Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment

by | Jun 2, 2020

Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment

by | Jun 2, 2020

Gun control is predicated on the belief that private citizens cannot be trusted with firearms. That the state should have a “monopoly on violence” because it is less violent than individuals. And that firearms should be taken away from private citizens because only the state is responsible enough to handle them.

On this episode of the Resistance Library Podcast, Dan and Sam discuss the problem with this and the concept of “democide.”  Democide is the murder of any person or people by their government.

States are statistically far more violent than individuals. After all, in the 20th century alone, 262 MILLION people died at the hands of their own governments.

Democide is an important concept, as it is more expansive than the better-known term genocide. While the largest genocide in history is widely thought to be the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler’s work pales in comparison to that of Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong. In fact, one aspect of Stalin’s terror was the “Holodomor,” the intentional mass starvation of Ukrainians, which killed over seven million victims in less than two years (compared to six million Jews over the four years of the Holocaust).

Democide might be a practice as old as time, as mentioned above it reached new depths in the 20th century. This is when warfare became mechanized and, as pointed out by anarchist philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, war shifted from being about property disputes over pieces of land into ideological crusades. Democracy vs. monarchy or liberalism and communism vs. fascism are great examples of this.

Listen to Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment

You can read Sam’s full article “Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment” in Ammo.com’s Resistance Library.

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Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment
The Resistance Library
Sam Jacobs

About Sam Jacobs

Sam Jacobs is the lead writer and chief historian at Ammo.com. Work from Ammo.com's Resistance Library has been featured by USA Today, Reason, Bloomberg's Business Week, Zero Hedge, The Guardian, and National Review as well as many other prominent news and alt-news publications. Sam grew up in a working-class suburb in New England. He has lived in the EU, so has spent a lot of time in countries that don’t value gun freedom. He currently lives off-grid with his wife and kid back in the U.S.

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