From its very beginning, gun control — the attempt to regulate the possession of means of self-defense by the ordinary populace — has been closely associated with class rule and the class state.
In early modern England, regulation of firearm ownership was closely intertwined with the struggle by the landed classes and capitalist agriculture to restrict the laboring classes’ access to independent subsistence from the land. This included enclosure of common woodland, fen and waste — in which landless and land-poor peasants had previously hunted small game — for sheep pasturage or arable land. It also included exclusion of the common people from forests via the Game Laws and restriction of hunting to the gentry.
Under the slaveocracy of the American south, firearm ownership was prohibited by Black Codes that regulated free blacks. And after Emancipation, whenever the old landed gentry managed to successfully assert its power against the Reconstruction regime, former slaves were disarmed by house-to-house patrols, either under the Black Codes or by such irregular bodies as the Klan.
The same was true of the Civil Rights struggle a century later, after World War II. In areas where armed self-defense efforts by civil rights activists were widespread, they significantly improved the balance of power against the Klan and other racist vigilante movements. Numerous armed self-defense groups — e.g. the Deacons for Defense and Justice, whose members used rifles and shotguns to repel attacks by white vigilantes in Louisiana in the 1960s — helped equalize the correlation of forces between civil rights activists and racists in many small towns throughout the south.
Especially notable was Robert Williams, who in 1957 organized an armed defense of the Monroe, NC NAACP chapter president’s home against a Klan raid and sent the vigilantes fleeing for their lives. Williams’s book Negroes With Guns later inspired Huey Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers Party.
Speaking of the Black Panthers, no discussion of the origins of modern American gun control would be complete without recognizing their role in inspiring the modern right-wing gun control agenda.
Foreshadowing current groups like Copwatch and Cop Block, the Panthers in 1966 organized armed patrols of Oakland streets with rifles and shotguns, stopping to witness police interactions with local residents and provide information and offers of legal assistance when necessary.
In 1967 Republican state assemblyman Don Mulford of Oakland, a vocal enemy of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Black Panthers, responded with a bill to prohibit publicly carrying firearms in California. The BPP’s Bobby Seale protested the bill by leading a Panther detachment, armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols, up the steps of the statehouse (“All right, brothers, we’re going inside”), through its doors, and into the public viewing area. There Seale read a statement denouncing Mulford’s bill as an attempt “at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror and repression of black people,” and warning that “the time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.”
Mulford’s gun control bill was signed into law three months later by Governor Ronald Reagan.
Irregular workers’ militias and armed defense formations played a significant role in labor history, both in the US and abroad. During the Copper Wars at the turn of the 20th century, the governors of several Rocky Mountain states instituted martial law — including door-to-door confiscation of firearms from workers’ homes and striker encampments. In some cases, as with the West Virginia Coal Wars and the Homestead strike, workers fought pitched battles against Pinkertons, state militia and sheriffs’ deputies.
In Spain it was largely owing to workers’ militias, organized under the auspices of the CNT trade union federation and the parties of the Left, that Franco’s July 1936 coup attempt failed. In the areas of southern and eastern Spain where Franco’s forces failed to carry the day, workers’ militias often played a decisive role. In some areas armed workers drove Franco’s troops back into their barracks after pitched battles and burned them alive inside.
From its beginnings the state has been an executive committee of the economic ruling class and an instrument of armed force by the owners of the means of production, enabling them to extract surplus labor from the rest of us. I can’t imagine why anyone would expect the state’s gun control policies to display any less of a class character than other areas of policy. Regardless of the “liberal” or “progressive” rhetoric used to defend gun control, you can safely bet it will come down harder on the cottagers than on the gentry, harder on the workers than on the Pinkertons, and harder on the Black Panthers than on murdering cops.
A (Brief) People’s History of Gun Control on C4SS Media.
Translations for this article:
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, A (Brief) People’s History of Gun Control, St. Joseph, Missouri Telegraph, p. 10, 01/24/13
- Kevin Carson, A (Brief) People’s History of Gun Control, Counterpunch, 01/21/13
- Kevin Carson, A (Brief) People’s History of Gun Control, Before It’s News, 01/19/13
Carson really should be the Left's leading intellectual. Chomsky had his time in the sun, but he's gotten to be a boring old fart in his old age. Move over, Noam. Here comes Kevin.
