Needless to say, as an anarchist, I entirely disagree, and think Zupancic is putting the cart before the horse. Zupancic is right when he argues that a widespread perceived need for firearms in a given culture is a sign of dysfunction in that culture, but he is wrong when he assumes that treating the symptom will effect a cure. A world in which we need not fear deadly violence from oppressors would be a wonderful world indeed, and one in which I long to live. Unfortunately, we emphatically do not live in such a world today. In our world today cops and soldiers in countries the world over routinely murder our brothers and sisters. In our world today rape is still something to be feared. I would love a world where my female coworkers felt comfortable and safe walking to their cars alone at night, but we do not live in that world, and it is dangerous folly to pretend we do, madness to imagine we can create such a world by pretending amongst ourselves that it already exists.

Further, I would argue that assuming responsibility for one’s own safety is liberating. Knowing that one can defend oneself in any situation, against any likely attacker, is liberating knowledge, especially for those who belong to commonly victimized groups. Zupancic longs for society to assume responsibility for each individual’s safety, but here he commits a basic error — “society” can do nothing without individuals acting; for “society” to be responsible for something means that some individuals are going to be responsible for that thing. No one will ever be able to react more swiftly to something that happens to you than you will. Delegating responsibility for your safety to others means rendering yourself defenseless for however long it takes “society” to respond. Or as they say in firearms circles, when seconds count, help is only minutes away.

Firearms are of course weapons, implements of violence, and the victims of violence have a natural tendency to fear and hate that which has harmed them in the past. I maintain, however, that the proper response of the oppressed to guns is not to fear them but to seize them, to master them and to learn to meet violence with violence. Rather than fetishizing guns as evil objects to be feared, let’s identify our real enemies and learn to turn their violence back upon them. I share Zupancic’s longing for a peaceful society in which no one feels the need to carry a firearm, but we aren’t there yet. To imagine the rapist will abandon violence if we encourage women to do so is madness. To disarm before the ruling class does is simply suicide. I would love my children to live in a world without guns, but I won’t disarm until the cops do.

Government regulation of food production encourages centralization. Government focuses on enforcing minimum standards, not encouraging best practices. It requires costly procedures that drive small producers out of the market without necessarily improving the quality of food.

The centralization of food production supports business models in which close quarters and high volume promote the spread of disease. When the food supply is put into the hands of big corporations with big lobbying bankrolls, it means placing trust in the effectiveness of regulators and in the reliability of corporations to be clean when nobody is looking. And when tainted food slips past quality control the reliance on a few large providers means that one bad production run will reach more customers in more places.

Any regulatory regime will be implemented by the Food and Drug Administration, a federal bureaucracy with connections to large producers. A nice illustration of the revolving door between government and business lobbies is provided by Judith McGeary of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, in comments on grist.org: “FDA is staffed by people who come from within the industrial food system, many of whom are looking to get jobs in that food system when they leave the agency.”

Who has more access to regulators — small producers or food factories with big money and dedicated legal departments?

The FDA, which stands to gain power from the Food Safety Modernization Act, has previously demonstrated a tendency to place bureaucratic adherence to the rules over the public interest. As pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Mary Ruwart has written, for years after it was known folic acid supplementation reduced the risk of birth defects, the FDA continued to prohibit vitamin companies from advertising this fact, effectively censoring important nutritional information.

It is certainly reasonable to call for more oversight of food. What you put into your body on a daily basis will impact the quality of your life, and as things are now food safety recalls are likely to occur only after people have been infected.

But greater oversight does not have to mean greater government involvement. Unlike the FDA, non-government regulatory and oversight companies can go out of business if they do a bad job. Competition means viable alternatives are available if one agency proves to be as bad as the current system. And non-government regulation does not solely entail corporations focused on maximizing profits for stockholders. Cooperative testing and inspection agencies could be created. With today’s rapid spread of information, it could easily become public knowledge if a producer was found to be negligent. And the most intimate form of oversight is when community agriculture brings neighbors together to ensure quality food.

Unfortunately, a government privatization program would most likely hand monopoly privilege to a corporation, making regulation more profitable but not more effective. Any call for extensive overhaul would have to insist on more competition and less centralization.

An instructive nutritional improvement is the rising consumption of organic food. While it is not mandatory to produce, market, or purchase organic food, its sales are rapidly growing. Government certification and oversight of labeled organics has been called into question, and reputation is important to a company’s success. Choosing organic is an issue of personal priorities, which are influenced not only by educational and marketing efforts, but perhaps more importantly by monetary needs. Any grassroots overhaul of America’s food production should treat broadening access to quality food as a top priority.

In the short term, writing new rules into the government-business regime can make products safer. But don’t look for an ultimate solution from the system that created the problem in the first place.