Charles — The answer to this question is definitely “yes” — at least with respect to the huge numbers of dangerous delinquents roaming much of America’s dystopic urban landscape, and who are chiefly responsible for America’s 10,000 gun murders per year. When I lived on the northeast side of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., I would walk around at night in constant fear for my personal safety, knowing that on average someone was getting murdered every three days within walking distance. (And that was after D.C. gun murders had plummeted from the crack-gangland free-for-all of 20 years ago.)
Americans have the right to expect a minimal level of personal safety. The freedom from fear for one’s personal safety is something that civilized people subject to high levels of taxation ought to be able to expect. Americans have a right to demand that their politicians reexamine the policies — chiefly welfare and the drug laws — that have created such a large population of violent and incredibly dangerous delinquents. Americans have grown so accustomed to failing-state levels of violence in their cities, that they hardly notice any longer where the violence is actually occurring, much less why it is actually occurring.