"gun control — the attempt to regulate the possession of means of self-defense by the ordinary populace" ? Or an attempt from keeping all the Fucks out there with these goddamn things, or desiring these goddamn things, from killing dozens of people.
Are you talking about the police?
I would include the police with the others. It makes no sense to me to believe arming the general populous as a solution to solving political problems would work when most do not care enough to take the time to educate themselves as to what the problem is. Many of them would take up arms against those they should be aligning themselves with because of the propaganda they are being fed.
He can't be- what self-respecting state would be content with a body count in the mere dozens?
That 's a fair point, William. Kevin's review of the the real motivation behind past attempts at gun control is accurate and this kind of analysis brings nuance to a debate that usually lacks nuance. I commend him for his contribution.
Still, the loudest proponents of gun control today tend to be those that have no real intention of using their weapons to defeat reactionary forces. Sadly, they ARE the reactionary forces in many cases. When does the GOP ever stand up to criticize state repression of Occupy or other protest movements? When does the NRA ever condemn America's aggression abroad or worsening police state repression at home? How many gun clubs do you know of that discuss the savagery of neo-liberalism at their meetings? I'd say pretty much never on all counts. Furthermore, who do these folks view as the primary threat to their safety? I'm pretty sure they are thinking of someone about the same hue as Fred Hampton or Mark Clark, not Stacey Coon or J. Edgar Hoover.
This does not mean that I think excessive gun control measures are the answer. However, I think it is very unlikely that armed citizens will be the force that will end the drug war, American empire or Capitalism. Informed, motivated and brave citizens with a sense of solidarity might just do the job though. And America needs informed citizens a hell of a lot more than it needs guns at this point.
No doubt that's true, Dave. But the problems with gun control legislation obviously don't end with the fact that people who need to defend themselves against the state can't do so when disarmed.
Gun control legislation provides a basis for the expansion of state power in multiple ways. Non-violent offenses, like mere possession of a firearm or the failure to perform a background check before selling one to someone else, become bases for criminal liability: more people go to jail, and the authorities can use the threat of prosecution for these non-violent offenses to compel cooperation in other areas.
In addition, gun control legislation seems likely to create a black market, with all the potential violence-escalation problems typically associated with such markets.
Further, as David Friedman has helpfully pointed out, the more people aren't able to defend themselves against violent crime, the more dependent they become on the state, with all the predictable Stockholm-Syndrome-like consequences.
Gun control legislation is objectionable on the same grounds that all attempts to impose criminal liability for non-violent conflict are objectionable.
Dave Hummels, much of what you say resonates with me, but I must raise a point in response to this:
"Furthermore, who do these folks view as the primary threat to their safety? I'm pretty sure they are thinking of someone about the same hue as Fred Hampton or Mark Clark, not Stacey Coon or J. Edgar Hoover."
When Bill Clinton's (mostly white) ATF and FBI agents killed nearly 80 civilians near Waco, Texas, in 1993, about two dozen of the victims children and nearly have of them people of color, it was not progressives, nor the official Civil Rights movement, that protested. It was paranoid rightwing gun nuts who most loudly condemned this, the biggest federal massacre of civilians on U.S. soil since Wounded Knee. Indeed, even Republicans in Congress dared to suggest that the government wasn't 100% innocent, whereas the Dems in Congress, most notably Chuck Schumer, vilified anyone who would dare suggest the government would do anything wrong at all, mocking and ridiculing the survivors of that mass murder testifying before him. The center right, but most especially the center left, did all they could to demonize anyone who would question the government's conduct at Waco, and used the Oklahoma City bombing two years later to silence even moderate conservative talk of the federal government's potential for violence or oppression.
Today, Rachel Maddow continues to condemn those who call ATF "jackbooted thugs" and laments the agency's insufficient funding.
I am not saying the thrust of what you say is not true, but there is a bit more to it: When the government actually exterminates Americans, gassing, shooting, and crushing them to death with military weapons, the gun controllers who wish to whitewash all federal violence become rather colorblind themselves. I used to think if Bush murdered a bunch of civilians on American soil, many of them non-whites, the liberals would have been up in arms. Now I'm in doubt about even that.
