>Wait, there's something else you should know. I think you should sit
>down first. Ready? Ok really, this is a big one: in the US, the
>government by-in-large trusts it's citizens to own firearms. And even
>use them! Yes, those wacky guys-n-gals in Washington think it's OK to
>own and operate a firearm. Incredible, isn't it? So it should come as
>no surprise that, *gasp*, we're also allowed TO BUY THEM.
Just watchit, buddy! All the women here are members of LSC&TS. Next time gives a thumping. :)
And now on to our program:
I'm always stunned and dismayed that _hugely_ educated people, big intellectual credentials, committed leftists, able and willing to go into the most searching analysis of geopolitical economics...these very smart people seem so often to get a short circuit in their brains when talking about guns or some other classist hot-button-du-jour.
It's now a cliche, but none the less true for all that: guns don't kill people, people kill people. People were killing people before guns. People kill people in stone-age societies. The most undeflectable killing in the world, institutional killing, is done by and large without guns. We're watching and complaining about some of it right now, over in Serbia and Kosova.
The Dunblane massacre that precipitated wholesale firearm confiscation in the UK was a failure not of the principle of private gun ownership, but of social responsibility up the chain of civil authority. The beat cop knew the perp was a nutter, and reported it repeatedly. Nothing was done and, afterward, nobody in authority lost his job or pension.
We had another example of the same dynamic recently in Colorado USA. People in authority knew, and did nothing. Now there's plenty talk of tightening the screws on kids who are 'different'.
This is symbolic of a pattern.
We address problems by concentrating on limiting the options of individuals rather than redirecting the power of the system that shapes their behavior. We isolate people from social support, and constrain their choices, and impose tighter and tighter restrictions on them without ever recognising that we're creating the very conditions that lead to the behavior we're trying to eliminate. That's great for the rulers, whose privilege makes them relatively immune both from the restrictions and from the violence the pressure-cooker generates, but it's not so good for anyone else! And the end result of eliminating choices is totalitarian. What is not mandatory is forbidden.
And here on this list, what kind of deep consideration of these issues do we have? None at all! We have the same simplistic solutions! Capitalism makes people so alienated that sometimes they shoot other people? Don't address the alienation, take away the guns!
As leftists, we should be bang alongside personal freedom. Humans are not hive insects. The most persistent and dangerous argument by the right wing against the left is that our model of the ideal world is one of faceless, depersonalised economic units serving an abstract, controlling State. And too often we collude with that, to our own cost.
Individuals should be able to have and enjoy any damned thing they like, so long as no harm comes to others. And things that can harm others -- whether those things are firearms or corporations -- should have social controls on them appropriate to the magnitude of damage they can cause. But we don't do that, do we? Nor do we even consider it, really. Someone can own a corporation that can effectively destroy as many lives as an atom bomb, and we allow them to operate that corporation without effective let or hindrance. But a single-shot 5.5mm firearm? Oy! Serpent! Serrrrrpent! Get away you wicked serpent. Restrict! Confiscate! Serrrrppennnnt!
That's nuts, gang. That's _real_ tunnel vision.