Guns help the solidarity of the American working class the way eating glass aids the working of the stomach. They makes the stresses of poverty into fatalities. They fan the strains of difference into terror. And by producing a holocaust out of petty brawls and illegal drugs, they generate deep popular support for the prison state -- a diabolically coherent Keynesianism, where instead of burying cans of money and paying people to dig them up, we bury young black men from the cities in prisons upstate.
The widespread ownership of guns protects people against the force of the US state? When? As far as I can see, every time any small group, right or left, has been caught with a store of weapons anywhere in this country, the state has crushed them mercilessly and the people have cheered. As far as I can see, the Black Panther's successes were entirely nonviolent, and their military posturings brought them nothing but death and disaster. They don't seem like an example to follow but to learn from.
If widely distributed firepower promotes the freedom of the people from the state, why should lefty gunners stop with just permitting it? Why shouldn't we be promoting it? Give everyone an AK-47 and we'll all be free, like in Liberia or Sierra Leone. Those people certainly aren't oppressed by a strong central state.
At their worst, the gangs armed with automatic weapons wandering our inner cities bear a passing similarity to armed clans wandering countries where civil society has collapsed. Has this make the inhabitants free from the coercion of the state? Only in the ironic sense that they don't get any of the good things the state can provide, like peace and security. But certainly not in the sense that they are freed from fear of the state's armed forces. It's simply multiplied the parties that might unreasonably seize or kill them. In such a situation, the state becomes one gang among several, like Syria in Lebanon. And it is obviously much more ruthless than in areas where the citizenry not assumed to be packing. Drop more firepower in the inner city and life will be still worse for them. If all their guns were magically changed to knives, they would be inestimably better off.
As for "liberal gun control mania," what liberal gun control mania? We haven't passed a single law worth shit against bearing arms in this country ever. If only.
Analogies to the wisdom of arming the people in a revolutionary situation seem to me misconceived in the extreme. Those are situations of ideological polarity, where there are sides and loyalties and a question of justice at stake. But everyday life under modern capitalism has no clear loyalties and no clear object. The Left's goal is to produce such an effective group identity. Making our frictions mortal by means of arms is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
And, just for argument's sake: if you have such solidarity, you can always get weapons. Britain's stringent gun laws never stopped the IRA from arming. They just stop kids in Glasgow from shooting each other over soccer games.
So libertarian gun laws are not necessary for revolution. Rather revolution is necessary for there to be any point in having guns.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com