The Benefits of Denizen Disarmament

You mean gun control?

That’s what it’s called today, but it’s worked well throughout history before there were “guns”.

Modern “gun control” indeed thins the herd by enabling private murderers. This “disproportionately” harms the poor, who cannot afford armed guards, and are often government wealth-redistribution net “beneficiaries”. This helps lower socialism’s immense costs, same as abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, family planning, etc.

But gun control’s main benefit is increased state control over their citizens. When states are smaller and/or the citizens less amenable to control, citizens and citizen militias can help assist the state keep its tax-slaves alive. Machiavelli tries to come up with rules of when to disarm and when to actively arm subjects, see this. Switzerland, for example, still forces its men to own arms.

But in non-Althusiusian federalism or for rebellious provinces and minorities, disarmament everywhere enables (turnkey) tyranny, increases government-dependency when citizens are killed (“Take their guns away!”), safeguards against revolt (Par’oh, Eglon in Ehud’s time, Antiochus), and generally provides a useful day-to-day fake “security benefit” of the state.

Here’s a simple visual illustration, from Libertarian Prepper:

(“Yeah” is spelled with an “a”.)