I got the communist manifesto and the constitution in my hands as we speak. Tell me why we need guns.
the fascists won’t be the ones disarmed under an american gun control led by the us state, it’ll be marginalized people.
if we’re operating from a pragmatic standpoint based on the state of the us politics we need to acknowledge the state will not apply that standard fairly. and as you say, communists don’t have means to enforce these things, so it will be the democratic party. which means fascists probably will not be disarmed under it, as the democratic party is controlled oppo and enforces the interests of the protected class. nor will owners and private military companies be disarmed, btw.
gun control in america would just disarm the proletariat. maybe a few more people, but not in a substantial way.
Marginalized people are some of the most vocal supporters of gun control because they are the biggest victims of gun violence. Homicide is the 4th leading cause of death for black men in this country and that’s because of the proliferation of guns, I’m not arguing for outright gun abolition, but I am calling for their control in a manner that violates Marx’s mandate. You say the fascists will not give up their guns and you are right, so let’s not take them by force, we should make them afraid to use them. I’m calling for a ban on all gun production. That means stores, ranges, factories. Shut them all down, do to them what Republicans did to abortion clinics. Whenever we get a Kyle Rittenhouse or George Zimmerman killing people in self defense we need the ability to mobilize protesters, we don’t need guns for a riot, we can always keep our own illegal stashes of guns if there comes a time for violence, the fascists will do the same. But really, do we want violence? If we’re speaking pragmatically I think we should avoid it at all possible, we don’t need a monopoly in the thing we should be trying to abolish.
So let me clarify your position: Do you support gun control before or after the revolution?
If it’s before the revolution, it would be lead by a racist, classist bourgeois state that utilizes its fascistic domestic military to terrorize the marginalized on a daily basis. Any means of enacting gun control under the bourgeois state will disproportionately target marginalized people and the proletariat, and would remove the ability for those people to defend themselves. Fascists will not be disarmed under bourgeois gun control, and neither will the police. I really hope you understand the implications of that, because gun violence is a much less reiterated complaint from marginalized communities when compared to both hate crimes and police brutality, separately.
If it’s after the revolution, it would be moot for it to be broad and sweeping, and it is assumed by all here that we will attempt to disarm domestic bourgeois and fascist forces under the dictatorship of the proletariat. At that point, this discussion is moot and we’d already have the means of specifically addressing fascist violence under a proletarian state.
Do you ever stop and think that gun control has only ever been a bipartisan affair when the marginalized have defended themselves? The democrats won’t pass anything of substance ever if it could help the working class at a broad scale. It would be just another method of classist violence.
To quote a Black Panther Party statement penned by co-founder Bobby Seale, “[T]he Black Panther Party […] calls on the American people in general and the black people in particular to take full note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror and repression of black people.”
To quote Malcolm X, “So it says here: ‘A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club.’ That’s equality. If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality. If the United States government doesn’t want you and me to get rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don’t want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over.”
You have to look at it from the lens of what gun control under the current ruling class would inevitably look like. The bourgeoisie want an armed fascist bloc, whether it be the police or paramilitias. They don’t want an armed proletariat. Therefore, gun control under the bourgeois state would target the proletariat and only the proletariat. It would leave proletarians and specifically marginalized proletarians defenseless against state violence and nothing more. The US state will not enact sweeping gun control. They will enact targeted gun control. It will specifically be an effort to leave the marginalized defenseless against state forces. To say it will magically manifest in a way that aligns with the interests of the proletariat and the marginalized is pure idealism, it will be enacted on bourgeois interest and only bourgeois interest.
All this would do would be further cementing the bourgeois state. It would not disarm fascists. It would not disarm the police. It would further oppress the proletariat and the marginalized. If we are to be disarmed, how would we at all pressure this manifestation of gun control from being specifically targeted towards us? How would we prevent the state from targeting labor specifically if labor militancy is off the table (due to being disarmed)? Striking? The leaders of it would be shot, the participants intimidated into compliance, and there’d be no means of further recourse, since we’re disarmed. If we circumvent the law, the law will apply to us tenfold compared to how it applies to fascists. So how do you plan to ensure the manifestation of gun control is not one specifically enacted under bourgeois interest under a bourgeois state? I’d really like to know, because if you don’t have an answer to that, then all it would do is be used as means of enacting classist violence.
I view gun control as a public health response, I don’t look at it from a revolutionary lens. My view on guns is very similar to my stance on cars, take them off the streets. I think there would be an initial reaction of violence by the right wing but I’m confident the state could suppress them. In the long term gun control would stop a lot of right wing terrorism and murders. I don’t think the conversation I’m having with you is constructive because you view guns as the tool required to overthrow capitalism and that makes you unable to support gun control except in the most utopian of circumstances. Well let’s talk about something we can agree on, the police!
I think in the United States we need police officers, but they need to be reformed beyond recognition. There needs to be hiring quotas so that white officers aren’t the majority in any department, there needs to be strict use of force guidelines, there needs to be a purge of the current police force with criminal charges applied to many of them retroactively, we need to abolish the death penalty, we need to get police out of their cars, we need to give police more training. Anyone here disagree with my sentiment on police?
