Political legitimacy does not collapse at the moment a weapon is fired.
It collapses earlier—at the moment a governing authority accepts the presence of live ammunition in domestic crowd control as a legitimate option.

The decision to deploy armed personnel carrying loaded magazines is not a neutral security measure. It is a risk-ethical commitment. By definition, live ammunition introduces a non-zero probability of accidental discharge, misjudgment, panic escalation, or chain reactions leading to civilian death. The political significance lies not in intent, but in accepted risk.

The normalization of live ammunition in domestic governance is therefore not a failure of security capacity, but a failure of political persuasion.
When a state reaches the point where order can no longer be maintained without accepting lethal risk to civilians, legitimacy has already eroded at its foundation.

Once such risk is institutionally tolerated, the state implicitly accepts that civilian deaths—whether framed as accidents, miscalculations, or “unavoidable outcomes”—are politically manageable costs. At that point, legitimacy has already been structurally compromised, regardless of whether shots are fired.

This is not merely a matter of policing doctrine. It reflects a deeper political-economic and psychological structure of power.

Deploying live ammunition in internal governance externalizes political failure into biological cost. Structural grievances that cannot—or will not—be resolved through policy reform, redistribution, or institutional accountability are instead managed through probabilistic violence. Death becomes a negative externality subsidizing regime stability. What is preserved is not order, but narrative control.

From this perspective, live ammunition functions less as a tool of defense than as a mechanism of risk transfer: shifting the burden of systemic dysfunction from political elites to civilian bodies.

Classical political theory already warned against this logic. As Sun Tzu observed, war concerns “the ground of death and life, the path of survival and extinction.” This principle applies no less to internal governance than to external conflict. When a state treats domestic populations as acceptable terrain for lethal risk, it no longer governs—it occupies.

Equally flawed is the recurring myth of the “external agitator.” Large-scale collective action does not arise from manipulation alone. Without underlying social conditions, institutional failure, and perceived injustice, no amount of agitation can mobilize sustained participation. Citizens are not irrational masses; they are risk-calculating actors who generally prefer conformity, avoidance, and free-riding until legitimate channels of redress collapse.

Those labeled as “instigators” are often not enemies of the polity, but its most uncomfortable participants: individuals who identify unresolved structural problems that power holders cannot or will not address because doing so would threaten entrenched interests. What destabilizes authority is not disloyalty, but the insistence that governing promises be honored.

The presence of live ammunition in domestic governance therefore signals something precise and measurable: the transition from consent-based legitimacy to risk-managed domination. When lethal risk becomes routine, governance has already failed at the level of legitimacy, not enforcement.

Legitimacy does not die with the first casualty.
It dies when lethal risk becomes an acceptable instrument of governance.

The argument above concerns the collapse of legitimacy, not the impossibility of force. To avoid misinterpretation, the following appendix clarifies the normative boundary under which state violence may still remain legitimate.

The critique of lethal risk in domestic governance does not imply the rejection of all state use of force. The question is not whether violence can ever be legitimate, but under what conditions it ceases to be so.

In political philosophy and human rights law, legitimate violence has historically rested on three cumulative foundations: necessity, proportionality, and accountability. These criteria define the moral boundary between governance and domination.

Legitimate force presupposes that all non-violent avenues—dialogue, institutional remedies, policy correction, and representation—remain meaningfully accessible. Violence becomes illegitimate the moment it substitutes for political incapacity rather than responding to imminent harm.

When lethal risk is introduced in anticipation of dissent rather than in response to immediate threat, necessity collapses.

Proportionality concerns risk asymmetry, not weapon symmetry. Legitimate force minimizes irreversible harm and distributes risk away from non-combatants. The routine presence of live ammunition reverses this logic by transferring systemic risk onto civilian bodies.

Once civilian death becomes a statistically foreseeable outcome of routine governance, proportionality has already been breached.

Legitimacy hinges on accepted responsibility for consequences. Systems that frame civilian deaths as accidents while preserving the decision framework that made them probable fail the accountability test.

Without reversibility, punishment, and independent oversight, violence ceases to be a tool of law and becomes an attribute of power.

The decisive boundary is crossed when lethal force becomes structural rather than conditional—embedded as a standing solution to political uncertainty.

In such cases, violence no longer protects a legal order; it replaces it.

The boundary of legitimate force cannot be sustained without an equally legitimate epistemic environment. Where the state monopolizes the definition of reality, the criteria of necessity, proportionality, and accountability become unenforceable.

The legitimacy of state force depends not only on how violence is exercised, but on who controls the definition of reality in which that violence is justified.

When a government or ruling party monopolizes interpretive authority—the unilateral power to define events, identities, intentions, and threats without contestation—legality may persist procedurally while legitimacy collapses substantively.

In rights-based governance, the state enforces law within a pluralistic interpretive environment. When power claims exclusive authority to define violence, threat, disinformation, and legitimacy, coercion shifts from law enforcement to reality enforcement.

Monopoly over meaning enables civilian deaths to be reclassified as accidents, dissent to be reframed as subversion, and structural failure to be externalized. Violence becomes self-justifying through definition rather than evidence.

Labels such as “instigators” or “hostile elements” function as narrative shortcuts that personalize structural problems. Where interpretation is monopolized, accusation itself becomes proof.

Before lethal force becomes acceptable, dissent is framed as existential threat, responsibility for escalation is pre-assigned, and alternative interpretations are delegitimized. Narrative control is therefore not a byproduct of repression, but its enabling infrastructure.

Legitimate governance requires epistemic humility and contestable meaning. Where meaning is enforced, accountability collapses and violence becomes structurally unconstrained.

A government that monopolizes reality no longer governs through consent or law,
but through enforced meaning.

Where meaning is enforced, violence need not be constant.
It need only remain possible.

