As tends to happen after each such horrific occurrence, the school shooting in Connecticut was the occasion for reviving the debate over gun control in the United States.
Given the quality of this debate, I’m not really interested in engaging either the smug liberal challenges of “well, are you people finally ready to come to your senses” or the right-wing hysteria of “The Kenyan Marxist Muslim is coming to take our guns away!” I’ll just say for the record I’m an anarchist, and I don’t care much for the idea of the same state responsible for warrantless wiretapping and the NDAA regulating the public’s access to weaponry for self-defense. And I don’t want a new War on Guns carried out by the same lawless paramilitary thugs in kevlar who’re already fighting the wars on drugs and terrorism. At the same time, I can’t say I’m too crazy about the loudest anti-gun control voices on the right.
Instead, I’ll just make a few general observations. First, I doubt the level of gun violence in the United States has much to do with the kinds of gun laws that are in effect. This country would have a high rate of gun violence regardless of the laws on the books, just because of our culture. There’s a lot of truth in the liberal arguments against America’s “gun culture.” The United States has more gun violence than other Western countries for the same reason it has a culture of flag-worship and “supporting the troops” unequaled anywhere else in the West, for the same reason Christian Zionism is such a powerful political force in our country, and for the same reason a large plurality of our population actually believes the earth is 6000 years old.
Part of it stems from the unique role of what the late Joe Bageant called Borderers, Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish in shaping American culture. As a result American political culture is more predisposed than most to a kind of Type-A authoritarianism fixated on the use of violence to “show them who’s boss” or “teach them a lesson.” The worship of the military and the executive goes back to the Ulster Scots inside the Pale, with their adulation for King Billy.
And part of it probably stems from the Second Great Awakening, which is — directly or indirectly — at the root of so many of the ways in which American culture went off the rails in comparison to the rest of Western Christendom. The “Premillennial Dispensationalism” of John Darby, shared by the Southern Baptists and other fundamentalist sects and publicized by Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind series, traces back to this. So do our puritanical attitudes toward alcohol, and our weird attachment to Israel.
Second, I expect strict gun laws to be about as effective as the post-9/11 “counter-terrorism” police state, the Drug War, or the strict digital copyright regime in actually reducing the activity they’re ostensibly intended to reduce. Strict gun laws will hardly put a dent in either gun ownership or gun crime. In the places touted as examples of the benefits of gun control, like Europe and Japan, levels of gun ownership and violence were already far lower than in the United States even before such laws were passed.
But third, what strict gun laws will do is take the level of police statism, lawlessness and general social pathology up a notch in the same way Prohibition and the Drug War have done. I’d expect a War on Guns to expand the volume of organized crime, and to empower criminal gangs fighting over control over the black market, in exactly the same way Prohibition did in the 1920s and strict drug laws have done since the 1980s. I’d expect it to lead to further erosion of Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, further militarization of local police via SWAT teams, and further expansion of the squalid empire of civil forfeiture, perjured jailhouse snitch testimony, entrapment, planted evidence, and plea deal blackmail. In short, a War on Guns will take us even further in the direction of a society handed entirely over to violent criminal gangs, and the biggest gang of all: The criminal beasts of prey in uniform.
Translations for this article:
- Spanish, Algunas Observaciones sobre el Debate del Control de la Tenencia de Armas.
- Portuguese, Algumas Observações Acerca do Debate Relativo a Controle de Armas de Fogo.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Observations on the Gun Control Debate, Passaic Valley (New Jersey) Today, 01/17/13
- Kevin Carson, A Leftist’s Argument Against Gun Control, Truthdig, 12/18/12
- Kevin Carson, Some Observations on the Gun Control Debate, Counterpunch, 12/17/12
What can I say? Dead on!
Wow, I'd say that puts the hollow, contrived, Red vs. Blue post-atrocity debate to shame.
While discussing this latest act of barbarism with my wife, I think I was trying to make a similar point. It was nowhere near as eloquent. In my disgust and sadness for these victim I think I mostly said, "this country is coming apart" and "this is one sick society." I argued that this heinous violence is deeply ingrained in our culture. My wife was skeptical and asked for clarification. I then went on to cite examples, mostly acts of state violence. She said something to the effect of, "oh well that's the government, that's not really OUR culture." Then again, she is from Mexico. People in Mexico already know that they should not look to the state for examples of proper behavior. We in the U.S. are still learning. Kevin, I think you are making the point I was not able to make.
Just before checking C4SS, I visited a couple mainstream sources and then a couple of my favorite Left-wing sites. Sadly, they are pushing the same old "Obama needs to do something about gun control" line. They don't have anything unique to add, unfortunately. When leftists are getting sprayed and beaten at Occupy protests, they become anti-authoritarian. When a mass shooting happens, they want to hand more power over to the same guys that just kicked their asses and tapped their phones.
The Right is, of course, also bereft of ideas. "Now if I was there with my gun, by god, I would've taken him out," says Cletus, who is used to shooting at paper targets and four-legged creatures that can't shoot back (lack of thumbs and all). Really? None of us really know how we will react in combat until we are in the thick of it. The glib, after-the-fact tough guy talk comes off as callous after a tragedy like this. For all we know, Cletus might hide in a closet and soil himself after hearing the first shots.
There are no easy answers. As a person who wants to see us move towards a stateless and classless society, I certainly don't put a lot of stock in giving the state another reason to make war on its citizens. For now, perhaps the process of background investigation could be re-examined. And we may also need to determine if privacy laws (HIPPA, etc) are making medical/mental health professionals hesitant about advising law enforcement about people who appear to be an imminent threat. These killers do not just "snap." There are always signs and people are either missing them or they don't know what to do when they observe them.
