transparency

Jean-François replies:

A simple handgun, not a very complicated thing, no need for “gun handling and gun safety classes”, equalize a 92 lbs woman with a 250 men.

Furthermore, training does not need litteracy. Send UN arms trainers and give one 1911 .45ACP to every woman. Train weapon’s instructors (the few who are litterate) who will train others. Handling a gun is nothing but common sense. If you can surmount the danger of remaining alive in the world, you can learn gun handling.

And who cares about a few accidents happening, in comparison with the tens of thousand of people getting killed ?

This is one aspect that infuriates me most: equating accidental death to murder death.

No no no, that’s not what I meant at all! But it’s my fault, I didn’t express myself clearly. What I meant was: you have never been to Africa. Civil law is a rare and precious thing there. “Rights” and “control” as written in statutes have little meaning.

My mother put it succinctly:

Vivian_Cummins [____@pigeon.carleton.ca] wrote:
I scanned the article quickly – and as you say – the authors understand nothing about Africa.

What struck me right away, about the article, was the underlying assumption that there was a rule of law. In truth, no one cares if you get a gun and ammunition – and no one will do anything to enforce laws, especially in a situation like Darfur has become. But it is true that access to weapons will be less available to minority or disadvantaged groups – hence the machetes, which have the advantage of not requiring bullets or maintenance

V

I of course, will go on and on…

With rare exceptions, these are not modern countries where each person has rights and obligations as a citizen. Rather, these are poor countries where people rely on networks of relatives, clan-members and ethnic allegiances to survive. The obligation to support a brother or sister (this could mean same-mother-same-father, or it could mean someone from the same general geographic area) in need is overriding. African students abroad regularly receive letters from home asking them for money to buy a sewing machine for a cousin, pay for a nephew’s school uniform and so on. And they pay up. They often find feeding themselves out of their constantly-chipped-away-at grant money to be a considerable trial.

In this context, if, say, a judge is faced with finding for a brother or a stranger, it will be extremely difficult for them to find against their brother regardless of the facts of the case. (And how do people get to be judges? They are appointed by people with obligations. There’s an excellent chance that the person who finangled their appointment to a judgeship was mostly interested in the payoff money, and only incidentally in justice.) What does civil law mean then?

Another problem is that government employees are not paid enough to live on. So they do the logical thing and implement fee-for-service. Traffic cops stop you, get into your car and instruct you to take them to the station. You then pay them to get out and let you continue. Alternatively they will stop your taxi, haul out the driver and start beating him up. You are expected to pay them to stop so that you can continue your journey. (If you think your driver deserves the beating you will take your time before intervening.) This happens especially just before major holidays when people need money and has little or nothing to do with the quality of driving. And no, don’t even think of complaining to their supervisor. This is what they are expected to do.

Instead, we find that people act autonomously to punish perpetrators. In the case of a car accident where a pedestrian is killed (it happens very often, expecially when country people unused to traffic — and carrying heavy loads on their heads that make it difficult for them to maneuver — ball their hands into fists, squeeze their eyes shut and charge out across the road) onlookers stop the car, haul out the driver, burn the car and beat the driver to death. If the pedestrian is not severely hurt, the drive may be beaten but not killed. Likewise, shoplifters in the market are pursued by mobs shouting “Thief! Thief!” and when caught are beaten to death. In the absence of civil law, people resort to this sort of thing to make sure that consequences stick.

At least, that’s how it happened in Nigeria in the late seventies, and it’s not unique. And no, it doesn’t prevent either traffic accidents or shoplifiting.

It’s also why Shari’a law is so popular. When there is widespread corruption and no civil law, people find it very hard to live together in large cosmopolitan communities. An advantage of Shari’a law is that it defines the community as Muslims. (Not citizens, but still it’s a step up from sister or brother.) So that there can be some hope of fairness. Judgements and consequences might not rely exclusively on who is related to who, or who can pay off the judge.

It doesn’t always work well, especially when co-opted by local thugs, but there aren’t always a lot of alternatives.

One thing I marvel at is that Jean-François the libertarian espouses an ideal world where people rely on their families and the government exists only to print money. In this world, rights and obligations are negotiated individually with each person you meet, on their merits. (To me, this means that there are no rights or obligations. It’s just a way of saying “take what you can get.”) In this world, you must be armed at all times for self-protection because there is no rule of law. There is no social safety net, so the poor, indigent and insane with no family able to care for them will beg on the streets exposing their sores and swollen-bellied infants hoping for pity from strangers.

This sounds very much like Darfur, or Liberia today (or medieval Europe). Nigeria was much better off, but one of the many lessons I learned there was that people who want to live a modern, cosmopolitan life, who seek education and experience and travel, who want to improve the lot of their fellow-citizens and the status of their country, who value peace and oppose war — these people think tribalism is an evil. And there are many, many of them. But without universally applied civil law, and without a social safety net that protects all citizens equally on the basis of citizenship regardless of ethnic or family affiliation, tribalism is a necessity of life.

