gun ban but only for cops
do stricter gun control laws make it harder for a proletariat revolution?
I don’t think it matters either way, and I don’t think the outcome of an attempted proletarian revolution will be decided by small arms.
Against. The horse has already left the barn (there are more guns in private hands than people), America has a gun fetish (you can’t change the culture that is built on settler colonial violence), and the assault weapon ban in the 90s didn’t do anything so why do we think doing another one would be different. (I think the economy doing really well in the 90s explains the drop off in gun deaths and mass shootings, not the ban).
(I think the economy doing really well in the 90s explains the drop off in gun deaths and mass shootings, not the ban).
particularly the gun deaths that were reduced was handguns, which were not subject to the AWB.
They were subject to the AWB, in the sense that their magazine capacities were reduced to 10 rounds (there was however a grandfather clause for all existing magazines)
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The pigs won’t disarm themselves.
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The pigs won’t disarm their fascist drinking buddies either.
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Against. Basically all of the modern gun laws carve out exceptions for the police (sometimes even when they are off duty). Even besides that, the guns that get restricted the most also have the smallest percentage of gun deaths linked to them. The vast majority of gun deaths are from handguns.
According to Pew Research, “Rifles … were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%.”. So even if we banned all long guns, we would get at most a 4% reduction in gun deaths. And even if we did ban them, guns are surprisingly easy to manufacture and enforcement is hard.
Improve peoples lives and they won’t want to kill each other so much
Personally against because I’m in the US and it’s never going to happen anyway. If there is actually a revolution in the seat of the empire somehow, all the domestic gun violence along the way will have actually been worth it. I’m expecting the guns just make this country’s fascist turn more inevitable as the CIA/FBI stoke gun violence and the general trend keeps everyone terrified of each other and paranoid, and they probably make our subsequent invasion/occupation/re-education more difficult for whichever countries undertake that project. Probably better off
Obviously there’s a lot of other hurdles besides guns being available. There’s plenty of guns in army reserves if there were somehow a viable revolution making gains and winning hearts/minds. Maybe it makes revolution harder, eg if in practice the privately held guns are only owned by fascists or liberals whom capital has given skin in the game & incessantly propagandized to keep loyal.
A better society would be one where the public, the police, and the military have all been disarmed. It is a distant utopia, but one that I hope is possible.
That is communism, but that is not possible until the bourgeoisie exists
Against.
Who’s going to enforce those laws?
Lax gun control laws guarantee more vigilante violence, as easily juiced up young people fed from the trough of fascism and terrorize their neighbors.
Strict gun control laws guarantee harassment of the proletariat for any attempt to arm themselves by police as fearful as they are incompetent.
So its a hard choice, but also an easy one. Simply adding another wrinkle to the legal code won’t change our habit of killing one another. The laws don’t matter in the end. And even if they did, they are utterly beyond our ability to control.
I am for stricter gun control laws
I’ve already effort commented why before so I’m not gonna do it again but this APL article mirrors most of the same opinions I hold though I had a more data driven analysis of it and didn’t consider to argue against Marx’s “under no pretext” quote
https://redphoenixnews.com/2023/08/18/clearing-the-air-on-infantile-u-s-gun-culture-marx-revisited/
It is worth noting here that most violent attacks committed by these fanatics are overwhelmingly aimed at oppressed minorities such as Black Americans, Latinos, and various Asian communities, as well as women, LGBTQIA+ people, and people with disabilities. … the working class struggle demands, in relation to firearms, that the focus be on curtailing the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related violence that disproportionately affects various minority communities
this is the grossest part of that article’s awful argument. I hear over and over from american trans ppl just the most extreme possible reluctance to call the cops, if that’s even an option at all in a dangerous situation. we can’t depend on the police so who will protect us from violence? literally who??
getting on the lib treadmill of arguing over which types of guns are scary enough to regulate does fuck all to help us. rightoids are already armed to the teeth and we’re not. the article calls gun culture infantile, that’s pure libshit we need a stronger queer gun culture to save lives, you shoot the guy trying to hurt you you don’t bat your eyelashes at the fash in blue uniforms and hope they’ll help
and the argument that we’re not in the right phase yet to start having guns is based on just nothing. the phase we’re in is a gun ownership rate of 1.2 guns per american. it would be like trying to regulate breathing air, enforcement would just fall on the most vulnerable people. I talked to a black homeless guy whose prized possession was a glock 19. every night he slept on cardboard boxes behind the store where he worked and when someone would invade his space and wouldn’t leave he’d just pull up his shirt and show it to them and they’d leave him alone, and it gave him so much peace of mind. idgaf about reassuring people in oxford shirts that we’re doing enough to address “the gun epidemic,” my heart bursts for the most marginalized who are constantly vulnerable to violence, can’t depend on the police, and stand to gain nothing from taking away their access to guns
I’m pretty sure stricter gun control laws almost always mean tighter restrictions on semi-automatic rifles, which the article mentions btw
Handguns make sense for self defense and I’m all for that black homeless man having a glock
I don’t see any reason how something like an AR would make sense for self defense. They’re unwieldy, heavy, takes more training, can’t be concealed, etc. but it’s amazing if you wanna conduct a mass shooting
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Wow that’s insane I didn’t know you could 3d print attachments for handguns like that
For the record I don’t agree with everything the article says, especially the background checks on all arms
I generally just agree on banning semi-automatics, though if widespread knowledge of how to make a handgun more deadly then it would not be very helpful
Fyi you can 3d print entire firearms, with all the non-printed parts easily available at a hardware store or shipped to your front door.
I’m willing to consider any proposed law (as a thought experiment since the left has no electoral power) but generally speaking I have low expectations for any laws written by lobbyists, passed by capitalists, and enforced by fascists.
If the police are the enforcing agents then it will only further concentrate firearms in the hands of the right. As long as they’re armed, we need to be.
Revolution is gonna be much more impacted by other variables than proletarian gun ownership. If we ever get to the point where seizing infrastructure is a possibility, then access to guns will be more important. But that’s still a lot more about supply lines and logistics than individuals with some small arms and 500 rounds of ammo.
Like, guns are cool and important for surviving the oncoming instability as individuals and small groups, but they don’t hold much revolutionary purpose right now.
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Stricter than what?
