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I recently had an experience with a regular at work that left me in a bit of a dilemma. It has some worthy CW meat to chew on, particularly in regard to some recent events, so I thought I'd share it here.
Let me tell you about Hassan.
Hassan is not his real name, though his real name is similarly classic Arabic. Hassan is an American black guy. Nothing he has said in the years I have known him implies Islamic faith, but the name suggests maybe his parents had interests in that direction. Hassan is tall, in quite good shape, and fairly handsome - a bit like a Temu Young Denzel. As I mentioned, he is a regular, and he seems to like me in particular, so I usually end up chatting with him for a while whenever he comes in. The last time I encountered Hassan he mentioned his desire to leave Jersey for the south (possibly the Carolinas), something he's mentioned on numerous prior occasions. He has issues with New Jersey that we'll get into later, and thinks the south would be a more welcoming environment. But this last time he added that if he were in the south, he could get a gun (he pantomimed a holstered pistol on his hip as he said this), so that he could "be a man" and "take care of business".
And the reason I found this concerning is that Hassan is a textbook paranoid schizophrenic.
The very first time I met Hassan he spent 15 minutes telling me that the government snuck into his apartment while he was out and planted listening devices in the walls. He frequently expresses concern that "they" are out to get him, a nebulous shadowy they who mess with his Social Security Disability payments, try to steal his money, try to lure him into doing bad things, sabotage his employment efforts, and try to take advantage of him sexually.
More on that last bit in a moment.
Talking to Hassan, all of this comes out in a non-stop stream of consciousness type exposition that has never even caught sight of a filter or a reality check. It's as though every thought that occurs to him is taken as literal Truth, and never subjected to any kind of, er, sanity checking.
That said, Hassan is actually quite functional. He lives by himself, handles his own bills and money, cooks for himself. These are accomplishments he is very proud of, that frequently come up during his expositions. He will start by telling me how the people at the Social Security office are stealing from him (AFAICT, that was either taxes or a garnishment of some sort), then veer into reciting all the vegetables he eats because he knows how to eat healthy, he cooks for himself, but these people they not eatin' right and it causes problems, mental problems in they head they be havin' mental problems because they don't eat right, not like him because he eats his green beans, real food that he cooks for himself because he knows how to eat right, act right because he learned it in school, third grade, food pyramid, he learned that here in Jersey in school, third grade, and these other people should have learned it but they not acting right, that’s just Jersey, lotta bad people in Jersey, obsessed with money, takin’ from you, takin’ your money.
Just imagine that sort of run-on sentence going on for 45 minutes.
"Acting rightly" is a very serious concern for Hassan. He is deeply worried about people plying him with drugs, or otherwise enticing him into criminal behavior. He recently managed to get a job at a bakery, but he noticed his boss was sniffling and rubbing at his nose, so Hassan flatly told the man to please not offer or force Hassan to do any coke.
He was fired shortly after for some reason. "They" struck again. Jersey, ammirite?
So, we have a man with an internal filter that is severely misfiring at best, with consistent delusions of enemies out to get him, telling me he wants to get a gun to "be a man" and "take care of business".
I consider myself to be a strong proponent of the Second Amendment, but that conversation made me consider the merits of having a chat with my local police department.
Awkwarrrrrrd.
As that thought occurred to me, it wasn't conceived as a hostile action. Five seconds before that moment I would have happily told you that Hassan was the very model of "Oh, yeah, he's crazy but he's harmless." As my brain first traced that hypothetical report, it was largely directed by concern for Hassan himself. He travels on foot throughout the county, often in bad neighborhoods, but that's always been the case. Has something changed? Is he being threatened? If I were to take that info to the police, it would be in the hopes that they would be forewarned, and able to help him.
And, contrary to popular belief, I honestly believe they'd try, because I've seen it before. Someone called the cops for a wellness check on Hassan, and they caught up to him when I was there. Three of them showed up, because this is a small, safe town with little for them to do, and they earnestly tried to just check and see if the man was alright.
