Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.
Universal background checks, implemented correctly, could help a lot. By correct implementation, I mean funding in place to hire personnel to process and adjudicate applications in a timely manner and update the databases. As it stands now, if they can't give a firm denial in 72 hours, it's an approval. If you get denied because someone with a similar name is prohibited, then it's a long, arduous process to get approved. Large swathes of state, local, and even federal (military, specifically) jurisdictions don't even have proper reporting processes in place.
If private citizens can call the hotline for free before lending a gun to their cousin, instead of having to pay an FFL $25, then you'll have broad support for universal background checks.
Unfortunately, a large number of recent mass shootings wouldn't have been prevented by Universal Background Checks. Las Vegas comes to mind, but I'm posting while taking a break from other projects right now, so I'm not going to look up the rest.
In a world where gunpowder, tannerite, diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and other ingredients for explosives are available over the counter, restricting the working class's access to arms and ammunition will only go so far to fight right wing terrorism.
On top of all of that, if we could wave a magic wand and all non-government guns would disappear (because capital would never allow themselves to be disarmed) and no one could make them, then what will the revolution be fought with?
There aren't simple solutions to complex problems. The only solution to America's mass shootings is to change the material conditions.
This is just nonsense, and not how anything works. For example, studies have shown that putting up barriers around a bridge is effective at preventing suicides, and that most suicidal people simply give up on suicide if they encounter a barrier to their first approach. Contrary to what most people assume, suicide is generally an impulsive and irrational decision, so even though there are plenty of ways to kill oneself besides jumping off a bridge, the barrier is enough.
From that, and just from thinking about it realistically, it's obviously a lot easier and simpler to kill people with a gun than to rig up some explosive involving fertilizer. You would have to take time to study and prepare with a cool head, during which time it's very likely that you reconsider the whole idea. Even if you do still go through with it, there are a lot more points of failure, than with the plan of "pull trigger." And you lose out on the power trip of watching people die which probably matters to some of them. Note that if someone merely wanted to kill people, they could just set an IED on the side of the road and walk away with their lives - generally the point is to go out in a "blaze of glory."
Also, your argument is contradictory, because you claim there are all these other things that could be used just as well, then go on to ask, "What will the revolution be fought with?" It's clear that you know, on some level, that the claim you're making here is false.
The idea of a socialist revolution in the US is not realistic for the foreseeable future. I see little reason to believe that this notion is anything other than wishful thinking.
Any potential "revolution" could not be fought through conventional war or even guerrilla war as in Vietnam or the War on Terror. If that is how you fantasize about things going down, then you are completely ignoring the blatant differences in the material conditions of Americans as opposed to the Vietnamese etc.
Your previous argument about explosives actually applies better here. What on earth do you see yourself accomplishing with a personal firearm? And if you are fighting in an ongoing conflict for a real purpose, then you are less likely to be deterred by the patience required to engineer and set explosives.
Besides, nobody's even talking about banning guns. We're talking about a very moderate regulation that already exists for gun stores. Let's not equate the two.
There are many causes to mass shootings and we need to have as many barriers in place as possible. There's no such thing as 100% security and universal background checks will not solve the problem on their own but they are a good layer of security to have in place.
Again, this is such a complete non-answer. At this point you might as well say that the solution to gun violence is to have a revolution in consciousness where we all just put flowers in guns and everyone is happy and fulfilled and nobody wants to kill anybody anymore forever. It's a vague, pie-in-the-sky solution that's not going to happen on any sort of realistic time frame. It's unacceptable to respond to an urgent problem where so many people are dying regularly with, "Some day, we'll have abolished the patriarchy, there will be no more toxic masculinity and sexism will no longer exist, and at that point one of the many causes will be removed so we'll have a lower rate of violence." Fucking when? And we're supposed to just accept this as normal in the meantime? No. If the problem is the patriarchy then you need to provide real tangible things that can be done in the short term to address the aspects of the patriarchy that contribute to the problem. It's like you're like, "Someday we'll have solved every problem so this problem will be solved." And you talk about material conditions when there are plenty of poorer countries that don't have the problem, along with plenty of other Western countries with similar conditions that also don't. So which material conditions and how do we change them? We need tangible, specific solutions.
I don't appreciate that you completely ignored the first half of my post in which I both agreed with and criticized your one solution and concentrated entirely on the second half. I'm not opposing UBC out of a knee-jerk reaction, I am just well aware of the current state of NICS (undermanned, underfunded, relying on incomplete information, and inaccessible without paying an FFL money), as well as that it wouldn't have been a barrier to several mass shootings. While I didn't say it explicitly in the post, I thought the text indicated my support for a properly implemented UBC.
