Uvalde, Texas, is where I was born. It’s where my mom taught kindergarten less than a mile from Robb Elementary. Uvalde is where I learned to master a Daisy BB gun. I took that – that took two years before I graduated to a 410 shotgun. Uvalde is where I was taught to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun. Uvalde is where I learned responsible gun ownership. And Uvalde called me on May 24th, when I learned the news of this devastating tragedy. I had been out of cellular range working in the studio all day when I emerged and messages about a mass shooting in the town I was born began flooding my inbox.
These were the words of Uvalde native actor Matthew McConaughey at the White House following the recent tragedy. This same tragedy has led to all sorts of calls for gun control. Most notably, the Protect Our Kids Act which, among other things, would raise the age to purchase an “assault rifle” to 21 and would bar the sale of large capacity magazines and dictate proper at-home gun storage.
My gut instinct as a proud gun owner is to rail against such legislation - as anyone should. As Mises Institute editor, Ryan McMaken, has written, such legislation would merely put more faith in the police. The very same police who have proven time and time again - including this very same tragedy - that they have no duty to protect you.
McMaken, in another article, explains many of the obvious inherent flaws in such gun control legislation. In addition to all this that has already been laid out, there is the fact that as Austrians we don’t believe in “gun rights” or any other specific rights but rather we know that all rights are property rights. As Ludwig von Mises has said, “The truth is that every infringement of property rights and every restriction of free enterprise impairs the productivity of labor.” Such regulation as this would infringe on the property rights of millions simply on the grounds that they may one day far down the line become a criminal (and these outcomes of becoming such a criminal are far less likely than we are often told).
However, the solution goes deeper than that. The reaction to such a tragedy should not be handled by the Congress but rather by - as McConaughey repeated many times for emphasis - Uvalde, Texas itself. Mises Institute President Jeff Deist has previously posed the question “Why couldn’t the big question of the twenty-first century be where you’re governed rather than how?” We as libertarians like to get bogged down in the how, but the question of where is equally - if not, more - important.
This issue has absolutely no realistic reason to be handled at the federal legislative level. The state of Texas has time and time again proven it values its guns highly through actions like their constitutional carry law passed last year. But despite this, Uvalde, in a moment of wholly justified fear, is calling for a reverse in that trend. We like to ask in arguments favoring soft secession and hard federalism why Alabama and California under any logical system would be forced into the same abortion laws. But the question goes further, why should Uvalde and Fort Worth, Texas, have the same gun laws? Why should Miami and Okeechobee, Florida, have the same systems? Why should Birmingham and Morris, Alabama, face the same restrictions? We find ourselves with wildly diverse cultures even within the same state. In the face of these gun control debates the answer is to allow them to be decided at the most local level. If Uvalde in the face of tragedy wants to crack down on guns, then let them. However, on the flip side, if a more conservative student body in College Station or Lubbock wants to have campus carry readily allowed then Uvalde must respectfully allow that as well.
Another Mises Wire editor, Bill Anderson, has explained that the more we politicize mass shootings the more we simply guarantee them in the future. Decentralizing these decisions will take the heat out of them and let them be more peacefully and diplomatically handled at federal levels - as with any conflict. We can close this issue with the words of Jeff Deist:
Mass democracy, under shifting rules often determined by nine politicized judges, is not a prescription for harmony and goodwill among 330 million very diverse Americans. Those millions don’t much agree about guns, God, abortion, and plenty more. But they don’t have to agree. In a “post liberal” and post-good-faith environment, aggressive federalism and realistic discussions of political secession are the obvious path forward. If you claim to love your fellow American citizens, unyoke them from the federal superstate and demand the same for yourself. The universalist, totalizing impulse, which resulted in the dramatic centralization of state power through the twentieth century, must be reversed in the twenty-first. The other way lies political strife, and worse.
