5 year old boy shot his sister dead

[goalkeeper]

It's kind of ironic that communists are arguing that the PRIVATE ownership of firearms is a better thing than the STATE ownership of firearms. Legal private ownership of arms is as usable by reactionary forces as by Leftist forces. That's basically how an organization like the NRA can come into existence - it channels money from huge, private gun manufacturers and lobbies the government while those same businesses build up specialty markets for things like assault rifles among more conservative elements of the US population.

SNR, your politics certainly don't seem to be so bad as to equate state ownership with communism. Workers organisations (not that they really exist anymore in any meaningful sense) are going to officially designated as "private" within the bourgeois state. Of course private access to firearms means reactionaries have equal access to guns as revolutionaries; thats only a problem because of the depressing times we live in where people opt for reactionary politics more than revolutionary.

I understand the point of it being a fantasy to expect a bunch of guys with store bought weapons taking on the might of the US military and would obviously be a suicide. But there are more considerations. If workers are armed and prepared to shoot back at, for example, troops bought into break a strike (yeah, hypothetical situation for American workers today), the decision to do this will be more considered by authorities. Also, anyone who entertains ideas of the masses breaking out into open revolt against the US military is obviously an idiot or a Maoist (the two go together usually), as that is not how it is going to happen. Any sort of future revolution in the United States would probably have to see some sort of split within the military and breakup of the state or at least it's ability to function and assert control; within this context of a broken down state and war between professional soldiers there perhaps is some role for intervention by private citizens with privately purchased weapons. I am thinking of Józef Piłsudski and his rife clubs in Galicia; they obviously were in no way capable of taking on the partitioning powers, however with the general break down of the empires and exhaustion and mutiny of former imperial armies in the closing days of WW1 they were able to play a (admittedly disputed) role in the fight for creating a Polish state.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

SNR, your politics certainly don't seem to be so bad as to equate state ownership with communism.

I don't, and that's not what I meant, by state I referred to our current capitalist government.

Workers organisations (not that they really exist anymore in any meaningful sense) are going to officially designated as "private" within the bourgeois state. Of course private access to firearms means reactionaries have equal access to guns as revolutionaries; thats only a problem because of the depressing times we live in where people opt for reactionary politics more than revolutionary.

They are going to be "private", and insofar as they buy firearms for self defense that would be "privately owned". But that doesn't mean that the defense of private ownership of light arms isn't also a defense of the rights of business owners to arm security guards, etc.

Reactionary forces will naturally have more ability to purchase firearms in a Capitalist state because the forces of reaction tend to be associated with those who have more capital to begin with. It's not just a problem of political demographics.

I understand the point of it being a fantasy to expect a bunch of guys with store bought weapons taking on the might of the US military and would obviously be a suicide. But there are more considerations. If workers are armed and prepared to shoot back at, for example, troops bought into break a strike (yeah, hypothetical situation for American workers today), the decision to do this will be more considered by authorities. Also, anyone who entertains ideas of the masses breaking out into open revolt against the US military is obviously an idiot or a Maoist (the two go together usually), as that is not how it is going to happen. Any sort of future revolution in the United States would probably have to see some sort of split within the military and breakup of the state or at least it's ability to function and assert control; within this context of a broken down state and war between professional soldiers there perhaps is some role for intervention by private citizens with privately purchased weapons. I am thinking of Józef Piłsudski and his rife clubs in Galicia; they obviously were in no way capable of taking on the partitioning powers, however with the general break down of the empires and exhaustion and mutiny of former imperial armies in the closing days of WW1 they were able to play a (admittedly disputed) role in the fight for creating a Polish state.

As I said, firearms collected privately by a handful of radicals could play a role, but it's not this decisive issue that people are making it out to be. It's not like being critical of America's free-for-all deregulated gun market out of practical concern for one's children is going to impede the revolution.

[Os Cangaceiros]

This is from an old post by "Nothing Human is Alien" that's relevant to the topic:

"Gun control" is an aspect of liberalism, bureaucratic control (of those who know what's best over the "unwashed masses"), etc. It has nothing to do with the revolutionary struggle to do away with all exploitation and oppression.

The First, Second and Third internationals up until Stalin's reign argued for the right to bear arms.

