Gun Control As Regulatory Capture

Obama ‘best gun salesman’ on Earth: Stock picker

We’ve seen this logic invoked before when Obama has talked about gun control, and as a result, gun sales have risen and the share price of gun maker stocks have gone up.  Something about it has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I didn’t really put it all together until today.

The core premise is that when Obama threatens gun control, it causes people to hurriedly buy guns out of fear that, in the near future, they might have difficulty buying said guns.  Therefore, sales spike, and since sales are up, shares in the companies who make the guns go up.  But there is a fundamental problem in this analysis – the increased sales are not additional sales.  No new demand is created.  These are people who planned, at some point, on buying guns anyway – they just have to do it sooner rather than later.

In economics, this is known as “demand shifting.”  The most famous example of government policy leading to demand shifting is probably the much lauded “cash for clunkers” program, which it turned out didn’t really help the economy in the long-term at all.  It didn’t cause people who weren’t going to buy cars at all to buy them – rather it just caused people who were going to buy a car anyway to do so sooner than they otherwise would have.  So a particular company, let’s say Ford, sells more cars than they would have today, but it comes at the cost of selling fewer cars than they otherwise would have in some future period.

But let’s leave cars behind and return to gun stocks.  I don’t want to get too into the weeds of your intro college finance course, but let’s review some of the basic concepts involved here.  A stock is essentially a certificate that entitles you to a share of a company’s future profits.  The price of a stock is, essentially, an estimate of what a company’s future profits will be, divided by the total amount of shares that exist.

If all that’s going on here is demand shifting, it doesn’t make any sense that stock prices for gun companies would rise by a significant amount.  While it’s true that “money today” is better than “money in the future,” interest rates are near zero and time preference doesn’t go nearly far enough to explain why the stocks would rise by so much.  Wall Street analysts are very smart people who research stocks in detail and forecast for the long-term.  So what’s going on here?

My theory is that Wall Street analysts are approaching this situation with the theory that any new gun control regulations will benefit the large gun companies.  This runs contrary to the typical news media coverage of government regulation which stipulates that big business hates regulation and favors small government.

This is completely untrue.  Most regulation of industry is lobbied for by the biggest companies in a particular industry.  Typically, representatives of the largest companies serve on the regulatory commissions and often literally write the regulations in question.  Generally speaking, big companies like regulation because they will control it, and they are so large that it will be easy for them to comply with it.  But smaller competitors (and hypothetical future competitors that do not yet exist) will not have such direct involvement in defining the regulations, and the burden that regulations represent will be much more difficult for them to overcome.

This phenomenon is known as “regulatory capture” and is the process by which large companies use the government to help them eliminate competition and make higher profits than they otherwise would have.

My guess is that this is exactly what Wall Street expects to happen regarding gun control regulations.  Large players like Smith & Wesson and Ruger will be able to influence gun regulations and will be able to easily adapt to them.  But smaller companies will not, and the increased burden of regulation will make the industry less attractive to entrepreneurs, thus discouraging new entrants from competing.

So beware the media narrative that Obama and the big gun companies are bitter enemies, and don’t buy into the incredibly short-sighted analysis that short-term demand shifts leading to sales spikes are influencing stock prices in a major way.  Something else is going on here, and it’s the same story we’ve seen again and again throughout history.  The government is embarking on a massive scheme that will reduce competition and benefit a few large companies at the expense of everyone else.  Rather than heroically resisting the encroaching tyranny of the federal government, the gun companies are hoping to wield government force as a weapon against their competitors.  If you think they will succeed, these stocks are probably a good buy.  Otherwise, it’s a massive overreaction that will surely spell disaster for investors.



