Resolved: In the United States, private ownership of handguns ought to be banned

Protevi 12

The discourse of outlawing guns for their general welfare to society is a biopolitical grasp at de-rationalizing citizens and making decisions for them.

I'm always on the lookout when things are phrased in "public health" terms as some of the talking heads do with gun control, as the public health vs individual health question is one of the key points of Foucault's notion of biopower. Now Foucault's work in the late 70s (e.g., Security, Territory, Population and Birth of Biopolitics) brings risk into the story he was constructing of "governmental rationalities." (Governmentality is the "conduct of conduct," that is, the way in which individuals are taught / encouraged / induced to manage their lives as various types of "subjects," as "sexual subjects," for instance, or in neoliberalism as "self-entrepreneurs" [hence the interest in Becker's human capital theory].) In the angle relevant here, he tried to theorize the way neoliberal governments try to get folks to manage risk / reward calculations individually for the most part (a huge change in American society occured with the "Great Risk Shift" toward individual finance decisions), but still maintain the ability to step in to do it when the overall risks and / or the informational asymmetries are too great. So you get to read ingredient labels so you can judge the risks of your individual food consumption patterns (that is, the government requires that you have access to certain bits of information so you can judge your risks), but non-physicians can't prescribe drugs as they are deemed unable to make the proper risk / reward calculations. So here governments manage individual health decisions. The intersection of individual and public health occurs with infectious disease. So the government can demand vaccination for entry to public school, because individuals don't have the information to be able to judge the risks of sending kids to a school in which some of the kids are not vaccinated since you don't know how many are not vaccinated and you don't know which vaccines they've skipped. So with guns, the public health rationality would be that you can't judge the risk of living next to somebody with a huge arsenal, because you don't know its contents or your neighbors training. So the government can manage that for you under the rubric of public health, either by outlawing certain types of guns (on the model of certain drugs that are too dangerous) or by requiring training and registration (on the model of requiring vaccination).

Debrabander 12

Gun ownership kills freedom of speech.

Debrabander 12 Firmin Debrabander “The Freedom of an Armed Society” The New York Times December 16^th 2012 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/the-freedom-of-an-armed-society/ JW

As ever more people are armed in public, however — even brandishing weapons on the street — this is no longer recognizable as a civil society. Freedom is vanished at that point. And yet, gun rights advocates famously maintain that individual gun ownership, even of high caliber weapons, is the defining mark of our freedom as such, and the ultimate guarantee of our enduring liberty. Deeper reflection on their argument exposes basic fallacies. In her book “The Human Condition,” the philosopher Hannah Arendt states that “violence is mute.” According to Arendt, speech dominates and distinguishes the polis, the highest form of human association, which is devoted to the freedom and equality of its component members. Violence — and the threat of it — is a pre-political manner of communication and control, characteristic of undemocratic organizations and hierarchical relationships. For the ancient Athenians who practiced an incipient, albeit limited form of democracy (one that we surely aim to surpass), violence was characteristic of the master-slave relationship, not that of free citizens. Arendt offers two points that are salient to our thinking about guns: for one, they insert a hierarchy of some kind, but fundamental nonetheless, and thereby undermine equality. But furthermore, guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name — that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations: for, guns chasten speech. This becomes clear if only you pry a little more deeply into the N.R.A.’s logic behind an armed society. An armed society is polite, by their thinking, precisely because guns would compel everyone to tamp down eccentric behavior, and refrain from actions that might seem threatening. The suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly — not make any sudden, unexpected moves — and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend. As our Constitution provides, however, liberty entails precisely the freedom to be reckless, within limits, also the freedom to insult and offend as the case may be. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld our right to experiment in offensive language and ideas, and in some cases, offensive action and speech. Such experimentation is inherent to our freedom as such. But guns by their nature do not mix with this experiment — they don’t mix with taking offense. They are combustible ingredients in assembly and speech. I often think of the armed protestor who showed up to one of the famously raucous town hall hearings on Obamacare in the summer of 2009. The media was very worked up over this man, who bore a sign that invoked a famous quote of Thomas Jefferson, accusing the president of tyranny. But no one engaged him at the protest; no one dared approach him even, for discussion or debate — though this was a town hall meeting, intended for just such purposes. Such is the effect of guns on speech — and assembly. Like it or not, they transform the bearer, and end the conversation in some fundamental way. They announce that the conversation is not completely unbounded, unfettered and free; there is or can be a limit to negotiation and debate — definitively.

Gun ownership gives power to the government by fragmenting communities.

Debrabander 12 Firmin Debrabander “The Freedom of an Armed Society” The New York Times December 16^th 2012 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/the-freedom-of-an-armed-society/ JW

Gun rights advocates also argue that guns provide the ultimate insurance of our freedom, in so far as they are the final deterrent against encroaching centralized government, and an executive branch run amok with power. Any suggestion of limiting guns rights is greeted by ominous warnings that this is a move of expansive, would-be despotic government. It has been the means by which gun rights advocates withstand even the most seemingly rational gun control measures. An assault weapons ban, smaller ammunition clips for guns, longer background checks on gun purchases — these are all measures centralized government wants, they claim, in order to exert control over us, and ultimately impose its arbitrary will. I have often suspected, however, that contrary to holding centralized authority in check, broad individual gun ownership gives the powers-that-be exactly what they want. After all, a population of privately armed citizens is one that is increasingly fragmented, and vulnerable as a result. Private gun ownership invites retreat into extreme individualism — I heard numerous calls for homeschooling in the wake of the Newtown shootings — and nourishes the illusion that I can be my own police, or military, as the case may be. The N.R.A. would have each of us steeled for impending government aggression, but it goes without saying that individually armed citizens are no match for government force. The N.R.A. argues against that interpretation of the Second Amendment that privileges armed militias over individuals, and yet it seems clear that armed militias, at least in theory, would provide a superior check on autocratic government. As Michel Foucault pointed out in his detailed study of the mechanisms of power, nothing suits power so well as extreme individualism. In fact, he explains, political and corporate interests aim at nothing less than “individualization,” since it is far easier to manipulate a collection of discrete and increasingly independent individuals than a community. Guns undermine just that — community. Their pervasive, open presence would sow apprehension, suspicion, mistrust and fear, all emotions that are corrosive of community and civic cooperation. To that extent, then, guns give license to autocratic government. Our gun culture promotes a fatal slide into extreme individualism. It fosters a society of atomistic individuals, isolated before power — and one another — and in the aftermath of shootings such as at Newtown, paralyzed with fear. That is not freedom, but quite its opposite. And as the Occupy movement makes clear, also the demonstrators that precipitated regime change in Egypt and Myanmar last year, assembled masses don’t require guns to exercise and secure their freedom, and wield world-changing political force. Arendt and Foucault reveal that power does not lie in armed individuals, but in assembly — and everything conducive to that.

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