Why Do People Support Tyranny?

In the course of manning our Libertarian outreach booths and during campaigning for public office, I occasionally run into people who are adamantly opposed to freedom. Sometimes this is general and sometimes it is rather specific. The three specific questions where this happens the most are education, drugs and gun control.

I am always trying to figure out why others come up with such different conclusions than I do on these topics. First, I am always checking my own conclusions based on any new facts. I am always looking for that one overwhelming and devastating argument that will convince my opponents of the error of their ways. That is why I never get angry at people who argue with me; I see it as a learning opportunity.

I recently had such an encounter on the subject of concealed carry of guns in Kansas. Of course, the constitutional argument was powerless against this individual. He thought he was protecting his children by blocking concealed carry of weapons. How do I make him understand that the real danger to his children does not come from the rare and random nut who decides to shoot up an area? Do I tell him that if there was a good supply of armed citizens in the area, the nut will not live to get his second shot off? That will probably not work for the simple reason that his life experience does not include such incidents. That is a consequence of the rarity of the occurrence in the first place.

If he knew history well, he would know that the real risk to his children will come from the government. Those of us well schooled in the history of how governments go awry see all the signs around us and wonder how little time we have left before the police state closes down and the disappearances start happening. How do you explain to someone who got his watered down history from public schools that widespread gun ownership and the unquestioned ability to carry those guns wherever you go is the only thing that will stop a runaway government.

He doesn't even know that all the great genocides of the twentieth century started with gun control. You cannot commit genocide against an armed population. He doesn't see that as a realistic risk to his children because he never learned the important details of history.

You get the same line of thought with drug prohibition. "We have to protect the children". Why do they not understand that the drug war is what is endangering their children? Occasional drug use does not have anywhere near the consequences of being arrested for drug use. Prohibition makes the worst part of society wealthy and powerful. It encourages all sorts of secondary crime to pay the high prices of black market drugs that would be dirt cheap if legal. Worst of all, it gives the government the excuse to violate other rights under the "War on Drugs" banner. Overall, drug prohibition is all bad stuff but people blindly accept it to "protect their kids" from themselves. How have you protected your kid when he gets a criminal record for smoking a joint?