Statesian here. There are a CRAPTON of mass shootings here. If we do nothing about guns, the shootings will still happen. What is the leftist answer for reducing mass shootings without disarming the proletariat?
cracking down on the right-wing. seriously. the vast majority of US mass shootings that i can remember are done by violent white supremacists and fascists. the right is dangerous and will always use extreme and horrific violence to achieve their ways. so the leftist answer would be to suppress the activities and organizing of fascists heavily.
This. The circulation of fascist propaganda in particular must be curtailed and cracked down on to the greatest possible extent. Only a proletarian state can do this since a bourgeois state knowingly tolerates and cultivates fascism as a weapon against the working class and working class unity.
This.... Only a proletarian state can do this...
Sounds like not "This" at all? You don't agree with him. He's suggesting fixing it somehow within the current system.
of course the US government will never crack down on far-right terrorism, then they'd be stopping their own activities. this is purely just my leftist proposition of something that must happen to stop a lot of mass shootings. obviously, though, the US state is more interested in protecting the profits of the gun industry and the activities of the right. this would be an essential thing for a proletarian revolutionary state to do though.
The fetishization of the second amendment by white reactionaries reveals the true intention, not as a check against a "tyrannical" government as its propagandized to be, but as a securing of settler dominance against Black and Native populations.
the right trying to “stop tyranny” is like the body trying to stop its own heart from beating.
The issue is mass shootings have become a part of American culture. Americans not only like killing brown people in other countries, but also themselves. I'm obviously overgeneralizing but it does hold true to at least some degree. The only real solution is a mass reeducation of Americans and that can only happen once the US itself is thrown into the dustbin of history.
I mean yeah, mass murder has been part of the cultural psyche since the beginning. Once genocide and lynching fell out of fashion, the violence simply turned inward. You can see the parallels with relationship between liberalism and fascism.
There should be a distinction drawn between how the proletariat should be armed and how right-wingers want to be armed. The right in America uses guns as toys and an intimidation tactic against the poor. They're armed out of hatred and only care about their own guns, or perhaps that white people stay armed. American gun ownership, especially the 2A people, is an artifact from frontier justice, from slave catchers, lynching, all of that. It's disorganized, individualized, and fully absorbed within the capitalist framework.
The proletariat being armed implies for a purpose other than standard American gun ownership. We want liberation, we want to fight racism. So in that sense, gun ownership should be organized. Who commits mass shootings? Mostly disaffected white people who purchase a gun when they shouldn't have them.
I'd actually like to point to Switzerland's model of gun ownership. I know they're capitalist and imperialist and everything, but the gun ownership model is still interesting to me. You have to be involved in a militia there to have a gun. Guns and ammo belong to depots, so they're communally owned. You have to do regular training and drills to have access as well. So to have a gun you have to be part of something, you need training on how to use it, you need to be focused on using it for a specific purpose.
That's how the proletariat should be armed, in an organized way. We shouldn't be scared of restricting gun ownership based on purpose. They're not toys and shouldn't be bought and sold like toys. American gun culture is severely broken and downright frightening. It doesn't represent an armed working class at all. It's a disorganized mass, it's the working class pointing guns at themselves. Combined with a lack of social purpose it's like you said, a recipe for mass shootings.
Also the Swiss only get access to rifles and such from the militia right? Not exactly the kind of weapon you can hide under your shirt.
A bolt action rifle is the only one you can get without an acquisition permit, but you still need a background check. Swiss people can request things like pistols but they need to have a reason unless that reason is hunting, sport shooting, or collecting (like a museum). And I'm pretty sure they have to prove that it's one of those three things. If the reason is just something like "self-defense" I think that goes through several bureaucratic layers to get issued.
Community ownership of weapons. If you want to do a mass shooting or whatever, you have to convince your local community.
Specific details discussed later
Damn why are you getting downvotes that's basically the most based answer so far.
Maybe some people haven't got the idea that, precisely, no one in going to convince their local community to hand them guns and ammunition with no scrutiny or to commit mass murder.
What's a downvote?
