It was a long time ago so I probably butchered the description, but I thought it was profound.
Not at all. The idea is that the state has a mandate from its citizens to exercise violence (within due limits) to enforce the decisions of the citizens. It's a monopoly because citizens don't have the right to use violence against each other, and even if they do the state is guaranteed to be able to respond with enough force to make it stop.
> In effect, Americans have contractually given the state the essential powers of violence but still keep the means to take that power back.
This justification to arms ownership always strikes me as delusional. Whatever the amount of weapons in circulation there is absolutely no way American citizens could fight their own police and their own army.
Do people have the right to self defense? Are police legally obligated to keep you safe?
>there is absolutely no way American citizens could fight their own police and their own army
Please tell me the last time America won a war against a militia or insurrection embedded in the civilian population.
Of course, but that's a last resort. You cannot ask someone who is in risk of imminent harm not to defend him/herself, although that should be the minimum use of force needed to fend off the danger (in the US as usual the law is less strict, in Europe you can shoot to defend your life but if it's proven that in that exact moment your life wasn't in danger you'll be charged).
> Please tell me the last time America won a war against a militia or insurrection embedded in the civilian population.
A clear case must be in 1865, when the Union won the civil war- at the cost of between 600k and 1 million dead. But there's of endless instances of the US police or national guard using force to repress protests, uprising and terrorism- as it is normal. It's hard to say whether these movements could have been more widespread if they hadn't been repressed through intelligence and use of force.
But can you point out an example of when a militia or an insurrection won against the US police or national guard?
Afghanistan, 2016.
Why would I think that?
I'm saying that from the violence monopoly everything else is upheld by a first principle approach. If the state is overthrown the violence monopoly is either upheld by a new group, or you have no governing state.
So criminals actually don’t have easy access to guns in these countries, and post terrorism our secret police forces and Europol tracks guns rather well, typically leading to arrests before anyone get to use their guns.
In Switzerland, it's very easy[0] to acquire a weapons, the requirements are:
- you must be at least 18 years old,
- you must not be subject to a deputyship or a supervision order,
- you must not give any cause to assume that you could harm yourself or anyone else with the weapon,
- you must not have a criminal record for violent or dangerous offences or repeated felonies or misdemeanours.
Middle of Nowheretown USA (and Canada for that matter) tends to have astronomically high gun ownership rates and astronomically low "gun crime" or any violent crime other than domestic violence and people who are known to each other engaging in fisticuffs over preexisting disputes. I don't think it's the mandatory class you need to pretend not to sleep though and bureaucratic red tape that's keeping people from shooting each other. It's the lack of a society and economy (victim supply) capable of sustaining a "large enough to show up in the statistics" number of career violent criminals that keeps violent crime and therefore gun crime low in both places.
The crazy high crime, murder and incarceration rates in USA aren't caused by population size. They are caused by inequalities inherent in American system.
If a whole class of your society can't hope for their kids to get a white collar job, and have to fear losing their house if they ever get seriously ill - that's not a stable basis for a peaceful society.
I really hate how I find myself having to go to greater and greater lengths to disclaim my words around here to not have them twisted or stretched to imply something.
US murder and incarceration rates are more or less solely caused by the war on drugs. Once you remove people who are involved in the manufacture, transportation and sale of illicit substances from the crime stats the place looks a lot like the better parts of western Europe.
Yes, wealth equality, social mobility and healthcare have a hell of a lot of room for improvement but they are not the driver of violence in the US. Forcing a multi-billion dollar industry to exist outside the law is what is driving violence.
> US murder and incarceration rates are more or less solely caused by the war on drugs
That's what you would expect if drug trade is the most profitable crime, no matter if drugs are the reason these people went into crime in the first place. If you can't afford your expected lifestyle within the system you go outside the system. Once there you choose the crime with the highest profit per risk factor.
There's plenty of countries that penalize drug ownership that have order of magnitude less crime than USA.
It's not that surprising IMO for a country where there are so many guns for the police to encounter more hostile situations that require utilizing their gun for theirs and others protection.
Guns are a weapon that quickly escalates any situation to life or death.