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Hillary is a Bigger Islamophobe Than Trump


Views Muslims as mindless animals who do not have agency

No evidence for Hillary Clinton’s claim that ISIS is using videos of Donald Trump as recruiting tool | PolitiFact

How very odd that, for the second time in the public arena, Hillary Clinton has immediately jumped to the conclusion that Muslims will react to criticism with acts of violence and terrorism.  Note that this is the same reasoning she used when initially (and incorrectly) blaming the Benghazi attacks on a Youtube video – that criticizing or marginalizing Islam in any way will necessarily result in increased recruitment of Muslims into terrorist organizations, and will incite said organizations to carry out more attacks.  It’s worth noting that Hillary was not alone in following this line of reasoning – several other GOP candidates echoed similar thoughts at the most recent debate, suggesting that “security experts” have claimed that Trump’s proposals “make America less safe” (but unlike Hillary, they left it at that and refused to outline just how or why it would do so).

Yet somehow, despite using this determinist sort of logic, she is portrayed as the enlightened one, while Trump is an evil racist for suggesting that Muslim immigration be temporarily halted.  But let’s outline the logic of Trump’s plan as opposed to Hillary’s.  As far as I can tell, Trump’s logic is as follows:

  1. The majority of terrorist attacks are carried out by Muslims.
  2. Currently, we do not have the ability to adequately determine which Muslims are likely to become terrorists and which are not.
  3. Until that ability is acquired, prudence dictates we should not allow any additional Muslims into the country.

Now you can dispute any one of those three points if you’d like, but IF each of those three points are correct, then Trump’s logic is sound and is not racist in any way.  He is fully acknowledging that many Muslims are not terrorists, and puts the blame mainly on inadequate screening processes.

On the other hand, Hillary’s logic seems to be missing a step:

  1. Trump has made statements that are offensive to Muslims.
  2. ????
  3. Muslims are now more likely to join violent organizations, and those within violent organizations are more likely to carry out attacks.

But what could it be that fits in there to #2?  Why, nothing more than a bigoted assumption that some relevant percentage of Muslims react to criticism with violence.  While that might seem like a reasonable assumption (depending on how you define the “relevant percentage”), it seems odd that Hillary (and the rest of the left) do not apply this same standard to any other group they dislike and/or consider dangerous.

Let’s leave Hillary behind for a moment and go back to Point #1 in Trump’s logic – that the majority of attacks are committed by Muslims.  There happen to be many on the left who dispute this point.  In fact, here is one of many articles on Salon suggesting that the “real” danger in America is white, male, extremists.  The author states “This is why we must begin to understand whiteness as a kind of violent fundamentalism…”  This sort of opinion is not rare among the far left – it is repeated on a daily basis at Salon and other such websites.

And yet, nobody, on the left or on the right, criticizes Salon for saying things like this.  Somehow, the logic that Hillary invoked above in regards to Muslims – that saying unkind things about them will necessarily lead to more violence, is never applied to the supposedly more dangerous “right-wing extremists.”  I challenge any reader to link me to a single piece of writing that strongly criticizes anyone who has insulted white males under the logic that it will cause additional violence from said white males.  It may be out there somewhere, but I’ve never seen it.  As dangerous as Salon says right-wingers are, they don’t seem to actually believe it.  Where is the fear that articles on Salon about “white fundamentalism” will be used as recruitment material for the KKK?  Where are the security experts insisting that criticism of pro-lifers “makes us less safe?”

Salon and the radical left can rant and rave all they want about how Muslims are kind and peace-loving and how social conservatives are the real threat – but their behavior indicates a completely opposite position.  To conservative white males, they admit a certain degree of agency, rationality, and moral culpability.  They don’t seem to believe that white males will inevitably respond to criticism with increased violence (or if they do believe it, they don’t believe the effect is significant enough to dissuade them from engaging in such criticism).  But this agency, rationality, and culpability is not granted to brown people living in the middle east.  They are treated as mindless drones, who react to certain stimuli with a degree of inevitability – and as such, it is our responsibility to not provide the stimuli, rather than to expect them to behave like civilized and enlightened individuals.

Which gets me back to my headline.  In regards to how they treat Muslims, Hillary is a bigger racist than Trump and it’s not even close.  Trump’s plan deals with an operational problem – we can’t tell the terrorists from the non-terrorists, therefore it’s better to error on the side of caution.  You can dispute this if you’d like, but the logic itself is not inherently racist.  Hillary, the left, and the neo-cons, present the problem as one of religious and/or racial determinism – echoing the sentiments of 19th century slaveowners.  They insist that given X, Muslims will do Y, but fail to apply that same reasoning to any other group, even groups they seemingly dislike just as much (if not more).  This is textbook bigotry, and should be called out as such.