This was one of my ideas from anarchism that I carried over to Leninism that I think is applicable to any citizen's militia. Obviously, I could point to reactionary militias in the US to see how the idea could be corrupted, but if you're at that point already...
It also means that the community has a Space for regular training of skills relevant to insurgency, in case a larger state rolls by.
Idk, I'd be happy to bash out more ideas regarding this.
Downvotes are when people click the arrow pointing down to say that they don't like what you're writing. Maybe it's because your idea is a bit utopian since I'm not sure it could be implemented in practice in any near future but at the same time the same general idea can be adapted with stronger political structures like a revolutionary party so I'd say it's worth discussing!
Oh, the downvote question was sarcasm from the other user. She's from Hexbear and we don't have downvotes. We can't even see how many a comment/post has.
Wow yeah that's actually really good. I'm but stunned I haven't heard this before.
Ooo, will there be debates or targeted ads by each side; for and against the mass shooting?
A door-to-door grassroots campaign to stir up support?
I mean, it would probably alert someone that you're planning on doing a mass shooting. Which is the point, yeah? If we know it's going to happen, it probably won't? Because you can be like "Uh, I think Josh is going to do a mass shooting at a school, we shouldn't let him into the community armoury for the next while."
If you want to both have a civil militia AND low gun crime, you'll probably have to do this (and also have low poverty/inequality etc etc).
This would be true because militias don't mean everyone has a gun, or every type of gun, say at their bedside or residence, right? Having open access is still a kind of ownership.
Yeah, it would be like... Each block or group of blocks has a community armoury. Periodically everyone goes to a range and practices, but other than range days and maintenance, there wouldn't be much use. The point would be to remove the weapons from contexts where even "personal defence" could be raised, but still allowing the community to defend itself. There'd be a few trusted individuals in the community who have the keys to the armoury (maybe vote on it?), and breaking in would be an endeavour. Technically, there's a gun that's your gun (if that's what people want), but when the bombs start falling everyone gets one and you can kinda sort it out from there.
More rural areas would have different systems for pest control etc, as they currently do.
I do agree with the other answers on here too. Big cultural shifts, clamping down on ideologies that promote "mass shooting" as a tactic etc
Very interesting. Could I ask where I could read more about this, like an introductory text or something considered an important work?
No idea, it was the result of a bunch of discussions about what arming the proletariat and community defence might practically mean.
I imagine other people have had similar thoughts and I'm far from the most well read here.
Cuba does something similar from my understanding.
Basically, stockpile weapons in a secured location, and in the event that they're necessary, give em out to civilians reasonably expected to handle them with care.
I say "give em out to civilians", but it's civilians who decide when and why they're distributed anyway. How a DOTP functions.
I wonder how much of this can be achieved under capitalist rule. Maybe something like limiting firearms use and ownership to active members of hunting or marksmanship clubs. If you are able to handle guns safely and responsibly around other people on a regular basis you might be less likely to shoot random people.
Not sure, I obviously went in a different direction to how most people went with the question.
- Invest more in mental health programs, including efforts to destigmatize therapy.
- Teach critical thinking skills in school to give younger generations the tools to be more likely to find an alternative to violence.
- Encourage more in-person social events and public spaces. It's too easy to dehumanize these days.
I've been thinking about your third bullet point a lot lately. I genuinely think that the lack of irl social interaction these days is far more pernicious than anyone wants to acknowledge. I don't think it's social media and technology that are the problem, rather, the LACK of third places and irl social interaction is the problem, if that makes sense.
I went through online learning back in 2020 until early 2022 (Although this was probably justified due to the pandemic) and I can confirm that the lack of irl interaction (Combined with being overworked with constant online activities, where I had to work even during weekends to submit them on time) during online learning is what caused me so many problems and is what made me realize how shitty the status quo is, and that eventually radicalized me into becoming a ML, even if there were some bumps on the road. (although I overcame them by reading more theory)
While I still hold a personal grudge against the internet and (mainstream) social media, and have a desire to keep usage of it to a minimum, I agree that the technology itself isn't the problem. It is how it is used under Capitalism which is the problem. The internet has so much potential to connect and unite people for the better, but under Capitalism it isolates and alienates people. The internet could have been (and still could be) a great place to express human creativity and solidarity, but Capitalism has turned it into yet another place for consumerism and profit for the sake of profit, not to mention how corporations gather your online data and sell it.
