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On one night in December 1773, patriot activists disguised as Native Americans broke into Griffin’s Wharf in Boston Harbor, boarded three vessels loaded with tea owned by the British East India Company, and dumped it all overboard.

Now immortalized as the Boston Tea Party, this famous theft is celebrated today as a heroic act of resistance against the oppressive British government.

Usually forgotten in the story is Francis Rotch, an American merchant and co-owner of two of the ships invaded that night. Rotch had unwittingly agreed to ship crates containing the controversial tea from Britain. When he arrived in Boston, patriots prevented him from unloading the cargo and British authorities stopped him from leaving with it. In a conflict between crown and colonist, Rotch was squeezed between two sides.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is stuck in a similar position today.

The company, The New York Times reports, is currently sitting on some 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in a warehouse in West Chester, Ohio, all vialed up and ready to go. Millions more unpackaged doses are being held at a Baltimore facility, the Times says.

Both clinical trials and the vaccine’s actual use in the 70 countries that have approved it tell us that this is a safe and effective way of preventing COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Millions of Americans would gladly take it.

Standing in the way of this mutually beneficial exchange is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for approving vaccines and has thus far refused to give AstraZeneca’s shots the green light.

Worse still, the Biden administration is forbidding the company from exporting its idle doses to countries that do allow their use, and which have worsening COVID-19 outbreaks of their own.

Much like the forgotten Rotch, AstraZeneca finds itself in possession of some very valuable cargo that can neither be offloaded nor exported.

That raises an interesting question: Would modern Americans be justified in following their revolutionary forebearers’ example and just stealing that shit?

For all its merits as an act of anti-monarchical, anti-monopoly resistance, the Boston Tea Party remains an act of theft—one that ultimately put a private party in its crosshairs. That’s something most libertarians wouldn’t support, except perhaps in the most extreme hypothetical circumstances.

Would equally energized citizens today be justified in forcing their way into that West Chester warehouse and absconding with 30 million doses of life-saving medicine? The heist itself would require a few dozen people willing to offer the AstraZeneca warehouse staff enough cash to look the other way, plus enough refrigerated trucks to carry everything away. Once boosted, there would likely be countless doctors, nurses, and pharmacists eager to help administer a vaccine we have every reason to think is safe and would be saving lives today but for a pathologically risk-averse federal government. And if Americans didn’t want to take it, our vaccine vigilantes could bring the doses out of the country—maybe to Brazil, which has approved the vaccine’s use and where 3,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported yesterday.

Jason Brennan, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, says there’s some merit to the idea. Violating the FDA’s prohibition on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine should trouble no one’s conscience, Brennan says. That prohibition is imposing severe costs on Americans’ lives and livelihoods, and the agency’s refusal to approve the vaccine is motivated by perverse incentives that no one should feel the need to respect.

“If [the FDA doesn’t] approve a drug or if they don’t approve a face mask, if they don’t approve a testing kit for COVID, lots and lots of people die, but no one other than health economists blame the FDA for that,” says Brennan. “But if an FDA approved a drug and it fails or has side effects, people blame the FDA.” The desire to avoid blame encourages the FDA to adopt an overly cautious approach to approving drugs, even in the middle of a pandemic when the cost of that caution is hundreds of lives a day.

Should people manage to acquire the vaccine, they should feel free to take it, Brennan argues. And if AstraZeneca executives find a way to sell it onto a black market, he adds, they should be lauded as heroes.

Of course, AstraZeneca executives are not going to sell their vaccine into the black market, given the many legal consequences. That’s where the heist comes in.

Brennan acknowledges that this is a more difficult calculation. In emergency situations, he argues, theft or trespassing might be justified. “I don’t think property is completely sacrosanct,” Brennan says.

He gives the example of someone who comes across a privately owned cabin while being chased by a bear: You shouldn’t feel bad about breaking into the cabin to escape the animal, although you’ll probably owe compensation to the cabin’s owner after the emergency bear situation has lapsed.

Whether the COVID-19 pandemic counts as a severe enough emergency to justify stealing vaccines from a pharmaceutical company hinges on a lot of details, says Brennan. Stealing the vaccine to give it to an 80-year-old at high risk of dying from the disease is closer to our hypothetical bear victim and would thus plausibly be justified. Stealing it to give to a healthy 20-year-old who faces fewer risks would not.

The coercive force necessary to take the vaccine also needs to be considered, Brennan says. If a few AstraZeneca vaccine vials fall off the back of a truck, then their theft is easier to justify. If one has to shoot a security guard to get them, it almost certainly isn’t.