Hassan responds poorly to wellness checks. On another occasion, Hassan was trekking around on a hot summer day, on foot and hauling his old lady luggage cart. A much more successful black man (judging by the car) paused to ask Hassan if he needed some water. Hassan yanked out his gallon jug of water from the luggage cart thing and shook it at the interloper, yelling "You need water?! You need water?! You need water?!" I had a young second-generation Hatian kid working for me at the time, and he thought it was the funniest fucking thing he'd ever seen. He was wandering around the place for weeks afterward, randomly muttering "You need water!" to himself and cracking up.
It was worse with the three cops. Hassan was yelling and agitated and scaring other customers, and I ended up sort of forcing myself into the situation and just aggressively treating him like a normal customer to keep him calm until the cops left (Hassan responds very well to being treated with normal, respectful courtesy. Imagine that.)
You might think it was so bad because of the obvious racial element of three white cops stopping an erratic black man and trying to grill him with questions, but it's actually because one of Hassan's persistent delusions is that The Police want to enter a homosexual relationship with him and he has no interest in doing so. It's not even like specific officers. Just "The Police" in general. All of them, I guess. Hell of a polycule. And it sounds funny, but it's probably actually very sad. Hassan has told me that his deceased father was a police officer, and the interest in a relationship from the cops came from when he was a young man. I suspect that the start of this was his dad's old buddies trying to watch out for the son, but their interest and attention being filtered through Hassan’s delusional paranoia.
Or maybe someone tried to molest him. I don't know, and I can't exactly take his interpretation at face value.
So the optimistic thought of the cops trying to help Hassan while being mindful that he may be armed lasted until the instant it occurred to me that they might try to frisk him, because that could well end in Gay Panic Tragedy.
But really, what right do I have to red flag the man? He has never done anything wrong that I've ever seen. Hassan would walk ten miles out of his way to avoid the appearance of having accidentally stolen a quarter. He might honestly be the most scrupulous person I've ever met - and if part of that is fueled by paranoid delusions, then his paranoia is remarkably pro-social and it might be that this world could do with more of it. By what right should a man that is pathologically righteous be stripped of the right to self-defense?
Well, because his IFF functionality is broken. Because his current modes of behavior may be "pro-social" because his only move when he encounters anything that strikes him as sketchy is to leave. But it's not like the man is powerless now. He's above average in height, and fit enough that I assume he's still doing Presidential Physical Fitness Testing daily, just like he was taught in third grade. If he was inclined to strike at perceived enemies, he could certainly do so by hand. A gun expands effectiveness, it won't add intent where none existed before.
Unless it puts the idea in his head. He's been paranoid and talking about moving to the south for years. Why the gun, why now? Was it a random conversation? Was it the violence on the news, in the air? Hassan strikes me as too focused on daily life for that. It takes nearly 100% of his mental bandwidth to get through his day to day. But I only see slices of his life. If a 3rd grade teacher told him that good citizens watch the news, how susceptible to social contagion would he be?
The final thing that dissuades me from taking a stroll to the station is the fact that we live in New Jersey. Hassan is never going to buy an illegal gun - in the tiny chance that some ne'er-do-well offers him a sale, he would assume he was being set up, freak out, and flee. And if the state that requires fingerprinting and a background check and two character references and a psych history and a sign-off by the local PD and assorted other rules so strict they won't let TheNybber buy a gun... well, if they give Hassan a Firearms Purchaser Card to buy a gun with his Permanent Disability For Psychological Issues money then we have much more general problems. And it's not like a warning like that would carry across state lines, even if the Free Carolinas would take a warning from the People's Republic of Jersey in the first place.
So I'm 99% sure it's a totally moot point. But it raises interesting questions. At what level of non-functionality should people lose rights? Should they, if they've never done anything wrong, in spite of the non-functionality? When I look at things like mass shooters, I will decry playing the partisan blame game when I think the person's thought process is sufficiently disordered - roughly at the level of "GPT2 playing madlibs". Is that a level that justifies preemptive action? If no, does such a level exist at all? If yes, where is the line?
