# Does the state have a monopoly on violence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 21, 2025, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175 "2025-10-21T21:11:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/21 "2025-10-22T04:27:52Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Don’t we? At least in legal theory as an ideal (practice of course was always more statist), the American Founders seemed to think differently. At least to the extent they claimed to take this whole armed populace thing seriously. Certainly they were NOT Hobbesians. Not an expert in this field by any means, but the constitutional justification for the right to bear arms was that it was necessary _for the security of the state_, not for the defence of the people from the state. Obviously the founding fathers themselves took up arms against the (British) state, and the same is true for many states that were established through revolution or similar liberation struggles. But I think in all those cases the rebels would assert that the state against which they were rebelling was, or had become, politically illegitimate — i.e. that it could not, nor could no longer, legitimately claim a monopoly of violence, and therefore the people were justified in displacing it. But whatever state replaced it would inevitably have, and be entitled to, a monopoly of violence, because that’s characteristic of a state ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/22 "2025-10-22T11:02:11Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > How exactly is that done if the state and its actors decide that they don’t want or need to respect the rule of law or fundamental rights? By making sure that the state is populated by people who don’t think like that; which is a key place we’ve gone wrong. The government and law enforcement and so aren’t aliens; they _come from_ the people. We’ve just spent decades letting the worst possible members of the population take up those powers, and are reaping the results. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/23 "2025-10-22T11:14:09Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Technically that’s an exception. But I would argue how strongly regulated and restricted the right to self defense is an indication of how jealously the state monopoly of violence is protected. You _only_ have the right to protect you and the people around you’s immediately personal safety. If you start using violence like an agent of the state, the state will shut that down sharpish Presuming that the current state is actually able to. If they aren’t, then those others using violence like an agent of the state end up becoming the new state, and naturally will declare their own actions to have been legitimate. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/24 "2025-10-22T13:12:51Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Presuming that the current state is actually able to. If Yup. One of the many ways that despite the name the “monopoly on violence” is a good thing. It sucks to live in a country where every few weeks a new militia marches into town claiming to be the ones who are going to protect you because the government can’t (or, i guess, country where a mob storms the capital while the government forces stand by impotent to protect the seat of government. But let’s not get into that ☹ ) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/25 "2025-10-22T13:31:33Z")
Yeah. Where the state loses the _legitimate_ monopoly, pretty soon the warlords start up and you get Somalia. Which is a decidedly shitty place to live. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/26 "2025-10-22T13:42:18Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Ideally, the state would do its utmost to avoid violence, That’s obviously true but it’s doesn’t make it a bug IMO. The state monopoly on violence is a good thing not because the state gets to do violence all the time with impunity, but because everyone else _doesn’t_ get to do violence all the time with impunity. It sucks to live somewhere where the local rich dude can have his thugs beat you up with impunity. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/27 "2025-10-22T13:56:14Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The US is an outlier in that there’s a sort of explicit nod toward the People as the ultimate source of the US government’s legitimacy, in the Second Amendment’s recognition of the right to retain the tools for that violence Though you’d think that makes the state’s monopoly on violence weaker in a America, in practice i’d say it actually makes the states monopoly on violence stronger. Because of the armed populace the state has far stronger tools to enforce their monopoly on violence. It’s one of the things that is really glaring when you come to the US from other countries, how many cops there are and how heavily armed they are. In the small town in the UK I grew up in, the state enforced it’s “monopoly on violence” with one small police force armed with batons (armed officers if needed had to come from a nearby city’s police force). The similarly sized small town in the states I now live has about 5 different large police forces (city PD, county sheriffs, park police, etc.) any one of which is bigger than my hometown police station, and has the kind of paramilitary armaments only a big city specialist anti-terrorism force would have in the UK. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/28 "2025-10-22T14:11:23Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > I think that is using the term “violence” to strongly. The state keeps the peace through laws and courts and possibly the _threat_ of violence. The ability of the state to keep the peace via the legislative and judicial process is only possible because the threat of violence is omnipresent. At every step of the process, it’s understood there is a point where the state is authorized to initiate force to enforce their will. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/29 "2025-10-22T14:27:58Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The US is an outlier in that there’s a sort of explicit nod toward the People as the ultimate source of the US government’s legitimacy, in the Second Amendment’s recognition of the right to retain the tools for that violence. How is the US an outlier in viewing the people as the ultimate source of the government’s legitimacy? In England, for example, the Monarch draws legitimacy from statues passed by Parliament, not by inherent virtue of being the monarch (_anymore_, obviously it used to be different but they had some bloody civil wars to sort that out). There are a handful of exceptions (Iran, Vatican City, Saudi Arabia) where the ruler draws legitimacy from a source other than the consent of the governed, but even most dictatorships at least present the trappings of democracy - Putin, Erdogan, etc. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/30 "2025-10-22T14:32:40Z")