Revolutionary Bostonians had similar qualms about the destruction of private property during and after the Boston Tea Party. For that reason, they refrained from damaging the ships or molesting their crews during their act of thievery. Patriots even went so far as to replace a privately owned padlock they’d cut when breaking into the wharf.

Only the tea itself was destroyed, which Sam Adams and others later justified as a targeted protest against both unjust taxation and the monopoly privileges given to the East India Company.

One could deploy similar logic to justify the theft of AstraZeneca vaccines. The fact that they’re sitting idle in warehouses is solely the result of government restrictions. Their very existence is also the result of government action, namely a $1.2 billion contract the U.S. government has inked with the company to purchase 300 million doses of the vaccine it refuses to approve.

The anarcho-libertarian philosopher Murray Rothbard—a private property rights absolutist—has argued that forcible confiscation of property owned by state-supported universities and military contractors is justified under a libertarian framework, given that those institutions are bankrolled by stolen tax dollars.

“What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to ‘private’ property? Surely less than zero,” wrote Rothbard in a 1969 essay. “To say that their ‘private’ property must be respected is to say that the property stolen by the horsethief and the murderer must be ‘respected.'”

Grant Babcock, an editor at the Cato Institute’s Libertarianism.org and self-described Rothbardian, says there is some truth to that sentiment when it comes to Pentagon contractors. But he doesn’t think the reasoning applies to AstraZeneca or its vaccines.

“The market for fighter jets outside of government demand is basically nil. Whereas a lot of people might be interested in purchasing [a coronavirus vaccine] irrespective of the demand from the government,” Babcock says. “So to that extent, I don’t think we would consider AstraZeneca an arm of the government the way a lot of defense contractors could be.”

The FDA’s restrictions on AstraZeneca’s vaccine are clearly unwarranted, Babcock adds, saying people should be free to consume whatever drugs and medicine they want to. But that still wouldn’t justify theft of a restricted product.

“If there’s an unjust law, you shouldn’t feel too bad about breaking it,” he says. “But in this case, the unjust law is the law that’s prohibiting a transaction for the vaccine. It’s not the laws against theft, which are not unjust.”

Brennan argues that coercing the FDA directly into approving more vaccines would be appropriate, saying “if you could blackmail the head of the FDA to force them to” approve the vaccine “that would be a heroic thing to do. You would be deserving of praise.”

Whether or not that’s morally defensible, it seems like an impractical caper to pull off.

So the FDA’s restrictions on the vaccine remain both lethal and unjust. Yet injuring private third parties to right that wrong remains morally dubious.

Moral calculations aside, it should fill every American with Sam Adams–like revolutionary fervor to know that while some 800 Americans die each day, and countless more labor under governments’ pandemic restrictions, millions of life-saving vaccines sit untouched.

The public policy debate about the pandemic has largely been about what coercive force the government is justified in exercising to prevent infections and deaths. It’s worthwhile to at least think about how much force citizens themselves can use against a government that denies them access to life-saving cures.

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Since Monday’s mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, gun control advocates have repeatedly noted that a state judge blocked enforcement of the city’s “assault weapon” ban 10 days before the attack. The implausible implication is that the ordinance, had it been allowed to take effect, might have prevented this crime.

“Boulder’s assault weapons ban, meant to stop mass shootings, was blocked 10 days before [the] grocery store attack,” The Washington Post noted on Tuesday. “Boulder’s Pain Is Deepened by a Lost Fight for Gun Control,” says the headline over a New York Times story published yesterday. “Less than two weeks” after Boulder County District Court Judge Andrew Hartman concluded that the local “assault weapon” ban conflicted with state law, Times reporters Mike Baker and Lucy Tompkins note, “a man armed with an assault-style weapon walked into a Boulder supermarket and opened fire, killing 10 people.”

The connection between those two events may seem superficially plausible. After all, at least one of the weapons that the gunman apparently used, a Ruger AR-556 pistol, would have been covered by Boulder’s ordinance.

Among other things, that ordinance prohibits the sale of “all semiautomatic center-fire pistols” that “have the capacity to accept a magazine other than in the pistol grip” or “have a protruding grip or other device to allow the weapon to be stabilized with the non-trigger hand.” The AR-556 pistol, which resembles a short-barreled rifle but does not legally qualify as one, has a stabilizing brace and a magazine port that is separate from the grip.

If the local “assault weapon” ban had been in effect, the perpetrator of this week’s attack would not have been legally allowed to buy that gun in Boulder. But he lived in Arvada, a city about half an hour’s drive from Boulder. The arrest warrant affidavit says the suspect purchased the pistol on March 16. It does not say where he bought it. Still, even if Boulder’s ordinance had not been blocked, he could have bought the gun pretty much anywhere else in Colorado.

