Almost everyone agrees that gun ownership is part of the complex fabric of values and traditions that comprise American society. All sides in the gun ownership debate understand that firearms are embedded deeply in America’s society and culture. But whereas for some the right to own guns is a non-negotiable promise guaranteed constitutionally, for others it is far more an element of the American experience than is desirable. This essay examines three arguments which have not usually received full treatment in analytical debates, but which may help us to reframe the sharp polarization that now characterizes the discourse. The first relies on distinctively American ideals of liberty, property rights, and the right of protection from the state. The second considers the implications of American liberty and property across contemporary culture. The final argument captures a somewhat more obscure aspiration in American life: the freedom which can be enjoyed only when society has achieved the public good of safety from deadly firearms.

Arguments in favor of an individual moral right to keep and bear firearms typically appeal to the value of guns as a reasonable means of self-defense. This is, for the most part, an empirical claim. If it were shown that allowing private gun ownership would lead to an overall net increase in crime or other social harms, then the strength of a putative right to own a gun would be diminished. But would it be defeated completely? I do not think so, and indeed I want to suggest in this paper that even if the harms outweigh the benefits, that neither an outright ban on handguns nor restrictive discretionary ownership policies are justified as an initial reaction. In other words, given that the overall harms outweigh the overall benefits, the default position is still one in favor of reasonably permissive gun laws over a total ban or restrictive discretionary policies.

In the following, the author presents a case for federally mandated gun control regulations. Specifically, the author argues—with reference to The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—that the principle of limited government often used against federal gun control laws actually provides legitimate justification for them. The aim is to persuade gun advocates to accept such regulations from their own point of view.

This article explores gun control and the ethics of hunting and suggests that hunting ought not to be permitted, and not because of its impact on those animals that are hunted, but because of the risk other humans are subjected to as a result of some being permitted to own guns for mere preference satisfaction. This article examines the nature of freedom, its value, and how responsibility for the exercising of that freedom ought to be regarded when it involves subjecting others to a risk of grave bodily harm. A distinction between two kinds of freedom is put forth and it is argued that it would be wrong to sacrifice freedoms of intrinsic worth for freedoms of instrumental worth.

In this paper, I shall argue that the evidence supports, at the very best for the anti-gun side, agnosticism about the negative criminogenic effects of gun ownership. Given the plausible proposition that there is at least a prima facie moral right (a right that can be outweighed given sufficiently weighty considerations) to keep and bear arms, I argue that agnosticism supports the proposition that there ought to be a legal right to keep and bear arms.

From a European perspective the US debate about gun control is puzzling because we have no such debate: It seems obvious to us that dangerous weapons need tight control and that ‘guns’ fall under that category. I suggest that this difference occurs due to different habits that generate different attitudes and support this explanation with an analogy to the habits about knives. I conclude that it is plausible that individual knife-people or gun-people do not want tight regulatory legislation—but tight knife and gun legislation is morally obligatory anyway. We need to give up our habits for the greater good.

Democracy is rule of the people, but this tells us little, and lack of conceptual clarity creates confusion and undermines productive discussion. This paper explores four dimensions of democracy, articulating ways we can think about and apply the concept. The first concerns who we mean by the people, and here a state is more democratic when its body-politic is more inclusive. The other three concern what it means for the people to rule, and pertain to the theoretical principle of democracy, sovereign structures that are democratic, and actual democratic practice within a state. Distinguishing the dimensions is important because states can be more or less democratic along different dimensions. Thinking in terms of the dimensions of democracy enables more precise and productive debate on democratic government. Moreover, it reveals ways that democracy may change and evolve in the 21st century.

The paper considers the democratic value of the recent public sphere movements—from Occupy Wall Street to Taksim Gezi Park, from Tahrir Square to Sofia. It argues that the mainstream models of democracy fail to grasp the significance of these movements and the emergent political forms within these movements due to their narrow account of politics and democracy. To fully grasp the democratic value of recent public sphere movements, we should approach them from an agonistic perspective. Once democratic politics is viewed from an agonistic perspective, it becomes possible to recognize that while expressing their critique of existing liberal democratic institutions, the recent public sphere movements contested the dominant understanding of democracy and staged an alternative vision of democracy, democratic culture, and new forms of citizenship.

What follows considers whether harnessing word (argument) and action (occupation) constitutes a transformative democratic performance. In this, I am not seeking to replace the Aristotelian concept of performance, nor its transformative aspect, but I do ask how appropriate it is to confine mimetic acts of protest to an Aristotelian dialectic. The “efficacy debate” is a central issue for practitioners and scholars of political performance and I shall not question the truth of such claims that to be a performance the event must transform its audience in some way. Rather, I question, as others haveii, the ability for the performance of protest to effect any kind of political change. My argument is that Occupy’s politics emerge out of its performance of rhetorical devices and strategies that put democracy on display.

This paper attempts a response to two suggestions regarding the roots of and solutions to Africa’s social, economic and political concerns. Rather than trying to provide answers to the question “who should be blamed for the quagmires of Africa?”, the paper tries to provide further explanations of the problems using a specific case study of two pan-African scholars, Henry Kam Kah and Okori Uneke. Although their suggestions about the situation of Africa have received popular acceptance among scholars, this paper disputes the viability of their assumptions and conclusions. Even if it is true (as the scholars have argued) that Africa is an innocent victim of colonial or post-colonial causes, their arguments fall short of providing a foundation for future, positive development. Instead, this paper attempts to go beneath superficial first layer investigations to identify a more meaning way forward for the people of post-colonial Africa.

Democracy in the 21st century is exhibiting some radical discontinuities in terms of its forms and institutions and needs to be rethought, if we wish to have a sustainable future. Democracy increasingly will be shaped by three realities: the demise of the nation state; the failure of representational liberal democracy; and the radical impacts of resource insufficiency and climate change. Yet if no government, however tyrannical, survives for long except by consent of the people, then that consent can serve as the starting point for rethinking what is meant by “democracy.” Three terms are offered as functional categories that allow for an assessment of democratic forms and institutions: subsistence, operational and systemic. Each describes how and why the population acquiesces to governance and under what conditions.