UBC, as I understand it, is defined as: Whenever a firearm is transferred from one party to another, a NICS background check must be conducted, unless proof of prior approval is available (ie, revocable state issued CCW or firearms license is presented).
I define properly implemented as: NICS staffed and funded to handle well above the current average volume of calls, no fees to call the hotline, remove question 21.e. from ATF Form 4473, mandate that all local, state, and federal (including military) agencies and courts report all applicable data to the NICS database.
(Question 21.e. is: Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.)
While you didn't specify support for, I just want to point out that most current bans are typically cosmetic bans, feature bans, and model-specific bans which are extremely ineffective.
While I don't mean to downplay the psychological effects of mass shootings, they are pretty far down the list of preventable deaths in America, and I think that solving the problems that cause the others will also solve them, without disarming the workers and putting all of our community defense in the hands of the fascist police.
I admit that my previous post was not well put together. It was late at night, and I was busy working on other things. Additionally, this meme is not my creation. I don't remember where I got it from, even. It's not perfect, but I do still agree with the overall message. I hope that we can continue this dialogue in good faith. I'm not opposed to every piece of gun control, and I am trying to work on my revolutionary fetishism, but I do disagree with your premise that a guerrilla war wouldn't happen here, and, what I believe your implication is, that it would be ineffective. I also disagree with the parts of your final paragraph that say that changing the material conditions is a pie-in-the-sky solution. If getting rid of capitalism is impossible, then what are we even doing? Why are we here? Why not just give up, vote Democratic, and embrace the neoliberal hell? I don't mean to imply that that's what you intended to suggest, but saying it's impossible is giving up before the fight has even started in earnest.
I would like to close by saying that, honestly, I'm very out of practice in discussions like this. I'm a little older than what I think the average age is here, and I gave up on politics for a very long time. I really look forward to your reply, as I am honestly eager to learn your perspective.
I'm sorry for my tone there. I didn't pick up that you'd support properly implemented UBCs.
Here's my point about material conditions: you can just say, "change the material conditions" as a solution to pretty much any problem and it's so broad and vague that it feels like a cop-out to me. It's not clear to me gun violence comes from a lack of money, since there are poorer countries than the US with lower rates of violence. Looking at material conditions should just be the starting point of your analysis, and from that you try to figure out which conditions are the cause and how they could be changed.
The thing is that if you can find specific causes and solutions, it gives something else to direct energy towards. It provides a criticism where we can say, here's what the government could be doing to stop this, and they're bad because they're not. But if it's just, like, "If we were in charge things would be better and this wouldn't be happening," then it's just like, 'says you.' It's just not compelling unless you have a more clear and tangible solution.
As for the point on guerrilla war, the reason I don't think that Americans can use the same methods as the Vietnamese is that an average American and an average Vietnamese farmer from that time are about as different as two people can be. And those differences are the result of vastly different material conditions. The Vietnamese fought as hard as they did because they didn't have much of a choice, whereas Americans will likely always have the choice to go back to their life, which makes living in a tunnel a much tougher sell. Moreover, Americans are very divided intellectually and culturally, and there is a strong current of individualism that influences people regardless of their beliefs, and many people are alienated and isolated. All of these factors make it much harder to coordinate and organize than in a homogeneous, pre-industrial society filled with people with strong, organic social bonds who have nothing to lose. Just a cursory glance at American culture tells us what an uphill battle it is.
Imo, socialism has a better chance of catching on outside of the imperial core, and the best thing Western leftists can do for now is to seek to gum up the works of the war machine. A full scale guerilla war may not be feasible, but riots are. We can also work to counteract propaganda and attempts to manufacture consent by challenging false narratives (e.g. Zenz) and getting people to question the government more.
I won't say that it's impossible that there will ever be a guerilla war that will overthrow the government with executions in Central Park and the whole shebang, but it's a long way off. In the meantime, we need to focus on building support - and part of that means harnessing the anger that people feel over gun violence, and saying, "Yes, this is not normal, we need to do something to stop this because unlike them we are not a death cult and we take people's lives seriously, and that's why we support X, Y, and Z solutions." UBCs don't have to be one of those solutions but they do need to be more specific than just saying "change the material conditions" which just sounds to me like, "make things different in some way."