>[WS:] I think that the main problem here is that homicide and violence
>result from many factors and at the same time they are sufficiently rare
>events - which makes it virtually impossible to analytically separate the
>effect of gun ownership from all other factors. So all we can do is to
>repeat ad nauseam anecdotal evidence supporting our positions on the issue.
> The reason that I take the no effect position is that it is really easy to
>kill a person or even a number of people with a wide range of implements,
>guns, knives, bombs, vehicles, baseball bats, chain saws, pushing of the
>cliff or into the metro tracks, and so on - and the main factor is the
>determination to kill rather than mere access to the potentially lethal
>implements.
I'm not convinced that is so. Take thew case of Anders Breivik, who used two different methods with dramatically different results:
"In a sequential bombing and mass shooting on 22 July 2011, he bombed government buildings in Oslo, resulting in eight deaths, then carried out a mass shooting at a camp of the Workers' Youth League (AUF) of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 people, mostly teenagers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
So his massive car bomb, weighing about 900kg, killed 8 people, while his military style firearm killed nearly ten times as many.
As for your assertion that it is just as easy to kill people with knives or baseball bats, that is simply preposterous. The issue with military firearms is not their relative capacity to commit a single murder. But their suitability as instruments of mass-murder. In fact, their suitability for nothing else but mass-murder.
A serial murderer might use a baseball bat, or anything at hand, to kill as many people. But the burning issue with gun control is the growing incidence of rampages of mass-murder. To waffle on about other types of murder, as some people do, is simply a red herring. Gun control is not about these other types of crime, it is clearly aimed at addressing the problem of rampage mass-murder.
And its no use trying to say that these kinds of crimes would be just as bad with or without access to military style firearms. Do you really think anyone could kill 69 people in a single rampage, using nothing but a baseball bat or a knife?
So its firearms that are the issue and not just any firearms, but the kind of firearms that are designed specifically to kill people. Weapons which are no use for anything else. The question is, who has a legitimate claim to possess such weapon? The answer has to be, only someone who has a legitimate need, which I reluctantly concede would be members of the military, but very few other than that. (Even if we concede that a person has a legitimate right to own a firearm for purposes of "self-defense" - which I don't concede for a second - a military assault rifle is hardly an appropriate weapon for that purpose, unless you expect to have to defend yourself against an army.)
But as to whether that is a "left" argument, maybe not exactly. But the issue isn't whether gun control is a necessary stage in achieving socialism, the issue is whether it is necessary in the context of our present class society.
And I think the left would have to argue that it is. Clearly the social conditions under capitalism have deteriorated to such an extent that a high degree of alienation and anti-social attitudes prevail. To maintain a semblance of stability it is necessary to curb the mass availability of certain weapons of mass-murder. Particularly those weapons for which there are no other uses besides mass-murder. The left must argue that it is the responsibility of the capitalist ruling class and state to maintain as much social order and stability as it can manage. That has always been the responsibility of a ruling class.
If it is unable to maintain peace and security, then it is also worth pointing out that such failure is usually a sign of a ruling class in decline.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas