The Objectivist Position on Gun Control
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The Objectivist position on gun rights and gun control is a subject that is strangely quiet. Rand herself said virtually nothing on the issue. Very few of the prominent Objectivists that have followed her have ventured to add much either.
I find this to be a puzzling state of affairs. I personally know many Objectivists are gun owners, and think the issue is important. Indeed most people opposed to tyrannical governments, regardless of their philosophy, view gun ownership as an important right.
Objectivism speaks at great length on the fact that man should "hold his own life as the ultimate value" -The Virtue of Selfishness
According to Objectivism, a value is something that you act to gain or keep. It's not hard to imagine a situation where you would need a gun in order to keep your own life, your own ultimate value. As I previously mentioned, very little detail has been cast on the specifics.
Let's start by seeing exactly what Rand did say. Many of these quotations are pulled from an essay by Richard Lawrence, and I'd like to thank him for doing a lot of the legwork.
In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden carries a gun to protect himself. "He carried a gun in his pocket, as advised by the policemen of the radio car that patrolled the roads; they had warned him that no road was safe after dark, these days." pg 572
Presumably, this means that Rand thought handgun ownership (rifles and shotguns clearly won't fit in your pocket) should be legal. It's unclear if carrying it depends on police permission though. Should Hank need a CCW license? She doesn't say. The climate in Atlas Shrugged at the time is hardly normal either. We can't infer from this passage if she thinks the practice should be legal at all in times of peace.
Her only reference to the right to bear arms is found on page 306 of Letters of Ayn Rand in a letter to John T. Flynn. "A man has a constitutional right to bear arms."
This gives us some to work with but not much. Firstly, this is in a personal letter, so it is hardly a definitive statement of her philosophical position. Secondly, she says man has a "constitutional" right to bear arms. Is it significant that she didn't simply say "man has a right to bear arms"? Is this strictly an optional legal artifice? When did she ever qualify other rights as being constitutional?
Further the question yields no illumination on what she thinks arms should include. The founders who wrote the constitution clearly intended every type of arm up to and including the most powerful warships of the day. Otherwise the "Letters of Marque" provision in the constitution is meaningless. However, one passing remark which isn't expanded upon, in a personal letter, is hardly a basis to say that Rand agreed with the founders in every aspect.
Rand made frequent mention of guns as a synonym of force. She added that government should have "a monopoly on the legal use of physical force". She also said, "A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control" in The Virtue of Selfishness.
These two quotes could support a limitation on gun rights without much stretching. Again, it's not a very explicit position. The first quote could be interpreted to mean that self defense should be illegal. I don't think it's consistent with her other statements, but I can see the argument.
The second quote is even murkier. The phrase "under objective control" could mean all sorts of things. Perhaps it would include things like concealed carry only being permissible when the police advise you to. Perhaps it means that the government can decide what types of arms are permissible. Perhaps it only means that vigilante justice should be outlawed.
In 1971 on the subject of gun control, she said, "I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it's not of primary importance."
In 1973 she said,
"Handguns are instruments for killing people -- they are not carried for hunting animals -- and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don't know how the issue is to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim."
This has several problems. Firstly, she has repeatedly admitted to ignorance on the issue, so nothing she says can really be "The Objectivist Position." She seems to buy into the "sporting purposes" nonsense that the second amendment is about hunting ducks, and not about protecting your life from criminals. She gets her facts wrong about handguns, they are in fact carried for hunting purposes. I also don't see why it appears to difficult to distinguish between self-defense and indiscriminate murder.
Her most clear cut answer to the question comes from an interview with Raymond Newman.
Newman: Do you favor any form of gun control laws?
Rand: I have given it no thought at all and, off-hand, I would say, no, the government shouldn't control guns except in very marginal forms.
So, Rand herself leaves us with a very confused perspective. Her most clear cut position was admittedly something she had given no thought to. The definition of marginal also tremendously impacts the position. Sarah Brady and I have very different definitions of what the margins are on the subject. It's clearly either a subject which she thought was patently obvious given the rest of her philosophy, or that she just didn't consider the question important.