The ordinance also prohibits possession of “assault weapons” in Boulder, except for previously owned firearms registered with the city’s police department. But it defies logic to suggest that a man bent on mass murder would have worried about that rule, even assuming that he knew about it.

Even if this man was for some reason keen to follow local firearm regulations as he set out to kill a bunch of strangers, he could have accomplished the same horrifying end with a gun that did not fit the ban’s criteria. Would it really have mattered that his pistol lacked a stabilizing brace or that its magazine was attached to the grip?

“AR-style weapons, first developed for battlefield use, have for years been a growing target of gun control advocates as such firearms repeatedly are deployed during mass shootings,” the Times says. But the perpetrators of such crimes are actually more likely to use ordinary handguns or long guns that don’t qualify as “assault weapons,” which have figured in several of the deadliest mass shootings.

As usual, the Times does not delve into the question of whether the arbitrary distinctions drawn by “assault weapon” bans make any sense. But Baker and Tompkins do concede that “the gunman could have purchased his weapon in another town” even if Boulder’s ban had taken effect. “A person wishing to buy an assault rifle would only need to leave city limits to legally purchase one,” they note.

Still, Baker and Tompkins say, “there has been a particularly keen sense of dismay and frustration in a city that tried, and failed, to prevent one of the most horrific kinds of gun violence.” They illustrate those emotions with a quote from Jill Adler Grano, the former city council member who introduced Boulder’s “assault weapon” ban. “My heart is broken,” she says. “We tried so hard to prevent this from happening, yet here we are.”

Again, the implication is that the ordinance could have “prevent[ed] this from happening,” even though that is plainly not true. In their 27th paragraph, Baker and Tompkins come close to acknowledging reality. “In some ways,” they say, “local ordinances such as the one Boulder passed are statements of political conviction as much as they are effective prohibitions on guns.” But that formulation still implies that such ordinances are in some unspecified ways effective at accomplishing the avowed goals of the politicians who support them.

The Times laments “the limitations of a patchwork, city-by-city approach to gun policy.” It notes that gun rights advocates also object to that approach, “arguing that local ordinances like Boulder’s are a nightmare for gun owners who must navigate varying restrictions from city to city.” That is why Colorado, like many states, has a law that preempts such local restrictions—the same law that Judge Hartman cited when he blocked Boulder’s ban.

“I can’t tell you how angering that is,” Rachel Friend, a current city council member and local gun control activist, tells the Times. “I’m supporting and advocating for us to appeal.”

Toward what end? “Our country has gone through mass shooting after mass shooting for decades now,” Grano says. “I have a son in high school, and it just felt like, ‘We have got to do something. If the federal government is not going to take action, we’re just going to keep talking around in circles.'”

In other words: We have got to do something, whether or not it’s likely to have any impact on mass shootings or on gun violence generally. That is the logic endorsed by national politicians such as President Joe Biden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.) as well as local politicians like Grano and Friend. More should be required to pass any sort of legislation, let alone laws that impinge on a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

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Fourth Amendment advocates won big today at the U.S. Supreme Court, which held 5–3 that when the police shoot a fleeing suspect, it still counts as a Fourth Amendment seizure even if the bullets don’t stop the suspect. “The application of physical force to the body with the intent to restrain is a seizure,” declared Chief Justice John Roberts, “even if the person does not submit and is not subdued.”

The case of Torres v. Madrid began in the early morning hours of July 15, 2014, with Roxanne Torres sitting inside her car in her apartment building’s parking lot while several New Mexico State Police officers were parked nearby in an unmarked car. The officers, who were wearing dark tactical vests with police markings, were there to arrest somebody else. They claimed they only approached Torres because they thought she was acting suspiciously. According to Torres, she just saw individuals with guns crowding her car. Thinking she was about to be carjacked, Torres hit the gas. The officers shot her twice as she fled. Torres only learned that it was the police who shot her when she was arrested a day later at the hospital.

Torres sued, arguing that the officers’ use of excessive force violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizure. The officers countered by claiming that no seizure occurred since Torres was not actually stopped during the encounter.

“The question in this case,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh, “is whether a seizure occurs when an officer shoots someone who temporarily eludes capture after the shooting. The answer is yes: The application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure, even if the force does not succeed in subduing the person.”

Notably, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who Fourth Amendment advocates often see as an ally, dissented in favor of the officers. In Gorsuch’s view, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the case), “‘seizing’ something doesn’t mean touching it; it means taking possession.”

The chief justice rejected that view, pointing to a 1991 decision written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. In California v. Hodari D., Scalia said that “the mere grasping or application of physical force with lawful authority, whether or not it succeeded in subduing the arrestee,” qualified as a seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes.

