The End of Gun Control: 6.3 The Two Classifications of Citizenry
Implications on the production of security and justice from having net tax-payers versus net tax recipients, and how the Second Amendment is the correct vehicle to arrest criminal expropriation.
The political caste cannot be entrusted to police themselves. The dividing line is clear thanks to the analytical tools of causal-realist political-economy and a fact long recognized by enlightenment thinkers, such as Thomas Paine: Those that derive their living through taxation are categorically distinct from those that are net taxpayers. The taxpayers must always be organized, armed, and disciplined, and actively engaged in executing the laws in order to prevent deviations from the ‘fixed limits’ of the governmental operating charter.
Of course, the political caste would prefer armed bureaucrats that are loyal to them and willing to carry out upon the taxpayers whatever orders are issued. This is why enduring military establishments were considered anathema to enlightened republican theorists. The taxpayers hold the preponderance of the arms in a free society to keep tax consuming public officials humble, frugal, and compliant with the limits of their appointments.
The same fears associated with standing armies, that they will be tools at the disposal of political whims that ultimately harm the people, are equally applied to the abuse of the militia. That is, political malfeasance will ultimately unravel the militia system and, thereby, undermine the security of a free state.
An unraveling is exactly what happened in the United States beginning immediately upon constitutional ratification. Today, the militia of the several states are no more and We The People are divorced from executing the law, resulting in invasions of private and public property, as well as ongoing insurrections against constitutional order perpetrated by the political caste. The very existence of massive federal bureaucracies enforcing Codes of Federal Regulation, completely untethered to delegated authority, demonstrates a departure from the spirit of defense and tranquility the general government was contracted into existence to provide.
The greatest facilitator of these deplorable conditions is widespread apathy to the duties of citizenship. Chief among these duties is active participation in governmental affairs, especially at the local level. Guarding local sovereignty is essential to the function of the federation and is a key component to “bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power”, as Thomas Jefferson astutely observed.
Public apathy benefits the aspiring tyrants’ schemes. Active engagement is the antidote. Yet that engagement must be skillfully guided to fulfill legitimate governmental functions. This requires understanding, along with John Locke, that the sole purpose of government is to protect people and their property from invasion.
The purpose of government is to administer law, justice, and security from disputes arising between members of the political community as well as defend against encroachment by people from external polities. These functions describe the proper scope and sphere of governmental activities with all else being left to non-governmental, i.e. voluntary, actors.
A quick supplemental word, then, to clarify that governmental actors, agencies, and entities subcontracting to private individuals, firms, or organizations for purposes of extending political prerogatives violates the scope and sphere of legitimate governmental activity, and is, therefore, illegitimate and unlawful. A few examples:
- The US Central Intelligence Agency’s Operation Mockingbird to manipulate public opinion with planted news media,
- The US Department of Homeland Security’s program to curb speech on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, essentially establishing a Ministry of Truth to stomp out anything the political caste deems ‘misinformation’,
- The US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s hiring of Pen-Link to acquire social media data surveillance data and then collude with Facebook to suppress stories related to certain political figures.
- Legislation like the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that effectively compells electronic technology manufacturers to build intercept features into their products so that the political caste can more readily surveil private communications.
- The US Department of Justice’s Operation Chokepoint that pressured financial service providers to curtail commerce involving firearms, thereby infringing upon the right to keep and bear arms which is a necessary precondition to securing a free state.
While each of these signify corruption and abuse of position on the part of rogue officials, it is important to recognize that the average citizen mistakenly accepts the basic premises underlying these activities. To this one more case study highlights the problem. That is, contracted prisons.
Most people recognize the need to isolate anti-social actors from the rest of society. Jails hold offenders awaiting trial and prisons contain the convicted who are carrying out their sentences. For a variety of reasons, some jurisdictions contract with private firms to administer jails and prisons. While these appear to be legitimate aspects of criminal justice, the moral hazard involved amplifies due to political control of the system.
Contract jail and prison firms lobby politicians to impose harsher penalties and longer sentences so that their operations experience higher volume. Of course, they are not alone in this since the bureaucracies also influence policy, and for similar profit motives although of a different nature (private prisons get direct financial profits while bureaucracies acquire bigger budgets, staff, and decision-making authority).