I do not fear that Trump’s statements or policy proposals will make us less safe – because I view Muslims the same way I view everyone else:  as rational, intelligent, moral human beings who choose to be violent or non-violent for a wide variety of factors.  I believe that acts of violence and terror should be denounced – regardless of where they exist or what color people are committing them.  I apply this standard equally to radical jihadists, neo-nazis, and black lives matter protestors.  Can Hillary Clinton and Salon say the same?

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Six Reasons Jeb Bush Should Be Trump’s Running Mate

My favorite moment of the last GOP debate was when Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, after some good-natured ribbing back and forth, engaged in a low-five near the podium.  It was a really humanizing moment for both of them and got me to thinking “What if these two actually teamed up?”  At first I dismissed it as crazy, but after thinking about it for a while, I legitimately think that selecting Jeb Bush as his running mate is one of the smartest things Trump could possibly do.  Here are about 6.5 reasons why.

  1. It emphasizes the “team builder” nature of his business career.

There have already been several occasions where Trump has been challenged on his individual lack of knowledge about specific topics, or specific steps he will take to implement his policies.  His response is usually something like, “Look, I’m going to get a team full of really smart people, and they’ll be the best team and the smartest people, and we’re going to figure it out together.”  While the media typically spins this as a cop-out and a non-answer, anyone who has spent any time in business can tell you it’s actually a pretty accurate representation of how things generally work.  The CEO of a company isn’t expected to know every single detail of every single department.  His main task is that of team builder.  He isn’t Iron Man, he’s Nick Fury.  His main job is to put the right people in place and let them do their thing.  As a (relatively) successful businessperson, Trump almost certainly has decades of experience doing this, and in the long run, this is probably a more useful skill to have than “has successfully memorized the names of every cabinet minister in Tajikistan.”

  1. It shows that he’s willing to “listen to the experts.”

This is somewhat related to #1, but with a slightly different spin.  Trump also regularly faces criticism that his views differ from “expert consensus.”  This typically rears its face in scientific (vaccine-related arguments) or economic (immigration arguments) issues.  But Trump has also conceded that he is open to changing his mind if new evidence is introduced.  He could help hammer this point home by appointing as his top advisor someone who disagrees with him on many issues, but is generally accepted as an expert politician if nothing else.  Trump can easily spin this as “I’m an expert on making deals and negotiating, Jeb is an expert on the overall political environment, and together, we’ll be unstoppable!”

  1. It answers the “inexperienced” criticism.

Which leads us right into the “inexperienced” criticism.  This is probably the most obvious benefit, as it has been very typical in recent elections for tickets to include one person who casts themselves as the independent outsider, and the other person who casts themselves as the steady, experienced, political veteran.  This is exactly why Obama was willing to saddle himself with the idiotic serial-creepazoid that is Joe Biden.  The one thing Biden brought was the ability to say “I’ve been around politics for fucking ever,” which seemed to satisfy all the “EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST THING TO HAVE” people well enough.  Scott Adams (who was way early to the “Trump is going to win” bandwagon) has suggested that Trump should pick someone like Mark Cuban, but what good does that do?  Trump already has more than the necessary amount of outsider credentials and status.  He needs to balance that out with a boring party hack.  And they don’t get much boringer or hackier than Jeb Bush…

  1. It allows Trump to keep being Trump.

Which means that not only can Trump balance out his ticket with an experienced person, but he can also balance it out with a “nice guy.”  Traditionally, the candidate ends up playing the role of the civilized, calm, collected, intellectual while the VP plays the role of attack dog (think Obama/McCain and Biden/Palin).  But let’s be real – there’s no way Trump is ever going to be civilized and dignified.  Nor should he be, as that isn’t his strength.  Once Jeb is signed up, he can have a full-time job going around the country and “clarifying” (basically apologizing but without officially saying so) any “gaffes” Trump commits.  Trump could continue to wander the country saying really outlandish things, and Jeb can begin every one of his interviews with “Look, Donald is a really passionate and energetic guy who knows how to connect with the American people.  I think the issue that we’re really trying to get at here is… *insert 30 minutes of sleep-inducing policy analysis that people who work for the Washington Post will find really interesting here*”

