So my candidate for President, Michael Badnarik, was on my local NPR station yesterday morning. Sadly, I don't think it was a slamdunk. He got cornered on the gun issue and on healthcare, and instead of making a strong case for why the libertarian position on both is the correct one, he got bogged down in semantics.
Also particularly painful was the whole 'Switzerland' issue. Many in favor of actually supporting the 2nd Amendment highlight Switzerland as a good model because everyone in that country has a gun in their house. Not just a gun, but a military assault rifle. Problem is, the Swiss do have guns in their houses, but the ammunition is tightly controlled. Badnarik didn't know this nuance, and when someone on the show confronted him about it, he floundered.
What should have happened instead was this:
Caller: "No, the Swiss have boxes of ammunition in their house, but they're sealed, and monitored by the government, and you get in trouble if you open them."
Badnarik: "Sure the bullets are monitored by the government, but since when has the monitoring of anything been a deterrent to crime? We monitor prostitution, drug traffic, gambling, and a host of other activities which are illegal and they continue to this day. If someone is intent on committing a crime they will commit the crime, irregardless of whether the government's watching them or not. The fact that the Swiss people have guns AND ammo in their house without an increase in crime is still significant. In fact, the amount of regulation on bullets is a non-issue in my mind, and shouldn't be what ends this debate. We have more important things to discuss than just that."
Oh well. Next time perhaps.
Very similar to that, is the fact that in Israel, the vast majority of households have automatic weapons, Uzis or Galil rifles in particular, in them. The reason for this, is that active duty and reserve members of the military frequently end up taking their weapons home with them (this is how they do it over there, in the event that war breaks out, this way they can armed and mobilized in very short notice) and store them at their residence. Now, myself nor anyone else would NOT be so bold as to say that crime is nonexistent in Israel, but other than outright terrorism and the near state of civil war that exists between the Jews and the Arabs, there really is not that much violent crime in Israel, and the possession of weapons in households can be attributed as a major reason why this is.
From my own personal experience, I was only in Switzerland briefly this past summer, but I do know that they have rifles in their houses...but the real reason that they don't have ammunition, is probably because, like everything else in that little country, it's too damned expensive!