On 2013-05-09, at 3:36 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
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> On May 9, 2013, at 3:05 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> ...My argument that circumstances have changed - that the demand for arms is now coming from the right rather than from the constituencies we support, who now favour gun control - doesn't mean that I'm obliged, by extension, to support restrictions on our rights to assemble, to speak and publish freely, to organize trade unions and political parties, and to exercise other democratic rights. I don't have the slightest problem reconciling my unconditional support for these hard-won rights with my endorsement of efforts by liberal and radical Americans to place curbs on access to weapons...
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> If I recall correctly, we were recently talking about the "99%" vs. the "one%," and about the effective, coordinated, repression carried out by the armed agents of the "one%." The "liberal Americans" (there are, alas, very few radical Americans) who provide the constituency for the Bloombergs and Obamas are very much of the "one%," while the defenders of gun rights are almost entirely of the "99%" (the one-percenters don't need to own guns because they have the whole repressive apparatus of the State, which they own, at their disposal). So which constituency do "we support?" Do you think you have a clearer perception of the class interests at issue than Bloomberg does?
It's nonsense that the US working class overwhelmingly supports so-called gun rights, with only a tiny liberal bourgeois minority in favour of more curbs on firearms.
US public opinion is almost evenly split on the subject of gun control, with a narrow majority in favour.
By party affiliation, the split is much wider. Approx. 70% of Democrats favour gun control, while an equal percentage of Republicans are opposed. Urban working class Democrats and their allies were far more likely than reactionary white working class Republicans to belong to or to support the Occupy movement, which spoke on behalf of the 99%. The former have always been the left's natural constituency, irrespective of whether they've supported liberal and social democratic parties against conservative parties in the absence of socialist alternatives.