Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection.
Feb 14, 2014 13:02:58 GMT -5
Post by Michael Downing on Feb 14, 2014 13:02:58 GMT -5
h/t WRSA This is an old article but well worth the read...
www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/just-dial-911-the-myth-of-police-protection#axzz2tJqBu2BI
Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection
Underlying all “gun control” ideology is this one belief.” “Private citizens don’t need firearms because the police will protect them from crime.” That belief is both false and dangerous for two reasons.
First, the police cannot and do not protect everyone from crime. Second, the government and the police in most localities owe no legal duty to protect individuals from criminal attack. When it comes to deterring crime and defending against criminals, individuals are ultimately responsible for themselves and their loved ones. Depending solely on police emergency response means relying on the telephone as the only defensive tool. Too often, citizens in trouble dial 911 . . . and die.
Concludes...
Government lulls the public into trusting it to provide everything, takes away the people’s means of providing for themselves, and then claims it has no duty to provide after all. Noting the fatal irony in the “gun control” context, James Bovard has written that “government has a specific, concrete obligation to disarm each citizen, but only an abstract obligation to defend the citizen.” “Gun control;” Bovard notes, “is one of the best examples of laws that corner private citizens—forcing them either to put themselves into danger or to be a lawbreaker.”12
Laying Bare the State Protection Myth
The drive to prohibit private firearms ownership highlights the statists’ goals in a way everybody can understand. They aim to disarm ordinary nonviolent citizens, even those who face high risk of criminal attack, and substitute police protection in place of self-defense. Meanwhile the police will not be held liable to individual citizens for failing to defend them.
Government “social programs” and various mandatory “insurance” programs operate in the same way. First, the government programs distort the market forces that provide housing, food, medical care, transportation, and other goods and services. People shift to depending on the government programs instead of taking individual decisions and action.
When the government programs fail, however, the people relying on those programs have little or no effective recourse. At best, dissatisfied people can file bureaucratic appeals to the very agencies that harmed or cheated them. There can be judicial review of bureaucratic decisions in some cases also, but the judges are usually part of the same government, and they typically defer to the original government agency’s decision anyway.
In nearly all cases the citizen bears the stress and expense of pursuing appeals of bureaucratic decisions. The cost of appealing a government decision is already high. The effect of high appeal costs is to stop people from appealing—which gives results just like the “no duty,” “sovereign immunity,” and “public duty” rules. Government grabs power but sheds accountability.
The problem with government programs is not just that citizens have only narrow and costly avenues for appeals of decisions. While a government social program is operating, it is likely making worse the very problem it was trying to “solve.” People cannot get out of a government program and return to private action or free-market solutions because of the effects of the program itself. Legislators point to the “failure” of the mar ket, whine about the problems with the government program, and then prescribe more government. The voters reward those legislators by re-electing them.
Government power ratchets up the same way under a “gun control” regime. As laws discourage innocent citizens from defending themselves, the violent criminals remain undeterred. Absent some other, overweening factor, violent crime cannot possibly decrease in that environment; it more likely must increase. The statist response will naturally be to restrict firearms ownership even more, and to enhance the police presence. Greater police presence means more police, more surveillance, more reporting to government what citizens are doing. Nearly 170 million citizens lost their lives to their own governments in the twentieth century.13 There is little reason to celebrate a police state.
Revealing the lie underlying the “gun control” agenda strengthens the case against socialism and the welfare state on many levels. If the argument advances the cause of individual liberty, then it is an argument worth making.
www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/just-dial-911-the-myth-of-police-protection#axzz2tJqBu2BI
Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection
Underlying all “gun control” ideology is this one belief.” “Private citizens don’t need firearms because the police will protect them from crime.” That belief is both false and dangerous for two reasons.
First, the police cannot and do not protect everyone from crime. Second, the government and the police in most localities owe no legal duty to protect individuals from criminal attack. When it comes to deterring crime and defending against criminals, individuals are ultimately responsible for themselves and their loved ones. Depending solely on police emergency response means relying on the telephone as the only defensive tool. Too often, citizens in trouble dial 911 . . . and die.
Concludes...
Government lulls the public into trusting it to provide everything, takes away the people’s means of providing for themselves, and then claims it has no duty to provide after all. Noting the fatal irony in the “gun control” context, James Bovard has written that “government has a specific, concrete obligation to disarm each citizen, but only an abstract obligation to defend the citizen.” “Gun control;” Bovard notes, “is one of the best examples of laws that corner private citizens—forcing them either to put themselves into danger or to be a lawbreaker.”12
Laying Bare the State Protection Myth
The drive to prohibit private firearms ownership highlights the statists’ goals in a way everybody can understand. They aim to disarm ordinary nonviolent citizens, even those who face high risk of criminal attack, and substitute police protection in place of self-defense. Meanwhile the police will not be held liable to individual citizens for failing to defend them.
Government “social programs” and various mandatory “insurance” programs operate in the same way. First, the government programs distort the market forces that provide housing, food, medical care, transportation, and other goods and services. People shift to depending on the government programs instead of taking individual decisions and action.
When the government programs fail, however, the people relying on those programs have little or no effective recourse. At best, dissatisfied people can file bureaucratic appeals to the very agencies that harmed or cheated them. There can be judicial review of bureaucratic decisions in some cases also, but the judges are usually part of the same government, and they typically defer to the original government agency’s decision anyway.
In nearly all cases the citizen bears the stress and expense of pursuing appeals of bureaucratic decisions. The cost of appealing a government decision is already high. The effect of high appeal costs is to stop people from appealing—which gives results just like the “no duty,” “sovereign immunity,” and “public duty” rules. Government grabs power but sheds accountability.
The problem with government programs is not just that citizens have only narrow and costly avenues for appeals of decisions. While a government social program is operating, it is likely making worse the very problem it was trying to “solve.” People cannot get out of a government program and return to private action or free-market solutions because of the effects of the program itself. Legislators point to the “failure” of the mar ket, whine about the problems with the government program, and then prescribe more government. The voters reward those legislators by re-electing them.
Government power ratchets up the same way under a “gun control” regime. As laws discourage innocent citizens from defending themselves, the violent criminals remain undeterred. Absent some other, overweening factor, violent crime cannot possibly decrease in that environment; it more likely must increase. The statist response will naturally be to restrict firearms ownership even more, and to enhance the police presence. Greater police presence means more police, more surveillance, more reporting to government what citizens are doing. Nearly 170 million citizens lost their lives to their own governments in the twentieth century.13 There is little reason to celebrate a police state.
Revealing the lie underlying the “gun control” agenda strengthens the case against socialism and the welfare state on many levels. If the argument advances the cause of individual liberty, then it is an argument worth making.