Robert Anton Wilson advanced the idea of a "Guns and Dope Party" (originally suggested, if I recall correctly, by writer Bill Helmer) to bring together "gun nuts" and "dopers" into a libertarian alliance.
I have cited writer Jacob Sullum quite a few times in this blog, as he is very good about writing about the "war on some drugs," as RAW called it. I recently noticed that Sullum has a new "guns and dope" book out.
The book is called BEYOND CONTROL: Drug Prohibition, Gun Regulation, and the Search for Sensible Alternatives. From the publisher's blurb:
"Decades of research have produced scant evidence that popular gun control prescriptions, such as assault weapon bans, universal background checks, restrictions on ownership, and red flag laws, work as advertised. Research on the impact of the war on drugs likewise provides little reason to believe that its doubtful benefits outweigh its myriad costs. In both cases, the burdens often fall on peaceful individuals who pose no threat to public safety, and the policies seem ill-designed to reduce the problems they aim to address.
"Sullum notes that critics of gun control and critics of the war on drugs make similar points, complaining that these policies are unfair, invasive, poorly targeted, and ineffective. But because these two sets of critics tend to come from opposing political camps, they usually overlook their common ground. Beyond Control surveys that territory, showing that conservatives and progressives share concerns about overcriminalization, overzealous law enforcement, draconian penalties, and the erosion of civil liberties."
My local library doesn't have his book so I submitted a request for it to be purchased.
1 comment:
Massively omni-use general-purpose technologies of harm will probably change the parameters of this debate overnight. So I see this book as likely already out-of-date. In one important sense you can't compare gun and drug control, unless the "drug" in question has one purpose: maiming/death of another being.
So, to my mind, regulations on use/availability of poisons and lethal bio/chemical agents would be a more meaningful comparison.
And maybe we should extend the debate over "guns" to assault drones and micro-drones, since presumably something like AI-guided ammunition will become indistinguishable from drones. I've been reading the stories of Palantir AI-driven target-profiling assassination drones. It doesn't take too much imagination to extrapolate where this technology is heading when it becomes widely available, cheaper and smaller, smaller, smaller.
You can now buy a desktop DNA synthesiser for $25,000. Use as you wish, no restriction. Your own personal bio-garage! Sure, regulations suck, until the harm is directed at someone you love, by a total stranger based on nothing but ideology and social media profiles, data mining and untraceable and widely available (uncontrolled, unregulated!) technologies of harm.
I think RAW made a similar point about the right to obtain and use your own portable nyooks. How else can one be truly free?
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