Anarchists and Guns.

That rifle hanging on the wall
of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage
is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there.
~ George Orwell, sergeant in Home Guard

I wonder if the left wing is beginning to understand the Second Amendment. It sure as hell isn't to protect duck hunters rights to own 20,000$ Over Unders. It is to allow the people sufficient weaponry that the country cannot be occupied by enemies either foreign or domestic.

I've heard one too many times the old canard that the people wouldn't be able to fight back against the US army. As a counterexample I'd like to point out that Iraq seems to be doing a hell of a good job, armed with basic explosives and AK47's. Ditto in Afghanistan, and Vietnam.

Now, as I read of more and more election irregularities, I wonder if the Democrats who have opposed firearms are beginning to clue in as to why it is critically important that the people are armed.

It's not just for the possibility of revolt against a corrupt government, although that's important. It's also not just so the nation can defend itself without a standing army, something that sadly has gone straight out the window. It's because it's pretty blatantly obvious that when people in a nation start shooting each other, there's something wrong. The fact that there is as much gun crime as there is, should be a call to action to fix the problem. The typical liberal solution of banning guns does not help the high crime areas solve their problems, it masks them. It disarms the innocents and allows the criminals to take over neighbourhoods. That is not just avoiding the problems, it is actively making it worse.

The real problem is not guns, it's poverty, and a hopelessness that can't envision a future, so doesn't value life. If your life is shit, how can you possibly care about other people's lives. The real solution isn't to disenfranchise people further by telling them that they are not allowed to defend themselves, and that the state won't trust them with the tools to do that, it is to fix the poverty problem.

This ain't rocket surgery. Any society that doesn't trust it's citizens with guns, isn't free. Any society that doesn't see that when some of those people are so desperate that they are killing each other, it's a problem to be solved, not masked, isn't just.

Just to be perfectly clear, I AM a firearm owner, and I truly hope that I never, ever, ever have to use a firearm in anger. I am politically active in large part because I am very aware that if citizens don't take responsibility for their own self governance, they will eventually be put in a position where they will have to fight to be free, just as our forbearers did.

The UN has recently taken to pushing firearms control. When the UN talks about disarmament, it is the voice of dictators who would love nothing more than knowing their citizens have no way of revolting. It's the same approach as domestic gun control. Rather than examining the roots of conflict in the world, and trying to figure out why these people are fighting and trying to solve the problem, they want to disempower the people, so that there is stability in regions. That in my not so humble opinion is just a code word for "Keeping the people in power who are already in power".

As lovers of freedom, we should support the rights of people the world over to own guns and to be a threat. We should make sure that they are a threat, but not an active one; make sure that the potential dictators and tyrants are afraid.

Ok, I'm not a pacifist. I believe that there is a time when a man or woman needs to pick up a weapon and actually fight if they are going to look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. We're lucky that we live in a time that hasn't required it of us, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The left used to understand that. The International Brigades were proof of that. Somewhere along the way, and I think Vietnam had a lot to do with it, the traditional left forgot this. The idea of pacifism became unassailable. War is wrong! There's never a good reason for violence! Somewhere along the line pacifism crossed the line into cowardice. Leftists seem to be afraid of conflict. Not just on the world stage, where the leftists of yesterday would have been happy to kick Taliban butt, and actually done enough that they might have earned a place at the table when the new government was organized, Instead, there were a variety of corporate interests and monarchist pretenders at the table.

Until and unless the left starts getting a bit more involved in conflict, the corporatists, statists, and various authoritarians are going to keep gaining ground around the world.

One of the best counter examples is the Zapatistas.
Although they were not known as violent, they did have weapons. They also used them. Most importantly, they were willing to put them down, but not give them up. There is an important distinction there. As one website puts it, His most insightful disclosure concerned his feelings about his role as a military commander. He declared that further armed conflict would be a "failure". The man always seen with an automatic rifle crooked in his arm, a pistol in his belt, and bandoleers crossing his chest, said that traveling across Mexico unarmed was not a burden but a "relief".

The Zapatistas managed to stare down the Mexican government through the judicious use of armed resistance, combined with a willingness to sit down and discuss the situation. They weren't mindless terrorists. That is the face of resistance.

Another example of this is Ghandi. This was a man who once said, "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." The ability to face an enemy peacefully rests in there being some kind of consequence to attacking you. Without that consequence, all you are left with are (in the worst case) dead bodies with moral superiority. Generally not the desired result.

Comments

[milli]

the zapatistas stopped using real bullets about five years ago. or so i've read.

sounds like you want to join a militia but all the good ones are taken by right-wing freaks.

best,
milli

[m0nkyman]

Oh look, an ad hominem attack! Is there a reason that this post made you so upset you decided to go out of your way to insult me?

[denny]

i've been thinking about this recently... no conclusion just yet. i do think the left needs to stop with the knee jerk pacifism and gun control.

[jomama]

Guns, guns. Wonderful guns.

Pay no attention to the millis of
the planet.

[m0nkyman]

Millis of the planet? I'm not following you.....

[Rad Geek]

"It's not just for the possibility of revolt against a corrupt government, although that's important. It's also not just so the nation can defend itself without a standing army, something that sadly has gone straight out the window."

