I lose my cool when people say the same old lib talking points about how awful mass shootings are and how we need "common sense" gun control. It's the combination of smarmy :maybe-later-honey: :maybe-later-kiddo: attitude and unwillingness to consider the implications of policy, or the history of similar disarming of leftists and vulnerable groups. So I get a little hot and I bully them. Then, they play the "actually I'm [member of vulnerable group] " or "my sibling died to gun violence" card. Great so now I'm an asshole.

Am I wrong to bully people for shallow thinking and smug attitudes. Do I stoop to their style of rhetoric playing up atrocities like the Shanghai Massacre of disarmed leftists by the KMT or how cops kill and abuse black people with impunity after disarming the Black Panthers with the Mulford Act? These fools think these cops will protect us? It's so frustrating.

idk maybe they're just radlibs in leftist spaces

  • Juice [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Both of you seems to not really get that capitalist systems exploit social problems that it creates for its own benefit. The contradictions inherent in gun culture create opportunities for capitalists and politicians, while dividing principled opposition -- but you just keep bullying allies who disagree with you. I don't know a single freethinking person whom "bullying" would work on. Maybe your arguments are grounded in some fact or compelling moral argument that people were sort of on their way to internalizing, so that a natural outcome of of the person's conscientiousness and intelligence is to reach some of the same conclusions we, as scientific socialists, have already determined to be true. But there is noone who I would ever want to work with who folds when being bullied, what happens if they get arrested? Now the guy you bullied into being a "leftist" is being bullied by the cops to give up your working group.

    I love this community but the whole "bullying works" thing is pushed by operators and (I'm sorry I love you but) vegans. It doesn't work. You know what works? Explicitly non-violent, explicitly armed community defense. Pacifists are real principled until they start getting shot at by reactionaries. The group that defends them wins them over to the necessity of armed defense. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/deacons-defense-and-justice/

    Struggle. Not bullying. Leftists arguing isn't struggle. Leftists fighting together, is. Sorry for the lecture, but gun culture is designed to be a mindfuck rife with contraditions. There isn't a right or wrong side in this particular example. there are only right and wrong tactics conditioned by the demands of the struggle. Peaceful protesters should be able to be defended by principled, sometimes armed, comrades. Armed groups should be able to do peaceful and unarmed protest if necessary. Its not the guns that protect us, its our principles and camaraderie first. Without those we point the guns at each other, and the enemy delights

  • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    gotta disarm the police and the klan (same picture ik) first then i'll consider telling people at risk of getting pogromed to disarm.

    • Vingst [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      I agree but that's the last thing that would happen until this constitution gets thrown out.

      • FactuallyUnscrupulou [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        There will be no common sense to gun control. Just cite the mulford act or all the current medical cannabis users who are barred from owning firearms.

  • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Americans are soo gunbrained. The way Americans talk about guns and how rest of the world talks about it is very different. This thread feels very surreal.

    • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      We, the US, could have half of our guns disappear and still be roughly tied for the most guns per capita

      Guns are central to US identity from its very inception, and selective gun control laws have been used the whole time to arm the colonizers and disarm the colonized. It's silly to act like the US isn't in a unique bind on guns

      • MF_COOM [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        The US isn't in a unique bind about guns their government is just captured by industry

              • MF_COOM [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Having a government captured by industry isn't unique, the fact that in the US the gun industry is one of them is a distinction without a difference, not some Gordian knot no one can figure out how to untie.

                Instead of championing movement to counter that power we have very cool leftists repeating gun industry opposition to basic levels of gun control.

                • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Also, it's not some fucking gordian knot. We know how to untie it, it's just that it involves replacing our entire government

                  In the meantime, more criminalization in the US is just more criminalization

                  • MF_COOM [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    No shit chappie I didn't say it isn't unique I said it isn't a unique bind. It's the same shit lots of places, the only question is are you on the side of :porky-happy: or not

                    • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Ah yes, I forgot that all things exist in a vacuum and not in dialectical relation to each other

                      Thank you, I will join your movement and :vote: with my wallet

        • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I mean it's third most populous country and has more guns than people. I think that itself makes U.S. quite unique. China and India don't come anywhere close.

          • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            It's a weird, really bad situation. The distribution of guns in the US is strange, with gun-hobbyists holding a lot of them, particularly assault weapons. We have "licensing" programs for "illegal" weapons that allow you to own and use them if you're rich, meanwhile we sentence weed dealers to mandatory minimums for just possessing an otherwise legal handgun when they fall victim to a sting operation

            The US is ontologically evil is what I'm saying

  • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think a lot of them just aren't in the US, honestly. Even a lot of left-sympathetic people in the US don't really grasp how the US has always used its gun control laws to enforce white supremacism, but I figure it's especially uncommon knowledge elsewhere

    • Vingst [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      let's start by labeling leftists as terrorists and take theirs. then let's label minorities as criminals and take theirs. label trans people as mentally ill and unfit for gun possession.

      That's how it works in the US with it's current laws, constitution, and enforcement. Rules for thee but not for me. In-groups for whom the law protects but does not apply, out-groups for whom the law applies but does not protect.

