Kieran Healy

Chaos at Home and Abroad

Go to Digby’s blog for a point-by-point commentary on President Bush’s latest talk with the press. It’s pretty depressing.

Meanwhile, though the Oxbloggers prepare for the task of building stable democratic regimes throughout the Middle East, Eugene Volokh digs in against the prospect of civil war and the breakdown of law and order at home. I can’t bring myself to think that the conjuring up the prospect of regional or national anarchy at some point in the next 50 years is a sensible rationale for assessing gun-control policy choices today. Or any policy. No reason to stop at gun control, after all—if there’s a nontrivial chance of civil war, should we really be so worried about, say, the social security fund? The rhetoric of “But this is war, dammit!” slips into the subjunctive mood, so we get “But there might be a war, dammit!”

Matthew Yglesias argues, in passing, that “in case law and order really did suffer a temporary breakdown, having a well-armed populace would make that scenario more rather than less dangerous even if you personally would be better off with a weapon.” Eugene responds that

there are 200 million dumb guns in the country. They’re not going away… If an electromagnetic pulse destroys my smart gun (because I was so smart and cautious that I traded in my dumb gun for the smart gun), the result won’t be unarmed me vs. unarmed attackers. It’ll be unarmed me vs. armed attackers.

I think this is right, but it also raises a broader question. Restoring social order after a huge civil war or regional disaster would be harder, I think, the more guns there were floating around. In some respects the situtation would resemble that of regions of Africa caught in endless civil wars propelled by the easy availability of weapons and the ambitions of local strongmen. Off the top of my head, there are very few cases in the 20th century where civil wars were followed by a successful military standown and the implementation of a stable democratic regime (i.e., one where the government eventually lost an election and peacefully transferred power). I think, though I’m open to correction on this, that Ireland and Costa Rica might be two of a very few examples.

While we’re speculating about all of this, let me say that I think the U.S. would stand a pretty good chance of recovering from the kind of chaos Eugene worries about. But we wouldn’t have guns to thank for the restoration of stable civil government. Instead, we’d be thanking the availability of shared cultural templates for organizing a political and legal system, together with the presence of people able to transmit the detailed knowledge required to make those templates work as real, staffed institutions. People like Eugene Volokh, in other words.

In my opinion, all Volokh’s speculation does is advance the pro-gun unlikely scenario from one of home invasion to one of civil disorder. And in most of our real lives, neither is going to happen.

Is there a new meme about a US civil war? Holy shit. Who is fighting who? No, really. Is it when the Dems rise up and take the streets? Is it when Bush steals the election in 2004? Who the fuck is fighting who? I think we should be told.

There’s nothing quite like the joy a man gets from squeezing one off with his weapon. I shot my brand new .50 caliber Smith and Wesson handgun today. It was beautiful.

I was all aquiver as I wrapped my short, thick fingers around its rubber energy absorbing grip. After slowly coaxing it’s five chamber cylinder open, I fumbled a bit in loading each powerful, long, round, heavy cartridge into it’s own snug receptacle. I was now ready to fire. I raised the pistol as if it was the hand of God’s wrath and gently caressed the trigger, applying pressure until, in a glorious round of thunder, my 440 gr. wadcutter bullet burst from the weapon’s 15 inch long smooth hardened steel barrel. All of my synapses fired simultaneously. Endorphins coursed through my brain. Up became down. My legs deflated and I fell to the ground. My little soldier pumped my essence involuntarily as I shouted out the Lords name.

“Is there a new meme about a US civil war?”

No, it’s just the same old culture-war meme that’s been floating around America’s intellectual Right these past twenty years.