Now, let's move on to other Objectivist philosophers and writers to see what they have said on the subject.
In the November 1980 issue of The Intellectual Activist, Peter Schwartz said,
"People have the right of self-defense and, therefore, the right to own guns. And the less adequate is the state's police protection, the more crucial that right becomes. (This does not, of course, mean that anyone ought to be permitted to carry any weapons he wishes. The government should certainly intervene when there is evidence that there exists a threat to innocent people -- for example, when someone carries a howitzer down the street, or when a minor or a convicted violent felon tries to buy a gun. But a gun in the hands of a normal adult does not in itself constitute a threat, and the government has no right to step in.)"
That's certainly more explicit than anything Rand said. There is an explicit right to personal self-defense. He thinks that we should prevent children and felons (remember that felon in an Objectivist framework only refers to violent criminals), and that normal adults should be allowed to own guns.
However, he throws in the phrase "carry any weapon he wishes" which muddies the waters up considerably. Does this mean "normal adults" can own any weapon they want, but not carry them? Or does this mean the government should limit the types of weapons you can own as well? He also says permitted to carry. Does that mean an Objectivist government would license concealed carry of weapons? It's not clear.
He also says that carrying a howitzer down the street is evidence of a "threat to innocent people". Does that mean howitzer can be owned but not transported? How else are you supposed to take them to the range? Before you laugh at the concept, you should know that in our country today, private citizens legally own and shoot artillery pieces and tanks. When was the last time this resulted in harm to anyone? Whose rights are violated by such a hobby even if you think it is weird?
Leonard Peikoff on the 20th edition of his podcast on July 7 2008 has this to say.
First of all not all guns are ok. Some are demonstrably beyond any reasonable domestic use. Such as the need of personal defense or recreational hunting or whatever. What is that heavy machine gun....Uzi whatever...you couldn't say well I'm concerned to defend myself against intruders or there's a moose down the street. So, if your neighbors go to the police or the government, and say, "He's got such an arsenal, do something about it!" They are absolutely justified because the evidence is that what is going to come forth is aggression, not self defense.
A private army is slightly different. Because there is a possible legitimate reason in regards to personal security. Depending on on how extensive your holdings that have to be protected, and how extensive your enemies. So, within reasonable bounds, I put that in a different category.
I find this position baffling frankly. I don't at all see what objective facts make an Uzi unsuitable for home defense. Many of them are presently legally owned by private citizens, and no havoc results. In fact the ATF says there are about 400,000 registered machine guns in the united states. Figures vary, but consistently agree that between 125,000-200,000 of them are in private non-police hands.
Since 1934 when machine gun registration become mandatory, only 2 crimes are known to have been committed with a legally registered machine gun. One of them was a policeman too. That's a stellar track record by anyone's metrics. Given their utility (when soldiers and police have to defend themselves, they overwhelmingly choose machine guns), their recreational possibilities, and near total lack of ever being used in crime, I have real trouble seeing an argument made against them.
This is further muddied by Peikoff's position that private armies should be legal. Apparently, it should be legal for rich people to hire private guards to pull the trigger for them, but having a single machine gun that fires until you release the trigger is right out of the question. 10 coordinated and trained people with semi-automatic rifles can cause vastly more havoc than a single man with a pistol that shoots 10 shots with a single pull of the trigger. Considering the high standard of Dr. Peikoff's work, I think we have to treat these remarks as an off the cuff response that doesn't fully represent his thoughts.
None of these views really touch on the essential framework in my mind. Rand didn't even attempt to outline which types of arms should be lawful. Schwartz came closest, but left a lot of details unfilled. Peikoff put together a confused piece that cannot be "The Official Position"--it is contradictory, and gets the facts wrong to boot.
From an Objectivist point of view the only thing which may be legally prohibited is the initiation of force or fraud. Since we can safely dismiss fraud for this discussion, we are only left with the initiation of force. Are there inherent rights violations involved in the mere possession of a specific thing regardless of context?
It's not enough to claim that something scares you and therefore it should be banned. It's not enough to say no "reasonable domestic use" therefore it should be banned.