The forgotten key in all this is to question what people are being locked up for. Forty-five percent of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons population in 2022 were being held for Drug Offenses, which under common law are not crimes at all and, therefore, do not justify funding jails or prisons.
This is why it is essential to get the legal theory correct before task organizing to enforce it. The entire political philosophy of a free state must recognize that law exists to protect people and their property rather than being perverted into an instrument of plunder, a kleptocratic vehicle by which “everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else”, as Frederick Bastiat surmised.
The law in a free society is simple, universal, and accessible to everyone: Do all you have agreed to do, do not encroach upon other people or their property. With this, social order revolves around clearly distinguishable property boundaries and voluntary contracts (which are agreements to exchange property).
The political caste, of course, presently derives their sustenance through invading and plundering other peoples’ property and, therefore, has an overwhelming incentive to undermine a ‘common’ law. This is another reason why We The People must be the ultimate arbiters of what laws get enforced and the militia system is the vehicle for putting ‘equality under the law’ into operation. It is the practical means for arresting the tendency of the political caste to arrogate privileges for themselves at the expense of everyone else.
It is also the only way to effectively put an end to gun control. All infringements upon the right to be secure in our papers, houses, and effects (all of which are forms of property, including “arms” which are a uniquely protected form of property via the Second Amendment) must be arrested.
Submitting to the slightest degree of property or contract encroachment is to surrender the principle completely. From there, it is only a matter of time for the law’s perversion to slide down the slippery slope into the instrument of plunder it is today.
While the law may be clear and simple under a private property legal order, there are myriad disinformation campaigns employed by the political caste to justify deviations from the principles of universal justice. Many liberty or ‘gun rights’ advocates fall prey to the hypnotism of propaganda and indoctrination. You can identify them when they say things like, “I support the Second Amendment, but…” or “liberty has limits, therefore government should…”.
The limits of liberty are defined by equality under universal standards of law and property, as well as contracts to exchange property, delineate the boundaries of order. Violating property borders, or the terms of a valid contract, makes identifying violators elementary.
Gun rights are unassailable because they are a necessary prerequisite to securing a free state. Of necessity, a free state cannot exist without a population that is organized, armed, and disciplined to execute the law, repel invasions, and suppress insurrections without reliance upon, or pending the permission of ‘public officials’ constituting the political caste.
As explained, the political caste has strong incentives to undermine the institutions of universal legal standards and self-government. Leaving political matters in the hands of those that make their living through taxation, regulation, fiat currency, or other instruments of state power is a sure recipe for tyranny. This minority subset of the population must be held with suspicion in the public eye, kept humbly constricted to the limits of their delegated duties, and chastened by an array of jealous guardians surrounding them.
Ideally, the people selected as public officials would emerge from the same institutions of self-government through which constitutional order is maintained. That is, the militia as the center of community engagement, the spaces in which neighbors address security and justice needs at the most local level, and select leaders to represent them in other strata of the federation.
From the local militia public officials emerge for limited durations and to them they shall inevitably return. Knowing that they must face their comrades in arms, public officials under such an arrangement would be incentivized to behave honorably and remain faithful to their oaths (i.e., act only within the bounds of the authorities delegated to them).
Of course, that is not the reality of the ‘wayless world’ in today’s degenerate age. Rather than accepting the civic responsibility to contribute to the ‘security of a free state’, the popular refrain is to question why ‘mere’ civilians ‘need’ weapons of war. This, of course, is an example of Sun Tzu’s Art of War principle, that all war is based on deception, a psychological operation undermining the institutional arrangements designed to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
The antidote to the propaganda campaign against ‘guns’ is not to argue over statistics, comparing homicide rates, or even discuss ‘self-defense’ case, but to fall back on first principles.
We The People are the government, not the politicians or bureaucrats. The whole body of the people, except for the few public officials, are the militia and, as such, are constitutionally responsible for executing the laws of the union, repelling invasions of property, and suppressing insurrections so as to maintain constitutional order.