

Libertarians are frequently demonized and accused of supporting a state of lawlessness where everyone must "fend for themselves."



In fact, it's statism which creates a situation of lawlessness and "anarchy," in the negative sense of the word, because rather than people have full knowledge they must fend for themselves, they think the government will protect them. A task which, like keeping health insurance prices low, keeping drugs and weapons out of prisons, "managing" the economy, etc., the government fails at miserably. I believe such a failure was on display with today's Dark Knight shooting.



Just a few days ago there was a widely covered story when a 71-year-old man shot some robbers who entered an internet cafe armed with guns:







Fortunately, the older gentleman had a gun and was able to defend himself and everyone else from the armed robbers. One 71-year-old man did what the government could not. Imagine if such a situation occurred today at this Dark Knight shooting! If only one person had a gun the chances that Colorado shooter James Holmes would have been killed and more people would have survived would have been exponentially greater. The more people who had weapons, the easier it would have been to kill him.



Was no one armed? Are guns even allowed in the theatre? I'm not familiar with Colorado's gun laws, but any laws restricting what people are "permitted" to own by their rulers in the government are too many. Even if they had no restrictions on gun ownership (they do), the implicit false sense of protection the government gives people leaves people more exposed to danger because they assume "the government will protect them" and they do not have to "fend for themselves."



Of course, there was no police there to protect the people above in the internet cafe, nor was there any police to protect those during the Dark Knight shooting. As anyone who follows this site knows, the police generally act as revenue collection agencies for the state, violating people's rights just like armed robbers, rather than act to protect people from criminals, they act to protect the criminal state from the people.



The "government," or the people who call themselves "the government," are more likely to violate your rights than any random criminal, yet for the most part it's entirely illegal to defend yourself against government robbery and any state sanctioned "use of force."



To depend on these people for "protection" is foolish to the extreme, those who believe such nonsense put us all in danger.

_

Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.