"...the disarming of the workers was the first commandment for the bourgeois, who were at the helm of the state. Hence, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle, ending with the defeat of the workers." - Engels

"Education of all to bear arms. Militia in the place of the standing army." - Eduard Bernstein

"No standing army or police force, but the armed people." - Lenin

"Every possibility for the proletariat to get weapons into its hands must be exploited to the fullest." - Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work (Adopted at the 24th Session of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 12 July 1921)

Timothy McVeigh didn't need guns to level the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Aum Shinrikyo didn't need arms to launch the sarin gas attack in Tokyo. Kim Dae-han didn't need arms to start a fire in the Subway in Daegu. You can kill someone with any number of things, from cars to kitchen knives to lighters to explosives. Should they all be "controlled" too? Do countries in which gun ownership is more restricted not have murders, assassinations and violent attacks by rightists and people with mental issues?

Firearms aren't the problem.

* * *

The people making the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan so difficult are mainly using small arms.

Firearms were/are usually present in miners strikes in the coal fields (West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania) from the early days up until the 70's, 80's and even 90's. Ever see the documentary Harlan County U.S.A.? I have stories, friends and family with experiences, etc. that would surprise a lot of people, "leftist revolutionaries" included.

* * *

When you call for limiting gun ownership, for whatever reason you, you are arguing for the capitalist state to regulate our lives further, since that's the only force capable of regulating such a thing.

The bourgeois armed the proletariat when it needed it, and tried to reverse that when it didn't. Some countries went through mass revolutions involving huge swaths of the population. Others did not.

It should be mentioned that Switzerland has wide firearm ownership, and makes firearms training available to any boy or girl who wants it. All Swiss men enter boot camp around age 20 and remain a part of the militia until they reach 30. All those people keep their firearms (mostly Sig 550s) at home. After their militia term ends they're allowed to keep their firearms after having the autofire function removed. You need a permit to carry firearms.

There are some 3,000,000 firearms in homes across Switzerland. There are 7,600,000 people. There were 34 instances of gun violence in the entire country 2006. There were nearly twice as many instances of knife violence.

Anyways, in case anyone was wondering, a .22, a semiauto pistol or even an AR 15 would not really stand up against the military equipment of a professional military force, so pretending that the private ownership of arms in America will make revolution possible is a pipe dream. I'm skeptical about liberal gun reform efforts because it totally ignores structural causes for gun violence, but it's fucking hilarious seeing Leftists take up the michigan militia approach to the 2nd amendment as a means to violent revolution after what happened to the Black Panthers. Will a revolution be violent? It may well be. Might that violence include people's legally bought firearms? Those might help in certain limited contexts. Will that violence consist of brave Leftists taking a legally, store bought 9mm pistol and shooting an Abrams tank until it blows up as if we were in some kind of bad video game? Not likely ...

That's not really the strategy of people who view firearms through the lense of insurgency, honestly. It's more a question of: "how can society function on any sort of level other than something resembling raw colonial military occupation when there's 200+ million firearms floating around and a bunch of pissed-off people". I don't view societal change as a military affair but as I've said before on this board, most insurgencies are fought with small arms.

[B5C]

NRA has found the best option to keep kids safe!

Let's put guns in your child's room:

PINCUS: How about putting a quick-access safe in your kids’ room? [...] Good idea or bad idea? We have an emotional pushback to that. Here’s my position on this. If you’re worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense. [Laughter] If you think that the kid who’s going to try to break into the safe because it’s in their room isn’t sneaking into your room to try to break into stuff, you’re naive and you have bigger problems than this. So let’s settle that issue and think about it. In the middle of the night, if I’m in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or in the bedroom or watching TV in the living room, if that alarm goes off and the glass breaks and the dog starts barking, what’s the instinct that most people are going to have, in regards to, “am I going to run across the house to get the gun, or am I going to run over here to help the screaming kid?” And if I’m going to go to the kid anyway, and I have an extra gun and an extra safe, why not put it in their closet?

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...uns-kids-room/

I think this is a horrible thing waiting to happen.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

That's not really the strategy of people who view firearms through the lense of insurgency, honestly. It's more a question of: "how can society function on any sort of level other than something resembling raw colonial military occupation when there's 200+ million firearms floating around and a bunch of pissed-off people". I don't view societal change as a military affair but as I've said before on this board, most insurgencies are fought with small arms.

