What would be the marxist stance on gun ownership?

[Lily Briscoe]

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.

It is pretty amazing to me that you can talk about 'dishonesty' after making a comment like this without seeing the irony.

[La Comédie Noire]

I'm for gun ownership, not that it would make an overall difference for large scale revolution as other forces come into play besides military ones.

[Blake's Baby]

The link between anti-gun legislation and gun crime is by no means clear. There are states in the US with little gun-control and not a lot of gun crime, and then there are states with lots of fairly strict gun legislation and lots of gun crime. Ultimately, social conditions cause gun deaths, not the lack of laws against guns.

The Marxist position is against gun laws.

And what has this to do with the question? The OP posted a thread about gun ownership, not anti-gun legislation. It's not about laws, it's about guns. Do you deny that people in the US are 40 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in the UK? Do you deny that it's the availability of guns, that cause high rates of gun deaths, and that correspondingly, low rates of gun availability cause low rates of gun deaths?

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

As an European I'm against gun ownership. Simply because they are killing tools.
But I'd argue the reason there's a lot of gun crime in US is more due to extreme inequality than gun ownership itself, just compare it to Switzerland.

So, the best step should be diminishing inequality, but reducing gun ownership would obviously bring benefits to the society too.

[DDR]

As an European I'm against gun ownership. Simply because they are killing tools.
But I'd argue the reason there's a lot of gun crime in US is more due to extreme inequality than gun ownership itself, just compare it to Switzerland.

So, the best step should be diminishing inequality, but reducing gun ownership would obviously bring benefits to the society too.

As Europeans, Finland has, more or less, the same gun ownership laws as the US, yet they dont have the same amount of violent crimes. Guns are not the problem, the matter is education and social justice, the rest is just pure BS.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

As Europeans, Finland has, more or less, the same gun ownership laws as the US, yet they dont have the same amount of violent crimes. Guns are not the problem, the matter is education and social justice, the rest is just pure BS.

I said that in my post, but used Switzerland and not Finalnd as an example.

However it's not just BS. Do you honestly think if gun ownership had more restrictions (on par with most European natiuons), gun crime and accidents wouldn't go down?

[DDR]

I said that in my post, but used Switzerland and not Finalnd as an example.

However it's not just BS. Do you honestly think if gun ownership had more restrictions (on par with most European natiuons), gun crime and accidents wouldn't go down?

Switzerland works better as an example, in every house there's an assault rifle (so to speak, military service is obligatory, and after completion you keep your weapon to take it home), and violent crimes aren't high. And yes I do belive that gun control solves nothing, just like prohibition solves nothing. Education about guns and the elimination of the social inequality that cause crime is the only way to end gun crime.

[RedBen]

Govmint tryin' to take our cannons...

Anyway, a lot of young, male, rural American lefties seem to have a gun fetish and try to construct stupid political justifications for it.

On a gut level, my feeling is more or less 'I hope the government takes your guns you assholes'. But on a political level, I think the whole issue is basically a giant distraction and I don't think the legal status of firearms is at all relevant to working class self-organization in 2013.

urban mexican here. i keep a rifle in the closet. i plan on getting more in the future. if you think the gov should start taking people's guns, are you sure you aren't really just a liberal?

[Comrade Jacob]

From the Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, 1850 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...e/1850-ad1.htm

"2. To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party [the bourgeois democrats], whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising...".

That's really the end of the thread.

[Lily Briscoe]

if you think the gov should start taking people's guns, are you sure you aren't really just a liberal?

I said I was indifferent to the issue on a political level. On a purely emotional level (I.e. Not my political position but my gut reaction), when people obviously have an emotional attachment to their gun(s) and say stuff like this:

i keep a rifle in the closet. i plan on getting more in the future

the thought of the government taking away their firearms absolutely brings a smile to my face. If that makes me a liberal, I'm cool with that.

I have more to say about this actually, but am on my phone at work atm, so will try to get back to it later tonight (hopefully not tho cuz I'll be smashed) or else sometime this weekend.

[Logical seal]

It is of utpomost importantance to the far-left to be armed, and millitant, And defend the human rights as the left is famously known for.

[blake 3:17]

less guns, less idiot murders

[Remus Bleys]

I kinda wish that I learned how to use a gun in the living hell that was boy scouts.

Also strix that's very elitist and liberal. Are you a student or just an asshole?

[Skyhilist]

Surprised this thread is still going.

I mean seriously "Marxist stance on gun control"? Marxism isn't supposed to be some dogma, you're allowed to think for yourself instead of just looking to Das Kapital in the same way Christian fundamentalists look to the bible.

