40 - False ideas of utility

Summary

One source of errors and injustices is the false ideas of utility held by some lawgivers. It is a false idea of utility that gives higher importance to particular inconveniences than to the general inconvenience, that commands the feelings instead of exciting them, that commands logic to submit. It is a false idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for a single chimerical or unimportant disadvantage, that would deprive men of fire because it burns or water because it drowns, and can only remedy evils by destruction.

{{The laws which forbid men to bear arms are of this sort. They only disarm those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity and the most important in the civil code will respect the lesser and more arbitrary laws, which are easier and less risky to break, and which, if enforced, would take away the personal freedom – so dear to man and to the enlightened lawgiver – and subject the innocent man to all the annoyances which the guilty deserve? These laws make the victims of attack worse off and improve the position of the assailant. They do not reduce the murder rate but increase it, because an unarmed man can be attacked with more confidence than an armed man.