The recent boat guy with the bullet in his brain who thought the "LGBTQ white supremacist pedophiles" were trying to kill him for narrowly avoiding their previous assassination attempts? That dude seems like he might just be broken hardware in a way where blaming any kind of software is just irrelevant. But before the attack he was just filing unhinged lawsuits and expressing wild conspiracy theories (unless there is an LGBTQ white supremacist pedophile cabal, in which case we again have much bigger problems). Is that something a man should have his rights stripped for? If so, is that meaningfully different from believing that, say, the police kill 10,000 unarmed black men per year? Or that Obama is a gay Kenyan married to Big Mike? Even broaching the topic feels wildly ripe for abuse.
Is this whole topic a can of worms best left unopened?
Certain rights are (imho) inherent and inalienable. For example, no matter if your IQ is 150 or 50, if you are age 1 or 120, you have (imho) a right not to be tortured.
Other rights are more conditional, some to the point where they might be considered privileges. Often these are rights which come with responsibilities. Driving a car on a public road would be a prime example: because cars are vastly more dangerous to the general public than bicycles, you generally need a license to drive them. It is still kind-of a right in that you typically have a right to try to get your license, and most governments can not deny it just because they dislike your skin color or something.
Nobody I am aware of argues that 2A describes an inherent, inalienable and unconditional right. Even the NRA will not arm toddlers. The absolute minimum to me seems to be that the gun owner will be generally found to be responsible for their own actions, which Hassan would fail. (Even if someone was generally of sound mind but had periodic episodes of diminished culpability, e.g. due to binge drinking, the decision to own a firearm would make me very unsympathetic towards a defendant who was accused of shooting someone under influence.)
Even if Hassan would never shoot anyone, it seems to me that he will get into situations where him being visibly armed would increase the stakes tremendously. A possibly deranged person mumbling to himself on the sidewalk is only a nuisance in many situations. Give him a gun belt, and that assessment changes completely. From my understanding, NJ does not allow any open carry, so this might be a practical issue. (Of course, NJ also requires a license for concealed carry, which he is unlikely to get. I am not sure how well "if you carry a gun bought in the Carolinas in NJ you are breaking the law" conversation would go, though.)
The cops which did the welfare check on him seem mostly chill from your description, but I would assume that they would be a lot less chill if they had a reasonable suspicion that he was packing.
Taking advantage of the gun show loophole requires considerable agency. You have to save up enough cash, find a show, find a way to travel there (presumably he is not driving a car?). Knowing how to ride a bus without conveying to the guy in the next seat that you are (1) mentally unsound and (2) on you way to buy a gun would be helpful as well.
Even sane people will sometimes voice aspirations which they will not follow through, from visiting far-away countries to quitting their jobs. "I am gonna go to NC to buy a gun there, for self-defense, youknow" could be just such a thing. Of course, if he is telling you he already found a gun show and transportation, that would seem a lot more concrete.
One flaw about modern bureaucracies is that sometimes there is nobody in the loop who has the authority (and balls) to pull the brakes and stop doing something counter-productive. If you tell the authorities that he has ideations about gun ownership, the default response would be him getting visited by cops who give him another talk. Given that this will be perceived as "gay cops are oogling me again", this will likely be counter-productive.
I guess you're not at all familiar with the topic then.
Here's Hobbes:
Here's Locke:
And it is of course explicitly because of this conception of a natural right of self defense, which was specifically popular in the early American Republic that the Anti-Federalists decided to include it in the Bill of Rights which they saw as necessary to secure against violation of natural rights that may come from the powers granted to the State through the Constitution.
To quote Hardy:
The second amendment was indeed understood to secure an inherent right to self defense. Much of it was implicit in the minds of its drafters due to the fact that English common law recognized it as a background principle, but it was actually talked about specifically in the constitutional ratification debates that preceded the bill of rights.
