies pro-gun absolutism. Forget about the Second Amendment—the gun lobby, abetted by timorous Republicans, is trying to privatize law and order.

Maintaining public order is supposed to be government’s job. The sociologist Max Weber considered a “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force to keep order” to be the defining characteristic of a competent state.

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In the gun lobby’s dystopic view, Americans can no longer rely on government to keep them safe, so they have to do the job themselves. When everybody is armed and dangerous, the predators among us won’t be able to find any victims. Banning assault weapons and high-capacity clips is tantamount to unilateral disarmament, since it would leave law-abiding citizens outgunned in their confrontation with thugs and criminals.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/09/pro-gun-absolutism-the-gun-lobby-s-push-to-privatize-law-and-order.html

The right-wing gun lobby and its Republican supporters and backers are pulling out all of the stops to enable vigilante justice in this country in order to promote more bigotry and street violence. We, as Liberal Democrats, can and must fight them and elect sensible representatives who will enact sane gun control laws. As the author of the above piece goes on to say:

"Once again, Republican pusillanimity in the face of gun fanaticism threatens to gut sane gun legislation in Congress. Yet progressives shouldn’t despair, because there is a saving grace—American federalism. New York, Maryland, and Connecticut have passed reforms that do not infringe upon the right to bear arms. In some states at least, lawmakers understand that commonsense restrictions on lethal weapons are part of government’s fundamental responsibility to assure public safety and order."