I admit it: By American standards, I’m a bit of a pantywaist when it comes to gun control. By British standards, for what it’s worth, I’m a libertarian: I opposed, and continue to oppose, the ban on handguns brought in after the monstrous school shooting in Dunblane in 1996.
Although no one seriously argued that such a ban would have prevented that atrocity — it was carried out with an illegally held weapon — Tony Blair felt that the legislative response should be proportionate to the sense of grief, not proportionate to the need to prevent shootings. But although I don’t like to see things banned, I also believe it’s possible to have some restrictions on dangerous weapons without ceasing to live in a free society.
So it’s not President Obama’s attitude to guns that alarms me; it’s his attitude to the U.S. Constitution. Coming from a largely gun-free culture, I don’t share the visceral hostility of many of my American conservative friends to proposed controls. I do worry, though, that people are missing the far more serious threat to American liberty, namely the unbalancing of government. Gun laws are essentially a state prerogative. And such minimal federal jurisdiction as there might be comes under Congress, not the White House.
Now you might argue that Obama’s words are not backed by any substantive action. Perhaps, given that he is mainly posturing, the Republican response has been slightly over the top. Then again, given the president’s record, who can blame the GOP? Again and again, Mr. Obama has treated the Constitution as a minor technicality. Whether unilaterally changing the immigration regime or bombing Libya without congressional approval, he has shown no recognition that the system is meant to be bigger than the people passing through it.
To be honest, I’m getting slightly fed up with all the talk of a “monarchical” White House. Real monarchs are, in the main, humbler, cheaper and far more respectful of the way things are supposed to work.
Still, we shouldn’t blame Mr. Obama alone. For at least 100 years, power has been dribbling from the 50 states to Washington, and from the legislature to the executive. America’s permanent federal bureaucracy has become an unofficial fourth branch, assuming most of the competences once exercised by the Crown.
Do you imagine that President Hillary Clinton would reverse this trend? Or President Donald Trump? Even the most literalist conservatives have a tendency to give themselves the benefit of the doubt once their own hands are on the levers of power.
And shall I tell you the worst thing? Hardly anyone seems to care. As long as people are getting the outcomes they want, they lose interest in process. The pro-gun lobby is every bit as guilty as the anti-gun lobby. Back in 2003, Ron Paul voted against a bill that would have protected gun manufacturers from negligence lawsuits. His rationale was that such a measure, however sensible, was a usurpation of the rights of the 50 states. Did gun champions, normally so ready to swear by the Constitution, applaud the congressman for upholding it? Did they hell: The NRA wanted to challenge him at the next primary.
I know this sounds like an abstruse point, but the rules really do matter more than the rulers. The usual condition of mankind is arbitrary government — that is, a system where the people in power get to do as they like. Only very recently and largely in the English language did the idea evolve that the law might somehow stand above the government.
In their seminal work “Why Nations Fail,” Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson singled out this quality as the elemental difference between “extractive” states, run for the benefit of their oligarchs, and “inclusive” states, run by and for the general population. There is a reason that the latter are more prosperous, happier and freer, as well as more democratic, than the former.
The United States was founded as the ultimate inclusive state. No country has so elevated and ennobled the idea of “a government of laws, not of men.” Which is why it is so unutterably depressing to hear Americans saying: “Who cares about states’ rights, what about the dead kids?” or “So what if same-sex marriage has nothing to do with the Supreme Court, you got a problem with gay people?” Come on, cousins: You can do better.
Dan Hannan is a British Conservative MEP.