Red flag laws for extreme behavior (domestic abusers, those making active, credible, and targeted threats against themselves or others), allowing psychiatrists or psychologists to place holds on a persons ability to own guns, cracking down on straw purchases especially for known “under the table” gun distributors.
Mandating that firearms be purchased with either a gun safe or trigger lock as to prevent accidental discharge and to keep them out of the hands of children.
Mandating first time gun owners take a short class in proper gun storage, handling, cleaning, and safety.
All of these things can be reasonably done without disarming the proletariat and they would reduce the gun death statistic SIGNIFICANTLY. The disarming of the suicidal or those in psychological distress along with domestic abusers would cut the amount of guns deaths by nearly 2/3rds.
In general, I would also support additional barriers for firearm ownership under the age of 25. Not make it illegal persay, but give some extra hoops to jump through.
Most of these mass shooters are men in their early twenties, where the decision-making part of the brain is not fully developed and most are in a very vulnerable transition stage in life.
Ehhhh I’m not sure about this one either. If a person can sign up for the military at 18, own a car, vote, sign legal contracts, etc, or buy alcohol and tobacco at 21, then limiting firearms to 25 seem infantilizing and misguided.
It’s a similar argument that a lot of right wingers use to say “raise the voting age”.
Also the brain development is a decent point, but its a lot more overblown then people make it out to be. 25 is actually the general average as people can be done at 22 or need until 27, and the level of development relies more on life experience and education then it does on some brain wiring.
If a person is hellbent on killing people like a mass shooter, then they will use anything they can get their hands on, hence why they’ve used cars before for example. Limiting everyone based off of a handful of the most deranged people is a bad idea.
Fair points. I didn't say I supported banning young people from firearms though, but would entertain giving them extra scrutiny depending on the legislation.
Ehhhh I’m not sure about this one either. If a person can sign up for the military at 18,
Well.. to add some context to this, if you're in the military you don't walk around every day with a weapon/ammo. You are not allowed to keep personal firearms on your person while one duty or on post without a really REALLY good reason. You are not allowed to store privately owned firearms in your barracks or on post housing (and probably off post housing too but you'd have to piss off all sorts of people to get them to comb through your house looking for stuff to gig you on). So its not that far out there.
The point is that in this hypothetical, you can go and use a gun, along with grenades, rockets, missiles, bombs, jets, tanks, gunships, helicopters, ships, and satellites to kill those your government has declared enemies. All at 18 years old.
But for some reason a civilian can’t own a gun till 25?
Correct, its not that big of a deal to live in a society organized around the organized use of firearms instead of unorganized individual gun ownership.
Good ideas all over the thread and I don't have much to add to the specific discussion, but I just want to make a tangential point.
Gun control has been historically applied selectively to, for example, BPP members. But in the case of a revolution in which the majority of proletarians don't have guns, y'all are lucky that there are these big gun and ammo depots lying around called "gun nut homes," and the revolutionaries can send him to the spawn point and steal his house in Minecraft.
Turns out that a comical amount of guns does not make one bulletproof themselves.
I don't think the killing in US will ever stop so long as capitalism remains in charge. Most of these comments, while mostly correct, and discussing the symptoms that are causing the mass shootings while the underlying cause of those symptoms is being ignored. Fascist propaganda, white supremacy, mental health, etc? All these things stem from the same general source. They are all a product of rampant capitalism. Especially the mental health. We either don't treat it at all or give people "antidepressants" that have been linked to erratic and violent behavior. All the stresses, social isolations, poverty, etc. that cause kids and adults alike to just go shoot up schools and shit. It's all a product of capitalism driving the labor class insane. It's meant to. To keep us killing each other and not the capitalists.