Our modern policing and social safety nets were implemented by people who wanted something better than what we had. I think we need some respect for their experience.

I have referred to “Africa” in my discussion, though Africa consists of many countries and histories and each area is different. However, poverty and an agrarian tradition with the attendant marginal existence vulnerable to drought are common across the continent. As are the traditional attendant obligations to care for your sister and brother, and ambivalence regarding these obligations. Some countries are forging their own versions of modern nations in the midst of this — Uganda comes to mind. Other countries are not countries at all, but territories patrolled by thugs.

But the point I come back to is, you cannot apply a theoretical concept like “the right to bear arms” to a situation where rights do not exist. To have rights, you need citizenship. Darfur doesn’t have citizens or rights. And you can’t have “gun control” without civil law. Darfur doesn’t have civil law.

And I don’t mean Sudan doesn’t have constitutions or statutes; I mean Sudan (Darfur in particular) doesn’t have the social conditions for them to have any meaning.

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 20, 2004]

——Start of Forwarded Message ———
> From: jfa
> Subject: Avoiding Genocide The right to bear arms could
> have saved Sudan
>
> August 18, 2004, 8:24 a.m.
> Avoiding Genocide
> The right to bear arms could have saved Sudan.
> http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/kopel_gallant_eisen200408180824.asp
> By Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, & Joanne Eisen
>
——End of Forwarded Message ———

The National Review clearly understands nothing about Africa.

The relevant passages in the article Jean-François thinks will convince me that we all (everyone in the world, and in the particular case of me and Jean-François, Canadians) need to stockpile automatic weapons in order to prevent our governments from murdering us in our beds:

In Sudan, it is virtually impossible for an average citizen to lawfully acquire and possess the means for self-defense. According to gun-control statutes, a gun licensee must be over 30 years of age, must have a specified social and economic status, and must be examined physically by a doctor. Females have even more difficulty meeting these requirements because of social and occupational limitations.

When these restrictions are finally overcome, there are additional restrictions on the amount of ammunition one may possess, making it nearly impossible for a law-abiding gun owner to achieve proficiency with firearms. A handgun owner, for example, can only purchase 15 rounds of ammunition a year. The penalties for violation of Sudan’s firearms laws are severe, and can include capital punishment.

International gun-control groups complain that Sudan’s gun laws are not strict enough – but the real problem with the laws is that they can be enforced arbitrarily. The government can refuse gun permits to the victims in Darfur and execute anyone who obtains a self-defense gun. Meanwhile, the Arab militias can obtain guns with government approval, or the government can simply ignore illegal gun possession by Arabs.

*** *** ***

1) When I lived in Nigeria, the top reason for road accidents was illiteracy. The connection? Because an illiterate person cannot pass a driver’s test, they need to buy their licences from the officials under the table. From the official’s point of view, there is no point in trying to apply the law because few people read well enough to pass the test. Trying to evoke the concepts of “gun control” or “the right to bear arms” in this context misses the point.

2) Guns are very expensive. The preferred method of killing your neighbour in Africa is to hack them to death with a machete. (See Rwanda.) However, Sudan is generally heavily armed anyway.

3) Anyone who refers to “black” vs “arab” when discussing Sudan has never met anyone from a “black” or “arab” group. Or they have, and are deliberately misusing key words calculated to evoke emotional responses in americans.

From the Guardian, much better informed on international issues than the National Review:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1268647,00.html

The Darfur war erupted early last year, when two armed movements – Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement – began a rebellion against a government in Khartoum that had neglected their region.

In response, the government mobilised, armed and directed a militia, known as Janjaweed (‘rabble’ or ‘outlaws’ in local dialect), using scorched earth, massacre and starvation as cheap counter-insurgency weapons. The UN has described Darfur as ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’. On Friday, the US Congress described it as ‘genocide’. The British government is considering sending in 5,000 troops.

Characterising the Darfur war as ‘Arabs’ versus ‘Africans’ obscures the reality. Darfur’s Arabs are black, indigenous, African and Muslim – just like Darfur’s non-Arabs, who hail from the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and a dozen smaller tribes.

*** *** ***

As you can see from my sharing of Jean-François’ post, I value diversity. But I wonder sometimes. From a review of “The Wisdom of Crowds” http://www.powells.com/review/2004_06_24 :

“Diversity is usually good, above all because it allows groups to acquire more information. But what is needed is not diversity as such, but diversity of the right kind. NASA’s judgment would not have been improved if the relevant officials had included members of the Flat Earth Society, or people who believed that aliens are among us or that space flight is simply impossible.”

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 19, 2004]