  1. It displays that he can be magnanimous in victory.

So far, there have been many occasions where Trump has come across as a bully and an asshole.  This helps him a lot with certain people, but undoubtedly hurts him with others (is it sexist if I say this is probably mostly women?)  But Jeb has been his biggest rival thus far.  To end up offering something of an olive branch to someone who he was once viciously insulting shows that Trump isn’t really a mean guy – that it was only business.  It shows that he can work together with someone he disagrees with for the purpose of achieving a common goal.  This plays in VERY well with his entire businessman persona and presents him as someone who is brash, but can compromise when he needs to.

  1. It shows some loyalty to the GOP establishment.

Let’s be honest – the GOP still doesn’t like this guy and is desperately pouring all of their resources into Carly Fiorina in the hopes that she can do something, anything, to get him out of the picture.  While Trump has already signed the “GOP loyalty pledge” (a move that I don’t think helps him much at all), he probably still needs to do a little more to win over the GOP faithful, and I’m not just talking about the big donors and the other politicians here.  There are a decent amount of GOP voters out there who actually do listen to Sean Hannity every day and are fiercely loyal to the GOP itself, period, full stop.  Selecting one of “their” guys would be a nice bit of outreach that those people would probably appreciate, and would help “unite the party” such as it is…

Bonus.  It bolsters the “Bush legacy.”

OK, this isn’t so much a reason for why Trump should select Bush, but why Bush should accept.  Let’s think about the Bush family presidential legacy for a quick second.  Bush 1 was Reagan’s goofy, nerdy, sidekick who had one job and failed massively at it.  Bush 2 was seen as a bumbling idiot who was the straight man to Dick Cheney’s evil overlord pulling the strings behind the curtain.  But in comparison to Trump, Jeb would be seen as the genius.  He would be the smartest guy in the room.  Surely that would be a welcome change for the family image, would it not?

DISCLAIMER:  I don’t really care about politics that much at all, and I don’t plan on voting in the primaries or in the general.  I’m following this stuff for entertainment value only, and wrote this piece primarily because I think it’s a good idea that I haven’t really heard anyone else advocate just yet.


Confused Socialist Accidentally Makes Case For Lower Taxes

You gotta hand it to Bernie Sanders – despite using the same old economic fallacies that progressives have been spouting since the 19th century, his campaign is resonating with people – as evidenced by the fact that around half my family has “liked” his Facebook page and continues to share posts where he seems to make a legitimate point, but in the end, is completely and totally wrong.  Below is one such example.


This graph is an image that he shared, along with the following caption:

“There is something profoundly wrong when we have a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as we have the highest childhood poverty rate of any developed country on earth. This campaign is sending a message to the billionaire class: “you can’t have it all.” You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry.”

Now, he doesn’t say it directly, but the obvious logic he is invoking here is that tax breaks for “millionaires and billionaires” are contributing to child poverty.  Even if we assume the child poverty numbers are accurate (which I suspect is, itself, a dangerous assumption), there’s an obvious problem here though isn’t there?  The graph only provides half the data.  He’s making an allegation of a causal relationship between taxation of “the rich” and child poverty, but the data on taxation is mysteriously absent.

I’ve followed politics long enough to know what that means…  If the data helped support his point, he’d have provided it.  The reason he doesn’t is because it does not support his point whatsoever.  See the graph below, which I made myself using my amazing MBA skills in about 20 minutes.


This is a scatter plot of the child poverty rate on the horizontal axis (provided by Bernie) and the combined taxation rate of “the rich” in the countries that Bernie’s image references on the vertical axis.  The U.S. is that one all the way out there on the right.  The red line is an excel-generated trendline representing the correlation between poverty and taxation.