This may be the case but insurgencies are as often fueled by illegal firearms as legal ones, and groups like FARC have always been hampered by difficulties in obtaining the kinds of heavier weapons they would need to defeat a fully fledged, US-backed mechanized army and air force. In addition, situations like that in Colombia show how paramilitaries on the side of Capital can benefit just as easily from the same kinds of rights. When workers cannot afford the firearms they need to protect themselves but business owners can, then you have a recipe for intimidation, land theft and other forms of social and economic aggression.

I'm kind of neutral on the issue myself - I can understand why people might think they're useful but I can also understand why people might see a wholly deregulated market of firearms as counterproductive.

[LewisQ]

*Something about the state monopoly on violence and how we're going to overthrow the greatest military power the world has ever seen with an arsenal of legally-held shotguns*.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

For fuck sakes regulate this shit already, your countries bullshit irresponsibility with guns spills over into Mexico and Canada too. And don't give me some people's war/ anarcho-insurrection bullshit either.

No, that violence is,according to my understanding, caused by the US Government/military sending arms to both the Mexican government as well as drug cartels as part of the War on Drugs. This is the source of the violence in Mexico (US demanding the Mexican government start cracking down). How irresponsible regulation along the border states would cause such massive violence is beyond me when considering how many arms would have to be smuggled (especially when we consider the amount of military grade weapons in possession of the cartels).

The revolution will not be a legal act. Why are users so keen in attempting to make it as legal as possible?

Because it tends to be easier to make revolution when people have some semblance of lethality; I do not buy the mystifying line that come a revolutionary situation the workers will be able to instantly find some means of self-defense: at the end of the day any form of workers self-defense militia/group/party/organization/state or what-have-you needs a certain degree of armed protection (which kind of brings me to my next point about the military question...).... In any case other comrades have brought up good points about the military in regards that anything you can buy legally is not going to do much against black operations special forces troops or heavily armored vehicles. So in this sense the real argument should be on how to swing the military members so that when the inner contradictions of capitalist society reaches a certain boiling point and a revolution (of some kind) with Leftist influence breaks out, they will gravitate towards an anti-capitalist program and not a right-wing one.

[#FF0000]

Im sure wealthy people find it fun to make alot of money yet here you are.... I rather take away this "fun" from some people so that other people dont end up being hurt by this "fun" of yours.

Except the bosses entire means of making money (ignoring the issues re: "money" itself) is inherently exploitative and demands servitude of other people. My having a gun isn't hurting anybody.

In any case, I'm fine with stricter gun control laws in the form of background checks. Mental health checks I'm not as sure about because I doubt how effective they would be, and I don't know how they'd handle folks who had a history with depression or some other hella common mental illness. And Takayuki's point on US gun culture is absolutely spot on.

Still wanna shoot paper tho.

[#FF0000]

*Something about the state monopoly on violence and how we're going to overthrow the greatest military power the world has ever seen with an arsenal of legally-held shotguns*.

True as your point is I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of the state disarming working class people.

[RadioRaheem84]

The argument about people being armed will do nothing against a power US military is a liberal argument that I heard espoused to no end by the liberal dolts on the Young Turks. They then proceeded to go into a tirade calling anyone even remotely pro gun a yokel. The obvious answer given by many of their commentors on Youtube was that their logic as flawed considering that they think the army just thinks in one monolithic mindset and that there won't be any dissenters who will switch sides.

The gun debate in the US amputates the structural problems surrounding gun violence so taking any talking points from liberals and conservatives on this issue is ridiculous.

The gun culture in the US though is reactionary but that may be the only reason why there isn't a full ban. If the populace and the gun "nuts" were even remotely leftist, there would sure as hell be a freeze by the State on gun manufacturers and countless regulations on their sale.

Change the paradigm on Middle America and watch how quickly the reactionary state will turn "liberal" on guns, Republicans and Democrats.

So no it's not reactionary to be pro-gun. We live in a capitalist country, where else are Americans supposed to get weapons? They do not own the means, so they have to purchase them.

In sum, this issue is too complex to call each other liberal or reactionary.