Indeed. Also, just as importantly, an armed community can defend itself without an extensive professional paramilitary police force. (Not that the line between cops and soldiers is a very distinct one, at this point.) There's a direct point of contact with history here: specifically, with the Black Panther Party. They armed themselves because they had a right to self-defense, and because if they could defend themselves there would be no excuse for the pigs (to use that term in its proper historical context for once!) to keep up their protection racket. Also because the cops were not only not protecting the Black community; they were often directly attacking it.

I think there's a simple answer to why liberals and "progressives" are so keen on gun control. It's because they're comfortable with obvious coded racism. It's unfortunate that that's the only plausible explanation on offer, but I think that it is. Gun control laws have always been a tool of white supremacy, and when liberals start wringing their hands about how gangstas will be mowing their children down with Uzis and "assault rifles," it's pretty clear who it is that they have in mind, and who it is that they are scared of.

This isn't to say that U.S. gun culture isn't creepy and scary, or that it isn't quite worthy of serious critique for its own racism and sexism. It sure is. But the answer is hardly disarmament.

[[email protected]]

sorry for the ad hominem attack.

"It is, as its commanders say, an army which aspires not to be an army any more (it’s something of an open secret that, for the last five years at least, they have not even been carrying real guns)." - david graeber

My point is that using zapatistas as a reason to defend arms is unwise being that zapatismo is for the most part an non-violent movement. more later. gotta run.

[[email protected]]

"We accept the challenge of defending freedom and spreading the word of truth to all of the American public." -- www.fortliberty.org

--As lovers of freedom, we should support the rights of people the world over to own guns and to be a threat. (defending and loving freedom is a common argument among the Right)

--Any society that doesn't trust it's citizens with guns, isn't free. (Classic argument of right wing militias)

--The UN has recently taken to pushing firearms control [in a dictatorial manner]. Sounds like Pat Robertson and his "NewWorldOrder".

-The real problem is not guns, it's poverty. (militia-men would say it's race or something)

All these sound rather similar to right-winger talk. So suggesting that your argument was similar to militia rhetoric is valid engagement with your argument, not ad hominem. Sorry if you felt attacked. I should have explained more.

I think if there is some hesitance on the left to approach an more hospitable view of gun ownership and "being a threat," it comes out of a realization that many hostile fascist states were conceived by people originally on the left (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin). The tendency toward pacifism is simply trying to keep closet fascist-authoritarians at bay.

Not that I have any idea that you might be one of those, but its just to illustrate where that sentiment might come from.

"The Zapatistas managed to stare down the Mexican government through the judicious use of armed resistance, combined with a willingness to sit down and discuss the situation. They weren't mindless terrorists. That is the face of resistance."

This is a good point. However, they did have 10 years of strong, effective community organizing before they asked consensus from the all communities to use armed resistance. It's not as if one day they bought some guns and made a revolution.

My point is that guns might (and not necessarily) be the endpoint of a long series of consequences that do not begin with a discussion about guns. It begins with trying to meet the needs of ordinary, poor people.

Instead of asking "how can we defend our rights to guns?" you should be asking "how can we create a situation whereby people might feel the need to defend themselves, even with guns if need be?" I think everyone would agree (left-center and extreme), the time is not ripe, and guns and discussions about rights to guns will not change that.
Only organizing will.

[m0nkyman]

I'm sorry, but attacking my language and using it to equate me with right wing militias IS an ad hominem attack. You've done it again by taking phrases and saying that they're similar to what a right wing militia loonie would say. Particularly nasty is this one: "-The real problem is not guns, it's poverty. (militia-men would say it's race or something)".

I didn't say it was race. I specifically said it was poverty. It's easy to dismiss my arguments as a variation, but you haven't addressed the central thesis, which is that free and equal people aren't afraid of their neighbours being armed, they're comforted by it.

If we're afraid of our neighbours, we're afraid of them whether they're armed or not.

Rad Geek got it right with his comments, and hit one point that I failed to, when he pointed out that an community that can defend itself doesn't need a paramilitary police force.

As far as the Zapatista thing goes, yes, the EZLN put aside their guns when their objection was acheived, but I don't remember them turning their guns in...
From http://www.projectsouth.org/resources/zap2.html

"When the whole world was saying no to armed struggle, we thought the people here were going to say no to the Change, much less the armed struggle. This was logical - the ideological bombardment was strong. But in the communities, the reverse happened. This was the time when more came over to incorporate themselves in the militias of the Zapatista Army. Things had gotten so bad that the towns declared they were left with no other road to take. When, on the international level, everyone was saying no to armed struggle, the indigenous farmers of Chiapas were saying oh yes, oh yes, oh yes..."

[[email protected]]

okay. your central thesis is solid.
peace.

-milli

[[email protected]]

I add this only for the purpose of correctness.
"An Ad Hominem is a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument."

I'm not attacking your person when I point out that your rhetoric has certain characteristics.

best,
-milli

[m0nkyman]

I may be a bit sensitive to accusations of being a militia member... something to do with my name.... (look at the banner at the top)

[m0nkyman]

From wikipedia
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally "argument to the man"), is a logical fallacy that involves replying to an argument or assertion by addressing the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself. A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:

1. A makes claim B;
2. there is something objectionable about A,
3. therefore claim B is false.

in this case;
1. m0nkyman defends the right to bear arms.
2. milli states "sounds like you want to join a militia but all the good ones are taken by right-wing freaks."
3. ...what do you think?