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Whether or not your opponents are aware of basic firearm maintenance has nothing to do with their ability to ascertain the effects of firearm ownership in society. I believe people can often have harsh views on gun ownership because guns can be as much of a tool for liberation as they are one of oppression; furthermore, there is the inescapable fact that guns do in fact cause fatalities when used, and regulation of firearm ownership is an achievable goal alongside addressing the underlying social circumstances.
Generic he?
I was going to counterpose some of my own anecdotes on this topic to your anecdotes, but then I realized I have far too many to choose from, so I just looked up some statistics instead:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/160223/me...un-owners.aspxOriginally Posted by Gallup
Also, demographic breakdown of political support for/opposition to gun control, from Pew: http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old...ntrol-2011.pdf
I find it kind of unlikely that people are genuinely oblivious to this trend.
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean firearm regulation would be an achievable goal in a future socialist society, or a reasonable reform for the proletariat to fight for?
I think you know what I mean, but regardless would you prefer if I changed it to him/her?
The latter, but the former is true as well. We should fight to make our world better by whatever means we can, as long as we are being mindful of the long-term with a holistic strategy geared towards a proletarian revolution.
You don't have to change it for my sake, I just didn't want any unjust accusations of sexism to come your way if that wasn't what you were trying to get across.
I favor gun control for the 5-0
"Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind ... when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom." Engels
Left: 8.99, Libertarian: 5.84
So you're in favor of increasing the power of the bourgeois state?
Anyone who wants to accuse me of sexism, because of adherence to a grammar rule I was taught in school growing up, can go right ahead, they'll merely be making themselves look silly.
My specific proposal would not increase anyone's power but the proletariat, because they would have greater access to firearms and other means of defense or liberation, while taking the weapons out of the hands of those who would oppress others with them.
That's not what you said.
Me:
You:
If you can explain to me a way, you fight for gun law reform, without increasing the power of the bourgeois state, I'm all ears. But you certainly can't blame me for assuming that is what you meant.
No, psychic powers.
BANS GOT YOU PARANOID? I MADE A GROUP FOR YOU! http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1349 NOW OPEN FOR EVERYBODY!!!
"Think for yourself; question authority." - Timothy Lenin
I think you are struggling a bit here with reading comprehension. I'm sure you are an intelligent person, so I'm assuming it's more the result of this issue being really emotionally-charged for you rather than any intellectual deficit on your part. You should probably take a deep breath and remember that, no matter what I personally think of it, you can pretty much have as many guns as you can afford to buy and nobody is going to take away peoples' firearms, regardless of how much they may contribute to the deadliness of domestic violence or any other irrelevant little detail like that.
So getting back to this point now that you are hopefully a bit more relaxed:
That wasn't the point of the statistics. You can read them yourself if you are actually interested in the points (which you clearly aren't), but one of the relevant ones was that "access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than five times".
I don't want to make this discussion about domestic abuse, though, because pretty much wherever there is social oppression in the US, guns serve to empower the people at the top of that particular hierarchy and the people at the bottom pay with their blood. Domestic violence certainly isn't the only example where this applies, it's just the one that happened to spring immediately to mind because a friend of mine was in a related situation earlier this year (she wasn't killed thankfully, but was beat to a pulp, escaped the house with her cell phone to call the police, and then made the mistake of going back in to try to get her 3-year-old daughter out, at which point her boyfriend proceeded to hold her and her daughter at gunpoint for several hours until he was incapacitated).
The fact that the entire purpose of guns is to kill is enough to make their possession a social issue rather than a purely personal one that concerns only the individual in possession of the firearm. Similarly, operating a vehicle isn't only the concern of the person operating it, which is why there are stringent requirements that someone must fulfill in order to legally operate a vehicle, since otherwise they are putting everyone in the vicinity in danger. For some reason, no one loses their shit over 'driver control' though, which is particularly weird when you consider that operating a vehicle actually has a practical, often essential, everyday function rather than just being for shooting shit, killing things, and feeling like a man.
Basically, anyone interested can go back and read the above comments in relation to the quotes they are supposed to be responses to. They are complete non-sequiturs, so I don't really see much point in attempting to respond to them.
I did say that, just not in response to you, although I apologize for unthinkingly assuming you would have read my post earlier in the thread beforehand:
I don't think my above proposal would increase the power of the bourgeois.
He could have meant that he would only train a boy to use a firearm, which is what is what I wanted to have clarified so no one would come to that conclusion if that wasn't what he was saying.Originally Posted by Sea
How am I supposed to help overthrow the bourgeois, establish a DotP, and repress reactionaries without firearms? If I state that as my purpose during your proposed lie-detector test for obtaining a firearm would I be granted a permit? How does one expect a revolution to occur without bloodshed and firearms.
It's pretty obvious you're calling gun owners mouth breathing hick, showing your elitist hatred of anyone who isn't from the city because they are "rural" and since they are rural, they are therefore uneducated, therefore will go out and beat their wives! And yeah, it did come off as implying rape. You are too worried about guns are meant to kill - but he said they are used as self-defense. So if Tricemarx is going to kill, it'll be as a result of someone else trying to kill him.
You wanna stop crimes? Make your case. But don't you dare say that gun owners are domestic abusers. Sure some of them are. Gun culture is ridiculous. But that doesn't mean that gun owners are somehow bad people, which your latent liberal elitism implies.
This is brutally dishonest and shitty of you. The gun debate is an interesting one (especially cuz I don't have an opinion on it) and acting like that showsthe contempt and elitism that is contained within you, and makes your argument look bad.
