Bryce Benefield
The prohibition of an item or material by a governing authority presents a peculiar opportunity for those willing to defy the law and possess the prohibited items. The inherent danger involved in the transportation and distribution or use of prohibited commodities has proven throughout human history to be a relatively lucrative business.
The items that are deemed illegal create value for those looking to generate income off the record. Americans learned an important lesson upon the prohibition of alcohol in the early 1920s; it was one of substantial failure. The most interesting, albeit unforeseen, result of signing of the 18th Amendment into law was an ensuing deterioration of the American rule of law as a whole, along with the rise of an immensely powerful criminal class.
This class then became entrenched enough to stabilize and diversify within the nation as a counter culture. A criminal class is comprised of individuals who have little to no reluctance towards violating the law, and thus are willing to act according to their own desires regardless of what the law says. Further discussion of the criminal class can be extended beyond the simple prohibition of alcohol; a more modern example of a powerful criminal class is the Mexican cartel, which was financed by the multi-billion dollar illegal marijuana and drug industry. The prohibition of marijuana and alcohol both created and entrenched a counter culture. Counter cultural tendencies arise where people postulate about the legitimacy of the law and relevant injustice, “my society was wrong about this prohibited material, and I think they could be incorrect about other common notions.” People grow to distrust government authority when faced with institutional contradiction in values.
My argument will be concluded with a discussion of the prohibition of firearms, a topic completely relevant to the operations of criminal classes. If a nation were to pass a universal ban on all guns, the possession of firearms, being illegal, would also be lucrative. Illegal firearms would be lucrative because their illegality does not inhibit the fact that they still would serve a primary function for individuals as a tool of self preservation (the ability to prevent external harm to oneself.)
The retained instrumental value then leads to a situation where any and all people who still value the instrumental utility of a firearm (and maybe the right to self preservation) would now be forced to operate within the criminal class to exercise that right. Immediately this person would now have to operate as if police officers, government inspections and the authorities as a whole were a threat, newly antagonistic and contradictory towards their self-ideation.
More importantly, those law abiding citizens who would ardently follow the letter of the law, and give up their right to possess an instrument of self preservation, would be at the hands of those who rejected that notion. This point denies the viability of the old intuitive adage, “less guns equals less violent crime.” Because strategically, those with guns where guns are scarce would be much more powerful relative to the rest of our law abiding citizens, depending mostly on how many instruments of self preservation we deemed were prohibited. In this sense, if granny were living in Detroit, where police response time is nearly an hour, wouldn’t it be better for her to be allowed to preserve her own life through any means necessary? Government prohibition of firearms, like alcohol and marijuana, would benefit the long-term viability of the criminal class more than anyone else.