Armatevi e morite

Anton Chekhov said that if a gun appears in a novel, it must fire. This is a fundamental principle of storytelling: novelistic, cinematic, theatrical. But it is not a stage artifice at all: it is simply reality. Because, data in hand, exactly the same thing happens in life: if there is a gun, it is very likely that it will fire; and many guns a lot will fire. Most often in the least desired direction. The mantra of “easy defense,” of “gun-toting citizens,” is nothing but illusion and deception, an illogical and irrational path, which – in the reality of facts and numbers, exposed here in all their disarming evidence – makes us more naked, more insecure, more victims. It happens everywhere and in every sphere where the recipe has been cooked.
We have committed centuries of civilization to gain a foundational value: the state has the right and the duty to ensure the defense of its citizens and to provide for their security. One can only demand it. To give it up, to advocate “do-it-yourself,” is as much a regression as it is madness. The slogan dispensed with resigned levity: “Since the state does not defend us ” is nothing but illogical and counterproductive sagging. We can only return to subscribe to what is still carved on the cornice of the police headquarters in Lecce: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, no one against the State.” Shunning illusory shortcuts.
Those on the right, then, keep in mind that “do-it-yourself” defense is not right wing at all. And everyone, that an accomplished form of gun privatization Italians already know all too well: it is called the Mafia.