Yesterday was May Day, which I celebrate by watching one of my favorite films: the 1967 Camelot, featuring Richard Harris as King Arthur and Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Guinevere. It recounts the story of Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere, their noble pursuit of a more just world through the Round Table, and its eventual demise through the machinations of Arthur’s bastard son Mordred and the tragic affair of Guinevere and Lancelot—Arthur’s most loyal knight and friend. I love everything there is about Arthurian mythology and legends, but this film in particular is one of my favorites, probably because it deals with a raw humanity, and the fundamental problem behind all law.
A Civilized Society
Civilized societies govern themselves with rules meant to approximate some sense of justice. As Arthur says,
This is the time of King Arthur, when we shall reach for the stars! This is the time of King Arthur when violence is not strength and compassion is not weakness. We are civilized!
Except in the rarest of pure free market societies, those rules come in the form of laws, written by human hands—whether by many in a republic or one in a monarchy. Good law is when, as the King of the Britons suggested, the rules promote civil peace and fairness.
Indeed, law is what separates civilization from barbarism. A society and culture built upon the rule of law is much improved than one built upon the rule of strength. However, it would be a mistake to say a civilized society differs from barbarism because it does not use force to get results. On the contrary, force is not what separates society from chaos, but instead is the universal tool of human existence.
Even for the most ardent of anarchist thinkers, they believe in a natural right to defend oneself and property. The very act of defense requires a measure of force necessary to repel vandals and would-be thieves. Civilized societies have laws to outline proper conduct and punish violators—but they have force to, well, enforce those laws.
Even Arthur, in a moment of eureka, understood that force was necessary for justice. Consider the conversation he has with Guinevere. He’s just proposed the Order of the Round Table, where other kings and knights lay down their arms to debate and discuss their problems instead of fight over them. Guinevere—Ginny, as Arthur calls her—is skeptical the knights will want to do such a “ridiculously peaceful thing.” He replies:
King Arthur: We’ll make it a great honor. Very fashionable! Everyone will want to join! Only now, the knights will whack only for good. Might for right….might for right….might for right. That’s it, Ginny. Might. No, not might is right. Might FOR right!
Guinevere: It’s very original.
King Arthur: Yes. Yes, yes. And civilized, Ginny.
At no point does Arthur pretend that by erecting new laws will swords and armor and lances disappear, only that now they will be wielded for a just and civilized kingdom.
Contradictions and Reality
The world is infused with force. Though laws govern, force sustains. We would be fools to live as if it were otherwise, and we would be morons to imagine we could have rules that can change the fundamental nature of reality.
This is why gun-free zones are a legal stupidity and a moral outrage. Gun-free zones essentially attempt to declare, “Per the rules, no one shall be entitled the tools to enforce the rules.” What a contradiction!
Firearms—among the most effective methods of force—are how we uphold the rules in our society. Prohibit them, and you lose the very means by which you establish the gun-free zone in the first place!
The common counterargument usually relies on unrealistic expectations. To say, “We don’t need guns, the police will protect us,” is naïve and factually erroneous. How many times in the recorded incidents of office space, church, and school shootings were police too late to respond? Never mind the fact the Supreme Court has ruled a police officer is not obligated to protect you or your property, to become dependent upon the state for your security is a recipe for authoritarian disaster.
There are instances where the law tries to prohibit guns in certain zones except for qualified armed security. Ignoring the fact that this creates a double standard of who is and is not entitled to self-defense, and the reality that private security of often prohibitively expensive, such legal exceptions admit their own flawed logic. To permit armed security is to admit to the principle that the protection of a gun-free zone still requires forceful means—it requires guns.
The Moral Imperative of Self-Defense
Gun-free zones deny regular employees and citizens the power to respond immediately to criminals who would abandon civilization and live like barbarians. The only logical response and most effective solution is to meet an evil and life-taking force with a good and life-preserving force. Might FOR right.
Gun-free zones attract violence, and not just in schools and churches. In the annals of history, nations which fail to properly arm themselves invite the wandering eyes of conquerors. Tyrants who are unsatiated with peaceful trade and diplomatic cooperation are drawn to unarmed nations like foxes to unguarded henhouses. Consider Switzerland, which has done quite well in staying out of most major conflicts in modern history. With its well-trained citizenry and a proud tradition of firearm ownership, they embody the notion of not just neutrality, but armed neutrality. That is how it is on the individual scale. Citizens should be peaceable—but prepared.
The laws that establish gun-free zones and those who advocate and pass them put our loved ones at risk. They surrender our individual capacity to protect ourselves, and legislate our endangerment. As a society, if we tolerate and accept such zones, we commit an egregious act of cowardice. To tell a peaceable, civilized member of society that they are denied the means to keep their family safe is not just bad policy. It is grossly immoral.