More guns for a sick, sullen society?

One of my Twitter followers wondered when I would post something on guns and "gun control" in Latvia.  He linked to a Libertarian Party (?) position advocating more or less unrestricted gun ownership. The issue came up after the movie theater shooting in Riga on Saturday, February 19, when a well-educated, seemingly stable person with a legal weapons permit pumped four rounds into a father of four who had objected to his loud munching of either potato chips or popcorn and generally disruptive behavior during a showing of "The Black Swan".
The issue of gun laws in Latvia is a rather difficult one, because there is more too it than legalistic or libertarian arguments. Indeed, the murder suspect was a doctoral student in law who had written in a Latvian law journal arguing for very liberal gun laws like those in many US states. The man even advocated free ownership of fully automatic weapons.
I think the issue of firearms in any society is not so much a legal or philosophical issue (although there are important points in this regard) as it is about the fabric (or lack of it) in any particular society or country. There is merit, in the abstract, to the argument that an armed citizenry is theoretically better protected against an oppressive government, foreign invaders, or crime waves, than a society where only the state, criminals or invaders have guns. However, as "future scenarios" dictatorship, foreign invasion and wild-in-the streets crime are not likely or frequent occurrences if we take a relatively stable, democratic society as a starting point.
I would instead argue that the likelihood of tyranny or mad-dog crime has its roots in the nature of the society we are dealing with. The nature of the society, its "health" or whatever you want to call it, also determines the real consequences of any given weapons control policy. In short -- the reason there is relatively little gun violence (aside from a few spectacular incidents) in heavily armed Switzerland and Finland is because these societies do not have  a "gun culture".  Firearms are not used for everyday dispute resolution, they are generally not carried around on a day-to-day basis and while accessible, their only thinkable use is for military (Switzerland) or hunting (Finland, if I am not mistaken) purposes.
So we have the rather paradoxical situation that there is proliferation of legal military assault rifles in Switzerland, but almost no drive-by killings. In the US, fully-automatic weapons are banned, I believe, by federal law, yet there are places where killing and maiming with automatic weapons (drive-by style) is a routine occurence.
In armed countries with no "gun culture" we see the kind of outcomes that gun control advocates in the US and elsewhere want -- very little gun crime. In places with patchy, but sometimes severe gun laws (parts of the US with handgun restrictions, registration, etc.), we still see crazed gun crimes and automatic weapons firing on the streets. The difference is cultural and the lesson is that the nature of a particular society, its health or illness, trumps any laws or lack of them.
In Latvia, we do not have a "gun culture" and except for the actions of a psychopath in a movie theater, we have very few crimes involving firearms (indeed, many robberies are done with "objects resembling firearms" and there is little actual gunplay -- the recent battle between "good cops"  and "robber cops" in Jekabpils being an exception).  In this regard, Latvia feels safer than the US. Any everyday dispute between strangers here is unlikely to end in a shooting. In the US, one never knows. Of course, the crime news here in Latvia does carry stories of knifings and deadly beatings and other forms of non-firearm violence, but nothing can turn a bad situation to the worst possible than using a high-powered firearm.  Knives, clubs, even fists can kill, but a hollow-point 9mm round is very lucky if it DOESN'T kill.
My impression of Latvian society is that it is anomic (people trust no one), depressed, distressed and in a state of passive-aggressive anger (people vent their hostility by non-cooperation rather than direct action). I don't know if I would want to spread more firearms in such a societal environment. I fear there could be a quick adoption of a kind of gun culture, of using firearms to vent the simmering anger and the collective inferiority complex (left over from Soviet times and augmented by what has happened since) that one senses here.
Another matter is that most people are not trained or skilled at using firearms. This explains the number of accidental shootings in countries where guns proliferate. One can also imagine what would happen if there were more gun battles between untrained, poor marksmen in situations where rage, rather than cool training (as with professional military and police) was the driving force of a conflict.
It is difficult for me to imagine that allowing everyone in Latvia to own guns would result in the creation of a noble "armed citizenry" that used its weapons with restraint and skill, that intimidated both state authorities (the parts of the police that are little more than armed gangs) and criminals in order to maintain  both freedom and order. I just don't see that happening. More firearms in this society would simply increase the level and lethality of senseless violence.  That is, perhaps, an inadequate but best effort answer to the issue raised in a "tweet" last week.

