If it is illegitimate, when exactly does it become illegitimate: at the moment of sale, or when that same unstable person commits a crime?
Ancapman
We are, of course, considering ancap, because under a state, this issue is resolved through political games surrounding regulations, and we are interested in what is the correct way.
Ancap is a free market plus the decentralization of law enforcement. The market means that the seller decides for themselves to whom and for how much to sell a gun. Anarchy means that conflicts are resolved on an ad hoc basis.
A psycho wants to buy a gun. The gun owner wants to sell it. A bystander fears that the psycho will shoot someone and would like the gun not to be sold to him. In other words, he has a conflict with the seller. But how will this bystander know that the buyer is a dangerous psycho? Do we have a society of total control, which is dreamed of by the author of the book Practical Anarchy, Stephan Molignon?
Of course, it is easy to imagine a society where all the dangerous psychos are known. This is a village or a small town where everyone knows everyone. This one isn’t a psycho, but a harmless hippie; he’s skating on the promenade. But this one is constantly shouting at his wife, and it seems there are fights. And when someone tries to reason with him, he becomes even more agitated and spews incoherent threats. Maybe he shouldn’t have a gun? And the owner of the only gun shop in the area would prefer not to take on extra responsibility. Or he sells it carelessly, and then tomorrow at the barbershop, he’ll be asked if he’s an idiot.
But people, you know, sometimes choose to live in megacities for some reason. Will megacities remain under ancap? I fully assume so: people cluster because many types of offline businesses have a significant positive effect of scale, and they will continue to have it even in the absence of state regulations.
In a megacity, generally speaking, all people look the same to each other. A gun can be sold in a thousand places. No one will voluntarily chip in to maintain a complex system of weapons registration and total medical examination, which means there won’t be one. Therefore, let’s simply accept as a fact that under ancap, any solvent psycho will always find a way to buy a gun, including anonymously, and even that loudmouth from the small town can easily do it simply by going to a megacity.
How to protect oneself from the consequences? In a small town, it is much easier for a dangerous psycho to be refused an apartment rental. He will be forced to move from time to time until he settles in the outskirts, where landlords won’t constantly receive complaints about their tenant. In a megacity, it may be unclear who to complain to about a violent neighbor, because generally, you simply don’t know who owns the neighboring apartment. But if it’s very irritating, you can, again, move yourself to a more decent district where more attention is paid to the peace of the residents.
Well, if the violent psycho does get a gun and intends to use it, the situation becomes very simple: get your own and neutralize the psycho. Or someone else who gets there first will do it. There is no time here to reason whether it was legitimate to sell that person a gun, or who to blame for the resulting situation. The probability of accidentally getting hit by a bullet is significantly lower than the probability of accidentally getting hit by a car or drowning, but that doesn’t make people give up cars or swimming.
In general, the question about psychos and guns was already asked to me about five years ago. Goodness, five years! How long I’ve been running this channel!
