Is The Gun Culture To Blame For America’s Foreign Policy?


Tyler Cowen seems to think so:

Gun possession breeds a certain kind of kick-ass mentality—”martial culture”—that doesn’t stop at the border’s edge, but spills “over there.” Therefore, if libertarians want to restrain America’s adventurism abroad, they will have to stop looking at guns from a narrow rights-based perspective, as is their wont, and start looking at them from the standpoint of the undesirable foreign policy consequences they produce—and so accept some gun regulation.

Reason’s reply:

As a naturalized American from India, I have always been both amused and bemused by the American romance with guns. I have also observed firsthand the destabilizing effect of America’s post-9/11 “martial interventions” near my native country. Thus, if there were a serious chance that restrictions on gun rights would help reduce Uncle Sam’s war mongering, I would consider it. But color me dubious.

Cowen’s argument is intriguing and original—not to mention refreshing in that it doesn’t put the religious faith that liberals do in gun control diminshing violence. It also has a certain intuitive plausibility. But does support for private gun rights actually generate a spirit of martial interventionism? Actually, as far as libertarians are concerned, the connection runs in the other direction.

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