"We must flee from Time, we must create a life that is feminine and human - it is these imperative objectives that must guide us in this world heavy with catastrophes."
Jacques Camatte, Echos from the Past
"For example, to say that the relation between industrial capital and the class of the wage workers is expressed in precisely the same way in Belgium and Thailand, and that the praxis of their respective struggles should be established without taking into account in either of the two cases the factors of race or nationality, does not mean you are an extremist, but it means in effect that you have understood nothing of Marxism."
Amadeo Bordiga, Factors of Race and Nation in the Marxist Analysis
I am aware of what you said and do indeed think it would be increasing the power of the bourgeoisie. What you are essentially asking for is a situation in which the state provides firearms to individuals who pass your proposed 'restriction tests' so to speak. I assume this would mean you would want the state to have a monopoly on firearm distribution; or else you must mean that the state should directly become a competitor in the firearm market, a proposal even more puzzling. Either way the proposal is troubling coming from a self described leftist. It does indeed increase the power of the bourgeois state to allow them to have control over regulation of firearms and I certainly hope you aren't naive enough to think they would allow these proposed laws to get in the way of carrying out their class interests.
I think given my posting history, its pretty obvious I'm not someone who is going to randomly come out with an outright reactionary position of 'herp derp only men should shoot guns,' but for clarity's sake, no that is not what I meant. It was simply a generalized statement, that when I have a kid, I will teach him/her to shoot, as my dad did with me. I don't know about anyone else, but going to shoot with your dad was like the coolest thing in the world growing up and a pretty awesome bonding experience. And there are some very simple rules to teach someone, that if taken seriously, will result in the person never misusing a firearm; #1 being don't point this at anything you aren't prepared to kill.
This is somewhat of an unprincipled criticism. The argument in favor of gun ownership cannot be premised on the increased possibility of revolution if guns are able to be legally owned by the population, at least not in the modern context. I can guarantee we won't take down the bourgeoisie with our SKS's. The act of revolution is itself illegal, so ransacking barricades/gun stores or things of that nature, are totally going to be on the agenda. The premise of the argument against firearm restrictions, at least from a Marxist perspective, is that the correlation between gun ownership and violent crime is tenuous at best, that many of the arguments put forth in this thread stem from a departure with the Marxist method and that it objectively increases the power of the bourgeois state.
First of all, I think they would have some sort of form with a rigid set of questions explicated in the legislation itself that would likely not include such a speculative scenario as, "if you were in an ideological war with the people in your community, would you use your firearm to fight against those you are opposed to?" I'm thinking more along the lines of, "Do you plan to use your firearm in cooperation with an organization that consistently transgresses the law in a violent manner, such as a gang?" or "Do you plan to use your firearm to aid in the facilitation of a robbery, home invasion or rape?".
Thus you should have no problem if you only plan to escalate to the use of lethal force when the situation requires it, that is, in self-defense or if someone is going to die otherwise or if there are people shooting at you from the other side of a battlefield. Even the bourgeois police/military can articulate these principles although they often fail to follow them, and so I'm not sure why a revolutionary militia would be less disciplined or humane in their theoretical ethics. My point is, if you will only use your firearm when that task devolves upon you, you should have no problem receiving a weapon.
I support my proposal if and only if the regulation is being directly handled via referendum on a local level, as I stated when I articulated it, and with that method of legislation it would not be handing the power to the state as a separate entity but to the community of that area as whole. Furthermore, I'm not asking for the state to compete with any company; I would like them to simply give people the money necessary to purchase a weapon if an individual wishes to own one but can't afford to buy it.
How is this not exactly is this not what I was pointing out before? You say that and do not say anything else. What am I supposed to think you are implying here?
I'm glad that he was incapacitated.
Again, you haven't actually advocated for anything here. All you have done is said that it is a social issue and that motor vehicles are controlled. This is only repeating my question which you call a non-sequitur below: what do you say should be done concretely?
Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. ~ Karl Marx
formerly Triceramarx
Ok, I know I'm not a Marxist, but I do utilize some of the same tools (dialectical materialism, specifically). I just wanna say that I'd be interested in how you think I should save myself from someone who stole a gun if I was unable to have one?
Furthermore, I'd be interested in seeing how someone tries to take away guns from gun owners- would they ask nicely? Maybe they would use guns? Either way, I doubt the person who owns the gun will be too obliged to hand over their weapons.
Furthermore fuck you, I'm an anarchist. I'll own a gun if I want to, and if it's illegal, cool, I'll still keep it.
"I'm not interested in indulging whims from members of your faction."
Seeing as this is seen as acceptable by an admin, from here on out when I have a disagreement with someone I will be asking them to reference this. If you want an explanation of my views, too bad.
That maybe I think a lot of people who are emotionally invested in justifying private firearm ownership (particularly with regard to the current situation in the US) need to seriously reexamine their priorities? I am definitely not suggesting that owning a firearm makes someone a de facto domestic abuser, and I am absolutely not accusing anyone in this thread of being domestic abusers (which is not an accusation I would ever, EVER make out of any ulterior motive, least of all to score political points).
I'm not 'advocating' anything. I don't have a viable political solution to gun violence in the US within the framework of capitalism, and I have no interest in trying to construct or propose one. I want to get rid of this miserable society, not try to invent little impotent fixes for things within it (as if some random individual's pet solutions would have any political currency anyway).
But like I said, I do think people need to think about why their 'right' as individuals to privately own and freely play with guns is one of the main considerations as far as this issue goes and seems to take precedence over the lives of huge swathes of vulnerable people.