> [@UDS1](#): > > Not an expert in this field by any means, but the constitutional justification for the right to bear arms was that it was necessary _for the security of the state_, not for the defence of the people from the state. It was both. The Founding Fathers consistently expressed the belief that an armed populace is a vital safeguard against potential government tyranny. This view was especially prevalent among anti-federalists like Jefferson, but even federalists like Madison (though he later broke with the Federalists) and Hamilton were in agreement. They were especially wary of the danger of a standing army, even more so when a standing army was actually established in the early 1790s. Jefferson considered an armed populace essential for preserving liberty. As he famously wrote, “…And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? **Let them take arms** … _ **The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants** _.” Madison, one of the principal authors of the Constitution and author of the Second Amendment, also saw an armed populace as a crucial check on government power. In _The Federalist Papers_, he argued that a federal army could not threaten the people’s liberties while a large armed citizenry existed. And Hamilton, another author of _The Federalist Papers_, supported a large citizen militia as a defense against a potentially oppressive standing army. In _Federalist No. 28_, he described an armed citizenry as the best security against such a force. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/31 "2025-10-22T14:33:17Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > The state monopoly on violence is a good thing not because the state gets to do violence all the time with impunity, but because everyone else _doesn’t_ get to do violence all the time with impunity. It sucks to live somewhere where the local rich dude can have his thugs beat you up with impunity. That’s what feudalism is. The monarch lacks the capacity to manage his entire realm, and so he delegates the monopoly on violence within a region to a local rich guy, and as long as said rich guy provides the monarch with what he really cares about out of the land - taxes and levied troops - the monarch is satisfied to allow the local rich guy to act with impunity within his domain. In the absence of a central government capable of enforcing a monopoly on violence, you don’t generally get a hippie commune paradise - you get something akin to feudalism. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/32 "2025-10-22T15:22:30Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > > [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > > > I think that is using the term “violence” to strongly. The state keeps the peace through laws and courts and possibly the _threat_ of violence. > > The ability of the state to keep the peace via the legislative and judicial process is only possible because the threat of violence is omnipresent. At every step of the process, it’s understood there is a point where the state is authorized to initiate force to enforce their will. As pithily stated in one of the jingles every LEO learns at the academy: > Ask, tell, make _Ask_ the civilian to comply with [whatever]. If that fails, _tell_ the civilian to comply. If that fails, _make_ the civilian comply. By appropriate force. How much is “appropriate”? When it gets to that point the answer becomes “However much it takes”. It’s nice when they start from the lowest possible base and work up. Quality policing in moderate threat situations will reliably go that way. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/33 "2025-10-22T17:56:27Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > I see the state monopoly on violence as something closer to a bug than a feature. Ideally, the state would do its utmost to avoid violence, and yet too often “the state has a monopoly on violence” gets touted as a justification of the states use of violence rather than an explanation of why the state’s violence is so often tolerated when maybe it shouldn’t be. It also gets used as a justification in the international context, for invasion and occupation of “states” (such as they may be)that are unable to maintain that monopoly. What do you see as the ideal then? Would you prefer a society in which nobody, including the state, has the right to employ violence (or force to use a more neutral term)? How well is a society going to work when people can do whatever they want and nobody, including the police, can take any action to stop them? Or would you prefer a society in which people in general have a right to use force as individuals without the government being involved? No involvement of legislatures defining what a wrong is or courts deciding is a wrong act occurred or police being the sole agents authorized to use force to stop a wrong act. If you, as an individual, think somebody else is doing something wrong, you can use force to stop them. It’s pretty easy to see ways in which this system would break down. Or a society in which groups have the right to define what is wrong and use force to ensure compliance but if two different groups disagree, there’s no overall authority to mediate? This is basically gang warfare. Personally, I feel none of these systems would work as well as one where the state has a monopoly on force. I agree that this can be a problem when the government abuses this right but I feel the solution for that is the people in the state having strong democratic control over the government. It’s not a perfect solution as we can see many examples of the majority abusing a minority. But I don’t see a better idea that I feel would work. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/34 "2025-10-22T18:51:24Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > In the absence of a central government capable of enforcing a monopoly on violence, you don’t generally get a hippie commune paradise - you get something akin to feudalism Yup and because of that you can get away with being a really crappy government and still seem like the best option as long as you maintain that monopoly. The case in point being the Taliban who didn’t win out because everyone in Afghanistan loves extreme Islamic fundamentalism. They won because the people of Afghanistan didn’t like getting robbed, murdered or raped every time they travelled to the next village, and the Taliban did a better job of preventing that than any of the other Afghan governments (even the ones supported by US military might) It’s also why early-modern thinkers like Hobbes loved the absolutist monarchs of their era, who seem, to us, like brutal incompetent autocrats. Compared to the alternative (mainly brutal incompetent autocrats who were too incompetent to maintain their monopoly on violence), they seemed a-ok. Particularly to people like Hobbes who’d lived through the complete breakdown of the state’s monopoly of violence that was the English Civil War. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/35 "2025-10-22T20:06:24Z")