St. George Tucker writes in 1803 in the earliest published scholarly commentary on 2A:
The thing about people using violence to defend what they perceive to be their natural rights is that absent some consensus about what these other rights are and what the ground facts are, these claims will overlap.
For example, if what for me looks like innocent religious worship to which I am entitled through natural rights looks to you like depraved demon-calling which threatens the lives of your neighborhood, you would well be within your rights to use violence to stop me, and I would well be within my rights to use violence to oppose you.
Solve for equilibrium, and this is roughly equivalent to saying that there is only one right, which is to use violence to do whatever you want.
This is certainly a valid conception of natural rights, but also a rather trivial one: might makes right. It generally leads to long-lived feuds between clans and families which have wronged each other.
Hobbes speaks of "Judgement, and Reason", Locke of "to judge, whether they have just cause". This sounds to me like implicit prerequisites to the right to self-defense: if your judgement is obviously impaired, it seems unlikely that society will respect your right to self defense. (I still think they are overly optimistic if they believe that reasonable people will not make overlapping claims wrt their natural rights, but that is besides the point.)
Of course, we can argue if philosophically, a toddler or a psychotic has a right to defend themselves against what they perceive as violations of their natural rights, but pragmatically, all historical societies which I am aware of have avoided giving the means for effective self defense to these groups. The right not to get tortured or killed is a right which most civil societies bestow to any humans in their jurisdiction from the moment they are born. Other rights, e.g. the right to vote, or carry effective means for self defense, or consent to sex are granted conditionally. (Related potential scissor statement: "as the right to bear arms is a consequence of the natural right of self defense, illegal immigrants should be allowed to bear arms").
All societies consider trade-offs when it comes to enabling their people to practice self-defense. As @cjet79 has pointed out, guns are excellent tools for self-defense. But the kind of guns which are legal to own in the US are probably not what is always optimal for self-defense.
For example, consider tamper-resistant explosive vests as a weapon for deterring rapists. If a potential victim packing a firearm will deter 80% of the would-be rapists, wearing a well-known rape prevention vest which works by turning the wearer and anyone within five meters into bite-sized chunks whenever its sensors detect that a rape attempt is happening might deter 90% (all the ones who believe that they could startle their victim before she can draw). Yet despite offering marginal gains, wearing such a device in public would be illegal everywhere in the world, because societies will not consider the benefits in isolation but also the trade-offs. If the device blows up one subway car full of people by accident per three marginal rapes it prevents, that means that it has negative utility for broader society.
The difference between Texas, New York, and Germany is simply that the societies balance these trade-offs slightly differently.
You misunderstand. It is inarguable that they do in fact have such a right. Nature provides that they do. An insane person can decide to just revolt and kill anybody they perceive as a threat. The world is structured in a way that makes this impossible to totally prevent.
The question that you decide to shift this to here isn't whether this is a natural right, but whether such a natural right ought to be enforced by the government, inasmuch as it doesn't violate other rights.
The idea that this is not a natural right is incoherent with your line of reasoning unless you embrace the Roussean view that there is now essentially no such thing, and that all rights have become civil rights which are provided at will by the State which is now the font of all such things.
The problem you have is that the US was founded specifically in a rejection of this concept and an embrace of the idea that rights are ordained by God, not the State. Under the theory that good government is government that recognizes natural law and aligns itself with the liberties that God provided us as much as it practically can.
You may disagree with this policy, but unlike you are claiming, this is a difference of nature, not of degree. This is why Charlie Kirk said that some gun deaths may be worth it and why his opponents can't fathom how he could say such a thing, because this isn't about some consequential end of State policy, but about the deontological application of natural law.
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Just to be surei understand you, do you believe in a right to self defense?
Like are we disagreeing that this is a fundamental right, or are we just quibbling about whether guns fall into an extension of that right?
This is absolutely not the equilibrium. If we are gonna use the terms of economics I'd say there are very high transaction costs for violence.
The equilibrium is more like: you can use violence or the threat of violence to protect a few things that you greatly care about. The things you can protect or enact with violence are heavily limited by what others are willing to protect with violence.
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