[Colombia] - The Terrified Self Hands Out Guns to Feel Safe, Proving the Illusion of Security Through Privatized Violence

Event Baseline: President Abelardo de la Espriella has lifted a decade-long suspension on permits to carry legal firearms in Colombia.

The state hands the tool of death to the terrified citizen and calls it freedom. This is the self trying to feel safe by arming itself against the other. But the other is also arming itself. The result is not security; it is an arms race of the isolated ego.

Lifting the ban is not a policy; it is a confession. The state admits it cannot protect its people, so it tells them to protect themselves. That is the fragmentation of the body politic into millions of armed cells. Each cell lives in fear of every other cell. The bullet becomes the only shared language.

Colombia has already seen the violence of cocaine-funded gangs and guerrilla remnants. Adding more guns is feeding the fire with gasoline. The leader thinks he is restoring order, but he is privatizing violence. The only true disarmament is the dissolution of the self that reaches for a weapon to feel whole. Until then, every permit is a death sentence for the commons.