There are very bad impulses in the GOP, the conservative movement, and the populist right, to put it mildly. But it sure doesn't help that only their worst views on militarism, the drug war, indefinite detention, immigration crackdowns, and police brutality are accepted as within the range of respectable opinion in the liberal media, whereas when they get something right—that perhaps the national government shouldn't use internationally banned chemical weapons and tanks on children as part of domestic gun control—they are shouted down as loonies.
"Can't do so when unarmed?" How many legislators are seriously arguing for complete gun bans? All talks have been restricting weapons down to that suitable home defence. Apparently you're going down the road of where any slightest hint of gun control means total disarmament. Any measures to help keep the guns out of the hands of criminals? Nah, that's prelude to full disarmament and besides gangsters have their (supposed) Constitutional rights anyway.
Besides even if the Government declared war on the People what would guns really do in this day and age? If people want to fight against a modern army then they should be arguing all weapons should be available to all those who can afford them. What of grenades, landmines, roadside, anti-tank rockets, anti-air missiles, etc., the type that would make a difference and are used by actual freedom fighters against modern armies?
Chomsky is not vocal enough of an anarchist.
Kevin: You ought to remind us that the leading genocide machine is, by far, the state. (Democide).
I am in substantial agreement with you as well, Anthony. The response to Waco from liberals and the conduct of Clinton, Reno and company was deplorable. And for the record, I will say that the ATF should be abolished. I don't care what Rachel Maddow and her "let's do the New Deal all over again" buddies say. And we can add the FBI–America's secret police service–to that list too if you'd like.
However, Waco and Ruby Ridge primarily resonated with the Right because the rationale for these raids involved guns. It is nice that the Right finally awoke to the brutality that the federal government (or law enforcement in general) is capable of during the administration of a Democrat. Unfortunately, they got all dewy-eyed about the state again when W stepped in and started tearing shit up. Going back a bit, whose side were they on when the Philidelphia Police fire-bombed the MOVE house in the 1980's? Or when Cook County, IL law enforcement assassinated Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in '69? And why do so many of these people (I would exclude some Right-libertarians, of course) not want to talk about the genocidal behavior the U.S. Government, state governments, local governments and the prior colonial governments have displayed in their interactions with American Indians and black people since before there was a United States of America.
Sad to say, Anthony, but I think most of these folks are just pissed off that new gun laws may inconvenience some white hunters, sportsmen or collectors. Often times they live in stable communities where they are unlikely to ever need a gun for self-defense. Though their paranoid fantasies about confrontations with swarthy males may give them the idea that they are in imminent danger, I suppose. But if they can find a token black man from the ghetto that used a gun in self-defense to cement their case, they will use that guy and then quickly forget about the conditions in his neighborhood that led him pick up the gun. After all, this kind of thinking might cause them to ask themselves uncomfortable questions about the wisdom of the drug war and mass incarceration, not to mention systemic racism, which Malcom X correctly called out as a predictable by-product of a capitalist system.
Gun control will not solve our problems, but neither will gun obsession among those who are statistically unlikely to find themselves in the middle of any shoot out that doesn't occur within the confines of a game of "Call of Duty."
Hmmm… I wouldn't closely associate class rule with gun control. I wouldn't judge a societies freedom based on their attitudes towards arms. Some of our more “oppressive” states have pretty liberal gun policies. In fact, I'd put it way down on the list of characteristics associated with freedom. I think there are other factors and tools that play a more prominent role in the establishment and dominance of a ruling class than preventing access to weaponry. In some instances, I'd argue that gun freedoms are used to allow coercion where the State can't coerce; all in the name of "self-defense". The Treyvon Martin case for instance, is just the tip of the iceberg here in Florida. There are so many instances of the "stand your ground" law being distorted to this end. It's also why you don't hear any gun-rights advocates suggest Martin would still be alive had he himself been armed.