I obtained the “combined tax rate” by combining the three forms of taxation must likely to impact the rich (and most often cited as the ones that need to be raised according to socialists like Bernie), the corporate tax rate, the top marginal income tax rate, and the top marginal capital gains tax rate.  My source for the corporate and income tax rate was Wikipedia, my source for the capital gains tax rate was the tax foundation.


Here’s a table of the data.  As you can see, the U.S. has the third highest combined tax rate of the 16 countries that Bernie provided as points of reference.  If you observe the graph and the trendline, it would seem that there is absolutely zero correlation between high tax rates on “the rich” and child poverty.  If you look reeeeeally closely, the trend line is actually slightly upward sloping, suggesting that higher tax rates lead to more child poverty, not less.

If the point of Bernie’s Facebook post was to suggest that we can improve the lives of children by adopting the taxation policies of other developed nations – then I fully agree.  Massive tax cuts on the top marginal rates would do wonders to get us more “in line” with the rest of the developed world.  Perhaps we could look to emulate Switzerland, for example, whose child poverty rate is 14.7, less than half that of the U.S.  They also happen to have the lowest combined tax rate of all the countries listed.  Their combined tax rate of 0.31 is less than one third of the U.S. rate of 1.08.

Qualification:  Obviously my method of calculating the figure I am referring to as “combined tax rate” is somewhat arbitrary and crude.  Obviously there are other forms of taxation besides the three I selected that are used in varying degrees and methods around the world.  I would defend my selection by pointing out that the three forms I selected are also far and away the most likely forms of taxation to be “progressive” in the sense that the rich are taxed at higher rates than the poor.  While it’s true that Europe, for example, often has high sales or VAT taxes, please keep in mind that the notion of substituting a progressive income tax for a flat-rate national sales tax has, to this point in America, been exclusively the domain of the farthest right portions of the Republican party.  I cannot imagine Bernie Sanders advocating such a position.  As I said above, these three forms of taxation are the exact forms of taxation that left-wing politicians in America regularly advocate need to be raised.  Note that in his Facebook post, Bernie is complaining about taxes for “millionaires and billionaires” exclusively, and not about the total tax burden on the average citizen.


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Zimbabwe’s Greatest Villain

Meet Walter Palmer.  He is a dentist who (allegedly) illegally shot a lion in Zimbabwe.

Now meet Robert Mugabe.  He is a power-mad dictator who for the better part of four decades has used terror and intimidation to maintain his stranglehold on power in Zimbabwe.  He uses rape and murder to subdue his political enemies.  Virtually everyone around the world agrees that he has ordered multiple acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.  In one campaign alone he is credited with being responsible for over 20,000 (human) deaths.  There is essentially zero political freedom, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press in his country.  Speaking out against him will likely get you and your family tortured and killed by his secret police.  And here’s what he has done with the economy…

Paul Krugman fails to see the problem here

Remind me again which of these is the bad guy?  Which is the one that Piers Morgan is calling for the execution of?  Which is the one that all of your friends (well, all of mine at least) are vilifying on facebook day after day after day?

Do people really, legitimately, believe that poaching should be a capital offense?  Just for lions, or for all animals?  Just for rich, white, Americans?  Or for native Zimbabweans as well (although under Mugabe, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was already the case)?  My intent here isn’t to do a post on animal rights or anything like that – but rather to think about what happened here for a second and what poaching really is.

Poaching is the illegal killing of an animal – presumably when the person who kills an animal is not entitled to do so.  This implies that property rights in said animal exist.  The animal was owned by someone other than the person who killed it.  Sometimes, the animal may be the private property of an individual (a cow owned by a rancher), or, in the cases of endangered species or animals who reside on land where “hunting is illegal,” the animal would properly be considered to be owned by the state.  After all, if you pay a butcher to come slaughter your cows, he is not poaching – because you had property rights in the cows and authorized him to do so.  Similarly, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a government agent being arrested for “poaching” while engaged in the killing of an animal within the scope of his job duties (which happens, even for endangered species, if the animal is considered dangerous, unable to survive on its own, or for the purposes of thinning out the herd).  This is because the state claims property rights in the animal, and has authorized its agents to kill it, for whatever reason.