> [@UDS1](#): > > the constitutional justification for the right to bear arms was that it was necessary _for the security of the state_, not for the defence of the people from the state. The phrase is “to the security of a free state”, with perhaps the emphasis on “free”. As in, if you don’t want to live in Juntaland, you need the most coup d’état-proof form of military: militia of armed citizens. > [@robby](#): > > Literally every time U.S. citizens have taken up arms against what they perceive to be the tyranny of the federal government—going back to the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s—it has been treated as an insurrection and put down by force by the government. Obviously the Founders didn’t want any band of hooligans to declare themselves Sovereign Citizens; however they also didn’t want that band of hooligans to be the 1% of the population comprising the Army and government officials. IOW, they didn’t want the government as an autonomous agent to have the power to conquer the other 99% of the population; that would sort of scotch the whole “consent of the governed” bit. The least-lousy compromise the Founders could come up with was a system in which if the population was armed, then whatever a 2/3 to 3/4 majority agreed upon and was willing to fight for would be the law. That being the supermajority by writ necessary to amend the constitution and, interestingly enough, about the supermajority needed to win a civil war. The whole question of secession for example was decided when the northern 2/3 of the country decided (if only by acquiescence to being drafted) to outvote the other 1/3 with minié balls. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/36 "2025-10-22T20:14:58Z")
That wasn’t what I was saying; I was saying that the 2nd Amendment is basically saying that some proportion of the state monopoly on violence is _de jure_ retained by the People, as the ultimate source of the State’s legitimacy. That’s what’s weird- the actual written-out retention of part of that monopoly, not the idea that the People are the source of a republic or democracy’s legitimacy. > [@griffin1977](#): > > The similarly sized small town in the states I now live has about 5 different large police forces (city PD, county sheriffs, park police, etc.) any one of which is bigger than my hometown police station, and has the kind of paramilitary armaments only a big city specialist anti-terrorism force would have in the UK. I think most of that is actually a consequence of the way the UK and US differ in terms of how local government is structured and organized. As I understand it, in the UK there are 43 regional police organizations which report to their local governments, and are dramatically more centralized in terms of organization, regulation, equipment, and pretty much everything else. Most of the regulation is set in Whitehall or wherever else for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the local authorities are pretty much administrative. Here in the US, between the semi-sovereign states and their own devolution of powers to local counties, you basically have 50 states, which control 3,144 counties, all of which have their own sheriffs and deputies. Then many of those also have municipalities which also can enforce the law within their own boundaries (home-rule cities, if I’m not mistaken). And while the counties and cities answer to their respective states, most set guidelines and let them do their own thing as they see fit. I think historically it’s a relic of the Westward expansion era, where that level of decentralization was necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/37 "2025-10-22T20:59:30Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That wasn’t what I was saying; I was saying that the 2nd Amendment is basically saying that some proportion of the state monopoly on violence is _de jure_ retained by the People, as the ultimate source of the State’s legitimacy. > > That’s what’s weird- the actual written-out retention of part of that monopoly, not the idea that the People are the source of a republic or democracy’s legitimacy. I like how Jim Kavanagh aka The Polemicist put it in his essay “The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights”: > Let’s start with this: The citizen’s right to possess firearms is a fundamental political right. The political principle at stake is quite simple: to deny the state the monopoly of armed force. This should perhaps be stated in the obverse: to empower the citizenry, to distribute the power of armed force among the citizenry as a whole. The history of arguments and struggles over this principle, throughout the world, is long and clear. Instituted in the context of a revolutionary struggle based on the most democratic concepts of its day, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is perhaps the clearest legal/constitutional expression of this principle, and as such, I think, is one of the most radical statutes in the world. > > The question of gun rights is a political question, in the broad sense that it touches on the distribution of power in a polity. Thus, although it incorporates all these perfectly legitimate “sub-political” activities, it is not fundamentally about hunting, or collecting, or target practice; it is about empowering the citizen relative to the state. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/38 "2025-10-22T21:13:53Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Here in the US, between the semi-sovereign states and their own devolution of powers to local counties, you basically have 50 states, which control 3,144 counties, all of which have their own sheriffs and deputies. Then many of those also have municipalities which also can enforce the law within their own boundaries (home-rule cities, if I’m not mistaken). Except small states like Connecticut which got rid of their county government (back in the ‘60s). Instead all land in Connecticut is incorporated into a Town (what would be called townships in other states), and some Towns are coterminous with incorporated Cities (the difference being between the type of government). And a couple of cities are smaller than the surrounding town, which is confusing until you realize that the towns are like small counties. Regardless, there is no remaining county government in Connecticut, so no sheriffs, only state police and municipal police forces. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/39 "2025-10-22T21:20:57Z")
Even at that, it’s more disparate than in the UK, where ALL the police authorities are regulated by the Home Office and governed by the same statutes. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175/40 "2025-10-23T00:13:54Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I think most of that is actually a consequence of the way the UK and US differ in terms of how local government is structured and organized That’s probably true of the number of police agencies involved in the US vs UK (I actually think the UK is a bit of an outlier here, in Europe you’ll have different federal, local, etc. police agencies similarly to the US) But it’s not an explanation for total number of police and the level of armaments they have access to. That is fundamentally because of the amount of guns in circulation in the US (because of the 2nd amendment). Your random small town cop investigating a minor crime in the UK generally does not really have to worry about the eventuality that guy they are about talk to has a gun, that’s not the case in the US. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-have-a-monopoly-on-violence/1024175.md?page=3)