On 2012-12-18, at 7:43 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com>
>
>
>> The US has a history of widespread gun ownership not found, to my knowledge, in other capitalist states. Isn't this the crucial variable which does, in fact, explain its >extraordinarily high historical murder rate?
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> All the way back to the 18th century? I don't think so.
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>> Otherwise, what does?
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> Beats me. Historical research into the question only really got going in the last few decades. The jury is still out.
Any historical research pointing to the fact that the US was a democratic republic where, instead of land hunger, there was increasing opportunity for small freeholders to prosper across a constantly expanding frontier? These settlers needed weapons to subdue the native populations, and as they did not engage in peasant jacqueries or pose any serious threat to the governing eastern elites, the ruling class thought it necessary and was prepared to trust them with firearms.
Europe, by contrast, was composed of much more class divided societies shaken by periodic revolts by land hungry peasants and the raising of barricades by artisans and labourers in the cities. Unlike in the US, there were no expanding frontiers acting as a safety valve to relieve urban discontent or to provide abundant land to farmers. In these circumstances, the very last thing European landlords and capitalists were prepared to tolerate was widespread gun ownership; weapons had to be forcibly seized by the insurrectionary masses from state arsenals or brought to them by defecting troops on such occasions.
Therefore it seems to me a case can be made for tracing the roots of America's gun "democracy" back to the 18th century and even beyond - to the arrival of the first settlers a century earlier. Guns are essential to settler colonies vigorously determined to keep expanding their territory. When the British tried to contain the ambitions of their colonies, the armed settlers expelled them and proceeded to spill over the Alleghenies on their long westward conquest of the continent below the 49th parallel. Neither could have been accomplished without an armed populace drawn to the revolutionary new ideas of republican democracy and jealous of its independence from central authority as it expanded westward. This movement found expression in the second amendment to the Constitution. Today, that amendment is a relic, seized upon by the most reactionary sector of contemporary American society anxious about its declining cultural and economic status.