Therefore, to the extent that Palmer is guilty of poaching, it is because he, without permission, killed an animal owned by the state of Zimbabwe.  Well guess what… in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe is the state.  For all practical purposes, Palmer is guilty of the crime of vandalizing Mugabe’s personal property.  This is not dissimilar to accounts of Robin Hood being prosecuted by the local authorities for daring to kill “the king’s deer.”

In many cases, someone who vandalized the personal property of a genocidal dictator would be lauded as a hero, but Dr. Palmer has received no such recognition.  Nor have the tens of thousands of Robert Mugabe’s human victims, as well as the entire nation who continues to suffer daily under his tyrannical rule.  But for those who (for whatever bizarre reasons) value the lives of lions above the lives of actual people – it should be pointed out that the best way to protect lions would be to assign property rights in them to private individuals, who would thus be incentivized to properly protect them from poaching.  Assigning them collectively to the state puts their entire disposition in the hands of the state.  Maybe that seems like a good idea if you live in America and believe in the “we are the government” nonsense.  But it probably isn’t such a great idea if you live in Zimbabwe and “the law” is “whatever the crazy genocidal dictator decides it is.”

Look, I get that we’re all busy people and there’s a limit on the amount of outrage we can feel for the tyrannical monsters of the world at any given moment.  My point is not to say that because Mugabe is bad that means Palmer is okay, nor is it to diminish the notion of animal rights in a general sense.  I just think this issue would strongly benefit from some perspective of the relative harm done by certain individuals – as well as an economic understanding of the property rights that help determine what is, and what is not, a crime.

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Arming recruiters and reserve centers is almost as stupid as disarming them

Should military recruiting centers be armed? –

Full Disclosure:  I have a dog in this fight.  I worked at a reserve center that was essentially a public building with almost zero security for about four years.  To a certain extent, I was actually in charge of our “security.”  Because we were such a small command, this was a “collateral duty” meaning it was an extra thing I had to do in addition to my regular job, meaning it was paid very little attention – it was considered a minor annoyance that distracted me from what I was really there for.  My suspicion is that for the overwhelming majority of recruiting stations and reserve centers, security is managed as a collateral duty in this respect.

In the aftermath of the shootings in Chattanooga, we’re seeing increased calls for the “arming” of recruiting stations and reserve centers.  As usual, this is presented in the standard American “right versus left” debate format.  Conservatives think military personnel at these locations should be “armed,” liberals, presumably, don’t.  But, yet again, there’s a superior third option – that is going completely and totally ignored.

The appropriate response to a heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all regulation (such as, “no weapons allowed in federal buildings”) is not another heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all regulation (such as, “everyone in military stations must carry weapons.”)  Speaking as someone who used to work at such a place, I wouldn’t want to be issued and have to carry a gun all the time for my routine desk job.  It would really just be one extra hassle I’d have to go through.  One more piece of training and qualification I’d have to get on a yearly basis.  One more thing to remember to bring with me every morning.  It would be a distraction and an annoyance and wouldn’t really help me do my job at all.

Now at this point, you may be thinking, “Hey, who cares if you’re a huge sissy who doesn’t want to carry a gun?  Suck it up, buttercup!  You’re in the military!  You signed up for this!  Following dumb orders and carrying guns is part of your job!”  That’s all technically true, except for one small caveat…

As I mentioned above, this is being framed as an all or nothing sort of binary proposition.  Either recruiters are armed, or they’re not.  But there’s absolutely no reason why that must be the case.  There’s a perfectly viable (in fact, probably superior) alternative – the option that never occurs to anyone who operates under a statist mindset – the libertarian and voluntarist option:  carry a gun if you want, or don’t carry one if you don’t want to.

The proper response to this scenario is not to pass some new additional law or responsibility or requirement – it is simply to eliminate the last one that was passed forbidding military personnel from carrying weapons in these places.  Simply discard that, and place military personnel at these sites under the same laws and regulations that civilians in public places have to abide by.  Those who want to obtain a concealed carry permit and carry a weapon can do so, and those who don’t want to, can choose not to.  There is literally no flaw to this plan – other than that it diminishes government control and micromanagement over the military.

