Posted by David Kopel: Gun Prohibition One Country at a Time: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_22-2005_05_28.shtml#1117051970
In 1924, after Lenin's death, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union introduced the concept of "[1]socialism in one country." Recognizing that the hoped-for Communist revolutions elsewhere in Europe would not take place, the Soviet Communists set about building their version of "socialism," and then adding other nations to their "socialist" sphere of hegemony whenever possible. Today, many international gun prohibition advocates have recognized that, even though world-wide gun prohibition is not achievable in the near future, gun prohibition can be advanced in individual nations. Single-country (or single-region) gun prohibition is called "micro-disarmament." Success stories of micro-disarmament are a very important part of international gun prohibition advoacy. In [2]Microdisarmament: The Consequences for Public Safety and Human Rights, my co-authors Paul Gallant, Joanne Eisen, and I examine six case studies of microdisarmament. In three of those cases--Albania, Bougainville, and Cambodia--microdisarmament has seriously harmed human rights. Limited disarmament in rural Guatemala was followed by a crime wave, but it is not clear that the former caused the latter. In San Miguelito, Panamana, there was a successful program to convince youthful gangsters to surrender their guns, in exchange for participation in a government jobs program. In Mali, northern tribes fought a successful war against the corrupt central government which starved and oppressed them. After the central kleptocarcy was replaced with a democratic government which respected the rights of the northern tribes, the northern tribes laid down their arms. In Mali, disarmament was not the cause of peace, but rather the result of a successful war for indigenous self-determination. The Microdisarmament article is the lead article in a forthcoming symposium on firearms policy in the UMKC Law Review. The [3]PDF version available on the web is nearly final, except for some cross-references in footnotes, and a few other small item. References 1. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/o.htm 2. http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Foreign/MicroDisarmament.pdf 3. http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Foreign/MicroDisarmament.pdf _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
