Citation

Hughes TC, Hunt LH. Public Aff. Q. 2000; 14(1): 1-25.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Bans on guns are typically considered a "liberal" policy, if only because those who support them generally consider themselves to be politically liberal in some sense or other. We will argue, however, that broad bans on firearms are in fact not liberal policies at all. The policy of a state that disarms its citizenry conflicts with more than one of the fundamental principles of liberalism.

The degree and nature of the conflict between liberalism and gun bans depends, however, on how one conceives of liberalism. In this regard, gun bans serve as a means of illustrating the disparity between two fundamentally different versions of liberalism, which we shall call wide and narrowliberalism. We shall try to show that a complete ban on the private possession of firearms is impermissible on either view; in fact any meaningful restriction is difficult to justify in the context of wide liberalism. Narrow liberalism, on the other hand, permits more restriction, but, if applied consistently, is unlikely to allow ones that will result in a significant decrease in violent crime.