Objectivists wouldn't apply that rubric to any other category of item. There's no "reasonable domestic use" for a luxury submarine, but that doesn't mean they should be banned. Paleo dieters will say that there's no "reasonable domestic use" for gluten, but that isn't justification to outlaw wheat.
No, the only thing that an Objectivist government can prohibit is the initiation of force. Using that framework, let's work our way upwards.
Traditional rifles, pistols, and shotguns are clearly allowed under such a rubric. Having a shotgun in the closet clearly doesn't violate anyone's rights. They just sit there.
Having one of those guns in your car clearly doesn't violate anyone's rights either. No one is harmed by such an activity. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the presence of lawfully owned arms deters crime, but those sorts of statistics don't effect the legal outlook.
In an Objectivist country, you punish specific people who cause specific harm (or explicitly threaten such harm) against others. You cannot simply have blanket prohibitions of inanimate objects just because they have the potential to be misused. Otherwise you could claim that medicine and cars could be outright prohibited.
Concealed carry (obviously this only applies to pistols) isn't a violation of rights either. Putting a gun in my pocket doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't represent a threat to anyone except for criminals who initiate force against me. A follow up corollary to this is that the government cannot demand licenses or registration to carry concealed. Lack of filling out government paperwork to get permission to exercise the right of self-defense is not a violation of rights.
Undoubtedly, that sounds really scary to some people. It shouldn't. Did you know that three states (Alaska, Vermont, and Arizona) already have laws like that on the books? Where is the blood in the streets? Let's not let emotions get in the way of the facts and principles here.
Now, let's move onto scarier things like "assault weapons." This is an essentially meaningless term invented by gun control advocates. In essence the assault weapons ban, for 10 years, prohibited guns that looked like military arms. Crucially an "assault weapon" is not a machine gun. It's a semi-auto gun, which functions identically to common-place hunting rifles, that looks like a military weapon. For instance the civilian AR-15 is a popular rifle which is externally similar to the military M16. However, there are internal differences which restrict the AR-15 to one shot per pull of the trigger. This means that the "assault weapons ban" was an attack on cosmetics. A gun which looks scary clearly doesn't violate anyone's rights while it sits in a safe, or in a car, or at a gun range, or on a hike, or just walking down the street.
I know, the idea of people openly carrying guns is scary. Schwartz references "carrying a howitzer down the street" as something that should be prohibited. However, did you know that open carry of handguns is already legal in nearly all states?
Some of those red states already permit people to openly carry rifles, even scary looking ones. Texas let's you do exactly that. Of course the logic behind letting people throw loaded rifles over their shoulders with no permit, but never letting them tuck in a shirt while they have a pistol on their belt, regardless of permits, is pretty bizarre.
In any case, before we let our emotions run away, lets refer back to facts and principles. This is an activity which is already legal in nearly every state. Where is the blood in the streets? Where are the mass shoot-outs? Whose rights are being violated by such a permissive, dare I say free, state of affairs? Are you really advocating a position on guns more restrictive than President Obama?
Applying the same logic, we can conclude that machine guns,sound suppressors, RPGs, artillery pieces, and tanks could be lawfully owned in an Objectivist society. All of those items are safely owned today in America. Mere safety of course is not the proper framework. Utility isn't either. In a free society, men are given the freedom to own all sorts of eccentric and impractical things just because they want to. The question we have to ask is are anyone's rights being violated if I shoot a machine gun at the range? Is it an initiation of force if I drive a tank around a friend's ranch? Clearly not as long as I have his permission.
Now, if a man makes threats against his fellow man, that's different. However, such an initiation of force should be illegal whether you own a pointy stick, or a tank.
Comments
You either support an individual's right to use a gun to defend himself, or you do not.
Stop ducking the issue, O's!
Curing your ignorance of weaponry, and curbing your irrational, collectivist-generated/perpetuated fear of guns would be a good place to start.
Good work, Scott!
And if you don't support an individual's right to protect his life with the most efficient means possible, how can you claim to support his right to life at all?
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