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Marxist position on gun control?
I know the conservative government is to have a bazooka in every home but the liberal position is literally to have all guns above pistols and shotguns in the hands of police and government.
I just watched an episode of Colbert where he was a bit smug, as usual for liberals, about mocking the right wing's fear of a government tyranny. while I do not think the US government is going to turn fascist anytime soon, what would happen if it did over the course of the decade or more? How do they reconcile this?
What's the Marxist position?
I don't think there is what you could consider a cohesive position on such an issue among communists.
My view is that if there is no line to be drawn between what is acceptable and not acceptable for personal possession then we ought to just give tanks, anti-aircraft batteries, and atomic bombs to general citizens. Call me a liberal but I'm not unsympathetic to calls for a ban on assault weapons and weapons that are more destructive than necessary to hunt or protect your home with.
At the end of the day, though, I think if the success or prospects for success of the worker's revolutionary movement is going to be defined by how many weapons we can stockpile or whether or not we can overpower or strongarm the bourgeois state militarily then the bourgeois state has already won. A key feature of the bourgeois state is a monopoly on violence and means of destruction so they are always going to be able to overpower us in that regard.
At the end of the day I am ambivalent. One of the problems with gun control from a positon sensitive toward oppressed peoples is the ramifications this will have in poorer neighborhoods that house mostly minorities. This quite possibly will lead to cops going crazy with this and ramping up their abuses and violent acts toward people in these areas. Furthermore, any piece of gun control legislation is going to be eaten up and exploited by the follks on the right who are going to use it as proof of their conspiratorial fantasies of socialist tyranny coming into fruition.
It varies from person to person. I think background checks are necessary, and the mentally Ill shouldn't be given any guns. I'm a bit torn about the issue of assault rifle bans, though.
I'm from the south and grew up around guns. I learned how to handle them safely and all that stuff from a really young age, so this whole 'gun control debate' really perplexes me. Really, gun deaths pale in comparison to, say, alcohol, cigarette, and car accident related deaths. Why aren't the liberals crying to ban cars, cigarettes, and alcohol? Or say, you're only allowed to have one beer a day?
Because they don't want to ask "what is causing gun violence" (or maybe a lot of them like to drink, smoke, and drive) ... you have socioeconomic stratification leading to property crime, which sometimes includes gun violence (robbery, etc), you have people with severe mental illness who cannot afford treatment, etc, etc, etc. A sane, happy, healthy person will not go on a killing spree. You remove guns from the picture, that same insane person who went on a killing spree would in all likelihood still be a murderer. But instead of killing 20 people at once, maybe they would kill 20 people over 3 years with knives or a bat or something.
The cause of the problem is not treated when you remove guns from the picture ...
I do support background checks, though I think banning non-violent felons from having guns is a little stupid. And I don't think we will ever eliminate violent crime totally ...
GourmetPez: Don't you know anything about
communism? We're for the enslavement of the Aryan
race by a global semitic reptilian dictatorship. Black
people will own white slaves, homosexuality will be
taught in schools, mad blunts will be smoked.
I feel it simply comes down to whether you actually believe in arming the masses or not. We know that bourgeois laws are for the benefit of the bourgeoisie so why should we think differently to when they want to disarm the general population? Why should we cry out against the masses having arms when it's still nothing to what the true murderers (the state) have? We know a revolution is not going to be a tea party so why shouldnt we be concerned about our ability to acquire weaponry?
Freedom before Peace
The UK and Sweden both have gun laws restricting arms. One is a free wheeling capitalist nation with a lot of violent crime despite the restriction. The other has less crime but it's due more to the standard of living being met by a strong welfare state, not the lack of weapons.
US liberals are really ignoring the socio-economic aspect of this whole debate.
I'm all for prohibition of gun distribution and, if possible, less production of all types of arms.
Probably should get in before the 'liberal' accusations come out - the police and bourgie armies shouldn't have firepower to obliterate the working class and yes, gun restriction should be combined with far more effective mental health strategies.
But let's face it, workers' militias or not we are not going to outfight the capitalists. If it comes to a situation where the way we try to overthrow capitalism is through war, then clearly capitalism hasn't fully saturated yet or we are choosing the wrong method.
Crime in the UK isn't evenly distributed, though. I grew up in London and there is a marked difference between violent crime in the rougher, poverty-stricken inner cities and the more affluent areas.
Yet in the US there are so many stories of gun-toting maniacs in affluent middle class areas running around shooting people. It's crazy. Guns offer no protection against violent crime, and for people to say that violent crime in the UK is relatively high because of lack of guns is the height of either idiocy or worse, dis-honesty.
I don't support banning or severely restricting ownership of firearms. I'm considering the purchase of a handgun at some point.