My plan – to put the military under the same rules as everyone else – comes with several key benefits.  Here are just a few:

  1. It would achieve the desired objective of increasing the security of these installations. As John Lott discusses in his book, “More Guns, Less Crime” concealed carry creates a deterrence effect.  Criminals (even violent and suicidal mass shooters) are less likely to target those who they believe may be armed.  It would seem to me that the military is probably over-representative of people who would choose to carry a concealed weapon, if given the opportunity.  It seems statistically likely that each command would have a few people who would choose to do so, and as Lott discusses in his book, the deterrence effect doesn’t just work for those who choose to carry – it works for everyone around them as well.
  2. Concealed carry can potentially be a better deterrent than armed guards. Posting an armed guard at the entrance of a facility where everyone else inside is disarmed is basically like having a guy standing around wearing a large sign that says “Shoot me first!”  They become sitting ducks, easy targets, and provide a false sense of security to everyone else.  The benefit of concealed carry is that you never know who it is that might fight back against you.  This element of surprise can become a major tactical advantage.
  3. This would create no additional burden on any military personnel. The option to concealed carry would be completely voluntary, and would be selected by people who would choose to go through the necessary training and purchasing of weapons on their own anyway.  It would not distract anyone from their primary duties or impose any additional training or administrative burden of any kind.
  4. You would not have to re-write or modify existing laws, rules of engagement, etc. This currently seems to be one of the primary objections to “arming” these locations.  The top military generals insist that because these sites are located in civilian areas, laws and rules of engagement would have to be re-written.  The article from CNN I link to above even has wonderful lines such as “the law does not permit the military to shoot civilians in the United States.”  But under my plan, none of this would be necessary.  Rules of engagement would not apply, because a potential active shooter scenario would not be considered a military engagement.  The military members who may choose to respond to such a scenario would be acting with the same rights and responsibilities to protect themselves and others as any ordinary civilian with a concealed weapon would.
  5. This would not put the public in any additional danger. Concealed carry holders, as a group, are some of the most law abiding members of society.  They are also typically gun enthusiasts who are very proficient in the operation of the weapon of their choice.  In basic training for the Navy, do you know how many times I fired a live weapon?  Once.  Your average civilian concealed carry holder is exceptionally more qualified to handle a weapon than I was.
  6. It would enhance community relations. The sight of armed soldiers walking around shopping malls (where many recruitment centers are located) is not a particularly pleasant one to imagine.  Armed guards standing outside the door could potentially deter many from walking in and engaging with the staff.  The vast majority of these sites are located in towns with virtually no military presence aside from these places, and community outreach is a big deal.  Under my plan, the local military recruiter would look just like everyone else at the mall, but would still be able to protect himself if necessary.
  7. It would improve the attitudes of military personnel. I’ve written before about how military culture can foster a sense of entitlement – as those in the military are indoctrinated into believing that they are somehow superior in every way to the common plebeians they protect.  Giving them special rules and exemptions from local law would only reinforce this belief.  It would provide an extra incentive for someone who just wants to carry a gun around to join the military – which are the exact sort of people who shouldn’t be joining the military in the first place.  In every possible situation we should look to try and place the military under the exact same rules and restrictions as the civilian population they supposedly protect.  This will promote increased understanding and empathy across two very different and disparate groups.
  8. It would encourage military personnel to advocate for more liberal gun laws. By requiring them to abide by the same rules as everyone else, military personnel wanting to defend themselves would be encouraged to join the advocacy for greater liberalization of concealed carry in their particular state.  Gun-grabbing state and local governments would face increased public scrutiny, as they would be seen not just as disarming the general public, but disarming the military as well.  Giving the military special exemptions would eliminate any incentive they might have to care about these issues, as an “I got mine, who cares about the public?” attitude would sink in.

