Hello, I just wanted to ask what us communists should think of gun rights, both under capitalism and socialism. Is it a important part of the movement today, why or why not? Tell me what you think of guns and what must happen with them?
Hello, I just wanted to ask what us communists should think of gun rights, both under capitalism and socialism. Is it a important part of the movement today, why or why not? Tell me what you think of guns and what must happen with them?
IMO it really depends on the culture of the nations. I personally don’t plan on giving up my guns even if a successful revolution in the USA happens. And I think it would be extremely hard to ban them. But more importantly, the USA (or at least large swaths of it) has had a pretty different view on persons being allowed to own guns compared to many other nations. And being part of the constitution does kind of make the USA a little different. Though I don’t know off-hand how many other nations have something like the 2nd Amendment so feel free to let me know.
I can’t speak to how the cultures of Soviet/Warsaw Pact, China, Vietnam, DPRK, Cuba, or any other nations thought of guns before or after their revolutions. Even if you look at non-socialist nations (especially the major capitalist nations), they also have similar laws making individuals owning guns super limited. Which (to me) just indicates that they just don’t have gun culture large enough to push for changing the laws. Not a “good” or “bad” thing, just shows that the people of different nations (or even just regions of nations) do things differently.
In my personal case, I grew up and still live in a more rural area. And I have handled various kinds of guns since I was like 10~12. Most of the time was hunting or scouts, but now also for concealed carry and fun range days with friends. I understand how large urban and suburbs closer to urban areas would want to have more rules due to higher population densities (different material conditions and cultures).
The rest is about mostly mental and physical health that I got ranty with but still matters in my opinion. Not kidding myself into thinking it is the only or correct causes/solutions. Just things I feel do matter with obvious problems relating to guns and other physical violence.
I think the very real and terrible issues with gun violence in the USA is that so many other deeper issues lead to the violence. Our capitalist system keeps poor and working people down and healthcare is out of reach. More and more people become isolated and then get “black pilled”.
Even if someone has access to healthcare (specifically mental health but other health related issues very much matter), all the effort doesn’t change that outside of sessions or physical health efforts the “real world” just keeps grinding them down without care because profits matter more. I always roll my eyes at any “mental health awareness” trainings my jobs put so much lip-service into. Because the rest of what they do in demanding more and more with fewer people. Overwork and impossible demands mean that even if you do try to take a mental health day or are visibly stressing out are just another reason to get rid of you. The stress of possibly losing access to income (and healthcare that is tied to the jobs) only increases the isolation.
A socialist/communist society with unconditional access to healthcare, housing, employment, and basic needs for literal living would remove a lot of these issues. Might not go away, but would seem to naturally reduce gun and other violent crimes. Much like with how the idea of government and classes as we know them withering away naturally. Obviously there will always be outliers like literal clinical issues that aren’t tied to the above. But real efforts to research biological causes and ways to actually help seem to only become an option if the profits are removed along with the default of just throwing people away into prisons to “forget” about them.
Therapy is a rather disappointing institution. It’s not without value and I say that from experience of doing it for like two years, but it’s also painfully limited in what it can actually accomplish. Bougie ideology taints it with a directive of “getting people back to work” and in general, it’s not built to do much more than tell you what might be going wrong and urge you to do stuff that might fix it, or help you process something which can help some but probably won’t result in dramatic change. Because most of the problems aren’t actually caused by what you’re doing in the first place and bougie therapy can’t say that. It can only tell you what to do differently. So it reinforces individualism and pushes you more toward internalizing problems you have as having largely internal causes. This conveniently lets the systemic exploiters off the hook, even if it’s not expressly what the therapist intends.
I’m sure some therapists are better about this than others, but as a whole, the practice is, I guess I would say, a lot more underwhelming than I thought of it at some points in my life.
Fully agree, shit is a perfect constant example of liberalism loving nice words while actively preventing making any actions following to address the causes. I really and truly believe that therapy can be really great. But if the person in pain and struggling is constantly setup to fail by putting it all on them. Then liberal capitalist therapy is noting but gaslighting. The struggling person isn’t the failure or worthless for doing the things they can. The rug is pulled even when personal progress does happen.