Author: tomillo2@illinois.edu

While examining each social contract theorist, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, my analysis offered valuable insight not only into the issue of gun control but our current system and society as a whole. My research on Locke’s theory revealed the faults that may have been involved in the creation of his theory and natural man. Locke’s ignorance of certain members of the human race could lead to several faults within his theory regarding more than gun control. My analysis of Hobbes support of self-preservation along with the current use of firearms for self-defense reveals changes in circumstances since his own theory that may affect its usefulness in addressing our issues today. Finally, looking into Rousseau’s theory and support of the general will, I uncovered that being as large as it is, the United States may not fairly and adequately represent the majority of the people as well as it would as a smaller state.

My findings throughout the analysis of each of these pieces stretch far from what I expected. Instead of revealing helpful ways of handling our current issue on gun control, each of the three theories offered faults within their own findings as well as our government today. When I began this blog, I expected to uncover an answer to my question – as I end it, I leave with more questions. Maybe the answer to gun control is not about a law that will fix the problem but involves the people and the government in general. Maybe a larger change needs to be made surrounding the way we come up with legislation and how we follow certain theories.

For myself, there is no right or wrong answer to gun control answered by the social contract theorists. While I believe a change needs to be made and we need to be protected, I lack the support of any of these three theorists in why that should be done. I advise you, my readers, to take a chance and look at these pieces yourself. Did you find something different?

Jean Jacques Rousseau’s social contract relied heavily on the people’s position and power within the government. Rousseau insisted that the people remain the sovereign and their ideas and choices are represented. He found that the best way to see the sovereign’s ideas represented is through a majority decision. Rousseau believed this majority decision would always represent the general will of the people, even those who at first did not realize it was the correct decision and voted otherwise. This general will represents the people as a whole.

When it comes to the topic of gun control and stricter policies, Rousseau would continue to leave this decision to the majority. While in his time, methods of determining the majority may have been more difficult and harder to achieve, it has become easier today with increases in technological advances to understand citizens’ stances. One view of Rousseau that would not support this majority vote on gun legislation is his emphasis on the importance of a moderate state. While he mentions that the state should not be too small, he also recognizes the importance of making sure it is not too big. Rousseau supports this idea by pointing out the difficulties of regulating too large of a state. He believes that once a state becomes too large, administration becomes both burdensome and costly as more levels of government must be created. He also recognizes with such a large, broad group of citizens, it would become too difficult to maintain legislation that is fair and represents all individuals.

This difficulty of finding the correct law fair to all individuals is a question constantly faced in the country today – especially gun laws. With so many different cultures throughout the country, individuals have very different opinions on which is the best way to regulate gun control. While it is true to set on one opinion for all individuals, Rousseau earlier supported the idea of the majority representing the people. It is clear that today, even with such a large state, it is not very difficult to uncover the majority and their preferences through elections. A recent PEW research study found that over half of adult Americans support stricter gun policies.

While this majority represents the country as a whole, it is interesting to look at the nation as smaller, moderate states as Rousseau suggests. Another PEW study found that when dividing the country into four smaller regions, Northeast, Midwest, South, and West, the majority seems to change. Both the Midwest and South regions held majorities that did not prefer stricter gun control policies while the Northeast and West regions found majorities who did support stricter gun laws. This divide in the country’s majority brings into question if Rousseau was right all along. In order to be fair to the members of the country, it might be more reasonable to break into moderate states.

Consequently, Rousseau does not seem to have a particular stance on whether gun policies should be more or less strict, rather he is dependent on the people to use their knowledge of the current state of the country to make a judgment on what should be done. Using Rousseau to analyze the current political climate in America tells us less about what should be done about specific policy and more about what could be done about managing the size of the state to be sure the majority continues to represent the general will of the people.

Sources:

Thomas Hobbes acknowledges the faults of mankind and their inability to be trusted to self-govern through his own political theory in Leviathan. Hobbes understands that in order for individuals to protect themselves from the state of war and nature, they must voluntarily submit their rights to join under a sovereign power. (ch. 17) While Hobbes supports the process of the succession of these rights, he acknowledges a single right that cannot be given up – the right to self-preservation. (ch. 21)

The idea of self-preservation is viewed as the sole liberty left to the individual in order to preserve his life. Going as far to say “a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life,” Hobbes recognizes the importance of individuals’ capability to preserve themselves. (Ch. 14) Therefore, by not allowing individuals to protect and preserve themselves, the government would be depriving them of their lives.

Taking Hobbes’ theory into account, it seems to support the ownership of firearms throughout the country as a form of self-preservation and self-defense. While this would seem to make sense to a thinker like Hobbes, especially in his time, statistics today reveal the opposite. A study from the Violence Policy Center shows that only about 3% of criminal gun homicides in 2014 were justified as self-defense. While the idea that these firearms could be used for self-defense is understandable, it is clear that their use in this approach is rare. Rather, these firearms are being used for the opposite – something Hobbes aimed to stop.
In recent years, mass shootings around the country have become more common and even more deadly. The reoccurring horror stories continue to reveal individuals who Hobbes had warned us about, ourselves. As he had recognized, in a state of war individuals are inherently bad. (Ch. 12) In order to protect them from themselves, they must be regulated and maintained by a government to protect their lives.

While Hobbes insists that surrendering our rights to the government is what is necessary in order to maintain our lives and order, what should happen if that no longer is true. Further examination reveals that the current government’s failure to enact laws that protect the citizen from these inherent evils have resulted in the failure of the Commonwealth and possibly a shift back into the state of nature. The government must take steps in legislation to regain the trust of the people and offer the protection they were promised when entering the contract.