"I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless robots who protect them and their property." - Assata Shakur
The problem in discussing any "rights" is that in the mainstream they are spoken of abstractly when in fact this is never the case. For example, no NRA spokesperson would condone selling guns to pot-dealers even though they probably have more legitimate need for "self-defense" than all the weekend warriors who support the NRA. While Charelton Heston talked about the 2nd ammendement defending us from some hypothetical government tyranny, he also was the spokesperson dennouncing ICE-T for "Cop Killa" even though songs like that were a direct reference to ACTUAL police tyranny. Another example is that Ronald Regan supported gun control when it was aimed at poor blacks as Governor of California.
So like "freedom of speech", gun-rights don't exist outside of society and so I think it's hard to have ONE standard marxist stance regarding this issue. It depends on the context and potential effects.
In this light, I can understand why some marxist might lightly favor some of the proposed restrictions on weapons that really are kind of outrageously useless for anything but shooting at large groups of people. These weapons are much more likely to be used against us by fascists or right-wing nuts angry at striking workers or a protest or "reds" in general than to be used by us for some kind of worker's militia - in the short term anyway.
But ultimately, I don't really take any sort of pro-position on gun control. I don't think it would actually do much for the problems such a ban would supposedly solve. There's always rifles and towers like before all these weapons, there's always fertelizer and so on.
I believe in the gerneral arming of the people, workers' militias and all that so take my generally coming down in favour of gun ownership as read.
Now this doesn't mean that much of the US isn't seriously lacking in some common sense regulations. Yes, there should be a mandatory waiting period. No, people convicted of a violent crime shouldn't be able to buy guns. No, the right to bear arms doesn't confer the right to take your AR-15 when you go shopping.
It's worth considering that the easy availability of heavy weaponry to criminals, gangs, and just about anyone they want to stop plays a part in a vicsious cycle. It's convenient propaganda for an increasingly militarised police force, for police in schools, for attacks on civil liberties etc. Would they try to do these things anyway if the gun situation in the US wasn't one of controlled chaos? Yes, but they'd be a lot less convincing. The stable plurality of citizens who just want to get on with their daily lives wouldn't feel compelled to grant quite the same level of unchecked powers to the great leviathan.
Last edited by Clarion; 21st January 2013 at 13:46.
Yeah, I don't support the banning or severe restriction of guns either. It only serves to disarm the population, and I don't think that's something we should be looking to achieve. A strong-willed, intelligent population is a good thing, and arms are always useful in case of tyranny.
Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice. -George Jackson
There is no such thing as an innocent bystander. -Abbie Hoffman
Guns are part of the factors of production. To deny them to regular citizens is wrong, but psychological tests should be made.
These rickety "affluent" middle class burbs are rife with stress due to the debt financing of a lot of their living standard rather than a more stable welfare state apparatus that works as a social safety net in most European countries, even in the UK to some extent.
People still have to rely on debt, a job without real security and their employer for nearly every benefit. Their relatively high professional wage is always at risk. Their middle class existence constantly rocked by the tax burden shifting to them and continous stress. Not to mention a keeping up with the Joneses mentality too.
Point is the suburbs in America have their own problems.
Are you saying that article represents your views or are you just posting it?
Freedom before Peace
Armed struggle is deadly by its very nature, it didn't take new social control methods to make it that way. I'm not interested in the morality of gun ownership or use. Psychological screenings and better mandatory training would go a long way. With the proliferation of guns already present, it is unrealistic to expect anyone to deter lone wolf terrorists or the mentally Ill from engaging in rampages, its necessary to address the conditions that create those individuals.
I generally support the ownership of guns, although I don't own any.
But the issue is the way it's all frame and perspective.
Certain people want to frame it one way or the other.
I support restriction to weapons, like checks and sale restrictions.
The NRA want to frame restrictions as some sort of "slippery slope" to full outlawing of gun ownership.
Certain liberals also play this "all or nothing" game to a certain extant.
In Florida (and a few other states), the most troublesome laws are those around "gun show sales" or "private transactions" where people can get their hands on all sorts of weapons without any checks, etc. I think this needs to be restricted.
In fact, many people who own weapons agree that this element is kinda wild and should be restricted.
I also support restrictions on automatic weapons ("machine guns") although many ARs and such sold for the civilian market are semi-auto types. I think semi-auto rifles are ok.
"My heart sings for you both. Imagine it singing. la la la la."- Hannah Kay
"if you keep calling average working people idiots i am sure they will be more apt to listen to what you have to say. "-bcbm
"Sometimes false consciousness can be more destructive than apathy, just like how sometimes, doing nothing is actually better than doing the wrong thing."- Robocommie
"The ruling class would tremble, and the revolution would be all but assured." -Explosive Situation, on the Revleft Merry Prankster bus
Moving this in a slightly different direction than just the guns themselves. How do you feel about extended clips?
I support the ability to have them. My anarchist friend and I debated this for a few hours last week and it was very interesting.
Freedom before Peace
I think shorter clips will only encourage higher training.
I personally support ownership of guns, and have several, and shoot regularly.