“At the end of the day,” Roberts wrote in Torres v. Madrid, “we simply agree with the analysis of the common law of arrest and its relation to the Fourth Amendment set forth thirty years ago by Justice Scalia, joined by six of his colleagues, rather than the competing view urged by the dissent today.”

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Sen. Alex Padilla (D–Calif.) recently claimed that it is easier in some states to acquire a rifle than it is to cast a ballot. This false claim ignores the reality of gun control in America. Despite widespread misconceptions held by gun control advocates, guns are the most heavily regulated consumer good in the country. Millions of Americans are federally prohibited from not only possessing a gun for even a fleeting moment, but also from possessing even a single bullet. 

Everyone who purchases a gun from a gun dealer must undergo a background check. The background check system is fairly robust (even though false positives can be a problem), and it screens for a variety of conditions and offenses that would disqualify someone from legally possessing a gun. Ineligible individuals include, among others, felons, those who have been dishonorably discharged from the military, anyone who has been involuntarily committed or adjudicated as a “mental defective,” undocumented immigrants, and anyone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. If a prohibited person acquires a gun through a private sale without a background check, he is committing a felony. If the seller knew or had “reasonable cause” to know that the recipient was a prohibited buyer, then he is committing a felony too. Violators can serve up to 10 years in prison.

While prohibiting some people from possessing a gun might make sense, millions more Americans are stripped of their Second Amendment rights if they are “unlawful users” of or addicted to any controlled substance. It’s no defense if you live in a state where marijuana has been legalized. And if you lie on the form and say you don’t use illicit drugs, that’s a five-year felony.

This is not all just theoretical, as Ethan Kollie found out. Kollie helped the 2019 Dayton nightclub shooter build his gun (but not to commit the shooting, of which Kollie had no inkling). When the feds came to Kollie, he admitted to using marijuana and to lying on the background check form. He will serve 32 months for lying on the form and being illegally in possession of firearms.

In general, however, you need not worry if you use marijuana and own guns—if you’re white and live in an affluent neighborhood, that is. Those charged with prohibited possession of a firearm are usually already under investigation or having trouble with the law in other ways. Federal prosecutors often charge every offense they can, as it gives them more leverage in plea deals and helps pad their conviction rate. In 2007, for example, federal prosecutors charged John Mooney with possession of a firearm by a felon after he took a gun from his ex-wife, who had held the weapon to his head. Mooney then walked seven blocks to the bar he worked at to give it to the police. For those seven blocks he was in possession of the firearm and technically violating the law. And in November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a sentence of 30 months for a felon who was convicted of possessing a single bullet.

These are just the federal restrictions. Many states have onerous requirements of their own, such as the 10 states that require a permit to purchase a firearm. In Washington, D.C., the requirements for legally owning a gun are sufficiently cumbersome that many have simply given up. While the pandemic came with gun-buying fervor across the country, in D.C., the only federal firearm licensee who could legally authorize the transfer or acquisition of guns abruptly stopped business. Gun rights, unlike voting rights, can be precarious enough that a change in profession can affect the right to self-defense for thousands of people.

True, not all firearms sales are run through the background check system. Private sales between individuals who are not in the business of selling guns are not subject to background checks. Fixing that “loophole” is the goal of so-called universal background check bills. Note, however, that anyone who is prohibited from possessing a weapon who acquires one through a private sale is already committing a significant felony, as is the seller if he knows the buyer is prohibited.

Obviously, registering to vote and casting a ballot are not subject to the same restrictions as purchasing a gun. In many states, felons are commonly restricted from voting during the period of incarceration, and in 11 states felons lose their voting rights indefinitely. But every felon in every state is federally prohibited from possessing a firearm or ammunition, and states are powerless to relax those restrictions. That’s true for someone who received a suspended sentence for tax fraud 30 years ago as well as for a murderer who served his time. (In rare instances, courts have restored Second Amendment rights to some felons—those with the resources to take their cases to court, at least. The blanket prohibition is the default rule.)

While some states may have overly bureaucratic systems for voter registration, that’s nothing compared to gun restrictions. Twenty-one states allow same day voter registration, and every state allows some sort of mail-in voting with just five states requiring a justification for voting by mail. Yes, lines may be long at some polling places, but the same is true of gun stores, especially last year.

Gun control advocates often embrace the narrative that guns are freely available in stores to anyone who wants one. Maybe they’ve never tried to buy a gun, and perhaps they don’t know any gun owners. In this and so many other ways, the gun debate is actually a culture debate. Guns are similar to voting in that people imbue them with deep significance and get fiercely riled up about restrictions. Within political tribes, your stance on gun rights or voting rights is a signaling device—but it’s still important to get your facts straight.

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