O O Ø O O O O
Free the Streets
Although I will soon be saying my farewell to Nova Scotia, I can’t just let Halifax city councillor Patrick Murphy propose a curfew for city teens without explaining why this is a terrible, terrible idea.
Councillor Murphy—who is actually the representive for the North-end district in which I live—has suggested that the city’s recent rash of swarming robberies can best be handled by keeping teenagers inside after 9 p.m.
Sounds to me like someone’s unnecessarily messing with Canadians’ freedom. Danger!
The problem is that the good citizens of Halifax are lately finding themselves threatened and robbed at knife- and gun-point, by groups of roving ne’er-do-wells. To solve this problem, the local beadledom has jumped on the idea that a portion of the entire population–all of whom are innocent barring evidence to the contrary–should have their freedom summarily restricted. Additionally, there is no sunset for this proposal. Teens are being told they should give up their mobility indefinitely. In how many more ways could this thought-balloon be wrong?
The symptoms are undeniably serious. A significant number of these occurences have happened within a stone’s throw of my apartment, so I am as alarmed as anyone else. My school custodian’s son was brought to within a fraction of an inch of his life thanks to one such attack. (A month later, he’s mostly recovered, minus several organs.) Something must surely be done.
Here at the pd.o we’re known for espousing simple solutions to complicated problems. This time is no different, so here it is:
- First, remove the laws against posession.
- Then, end prohibition.
You had to know it would be a libertarian solution, didn’t you?
Remove The Laws Against Posession
Guns, switchblades, beartraps, whatever.
We presently have plenty of laws restricting the ownership and carrying of sidearms. We also have a spanky-new national registry of firearms. You will notice that none of these laws have done anything to prevent these swarming attacks, except guarantee that the victims can’t defend themselves.
Now before I receive a mailbox full of barking missives imploring me to “just look at America,” I would like someone to explain to me how owning a gun is actually a crime. And I mean an actual crime, not just technically a legal transgression.
Actual crimes are things that people do, not things that people own. It’s a pretty simple test: if someone inflicts damage to your self or your property, then a crime has been committed. As libertarian prophet Harry Browne puts so succinctly, “It is a crime whether or not you have liquor on your breath, or hate in your heart.”
Please also spare me the alligator question about whether I care if my neighbour has a rocket launcher in the back yard. I don’t. Just so long as she doesn’t launch that rocket at anything of mine. (My car, my house, my ass.) But why would she? I’m a good neighbour (who believes in good fences), and a pacifist as well.
Please note that I have no desire to carry a firearm (well, maybe just for special occassions, like weddings), but just the possibility that I could be armed can protect me.
Our current crop of gun laws has resulted in me not feeling safe enough to walk in my otherwise decent neighbourhood after dark. It doesn’t get any closer to home than that. Gun laws did this. They don’t work.
End Prohibition
Drugs, alcohol, prostitution, whatever.
For these to actually be crimes, there would have to be victims willing to testify in the courts against the perpetrators.
The ills often associated with the drug trade are actually the consequences of the decades-long battle to prohibit drug consumption. By now, we should understand that demand for drugs (taurine, crank, weed, you-name-it) will always exist, and that trying to limit the supply to zero will have the obvious economic result of elevating the price, thereby creating a deep, dark market for the stuff.
If we summarily lift the ceiling on supply, the price will drop. Without the artificially high prices, it will be almost impossible for the current crop of drug dealers to compete. Think over-the-counter heroin, available at London Drugs, at prices comparable to NyQuil. Think tamper-proof bottles of e. Think organic weed at the corner store (right beside the pilsener, of course). Would you rather buy a sealed, labeled product from your local merchant, or from the guy with the plastic bags on the street corner?
Now here’s the important part: roving gangs won’t feel compelled to jack passers-by to put together the cash for their next highs. Good old fashioned hooliganism–the kind engendered by boredom–does not incite gangs to knife people for money. (Even if this were the case, the first part of my solution takes care of them.) Supplying drug habits, on the other hand, is often the source of violence to people and property. With legalized drugs, a tidy little heroin addiction could be supported with a paper route. The drop in theft and robberies would be immediate.
While we’re doing good by doing away with bad laws, we should look at the oldest trade. Prostitution–without the accompanying crimes of violence and coercion that come with prohibition–is also a victimless crime. It is made dangerous by its restricted nature, where sufferers of abuse, kidnapping and theft at the hands of pimps and gangs cannot go to the police for help, thanks to the illicit nature of their own activities. If we really care about the health and welfare of sex trade workers, the first step has to be the removal of the incentive for criminals to control women.
To reiterate, crimes are transgressions against another person. A contract between consenting individuals is not a crime. Neither is keeping a pistol in your pocket, or a joint in your jeans. Making these things illegal has made our streets less safe.
One last point. This simple solution isn’t necessarily perfect, and holes can inevitably be found. (Do I care if my neighbour keeps anthrax in his compost? Doesn’t prostitution inherently make a woman vulnerable?) These two steps, however, will work better than the status quo, which has obviously failed. Let’s implement them, and sort out the exceptions as they come along. They are both more reasonable solutions than implementing martial law.
Freedom is the answer. Now, what was the question?