But despite all of these advantages, I hear nobody advocating this laissez-faire approach.  We’re so programmed to automatically assume a top-down government enforcement method of one party or the other is the only acceptable solution to any possible problem.  And once again, this is completely and totally wrong.  The solution here is not to “arm” the troops, nor is it to “disarm” them.  It’s to simply treat them the same way that everyone else is treated – which will naturally lead to a situation where some of them are armed and some of them aren’t, according to their own voluntary preferences.

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You Pay Taxes, So That Means You Agree

Gunman tried to justify market raid to hostages, recording apparently shows –

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, it seemed that the typical battle-lines were being drawn.  Neocons were calling for increased surveillance and foreign meddling.  Self-righteous “moderates” were proclaiming their support for free speech (while simultaneously supporting laws that dramatically restrict it).  The left’s fellow travelers were insisting the real danger was not terrorism, but Islamophobia.  And Ron Paul pointed out that, like every other terror attack, this could largely be attributed to “blowback.”  Naturally, the neocons, the moderates, and the left could all get together to do what they all do best – loudly denounce Ron Paul and the principles of non-interventionism.

As a brief recap – the principle of the “blowback” theory is quite simple.  The simplest explanation is probably the best one.  We can listen to what terrorists say, and when they say, “We’re attacking you because you keep meddling in the affairs of our countries,” they’re probably telling the truth about that.  It is in direct conflict with the “they hate us for our freedom!” line that is parroted about by mainstream politicians (even in places like France, where the concept of “freedom” is laughable).  While it’s true that journalists who criticized Islam were targeted, the question remains:  Would terrorist cells be active in France in the first place if the west wasn’t out there engaging in military interventionism in Islamic countries?

Before you answer that – let’s look to one more example.  Charlie Hebdo wasn’t the only terrorist attack in France.  Two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, a gunman took hostages in a kosher market, ultimately killing four.  It’s easy to see the word “kosher” above and immediately assume this is simply an act of anti-Semitism.  Obviously this guy was just looking to kill Jews, and his attack has nothing to do with blowback or interventionism, right?  Wrong.

As CNN reports in the link above, the gunman made it quite clear that his primary objection is that the French military is harassing Muslim countries, and restricting the rights of Muslims domestically.  A phone was left off the hook, and captured audio of portions of his discussion with his hostages.  Of particular interest to this blog is the key line – “You pay taxes, so that means you agree.”  In that very instant, what seemed like a crazy terrorist slaughtering Jews because he’s racist suddenly took on the appearance of a common political debate that libertarians and statists have been having for decades.

The hostage responds as you would expect the average person to respond – by claiming that they pay their taxes for the roads and the schools, not for bombing children in Yemen.  But the gunman is having none of it.  He understands that all tax dollars go towards financing all government operations.  We don’t get to earmark our taxes to only go towards happy things everyone likes.  When you buy a membership to big government – you get the schools and the fiery death robots.  It’s a package deal with no a la carte pricing option.  The gunman’s position is quite clear on this – and it’s hard to argue that he’s wrong.  Paying taxes and supporting a government that engages in violence does make you somewhat responsible for that violence.

This isn’t to say that the gunman’s actions are morally justified.  I don’t support the use of force against individuals who simply finance violence and other bad behavior (as evidenced by the great “should it be legal to hire a hitman” debates of 2011).  But this particular attack should be far more terrifying to the average neocon, moderate, or liberal, than the Charlie Hebdo attack was.  As much as the media wants to emphasize that Islamic terrorists are “attacking free speech,” it’s pretty easy to avoid publicly mocking Muhammad (putting aside for the moment the issue of whether or not you should have to avoid it).  But if radical terrorists start targeting any and all taxpaying citizens for their complicit part in military aggression overseas, we’re looking at an entirely different ballgame.  The warnings of Ron Paul will be harder and harder to ignore.  And perhaps this will be a necessary condition for meaningful change.  Perhaps knowing that you could be held individually responsible for the actions of your country’s military will inspire people to more loudly and forcefully oppose military interventionism.  Normally, the aftermath of terrorist attacks consists of loud calls for us to surrender more and more freedom to the state.  Hopefully, the aftermath of this particular attack might be for us to consider the vile acts that government commits in our name and with our permission, and whether or not that’s something we ought to be supporting…
