On 2012-12-18, at 8:40 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: ""about 70 percent of Republicans favor gun rights, while the
> same number of Democrats supports gun control, according to the July
> Pew poll. Whites are more likely to say it is more important to
> protect gun ownership; blacks overwhelmingly back gun control. And men
> tend to give gun rights more importance, while women favor controlling
> gun ownership."
>
>
> [WS:] This is the main reason what I am in favor of gun control - as a
> purely political move against conservatives of various stripes.
> However, I am fully aware that such a move is totally ineffective - in
> the same league as delegalization of drugs or for that matter
> earthquakes. Gun control would certainly do absolutely nothing to
> prevent Lanza's mother from buying her arsenal - she was upstanding
> citizen that could obtain necessary permits even under very
> restrictive laws.
You may be right. The gun lobby is powerful, federal and state legislators beholden, and gun manufacturers are creative in finding ways to work around a formal ban on weapons like the Bushmaster assault rifle owned by Lanza's mother. But while gun control laws can never be fully effective, neither are they "totally ineffective" as you assert. The horrific massacre of the children in Newtown, on the heels of the Aurora theatre killings, is already renewing calls for restoration of the 1994 gun control legislation which was allowed to lapse in 2004, and, moreover, for closing its loopholes to ensure that assault weapons are effectively removed from the public domain.
Among other things to take into account is that the political weight of conservative white males in the deep South and Midwest is slipping, and it is no longer written in stone that the language of a new gun control law would do "absolutely nothing" to prevent households from continuing to acquire high-capacity automatic weapons. We've seen how the shifting relationship of forces has affected the debate around gay marriage, assisted suicide, stem cell research, drug legalization and other social issues. If the US were even to come remotely close to the gun control legislation typical of the other capitalist states, you'd almost certainly see a significant reduction in these kinds of shooting incidents.
Here's how one observer describes the law currently operative in Britain, for example:
"After a couple of horrible mass shootings in Britain, handguns and automatic weapons have been effectively banned. It is possible to own shotguns, and rifles if you can demonstrate to the police that you have a good reason to own one, such as target shooting at a gun club, or deer stalking, say. The firearms-ownership rules are onerous, involving hours of paperwork. You must provide a referee who has to answer nosy questions about the applicant's mental state, home life (including family or domestic tensions) and their attitude towards guns. In addition to criminal-record checks, the police talk to applicants’ family doctors and ask about any histories of alcohol or drug abuse or personality disorders.
"Vitally, it is also very hard to get hold of ammunition. Just before leaving Britain in the summer, I had lunch with a member of parliament whose constituency is plagued with gang violence and drug gangs. She told me of a shooting, and how it had not led to a death, because the gang had had to make its own bullets, which did not work well, and how this was very common, according to her local police commander. Even hardened criminals willing to pay for a handgun in Britain are often getting only an illegally modified starter’s pistol turned into a single-shot weapon.
"And, to be crude, having few guns does mean that few people get shot. In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America’s. In America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2012/12/gun-control
[…]
> The problem is not the material object (i.e. the gun) but the social
> relations that turned that object into a fetish of power. An
> effective way of dealing with this problem is not regulating the
> acquisition of objects, but destruction of the culture that turns them
> into fetishes. I do not believe this is going to happen any time in
> our life time.
By extension, the fight for any kind of reform is pointless - whether in regards to gun ownership, exploitation, inequality, homophobia, sexism, racism, climate change, freedom of expression and inquiry, imperialist wars - since these issues can't be satisfactorily resolved under the present system of social relations. This is the position of the anarchists and other ultra-left tendencies, although they do not share your deep pessimism about the prospects for serious change. Whatever those prospects - and I think it's idle to speculate - the important thing is that fight for reforms has, in fact, led to historic gains for working people and should continue to be supported rather than discouraged on this ground alone.