Evan Spence
March 29, 2005
OOØOOOODCXCVII
March 29th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
hear, hear!
March 29th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
Thought-Balloon? Hmmmmm…..
March 29th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
I think the phrase I was looking for was “trial balloon.”
But I like the idea of a thought balloon. Like the bubbles above a cartoon character’s head.
March 29th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
That calls for a cartoon.
March 31st, 2005 at 8:58 pm
No way, no how, do I want to be walking around in North America with guns on the loose.
The problem with the gun is that it has a detached, point and shoot quality, which has been further enhanced by films and video games. Try clubbing someone to death with a bat, and as you watch their face cave in with each blow, you really really really have to want it to not stop for the sheer horror of the act you are committing.
Could you explain to me how the current gun laws have led to the current state of affairs? You’re saying that if both the attackers and attackees had guns, then eventually all of the attackers would have been gunned down?
Or are you saying that when there are sheep vs. wolves, you’d rather the entire populace felt like wolves, instead of just the attackers? I don’t want to fear my neighbour, I want to respect him or her.
The rest of your post I absolutely agree with, but I do not think we will see eye to eye about guns.
April 1st, 2005 at 6:39 am
J2, I honsetly share your reservations about walking around surrounded by bristling arsenals. Frankly, the prospect leaves me decidedly queasy. As I said in the rant though, I could be protected by the possibility of carrying a gun, even though I don’t want one. As it is today, even if I decide to carry a gun (”illegally”) I would not actually be safer, since attackers are assuming I’m unarmed.
I see the choice as between “walking around in North America with guns on the loose,” and walking around in North America with guns only in the pockets of people who want to do you harm.
Regardless, I believe we can at least both agree that what we want is freely accessible, safe streets.
Also, from your post: “Could you explain to me how the current gun laws have led to the current state of affairs?”
It’s a truism. We have gun laws. We have the current state of affairs. Decades before the gun laws, the streets were much safer. There is perhaps less of a linkage here than I’m implying, but the facts are undeniable.
I would also like to ask the critical question again: How is owning anything an actual crime? (Pot, booze, pistols, conterfeiting machinery, etc.)
April 3rd, 2005 at 11:01 am
Facts, true, but the causality and correlation remain to be shown.
Personally, I blame the video games.
April 3rd, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Personally, I blame the playground that the charter of rights and young offenders act has become for defense lawyers and the accused/guilty.
Whatever happened to common sense, fer fuck’s sake? The kids know they’re gonna get off, and until our justice system and “society” has the balls to slap the hooligans hard everytime they step out of line (and I’m not talking jail time, I’m talking a good ‘ole Patty Murphy shit-kicking for being stupid), they’re gonna do what they want, when they want, and get off scot-free.
After all, they’re only kids. How smart can they be?
April 5th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
I can’t not comment. :)
Knowing you as the smart funny complex cat that you are Ev, I continue to be amazed that you latch on to such a simplistic philosophy. “Freedom is the answer.” Puhlease. It’s so … I don’t know … adolescent. I’m a big fan of Liberty, but I’m also a big fan of Courage and Compasion and Justice and Love and and and and. There are lots of other virtues to consider and I’ll never understand why you would choose give Freedom higher proirity than say Love or Compassion. Sure if you can derive something like Justice from Freedom (I’m dubious … why not derive Freedom from Justice?), then Freedom gets to stand in line first but I fail to see how Love or Compassion or many other things that are import to me neatly fall out of Freedom. And I also don’t exactly understand the link that is drawn between ownership and freedom. Oh and while I’m quibbling, I’ll never understand why you would assume that all members of a society are equal agents (a key point in particular being that not all members of society are moral agents … think kids, the handicapped, the demented, etc) Anyway, I don’t expect I’ll ever be able to convince you that this is all whacko dogma but you still write a fun rant.
Oh hey, regarding legalized drugs check out the NAOMI project (http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/26516.html). You can get your heroin in nice sterile controlled doses for free now in Vancouver. Granted, the addicts aren’t paying for their dope and this is medically monitored so I expect this doesn’t live up to your libertarian ideals. But hey, it’s a start.
April 10th, 2005 at 4:48 am
Ah, Chris. You’ll always be one of my favourites.
I would never presume to tell you to prioritize my ideals over yours: love, compassion, justice.
Dan Bern, in True Revolutionaries, puts it:
I could never put it as pithily as that. I want nothing more, Chris, than for you to go forward and find your justice, your love, and your compassion. Go to it!
But before you do, you’ll have to update me: If all individuals are not equal agents, then who is the arbiter of their status? It’s not me. Is it you?
The NAOMI project is worse than a start: it is the apparatus confiscating funds from your pocket, to give government-harvested drugs to addicts. Political agents determine who deserves these drugs. It is, in fact, the very opposite of what I want.
Cheers.
May 18th, 2005 at 11:48 am
thats bull you cant punish 90%of the teens because 10%cant follow the law its injustice and goes againt or freedom!!!!!!
May 18th, 2005 at 11:51 am
take your curfew and shove it up ur ass
May 20th, 2005 at 6:42 am
this is not fair think of all the innocent people this would effect.its not right to punish such a high percentage for what such a low percentage has done its taking away our rigts to be a free canadian!