Sure, you could enact laws against propaganda, better background checks, all that, but those things will never pass in the US's hyper capitalist government. In theory they could work but in order for them to be put into practice you have to actually do something about capitalism. And if you end capitalism you get rid of a lot of the factors that cause the shootings in the first place.
I don't think anyone here disagrees with this. It's just that for those of us living in this shithole country, there's got to be at least some policy to fight for that make things safer but doesn't disarm us. Capitalism in the US isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Oh I get it completely but the issue I see is that there won't BE any real action or reform taken specifically because the capitalist system doesn't want it to. It's like how the vast majority support extended background checks but Congress will never touch that shit. America is so fucked it would take the ending of capitalism in order to implement any of these ideas. At least that's how it seems to be from my point of view of the society.... God I hate it here.
You and me both. We'll just have to settle for being fucking paranoid everywhere we go.
Maoist china had almost everyone with guns and i don't think school shootings happened
Maoist China had peasants and working people organized and aware of who their enemies were, which should be a big distinction
To be fair, there was relatively widespread banditry after Mao's death and before Deng's policies were put into effect. But that could be pinned to factors unrelated to guns themselves.
Who told you that,Back then, fighting between the two villages, using RPGs.A lot of paper documents from the '60s are not online.
How did the Soviets approach the problem of unrest in the youth? Its by helping the youth build communal bonds among themselves, their community, their motherland, and their party that helped extinguish the anarchy left over from the Civil War alongside guaranteeing stability of home through the economic rights their parents had. It means educating socialist values while building a socialist material world to grow in.
For adults that still retain mindsets of the old world, I would imagine it'd be best to use Axont's proposal of the Swiss system with modifications for local conditions. Different types of communal depots or arsenals organized by either local enthusiasts, historical collectors, hunters, or outright gun nuts with full state supervision and with the possibility of financial support or other beneficial options as a proverbial carrot to encourage compliance. There's of course considerations at play for urban and rural people as well. I suppose the goal is to make it so that the huge gun hogs that just want to demo-ranch style shit can do so in a safe environment and sort them out from the outright insurrectionist-brained gun hogs.
I think there are good replies in the thread.
Per OECD for 2021, the majority of suicides in the US are by men at 23.000 per capita. The national average is 14.100 per capita and for women it's reported to be 5.700 per capita.
The following isn't sourced, my understanding is that women in aggregate have more suicide attempts. Men often use guns, if the sickness that affects the people who commit suicide and those who commit mass shootings is similar, I don't think it's far-fetched to say a solution to the poor mental health of men would benefit women quite a lot as well. I understand that it is a part of the culture in the US, despite that I think the knock-on effects of treating a large proportion of the population of individuals who have a higher chance of being involved with death through the use of a gun would perhaps decrease a ton of gun related harm.
What could be done for mental health? I think women's rights need to be protected first, which may be unintuitive for some. As that would generally reduce tension. I'm not a woman, I have read sentiments from the US where women stated they were very cautious with becoming romantically involved with men as there is a higher risk getting pregnant if you are sexually active and there would be no recourse for them if they decided they did not want the baby. Being on edge like that is not conducive towards an open and health environment for all involved I think.
The reason why I don't think enacting too many restrictive laws (say banning all handguns or something which would be negatively viewed across the political aisle), some of which disproportionally affect men would work, is it doesn't seem as though it would positively affect men's mental health.
Maybe one might argue that operating in men's interests has been the standard operating procedure, why would it work now? As well, why does it make sense to aid them when they have historically had certain advantages?
Unfortunately for that argument, though I am sympathetic as I believe the opposite can be very invalidating for those who suffer, is not necessarily productive. I really think, like most issues, it needs to be treated from the perspective of the individuals interests guided towards a common interest. Of course if it's only done for their benefit to the detriment of any other group it wouldn't really work. That said, in any area where there's change there are contradictions. Solving those contradictions unfortunately involves some give and take, the outcomes might be known but the path certainly isn't. The uncertainty is definitely enough to dissuade anyone from acting, and the dialectical response is to pursue nonetheless.
NOTE Per capita means in every 100 000 persons
From what perspective? Am I the president with a compliant legislature or am I just me as I am now?