[Lily Briscoe]

Also strix that's very elitist and liberal. Are you a student or just an asshole?

Again with the buzzwords. For the record, no I'm not a student and I've never been to university. I'm in my mid-twenties, I'm a courier and I make $12 an hour (which, working full time, comes to just under $25,000 a year).

Really the entire idea that being critical of private gun ownership makes you an "elitist" is such a total crock of shit. I posted really instructive links on the second page of this thread which contained demographic information on both gun ownership and support for 'gun rights' in the US*. Probably nobody actually clicked the links since I was presenting an angle on the whole 'gun ownership' thing that a lot of people here seem to be religiously opposed to even thinking about. But if you go back and read them, they demonstrate very clearly that both gun ownership and 'gun rights' politics in the US are overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly the province of middle class white male property owners, and that the people least likely to be armed and most likely to be opposed to 'gun rights' are not the wealthy elitist liberal boogeymen from the right-populist narrative (that a lot of people here apparently swallow hook, line, and sinker) but on the contrary are hispanics/blacks/women/people making less than $30,000 a year. Why? Because for one, these are the sort of people who are most likely to actually find themselves on the wrong side of a gun, so for them the whole issue of 'gun rights' isn't about whether or not they have the 'right' to have a gun hobby or to bond with their white suburban middle class dad at the gun range or whatever but rather the 'rights' to stockpile deadly weapons with impunity of people who help enforce the structures of violence that surround them in their daily lives. And also, the fact that ;gun rights' in America has nothing to do with vulnerable people 'defending themselves' or 'arming themselves against a tyrannical government' or whatever bullshit and everything to do with middle class white men protecting their property from the rabble. That opposition to this state of affairs could possibly be framed as 'elitist' is really testament to how completely fucked up and backwards the political discourse in american society is.

Here was some of the relevant stuff from the links:

*Also Remus Bleys, your location is set as "Apparently Denmark" but I'm assuming that's some sort of inside joke, because things you have said have given me the distinct impression that you are definitely an American

[Queen Mab]

I absolutely oppose regulation of weaponry by the bourgeois state. When we get to a communist society there will be no class antagonisms and no crime, so guns will be useless and can be disposed of (except for sport). But until then I'm not going to trust bourgeois politicians being given the power to dictate who is armed and who isn't.

[Ocean Seal]

Okay we've had this gun control thread for a while, but I wanted to say that I really dislike gun ownership. For the most part it simply empowers a security rich state and gives it cause to adopt more oppressive measures, and I have yet to see the firing of a shot outside of a revolutionary context do any good in terms of protecting us against the bourgeoisie. The Black Panthers had guns, and showed us that going down that road with guns doesn't necessarily help. For all the guns that they had they wound up dead or in jail without significant casualties on the other end (iirc). They are simply not useful.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

I absolutely oppose regulation of weaponry by the bourgeois state. When we get to a communist society there will be no class antagonisms and no crime, so guns will be useless and can be disposed of (except for sport). But until then I'm not going to trust bourgeois politicians being given the power to dictate who is armed and who isn't.

What? Communism can't magically make crime disappear, there's the mentally ill or simply people who act on a whim. (lots of guns suicides that way btw).

[motion denied]

I absolutely oppose regulation of weaponry by the bourgeois state. When we get to a communist society there will be no class antagonisms and no crime, so guns will be useless and can be disposed of (except for sport). But until then I'm not going to trust bourgeois politicians being given the power to dictate who is armed and who isn't.

As if an armed citizen would stand a chance against the whole fucking apparatus of the bourgeois state. Whether you are armed or not, the State can kill, as it has always done with ease.

Living in a country where some people are heavily armed (big drug dealers have anti-aircraft army shit) I can tell that when the army or the police comes, they do not stand a chance. They just don't.

[Slavic]

As if an armed citizen would stand a chance against the whole fucking apparatus of the bourgeois state. Whether you are armed or not, the State can kill, as it has always done with ease.

Living in a country where some people are heavily armed (big drug dealers have anti-aircraft army shit) I can tell that when the army or the police comes, they do not stand a chance. They just don't.

Your right, mind as well give up being a socialist and become liberals since the State is just going to kill us anyway.

If a revolution were to occur, the "whole fucking apparatus" of the bourgeois state won't exactly be whole. I guarantee you there will be some level of mutiny within the military/police, as well as breakdown of state institutions. As I see it, the more weapons in the hands of the proletariat pre-revolution the easier it is to raid armories during the revolution.

Edit: Actually after rereading your post I'm not sure who are your referring to in your last sentence. The army/police or the "big drug dealers with anti-aircraft army shit"?