This is a wholly illogical article. The fact is America had the same Common Law tradition as the U.K. Just as in Britain, the right of the individual to own guns and other weapons for self-defence was unrestricted save with reference to 'condition and degree'- i.e. whether armament was proportionate to what was being defended. Restrictions in the UK on gun ownership only applied to felonious intent. The first licensing law, in 1870, was a revenue raising expedient. It did not curtail the right to self-defence.



What makes the US different was the notion that not just individuals, for self defence purposes, but also 'militias' had a right to bear arms. However, as in the UK, in practice there were restrictions related to 'condition and degree'. Buruma, blinded by hatred of a historicist and ideological type, links the right to bear arms to the Glorious Revolution and the notion of an embattled Protestant Religion which had been previously persecuted by James II. However, the legal principle on which this provision of the Bill of Rights was based was the ancient 'Assize of Arms' of Henry II. It was not till 1937 that the UK decided that there was no fundamental right to own a gun for self-defence. But, by then, Britain- a relatively small, relatively well policed, country had developed a very different type of judicial and penal system. Criminals did not want to carry guns because it increased the risk associated with their enterprise. By contrast, in parts of America, it remained the case that criminals needed to have guns because their rivals had guns and the police too carried weapons.



Buruma mentions 'images of Black Panther revolutionaries taking up arms'. He does not add that some such revolutionaries spoke explicitly of a race war. Whether he likes it or not, his paranoid account implicates the Black Panthers as much as it does the Ku Klux Klan. However, the fact remains, high gun ownership has to do not with racial or religious violence- which the wealthier, or politically dominant group is well defended from by the police, the armed forces, and private security firms- but fears relating to criminal rivals within one's own community. If they possess weapons of greater lethality, then one is forced to 'keep up with the Joneses'. Their 'drive by' must be matched with an equal show of fire-power.



For Buruma, the fact that Covid is a virus means that anything else he does not like is also a virus. However, for ideological reasons, he also does not like the word 'war'. What is the result of his cogitations? He says 'The “war” against COVID-19, belatedly declared by Trump, is not on the surface the same thing as racial resentment of minorities. But fear of lawlessness is fear of poor and desperate mobs, deprived of jobs and health care. It is fear of a war of all against all – or perhaps not quite all.' The fact is all countries- regardless of color of skin or religion- are at war with this virus. It has nothing to do with 'racial resentment'. Yet, in Buruma's mind they are linked. Why? Is it because of a virus of some ideological sort? Or is it rather the case that his stock in trade involves wilful ignorance of the facts of the case? Why can't he see that the US is doing what the UK is doing? Their different attitudes to guns make no difference at all. There is no such thing as a 'gun virus'.

Furthermore, it is simply not true that 'fear of lawlessness is fear of mobs of the poor'. We are not aristocrats fearing a jacquerie in the France of the ancien regime. We have not stockpiled matchlocks so as to fend off pitchfork wielding peasants. If some American politicians want gun sales to continue it is not because they believe that the country is on the brink of anarchy. On the contrary, they understand that 'panic buying' has a speculative element. Furthermore, sudden shortages in one market can have a demoralizing effect and, at the margin, bring about 'lawless' behavior- e.g unruly behavior by panicked shoppers, the development of a black market, etc. etc. Thus, if a panic causes toilet paper to disappear from Supermarket shelves, it is worthwhile to take measures to reassure people that the thing will be available in unlimited quantities. The mass psychology involved here is the same as that which expresses itself in a run on banks.



Buruma does not understand that gun ownership is driven by intra-community mimetics. It has nothing to do with Eighteenth Century fears of a peasant uprising or a Slave Revolt or a 'Race War' or anything of that sort. Hobbes died long ago. He had no great influence on Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence or political theory. He was an oddity seized upon by Continental pedants. By contrast, Locke- who opposed Hobbes- influenced the American Founding Fathers. Why does Buruma pretend otherwise? I suppose the answer has to do with some soi disant virus which, if it infects us, would have us believe that Trump's America is headed for a war in which Blacks and Asians will be on one side and...who would be on the other? Perhaps it is those who Buruma says should be 'scared' by the prospect he has so suggestively limned. But what is the use of such fear-mongering? It panders to the lunatic fringe. The path of Virtue, if not Virtue Signalling, is to condemn their paranoid delusions and simplistic assumptions about race and class. I hope, in our enforced solitude under the lockdown, we can self-reflect about our own irrational views and come to see that we are all in this together. We need to put aside the blinkers of blind hatred. Let empirical evidence, not the vaporings of some Seventeenth Century pedant, guide us in adopting a rational and compassionate attitude to all those tasked with protecting us in this crisis.