Bumbling toward minarchy in Latvia

I have always been interested in libertarian politics and consider myself a libertarian on most issues -- decriminalizing drugs, legalizing gay marriage, striking victimless crimes from the law books, abolishing compulsory military service, etc. Broadly speaking, libertarians are divided into two camps -- minarchists, who favor a small, night watchman government, and anarchists, who prefer to let society self-organize without a state.

Without going into that debate, an interesting observation on the topic of this blog is that with the massive, rushed and hectic budget cuts that Latvia is undertaking, the country is, in fact, bumbling and stumbling in the worst possible scenario toward becoming a minarchy. When the LVL 1.5 billion are cut from the government budget over the three years 2009-2011, and when the real effect of the formal cuts on tax revenues (and tax evasion) take hold, it is likely that Latvia will be able to finance little more than a skeleton police force, a small professional military and some kind of court and criminal justice system. At least on paper.

The problem is that states, especially states with bloated bureaucracies and massive inefficiency in public administration such as Latvia, have created dependencies and reliance by the population that is very painful to cut and betray in the kind of series of short and desperate actions that the Latvian government is taking.

Employers have been compelled to pay social taxes on behalf of employees, among other things, for their pensions, and these pensions (some have argued, with considerable merit, that they are the vested private property of pensioners) are now being confiscated, all expectation of any benefit from the compulsory diversion of income has been shattered.

If Latvia were seriously moving toward minarchy, an essential step would be to cut social taxes and leave employees with more income to divert to private pension insurance schemes. Younger employees could have the option of spending some of their income to support sick or elderly parents or grandparents.

Since the government is, essentially, gutting the state health care system, it should also cut taxes to allow individuals to buy private health insurance and do nothing that would inhibit the rapid formation of private hospitals and other medical care facilities, where private insurers would pay most of the bills.

Education is another area that has been bulldozed by the government, making teaching the lowest legally paid "profession" in the country, assuming that one cannot be paid below the (reduced) minimum wage in the public sector. However, no steps have been taken to encourage the creation of private and cooperative schools and of "informal" education.

By late summer, it will become clear that the schools in Latvia will not open on September 1 (there may be a "stay-away" strike on the first day) and will be seriously depleted of teaching staff if they do open. So the issue of alternative, non-state education will be acute by fall. Creative solutions may have to be found, such as, perhaps, gathering pupils at library internet access points for instruction by internet video (rural children could be charged a small fee to watch lessons at private schools in Riga).

The police will also be severely affected by the cuts, with the result that the ability of the police to prevent and investigate crime will deteriorate, bribe-taking will increase and the police force will continue to lose its best and brightest to emigration and private sector work.

Little has been done to create an alternative system of private law enforcement by expanding the role of private security companies (perhaps allowing certain areas of the country to invite tenders for private law enforcement coverage).

In short, Latvia has unwittingly started on the path to minarchy, but has nothing resembling a transition plan, nor any substantial analysis of how this can be done. Indeed, the government is still projecting the illusion, to the public, that its current path of budget cutting will somehow lead to a system that still provides state-funded pensions, health care, education and law enforcement when, in fact it is (unintentionally) reducing these government entitlements and services to a completely inadequate and disfunctional level. The Latvian population will, over the next 18 months, be forced into the worst kind of minarchy. It remains to be seen if civil society can somehow improvise around this process.

Video of Riga Pride 2008

Here is a video of my impressions of the Riga Pride 2008: