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.
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."