Gun Control: Machiavelli’s Stance

Machiavelli explains in The Prince that a principality’s strength can be measured by their army and ability to fight on the front as opposed to defending within city walls. Weapons, armed men, and fortifications are a theme throughout Machiavelli’s discussion of how to maintain stable principalities. Providing strong defensive measures guarantees that the prince will be able to preserve his city and his rule. This is a simple concept to accept, and we can see it clearly in our society today in which our capable, large army allows us to take offensive actions against adversaries.

A further discussion by Machiavelli on the arming of a nation against internal adversary caught my attention in the Stanford Encyclopedia article when it outlined in his works, The Discourses on Livy and The Art of War, the consequences of disarming a nation. While praising France for its dedication to law and institution that eliminated tyrannical conduct from the government, Machiavelli criticizes France’s disarmament of the people. France’s disarmament was a consequence of its goal for “vivere securo” (living securely), because in order to make security a priority, the state felt they could not afford to arm the populace for fear the masses would use their weapons against the crown and nobility. Machiavelli says that crucial result of disarming a nation is that it must depend on foreigners to fight and that it takes away the liberty of a community, creating a passive and minimally civil society. Machiavelli stands by the belief that citizens will always fight for their liberty, against external but also internal oppressors. French monarchs prized public security and order, but it meant eliminating any opportunity for subjects to bear arms and use them against the government if they felt it was becoming an internal oppressor.

Skipping ahead to a later chapter in The Prince, Machiavelli refutes in Chapter XX the Medician view that, similar to France, the best way to secure a state is to disarm the people. He makes the argument that a new prince of a nation always armed a disarmed people for the reasons that “those whom you suspect become loyal, and those who are loyal remain so, and they become your partisans rather than your subjects.” He goes on to say that when a ruler disarms a people they will be offended because it shows distrust for either their cowardice or lack of loyalty.

While I understand that Machiavelli is generally referring to arming a nation for the purpose of a military, his arguments drew my attention because of how much they pertain to our society’s current debate over the Second Amendment. Each of his major points on arming a people echo the arguments in defense of gun laws I constantly saw on social media after the Sandy Hook tragedy. After this event, one of the immediate reactions of the public was to declare that the only way to attain our own “vivere securo” is to crack down on gun laws and limit them as much as possible in hopes of generating safety. However, defenders of the Second Amendment reiterated Machiavelli’s warning to the French: by taking away the right to bear arms, a nation places limits on liberty. Our nation’s founding fathers would have sided with everything Machiavelli argues, especially the basic fact that a citizen’s right to bear arms secures them from internal abuse as well as external threats. Machiavelli was dead on with one major point –if the threat of disarmament arises, the people will be quick to take offense and voice it loud and clear.

Brennan Shearer