Click Here For Washington University Law Quarterly: OF HOLOCAUSTS AND GUN CONTROL

Washington University Law Quarterly: OF HOLOCAUSTS AND GUN CONTROL: " When victims have guns, the overwhelming advantage otherwise enjoyed by physically superior or more numerous aggressors is diminished. One (usually unintended) consequence of an effective ban on citizen firearms ownership is to weaken the weak and strengthen the strong relative to one another. It is not embellishment to call this effect a 'cause' of genocide, because it foreseeably expedites this outcome by lowering the costs of predation. In practical effect, moreover, the matter is even more stark, because gun bans are never universal. By definition they do not operate on people whom government illegally supplies with guns such as government officials.[8]
To summarize: from the point of view of any aggressor, it is desirable if not essential that intended victims not possess weapons, especially firearms. This principle holds true whether the subject is a gangster premeditating a crime or a government planning a genocide. This is an inherently dangerous incentive structure. It seems to us indefensible to fail to acknowledge its potential for mischief even if at the end of the day one decides that 'tyranny' is too remote an evil, and an armed citizenry as a means of avoiding this evil too feeble, to repay its cost in accidental or unjustifiable bloodshed. We discuss these questions presently, but we turn first to a threshold question. "