anonymous question

The most successful example of the beneficial influence of legalization for a Russian-speaking audience is, of course, Moldova. A post-Soviet country introduces the legal acquisition, carrying, and use for self-defense of rifled short-barreled firearms—and the curve of violent crime drops sharply. The same occurred in the Baltics, although the example of phlegmatic Balts is not as convincing to the listener as a story about hot-blooded Moldovan guys. But the most statistics come, of course, from the States, where half of all crime is concentrated in just two percent of counties with the strictest gun laws, which are ethnic ghettos, while in the most armed areas, violent crimes are practically non-existent.

There are also downsides to legalization—they appear when legalization is carried out partially and thoughtlessly.

For instance, in Kazakhstan, instead of legalizing rifled short-barreled firearms, they only made the acquisition of traumatic weapons extremely simplified. As a result, traumatic weapons became a convenient tool in clashes between gangs: this weapon is very useful as support in a fight since it cannot be tracked by any ballistic examination, and the psychological threshold for its use is extremely low, as it is supposedly not a “real” gun. Consequently, the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, and Kazakhstan has begun to tighten the screws, as hoplophobes now have an excellent argument for doing so.

In Russia, gun legislation is generally tolerable, although it is quite inconsistent regarding rifled short-barreled firearms. Law enforcement practice is much worse here; in many ways, it is this, rather than the law on weapon circulation, that encourages criminals—since they know that the victim will hesitate until the last moment before using a weapon, not wanting to deal later with much more frightening criminals: the Russian police.

The main thing to understand about weapons is that a criminal always has one. He will simply buy a gun on the black market using bitcoins, as it is far less dangerous for him to be caught with a gun than to be unprepared for a showdown with competitors. Meanwhile, someone who earns a living in more peaceful sectors would rather spend their bitcoins on donating to Ancap-chan, and for them, it is important to have a legal gun, as well as the right to use it legally for self-defense.