Guns and Violence by Jacob G. Hornberger!
(2019-11-26 at 17:20:22 )

Guns and Violence by Jacob G. Hornberger

The gun-control crowd continues to believe that violence in the United States of America is due to the fact that so many people own guns. If guns could just be made to disappear, the argument goes, the violence in United States of American society would finally disappear.

What about Switzerland?

In that country, most everyone owns guns and keeps them in their homes. The Swiss people are among the best-armed people in the world.

Interestingly enough, no one, including the United States government, ever jacks with the Swiss by invading or regime-changing Switzerland.

Switzerland also never has any problems with tyrannical regimes rising to power within the country.

Switzerland also has no chronic terrorism problem, like the United States does, and therefore has no need to wage a "war on terrorism."

So, given that there is not a large amount of violence in Switzerland, notwithstanding widespread gun ownership, there has to be something other than widespread gun ownership here in the United States that is causing the violence

There is.

In fact, there are two things going on here that are not going on over there in Switzerland: the drug war and foreign interventionism.

Violence and the drug war

The drug war is a root cause of massive violence in the United States of America.

It has given rise to violent drug gangs, drug cartels, and drug lords, along with violent turf battles between them.

The situation is no different in principle than when alcohol was made illegal.

The drug war also gives rise to exorbitant black-market prices, which cause drug addicts to commit violent crimes, such as robberies and muggings, to get the money to pay such prices.

None of this would be occurring if drugs were legal.

The drug dealers would be pharmacies and reputable drug companies.

The drug gangs, drug cartels, and drug lords would be out of business overnight.

They can compete in illegal markets but they can not compete in legal markets.

If drugs were legalized, prices of drugs would plummet.

Drug addicts would no longer have to commit violent crimes to get the money to finance their habit because prices would be relatively low.

When do we ever see winos robbing people to get the money to buy a bottle of wine?

In fact, that is pretty much the approach toward drug addiction and drug abuse that Switzerland has taken.

Theirs is not the ideal libertarian system in which government plays no role in drug abuse at all, one in which drug abuse is left entirely in the hands of the private sector, but the Swiss have taken an overall approach of treating drug addiction and drug abuse as a rehabilitation problem rather than a criminal-justice problem.

So, why not simply legalize drugs rather than confiscate guns?

The drug-war crowd will not let that happen because so many people in the drug-war establishment are dependent - addicted, if you will - to the enormous money that comes with the drug war, not only in salaries but also in bribes and asset forfeiture.

Violence and foreign interventionism

The second difference between Switzerland and the United States is foreign interventionism.

Even since the end of the Cold War, when the United States government lost the Soviet Union as its official enemy, the United States national-security establishment has been killing massive numbers of foreigners in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Killing foreigners has become a permanent and perpetual part of United States of American life.

Not so with Switzerland.

During the entire time that the United States government has been killing hundreds of thousands of foreigners, the Swiss government has not killed any.

Driving the United States killing spree has been a mindset of total indifference to the value of human life in foreign countries.

That mindset has been reflected by the United States governments position to never keep track of the number of foreigners it is killing.

It just does not matter.

What matters is the value of United States of American life, not foreign life.

The assumption, of course, has always been that that decades-long killing spree, along with the mindset that drives it, would never adversely affect the United States of American people, so long as the number of United States casualties remained relatively low.

The United States of American mainstream media has played into this process by downplaying coverage of the hundreds of thousands of people who were being killed overseas.

What interventionists failed to account for, however, was the possibility of copycat murders here at home, committed by people who were off-kilter mentally.

Of course, we have seen people commit copycat murders when, say, private serial killers are killing people.

Why would the same thing not happen when the United States government is the killer?

Interventionists would point out that the killers here at home are killing United States of Americans rather than foreigners?

Yes, that is true, but it is entirely possible that a person whose mind is off-kilter is not going to draw the same distinction on the value of human life that United States officials and interventionists do.

It is entirely possible that the off-kilter United States of American copies the United States governments massive, permanent, and perpetual killing spree by placing no value on any life, American or foreigner.

I say this: Let us end the United States governments drug war and the United States governments killing sprees abroad, and then let us see what happens.

I say that violence in the United States of America would plummet, which would then eliminate the excuse for gun control.

Of course, maybe that is why the gun-control crowd opposes that two-pronged solution to the problem. It would eliminate their excuse for gun control.

Reprinted here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!