If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them

Gun crime in UK up over 89% in a decade

Guns are illegal in the UK, and yet gun violence is at an all time high.

Many would see this as a strong argument against what the left euphemistically calls "gun control." The left commonly makes the public argument that gun control equals crime control, relying on fear and ignorance to convince the gullible into adopting their anti-gun stance.

Evidence that gun control does not lead to a reduction in violent crime, but instead creates more of it, falls upon deaf ears when presented to leftists because their anti-gun agenda has nothing to do with crime prevention.

Leftists don't want to disarm criminals, they want to disarm their political opponents. They dream of imposing Marxist tyranny on everyone, and the empowerment of the individual that firearm ownership represents is a direct threat to that goal. They fear an armed society for the same reason that all criminals fear citizens with guns: they don't want to get shot.

Political power comes from the barrel of a gun. This is one of Mao's most famous quotes, but one that is most often misunderstood, or even disregarded because of the identity of its originator. What Mao was trying to say is that those who are most able and willing to use deadly force in the pursuit of an agenda will usually get their way, the very definition of political power.

The virtue of democracy and civil society is that disputes that would otherwise be resolved through the use of raw force are instead sorted out through peaceful means. But this is a very fragile arrangement that only works when all the would-be combatants buy into the idea. It also depends upon a mexican standoff when it comes to the direct use of force. Groups that would otherwise be at each other's throats are restrained from doing so by rational self interest in preserving their own skin. This standoff is only possible when all parties have the power to defend themselves and their interests through deadly force. Take that ability away from some, and those who have retained their raw power soon make a mockery of civil society.

The left is well aware of this, and in fact is counting on it. They hate democracy because it does not create the Marxist dystopia of their dreams. Instead it tends to result in free markets that reward each individual in direct proportion to their value to others. Once upon a time they bought into democracy because they believed that it was a possible path to Marxism. In truth democracy is a defense against Marxism and other forms of tyranny. As such, a healthy democracy will never lead to Marxism, only away from it. This becomes more and more obvious to the left as time goes by, and so their hatred of democracy grows.

Democracy itself depends upon the empowerment of the individual, and few things are more empowering than the ability to use deadly force in defense of one's liberty. A person empowered in this way can never be enslaved. The most you can do is kill them, and that only with great difficulty and at extreme risk. This is why the left is so rabidly in favor of gun control. It isn't about reducing crime, but about reducing the power of the people to resist the tyranny that the left dreams of imposing upon us all.