[Dear Leader]

1. Ban all private ownership of guns, now! People have the right to walk the streets without fear of being shot down by gun loving lunatics.
2. Arrest the NRA terrorists now! Hold them responsible for the 30,000 deaths and 500,000 wounds that occur every year from guns in the United States.

These should be leading demands of any socialist party in the United States. I will join any socialist party that makes these simple and clear socialist demands. We need a socialist revolution to free ourselves from the NRA-terrorists who now have power in the United States.

Yeahhhh.....no.

[Rugged Collectivist]

How is he a liberal? Liberals are all about the "freedom" of having guns. You sound like a reactionary conservative who blames "liberals" (socialists) for wanting to take his beloved guns away.

Liberals in the US (represented by the democratic party) are hugely in favor of gun control laws.

I wasn't one of those people who was raised around guns, and admittedly I don't really know what a .22 is, but wouldn't a BB gun be more appropriate for a five year old? Or even an airsoft gun if you really want to be careful.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Still wanna shoot paper tho.

If its legal in your area, go to a range that allows tannerite targets. dont be a dumb ass about it though. Put it well beyond 25 yards away from you or anyone else...


anyway i first shot a firearm when i was 14. started with bb guns when i was 10... I'd say 10 years old, not because of my situation, would probably be the earliest time to start handling ANYTHING lethal, including pellet guns.

start a 5 year old with a cheap airsoft gun, work into a daisy lever action, get a cool CO2 or pump pellet gun, a 22, then whatever...

[Vanguard1917]

It seems like this was a tragic freak accident - not a reason for parent-blaming, making sweeping statements about a 'gun culture', or demanding more gun controls. Frankly, shame on those using a family's personal tragedy to bolster their own political agendas.

[The Intransigent Faction]

We must stand with our comrades in the leftist NRA and uphold the 2nd Amendment of the Glorious People's Constitution of the Socialist Republics of the Americas. Only in this way can our peoples' militia outgun the U.S. government, invade Congress and bring about an era of communism.

..Oh wait.

[Vanguard1917]

We must stand with our comrades in the leftist NRA and uphold the 2nd Amendment...

...or put forward the leftwing case for the freedom to bear arms.

But for that to succeed, of course, the US firstly needs a leftwing movement, not the cowardly, state-worshipping, anti-working-class liberalism that passes for leftism in America today.

[melvin]

this whole situation is irrelevant to gun control, because background checks wouldn't prevent things like this. a background check is for criminal history. assuming that the registered owner of this gun does not have a history of violent crime, the outcome of this situation wouldn't have changed.

this is a family tragedy, really. nothing political.

[Geiseric]

this whole situation is irrelevant to gun control, because background checks wouldn't prevent things like this. a background check is for criminal history. assuming that the registered owner of this gun does not have a history of violent crime, the outcome of this situation wouldn't have changed.

this is a family tragedy, really. nothing political.

I don't get why more people don't think like this... seriously things like this aren't rocket science. Crazy people, Nazis, and kids shouldn't have guns. End of story.

[BIXX]

The first time I went shooting, I was eight. By the time I was twelve I was shooting an SKS and an AK-47. I am growing up with guns, and I actually plan on going to a college to learn how to make guns. I'm looking for a job in a gun smithing shop this summer so maybe I can even skip the schooling. The fact is, gun ownership is fine, but only, ONLY, with the proper training. I think that should be a requirement to own a gun, but of course, I'm not qualified to state what the proper training is.

Is there a point to learning to shoot a real gun at the age of 5 besides "it's fun"?

Well, then what do you suppose drugs are for? Some of them are dangerous, and they are used because "it's fun". Do you support the complete ban of drugs?

I honestly don't think we can ban guns, because at this point they are part of who Americans are. Even if I supported it, I think it is not really possible.

As a side note, how would we enforce the ban? Would the state take them away? Presumably they'd want guns to match the guns that they were trying to acquire. so do you support a state monopoly on guns? And assuming you don't want the state to have guns, how the hell will they be taken away? Or do you believe the state will just get rid of it's guns? If you believe the state will willingly do that, I believe you're stupid.

[DasFapital]

I got my rifle (Marlin .22 bolt action) as a birthday present when I was 15. I had to go through a hunter's education course and get my hunting license before my dad allowed me to use the thing. At the time I thought it was stupid but now I see that experience was useful. Anyway, now I have damn good aim with a 12 gauge.