June 13th, 2008

Only in a frightened, cowed society are people scared by the mere sight of a gun.

Richmond police scrambled in several parts of the city this morning after receiving reports of a man with a gun on a GRTC Transit System bus.

Ultimately, police found the man in question on East Broad Street and discovered that he was carrying a handgun legally. But that came after 15 minutes of anxious moments for police trying to determine which bus it was, where it was and whether there was actually a gunman aboard.

While it is a traditional liberal goal to bring about gun control and restrict the right of peaceable people to carry firearms, libertarians and revolutionary leftists recognize the danger of state monopolization of the tools of force. If you don't like the idea of rednecks carrying guns, is it any better when, say, an organization like Blackwater is empowered by the government to not only to use firearms but wield them among a disarmed population?

An egalitarian society is one in which power is distributed among the population, so that no one party can use privilege to gain at another's expense. If we're serious about achieving that society - and trusting normal, everyday people to govern themselves - they must be trusted to keep and use firearms. Otherwise, people will always depend on some outside authority for their very survival, and state usurpation will be the inevitable outcome.