      • forcequit [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        nationwide buyback & amnesty program, strict licencing and criminalisation thereafter.

        the idea that all comers can get their hands on a gun is fucking wild to me, usa is a small arms manufacturer's wet dream

        The answer isn't more guns

        • aaro [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          buybacks are the quickest route to taking all the guns from the underprivileged and economically underserved minorities while leaving all the guns in the hands of the middle class and petit bourg white supremacists who have the fun bucks to spare. Gun control is good and well but buybacks are an incredibly bad solution

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          nationwide buyback & amnesty program, strict licencing and criminalisation thereafter.

          Leftists can't impact policy in the USA, so what's the point of this? That might be nice, but it won't happen. The point is that any actual gun policy in the US will be used against minorities first and the ones most likely to do the violence will be allowed to retain their guns. There's already tax stamps that make suppressors and full auto basically unreachable for poor people but easily available for the wealthy.

        • Vingst [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          The answer to what?

          Anyone with a 3D printer and internet can make a gun now. The cat is out of the bag. Criminalize it all you want, criminals will still do it.

          The answer has nothing to do with gun control.

          • forcequit [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            anyone with some pipe fittings can make a slam gun too. That doesn't mean semiautos should be easily accessible, nor that you should just accept the consequences

            • Vingst [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              1 year ago

              I don't want to just accept the consequences. I want to address the real causes and solutions to antisocial behavior, instead of us playing whack-a-mole with different configurations of plastic and metal.

              And semi-autos are printable too.

              • forcequit [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                absolutely, that's the right way to do things. again, idk, y'all are strapped to the teeth already, I don't see a way of undoing that without further bloodshed, you're all so attached to your instruments of death.

                Like yes, root causes and solutions, but in the meantime, what?
                You being armed does nothing to help your neighbour, nor better living conditions for anyone. Someone in crisis (or power, or both) having access to firearms does little to deescalate or address the situation either.

                • Vingst [he/him]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  It does help. An armed leftist stopped the Normandale Park shooter in Portland. The actual kind of gun control that can get passed in the US won't stop right-wing violence against us. It's up to us to arm, train and protect each other.

  • SerLava [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I want private gun ownership to be abolished and to be able to go down to the range and shoot an automatic AK with the mates, like you can in Vietnam, but I don't think I want the United States of America to be taking guns away

  • Sickos [they/them, it/its]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Say "Under no pretext" then when they disagree they are a silly person whose opinion can be discarded and there's no point to further conversation. We can't win them all.

    Embrace Leninist thought:

    Trotsky has sent in a silly letter. We shall neither print it nor reply to him.

  • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    My problem is that they say that shit and then don't do anything about it. There probably wouldn't be a single issue that would be easier to build a mass movement around and yet they sit on their ass and repeat smarmy lib talking points like that's going to do anything. Any popular energy on this issue is immediately filtered into backrooms where the Democratic party and the pro gun control lobby guzzle down tax deductible billionaire money to sustain their bourgeois lifestyles. Bring it to the masses and into the streets and I'll take the issue more seriously.

    • Vingst [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      What are you saying? Are you in the US?

      • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I'm in the states. I'm saying like every progressive issue it gets taken over by the politicians, lobbyists, and bureaucrats and nobody even tries to build a mass movement around it.

        I'm slightly opposed to gun control but had something like March for our Lives actually been a sustained movement it would have been cool. Instead it turned into a lobbying group. This seems to always happen with gun control in particular.

        • Vingst [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          I see what you mean now thanks. I don't see it becoming a mass movement because the masses aren't on board. Too many Americans own guns and believe they would be less safe without them. It is a movement of young people who can't have guns, have no experience with them except the fear of being shot, which I completely understand. Then of course billionaires don't want an armed working class, I'm sure they don't want mass shootings either (who does), but their material interests align with that. On the other hand, there's other capitalists whose material interests benefit from civilian gun sales.

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    As you can see, OP, even here it's difficult to get people to acknowledge that having a gun can protect you from someone else with a gun.

    • MoneyIsTheDeepState [comrade/them,he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Snappy, but if you were to organize the biggest and most grassrootsiest gun control campaign in US history, you would still stand no chance of disarming boat dealers and their murderous failsons

      • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Oh I am well aware, if sandy hook didn’t get it done nothing will. You can’t appeal to the morality of that which has no morals.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Another Internet thread about guns in the US, another chance for me to say these two simple truths:

    1. The pigs will not disarm themselves.

    2. The pigs will not disarm their fascist drinking buddies either.

  • Wheaties [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    i'm rather a fan of the practical appeal when talking with liberals here in the US.

    it's the third rail of our politics -- touch it and you loose. It doesn't matter what you argue or how recent the latest shooting. Gun control is a loosing policy. Everything else you run on can be overwhelmingly popular. But people will ignore that if they hear you talk about gun control. Liberals can holler about the 'utopian' demands of the left all they want, non of it is more unrealistic than gun control in america.

    If they push back and ask what to do about mass shootings, point to the mental health crisis. Socialized medicine has the potential to address the cause of mass violence -- tighter weapon control is and always was just a band-aid.

  • YoungBelden [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    have yet to see any good leftist anti-gun talking points tbh. they all seem to be either from other countries and don't understand our material conditions, or people who still have liberal takes on it (read: smug moral superiority).

    not gonna tell someone in australia to get armed, so don't fuckin try to draw some backwards causal link between queer people in the US getting self defense and fascists shooting schools.

  • RollaD20 [comrade/them, any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    The Rev Left Radio episode that came out semi-recently is a pretty good discussion on this topic. They outline some regulations that could help to curb violence within the current system while recognizing that this policy often disproportionately affects minority populations.