They Want To Disarm You Because They Intend to Rule Badly

What Machiavelli Can Teach Us About Why Rulers Disarm Subjects

I’ve written a piece for the blog of Firearms Unknown, here is an excerpt:

“All this arises from the fact that this king disarmed his people and from the fact that he and the others mentioned above have preferred to enjoy the immediate benefit of being able to plunder their people and to avoid imaginary and unreal danger, rather than to accomplish things that would make them secure and their states happy in perpetuity.”
- Machiavelli [Discourses, II.30]

After the so-called January 6th “Insurrection”, which was more like a mild riot, the Democrats put a fence around the Capitol for several months. I kept saying at the time, “They have this fence up because they intend to govern so poorly that the public will regularly riot.” While the regular rioting has not happened, the abysmally poor and tyrannical governance certainly has. Being as the Democrats are basically pro-crime, no reasonable person should think their constant gun-grabbing attempts are any sort of earnest but misguided policy aimed at crime reduction. The truth is, they simply fear the public because they are wicked and incompetent. Any political faction with a basic belief in human liberty and some competence to govern should in fact want a population that is armed with “weapons of war,” as this brings more security to a “prince” or Republic than any standing army ever could. Though Niccolo Machiavelli has been greatly maligned for his hard-nosed realism and keen understanding of how power functions, he was actually a radical supporter of human liberty, and in his studies of the past and [his] present, explains why virtuous rulers benefit from an armed population, and why only the wicked would disarm you. He may have predated the Second Amendment, but he saw clearly that a militia was necessary for the security of a free state [though, somewhat ironically, the Florentine militia he personally organized lost to the Spanish, and his city lost its freedom.]

The current anti-gun talking point is that “Weapons of War” don’t belong on our streets. There are some reasonably fair arguments about the streets aspect of that, insofar as one would hope to live in a sufficiently well-ruled society that no one needs to be carrying around a high-powered weapon [whereas we actually live in a collapsing hellscape where you can only rely on yourself for protection.] However, the government should definitely want you to have “weapons of war” and to be trained in their use, that is, if they were not incompetent and nefarious, which they definitely are. The problem, beyond generally being tyrannical control freaks, is that few men, especially those in positions of power, have any meaningful faith in the benefits of human freedom, despite that liberty actually works remarkably well, if the rulers have any plans besides looting the treasury [which ours don’t.]

See the rest here: They Want To Disarm You Because They Intend to Rule You Badly

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