In a March 21 Vanity Faircolumn, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes suggests Second Amendment defenders have contributed to an “arms race” because of citizens and law enforcement.
He suggests this has happened as a result of the contention that private gun ownership is the “ultimate check against tyranny.”
Hayes writes:
The Second Amendment, its most strenuous defenders like to tell us, is the ultimate check against tyranny….The argument is that an armed populace keeps oppression at bay, but its practical effect has been the opposite. If the people are always armed enough to threaten the state’s control, then the state’s monopoly on violence is forever in question and the state therefore acts more often than not as if it were putting down an insurrection as opposed to enforcing the law.
