Guns and Genocide
By Nice post from Daniel at Duck of Minerva on guns and genocide. Call me a Hobbesian, but I find state power less frightening than the lack of a state monopoly of violence.
Of course, in the modern context private gun ownership does nothing to deter genocidal states. The assumption of gun advocates seems to be that a number of private, gun-owning citizens could face down the type of military and police organizations that modern states deploy. This is absurd; a group of shotgun toting villagers would be massacred with only marginally less fuss than a group of unarmed villagers. Even in Rwanda, the problem was hardly that the Tutsi were unarmed; they were simply outnumbered by their better organized opponents. A shotgun in ever home might have resulted in a few casualties among Hutu militiamen, but would not have changed the course of events.
Finally, this whole line of thought on the justification of gun ownership needs to die in the face of the Iraq situation. Iraqi private citizens were heavily armed by most standards, and yet could not throw off the yoke of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the strength and viability of the insurgency should demonstrate that tyranny is not the most important problem for most people. Thousands of Iraqis who were willing to live under the murderous regime of Hussein have taken up arms against the US. Simply put, widespread weapon ownership does not prevent the rise of tyrannical regimes. Wingnuts who have assured themselves that Hugo Chavez is a tyrant should also recall that Venezuela has one of the highest rates of private gun ownership in the Western Hemisphere.