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?
Give criminals a way out of crime
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.
From what perspective? Am I the president with a compliant legislature or am I just me as I am now?
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.
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.
