The "asset forfeiture" case now before the Supreme Court is unlikely to lead to any substantial limitations on state and local seizures of private property.
Capitalism — not democracy — is what gives us the blessings we have come to associate with a free society. So it is markets and not democracy that we must defend.
Regulation is simply the way in which self-interested public officials provide benefits to self-interested individuals who form interest groups. This is as true in land use as in anything else.
Contrary to myth, Latin America has relatively few civilian-owned guns — either legal or illegal. But this hasn't prevented enduring high rates of violent crime.