Some may see these steps as stricter gun laws while others see it as the prohibition of guns altogether. It is important to consider what other forms of self-preservation are left to the people because Hobbes understands that without this availability of self-preservation, the government takes away the lives of citizens. Recent years have shown that law enforcement is not enough to provide this preservation to the people. Therefore, it is up to society to work together and reach towards the correct legislation that will offer the preservation while still protecting the people from themselves.

While technological advances and shifts in society have revealed that firearms may no longer the be the safe, direct method to self-preservation, legal organizations, such as law enforcement, have also proven to not be as reliable as they once were after recent cases of discrimination and mistreatment. This leaves Hobbesian thinkers to once again reexamine the tools available to us in society today to best understand what can be used as self-preservation. Therefore, Hobbes’ work does not give an answer to whether stricter gun control needs to be enforced, but that society together must work to find the best, safest means of self-preservation.

Sources:

Hobbes, Thomas. “Hobbes’s Leviathan. : Reprinted from the Ed. of 1651 / With an Essay by the Late W. G. Pogson Smith.” Handle Proxy, Universitat De Barcelona.

While many support stricter regulations on guns in the United States, many others oppose these restrictions. Strongly supported by the NRA, gun activists believe that creating stricter gun laws would violate the Second Amendment of the Constitution which states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  These anti-gun control activists believe that creating stricter regulations regarding the ownership and acquisition of guns would do little to decrease crime rates and overall become ineffective.

Many of these pro-gun supporters use John Locke’s protection of “life, liberty, and property” (Locke § 87) to preserve the current gun laws and Second Amendment. In order to understand Locke’s position on this issue, the entire statement must be looked at in its context. As it is clear Locke supports an individual’s right to self-preservation, this does not ultimately mean Locke would be against stricter gun control.

Locke’s understanding of the natural man is a rational individual who when trusted with their futures will act in a rational way. (Locke § 61) He believes that because of this, all men should be able to preserve their natural, inalienable rights even after entering into a civilized society. While individuals may leave the state of nature to enter into a government, they do not leave their rights behind with them. To the understanding of many individuals, this would mean that Locke supports the individual’s right to self-defense and to bear arms in order to do so.

This argument runs deeper as Locke continues to mention that although men may maintain their inalienable rights when consenting into a civilized society, this does not grant complete freedom. Rather, the government may still regulate an individual’s right to preserve oneself for the common good. (Locke § 131) With the current issue in mind, many Americans today would argue that gun control could ultimately result in saving individuals’ lives – a common good.

While Locke considers these rights to self-preservation and inalienable rights to be those of the natural, rational man, it is clear today that not all individuals are rational. Statistics have shown that of 235 mass killings, 22% of the culprits would be considered mentally ill. These numbers clearly reveal the ability of guns to get in the hands of those who are not rational individuals, something that Locke does not support or consider in his work.

It should also be recognized that even Locke’s “rational man” may not always be the rational man we know today. During his time, Locke failed to recognize indigenous people, such as the Native Americans who had previously occupied American land, as members of this group. Rather those who had not followed the same common-law of reason may be treated as beasts as seen as “noxious prey.” (Locke § 16) This idea suggests a change in who the natural man is and what he encompasses. Neglecting such a large part of the human race from the natural man fails to fully examine “the natural man” and how rational he may be.

After analyzing Locke’s social contract, it is evident his examination of society and man is not sufficient enough to support a man’s right to carry firearms, especially at the height it has reached today. While his own theory may believe all men are rational enough to carry these weapons, his attempt to exclude individuals from the group discredits its truth. While based on his theory Locke would support the right to bear arms, a practical analysis of his work would not hold that decision accountable.

Sources:

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Watchmaker Publishing, 2011.

Qiu, Linda, and Justin Bank. “Checking Facts and Falsehoods About Gun Violence and Mental Illness After Parkland Shooting.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Feb. 2018.

Edited 5/6/18: Substantial Changes

The issues surrounding gun control have been long argued both for and against. In light of recent events surrounding gun violence, this debate has once again been sparked. With the increase of gun violence and school shootings over the past few decades, gun control has once again become a central debate in United States politics.

This debate has become an issue focused on by all ages from teenagers to senior citizens, something that affects us all. As recent data from The Trace reveals, 2017 seemed to be one of the deadliest gun violence years in decades with more than 38,000 lives lost. The infographic on this page exhibits the growth in gun deaths per day during the past decade. This rapid increase in gun violence has urged citizens and politicians to think and encourage others to come up with ways to solve this problem and protect Americans.

On the other hand, many gun control supporters find that these stricter laws would indeed have a positive impact on the country and prove to be effective in reducing the death and violence rates throughout the country. While the gun control activists aim to ban high-capacity machines, they do not intend to make it impossible for citizens with clean background checks and mental capabilities to obtain these guns as they already do. The question surrounding the nationwide debate has little to do with completely prohibiting guns but making them more difficult to possess.

Such a major debate that has caused such a disconnect between citizens throughout the nation has forced many individuals to look into different ways to solve the issue. While this is a contemporary issue being faced, it is can be useful to use significant figures from history to help better understand a way to come to a conclusion. Social contract theorists, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, can each offer substantial insight from their own times and thoughts to help better understand what is happening today.

Throughout several blog entries, I will analyze the works of Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau to better understand how they would deal with the issue at hand.

Sources:

Nass, Daniel. “Gun Violence Statistics for 2017: 11 Facts You Should Know.” The Trace, 26 Dec. 2017, www.thetrace.org/features/gun-violence-facts-2017/.

“Second Amendment.” LII / Legal Information Institute, 10 Oct. 2017, www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/second_amendment.

Edited: 5/6/18: Minor changes