Political legitimacy does not collapse at the moment a weapon is fired.
It collapses earlier—at the moment a governing authority accepts the presence of live ammunition in domestic crowd control as a legitimate option.

The decision to deploy armed personnel carrying loaded magazines is not a neutral security measure. It is a risk-ethical commitment. By definition, live ammunition introduces a non-zero probability of accidental discharge, misjudgment, panic escalation, or chain reactions leading to civilian death. The political significance lies not in intent, but in accepted risk.

The normalization of live ammunition in domestic governance is therefore not a failure of security capacity, but a failure of political persuasion.
When a state reaches the point where order can no longer be maintained without accepting lethal risk to civilians, legitimacy has already eroded at its foundation.

Once such risk is institutionally tolerated, the state implicitly accepts that civilian deaths—whether framed as accidents, miscalculations, or “unavoidable outcomes”—are politically manageable costs. At that point, legitimacy has already been structurally compromised, regardless of whether shots are fired.

This is not merely a matter of policing doctrine. It reflects a deeper political-economic and psychological structure of power.

Deploying live ammunition in internal governance externalizes political failure into biological cost. Structural grievances that cannot—or will not—be resolved through policy reform, redistribution, or institutional accountability are instead managed through probabilistic violence. Death becomes a negative externality subsidizing regime stability. What is preserved is not order, but narrative control.

From this perspective, live ammunition functions less as a tool of defense than as a mechanism of risk transfer: shifting the burden of systemic dysfunction from political elites to civilian bodies.

Classical political theory already warned against this logic. As Sun Tzu observed, war concerns “the ground of death and life, the path of survival and extinction.” This principle applies no less to internal governance than to external conflict. When a state treats domestic populations as acceptable terrain for lethal risk, it no longer governs—it occupies.

Equally flawed is the recurring myth of the “external agitator.” Large-scale collective action does not arise from manipulation alone. Without underlying social conditions, institutional failure, and perceived injustice, no amount of agitation can mobilize sustained participation. Citizens are not irrational masses; they are risk-calculating actors who generally prefer conformity, avoidance, and free-riding until legitimate channels of redress collapse.

Those labeled as “instigators” are often not enemies of the polity, but its most uncomfortable participants: individuals who identify unresolved structural problems that power holders cannot or will not address because doing so would threaten entrenched interests. What destabilizes authority is not disloyalty, but the insistence that governing promises be honored.

The presence of live ammunition in domestic governance therefore signals something precise and measurable: the transition from consent-based legitimacy to risk-managed domination. When lethal risk becomes routine, governance has already failed at the level of legitimacy, not enforcement.

Legitimacy does not die with the first casualty.
It dies when lethal risk becomes an acceptable instrument of governance.

The argument above concerns the collapse of legitimacy, not the impossibility of force. To avoid misinterpretation, the following appendix clarifies the normative boundary under which state violence may still remain legitimate.

The critique of lethal risk in domestic governance does not imply the rejection of all state use of force. The question is not whether violence can ever be legitimate, but under what conditions it ceases to be so.

In political philosophy and human rights law, legitimate violence has historically rested on three cumulative foundations: necessity, proportionality, and accountability. These criteria define the moral boundary between governance and domination.

Legitimate force presupposes that all non-violent avenues—dialogue, institutional remedies, policy correction, and representation—remain meaningfully accessible. Violence becomes illegitimate the moment it substitutes for political incapacity rather than responding to imminent harm.

When lethal risk is introduced in anticipation of dissent rather than in response to immediate threat, necessity collapses.

Proportionality concerns risk asymmetry, not weapon symmetry. Legitimate force minimizes irreversible harm and distributes risk away from non-combatants. The routine presence of live ammunition reverses this logic by transferring systemic risk onto civilian bodies.

Once civilian death becomes a statistically foreseeable outcome of routine governance, proportionality has already been breached.

Legitimacy hinges on accepted responsibility for consequences. Systems that frame civilian deaths as accidents while preserving the decision framework that made them probable fail the accountability test.

Without reversibility, punishment, and independent oversight, violence ceases to be a tool of law and becomes an attribute of power.

The decisive boundary is crossed when lethal force becomes structural rather than conditional—embedded as a standing solution to political uncertainty.

In such cases, violence no longer protects a legal order; it replaces it.

The boundary of legitimate force cannot be sustained without an equally legitimate epistemic environment. Where the state monopolizes the definition of reality, the criteria of necessity, proportionality, and accountability become unenforceable.

The legitimacy of state force depends not only on how violence is exercised, but on who controls the definition of reality in which that violence is justified.

When a government or ruling party monopolizes interpretive authority—the unilateral power to define events, identities, intentions, and threats without contestation—legality may persist procedurally while legitimacy collapses substantively.

In rights-based governance, the state enforces law within a pluralistic interpretive environment. When power claims exclusive authority to define violence, threat, disinformation, and legitimacy, coercion shifts from law enforcement to reality enforcement.

Monopoly over meaning enables civilian deaths to be reclassified as accidents, dissent to be reframed as subversion, and structural failure to be externalized. Violence becomes self-justifying through definition rather than evidence.

Labels such as “instigators” or “hostile elements” function as narrative shortcuts that personalize structural problems. Where interpretation is monopolized, accusation itself becomes proof.

Before lethal force becomes acceptable, dissent is framed as existential threat, responsibility for escalation is pre-assigned, and alternative interpretations are delegitimized. Narrative control is therefore not a byproduct of repression, but its enabling infrastructure.

Legitimate governance requires epistemic humility and contestable meaning. Where meaning is enforced, accountability collapses and violence becomes structurally unconstrained.

A government that monopolizes reality no longer governs through consent or law,
but through enforced meaning.

Where meaning is enforced, violence need not be constant.
It need only remain possible.