Aside from that, we need to get to a point where people view law enforcement/security as everyone's business, not just the realm of specialists (though specialists of some sort–under democratic control, I hope–are likely to exist in a stateless society). The existence of police leads too many people to believe that curtailing violence and other anti-social activity is none of their business. This misconception must be corrected.
Pretty spot-on, though a couple of observations: one, while 'gun culture' is no doubt a factor in some gun violence (perhaps most particularly the mass shootings that get the most media attention), much of the 'day-to-day' gun violence (and other forms of violent crime) occur in connection with either the drug war or related phenomenon of inner city (and the rural equivalents of the inner city) decay and disorder. Here in urban St. Louis, for instance, gun crime is almost always a part of the wider fabric of illicit activity and the interface of that activity with policing and incarceration. Needless to say, police attempts to control one set of illegal substances have hardly gone well, by almost any metric imaginable (save that of lining certain pockets).
Second, I think that horrific events such as this one underlie an increasing sense on the part of state authorities that the world is simply becoming unmanageable: state authority and force may be more pervasive than ever before, but this does not imply greater effectiveness in everything. 'Public safety' is in many cases a mere facade, and one that doesn't even apply, and never has, to poor and disadvantaged parts of the nation. No all-encompassing security apparatus is ever truly all-encompassing, no matter how hard it tries; no state is invincible or inevitable in its duration and power. Liberal reaction represents a yearning for a truly all-encompassing state, albeit a supposedly benign one, which, given the passage of new anti-gun legislation, will miraculously take on liberal characteristics (ie., it won't just be young black men being locked up for gun violations). However, beyond the simple-minded but earnest naivety of liberals is the simple fact that the omnipotent state they desire is no longer a real possibility- if it ever was in this country (or anywhere). The state's capacity or desire to 'protect' us, whether on a policing level or a social safety level, is diminishing, and is unlikely to return.
I believe you're also missing an element here of generational poverty, geo-economic conditions, prescription drug abuse, and the broken homes. We also have a 'drug culture' and an 'entitlement culture'. It takes a lot to move people from hopeful, to hopeless, to destruction. None of the right nor the left ever correlate economic conditions to violence, but there's an obvious correlation… or else all of them would move into the inner cities and put their kids in those schools.
Self-accountability, work-ethic, parenting… let's begin putting back the humiliation of public dependence and begin being good neighbors again that take care of our own instead of leaving them to a prescription or government handouts. Then and only then do I believe the violence will be curved.
I pray for the families and that community. I think the main jist of the article is right as far as gun laws doing nothing.considering you need to be 21 to own a gun,and this gentleman was 20. the scotch-irish and 2nd great awakening stuff though explaining violence in america i think is kinda a stretch.
Let us not forget that guns are a product produced by corporations to make a profit for their shareholders and obscene salaries for their corporate officers. The world gun industry and its officers and shareholders profit from all of the death and mayhem that result.
Good point, Hayduke. In a more rational, humane society, products like guns probably wouldn't be mass produced like they are under corporate capitalism. The same could be said for products like tobacco that have produced huge profits and shocking body counts.
Yes, blaming the Scots-Irish and evangelicals probably just reveals how the author feels about those groups. Most cases of gun violence that I hear about do not include people who are Scots-Irish or evangelical.
Perhaps Hayduke would prefer that guns be handmade by individuals who sell them at cost to right-wing militia groups dedicated to cleansing society of those they deem undesirable?
Would Dave feel better if cigarettes were handrolled and then given to children for free in exchange for being photographed in the nude.
Let us not forget evil corporations that make booze, cars, knives, propagandized media, unhealthy food products, dangerous chemicals, ugly clothes, not to mention all the computers that clog our landfills – all for obscene profits. They all benefit from the destruction of lives and of the minds of our youth. Somebody oughta make a law!?!?!?
But seriously, this is a great post by Mr. Carson. Is the school shooting in Connecticut really all that shocking? I mean after all, Americans don't seem to have too much of a problem killing children all over the world because they are in the vicinity of those merely suspected of Islamic radicalism. We live in a culture of death. What else is new?
I know, huh? It's like blaming the English for our English-speaking culture when most english people live in England…
I mean, what's up with that, amirite?
Now that you've read the intuition, here are the facts: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/20…
I don't think gun laws would reduce the number of guns in the country, but it might be possible to limit the number of assault weapons and clips. Let them have their guns but take away their militarized weapons intended to produce mass carnage.
My recent post US Attorney Says Wells Fargo Defrauded Government
I don't think gun laws would reduce the number of guns in the country, but it might be possible to limit the number of assault weapons and clips. Let them have their guns but take away their militarized weapons intended to produce mass carnage.
My recent post US Attorney Says Wells Fargo Defrauded Government
This is how I feel about it. I put this sign up in my yard:
My front yard sign
"When leftists are getting sprayed and beaten at Occupy protests, they become anti-authoritarian. When a mass shooting happens, they want to hand more power over to the same guys that just kicked their asses and tapped their phones."
Oftentimes there seems to be a galaxy of difference between the former group of leftists versus the latter. Many among the former genuinely share many of our same basic concerns. However, plenty among the former also include the children of the latter, who have already entered, or have been properly taught by the educational caste system to cease their childish concerns, go back to work, and love their Daddy.
Seems to prove Carson's points if anything, although I'm not sure what your point was in the first place.