>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.
Whoa, hold on just a minute there... don't go along with the football hooligan panic. 'Kids in Glasgow' do not shoot each other over football games. The British police murdered 93 Liverpool football fans by packing them into caged terraces at a football match at the Sheffield ground at Hillsborough. The reason they could do so was because the media sold a story about 'football hooligans' and their innate tendency towards violence that is simply unfounded. Football fans in Glasgow and elsewhere are much more likely to be brutalised by the police than they are by each other.
>
>So libertarian gun laws are not necessary for revolution. Rather
>revolution is necessary for there to be any point in having guns._
I see things differently. The state's monopoly of violence is an _ideological_ constraint over the mass of ordinary people, much more than it is a physical constraint. It represents an acceptance that the state acts in the interests of the community, while the community itself is dangerous. To give power to the state, you must have a correspondingly low opinion of your fellow human beings. If you believe all the crime panics then it is natural enough to want to be defended against your neighbours, by the police. But the real danger comes from the police, not your neighbours.
Breaking the state's monopoly on violence is part and parcel of the ideological struggle to free the masses from the domination of the ruling ideas.
-- Jim heartfield