I think to dismiss any attempt (however wrongheaded) to reduce violence as a grasp at power at the expense of others freedoms is a little unfair. Certainly, having a very well protected second amendment has done little to prevent violations of virtually every other amendment, in fact, many of the proponents of this "crucial" freedom have been instrumental in reducing those rights. Conversely, denying access to weapons by the Weimar Republic did little, if anything at all, to prevent the Nazi's from rising. (As an aside, Alex Jones is gravely mistaken, Hitler did NOT take the guns). And so I refuse to accept that my freedom is closely associated with firearm accessibility; that I should owe my freedom to a gun. I can’t help but feel that what’s lost in the “I need a weapon to defend myself against my oppressors” argument is all the freedoms we owe to the largely non-violent struggles made by labor, women's, civil, LGBT, etc. rights movements. I don't romanticize past struggles and think that armed resistance would never be necessary or doesn’t have it’s merits, but in so many instances where it has been used, the oppressed have become the oppressors. I’m with the other Dave on this, I don’t think gun control is the answer, but I definitely don’t think more guns is the solution either, and I definitely don’t think there is a direct link between guns and freedom.
Strange. Those at Waco had guns and it helped them none. Then again where were all the fellow freedom fighters when Waco was under siege before the shooting started? Why wasn't there a huge group of Libertarian-types amassing around Waco with the "if you're against them then you're against all of us"?
"I don’t think gun control is the answer . . ."
Define "gun control"? Do you mean there should no restrictions on ownership and how you buy your weapon? Should it be a free-for-all? After all, the 2A never mentioned gun and it's implied because the militia should access to all weapons like the military.
Actually the best ownership for personal, private ownership of guns is: personal self-defence not sporting, hunting, antiquing and certainly not a Rambo-style impromptu anti-government fighter. But that would mean a small(-ish) pistol in public and maybe shotgun and rifle in one's personal home as opposed to weapons more befitting of a soldier.
According to a Waco pawn shop owner, Koresh owned "more guitars than guns". I've always liked that phrase.
"It's also why you don't hear any gun-rights advocates suggest Martin would still be alive had he himself been armed."
I've heard some gun-rights advocates suggest just that.
I don't think there should be any restrictions. And I don't particularly care why they want to own them. Sporting, hunting, antiquing, and insurrection are all as fine and good a reason to own weapons as self-defence is, far as I'm concerned.
Attempts at reaching out to the left unfortunately seem to attract goo-goos who think this is some sort of serious bullet to bite.
Furthermore,
"Certainly, having a very well protected second amendment has done little to prevent violations of virtually every other amendment…"
Leaving aside the Constitution, we have no idea how much widespread gun ownership in America has or hasn't prevented other assaults on freedom. For all we know things would be much worse without it. We can say for certain that the most historically oppressed groups in this country have been those that the second amendment did not apply to (slaves, American Indians, etc.) Of course, guns are only as good as a willingness to use them, and guns in the hands of loyalists obviously do the oppressed no good (the loyalists can be thought of as an extension of government for this purpose). But all the more reason for oppressed groups to arm themselves.
Apologies for the multiple replies, but I have to say that the problem of the oppressed becoming oppressors is a serious one and one that I can't see any reason for fearing solely as a result of violent insurrection. The Christians, for instance, became enthusiastically violent oppressors as soon as the opportunity presented itself, after spending centuries nonviolently building a new society within the shell of the old.
You owe what freedom you have to your neighbors' willingness to leave you alone. There are many reasons your neighbors leave you alone, from decency to indifference to fear of potential retaliation. Ease of access to firearms won't make people in a fundamentally violent society free or safe, but it will tip the odds in favor of the weak and socially marginalized, and add some friction to the machinery of oppression..
The history of gun control has demonstrated that all gun control exists on a slipper slope to confiscation. And the firearms they're trying to restrict happen to be the most suitable tools for home defense. For example, an AR-15 with a 30-round mag is, in most cases, going to be superior for home defense compared to a shotgun or handgun.
Measures to keep guns out of the hands of criminals don't work. Statistically, there is no causal effect to be found between violent crime rates and gun control laws.
What of grenades, landmines, anti-tank missiles, etc? Yes, those should be legalized as well. But even small arms in the hands of guerrilla fighters can be sufficient.
I don't think too many people expected the government would go that far in that situation. Usually the government only does that in foreign countries.
There should be zero gun control laws. None of them are sensible.
On the topic of home defense, an M-4 or AK-74 would make a better home defense weapon than a shotgun. Shotguns are longer and heavier, making them more cumbersome to wield inside a house. A shotgun has much, much more recoil, making them borderline uncontrollable for people of a smaller frame. The noise from a shotgun is tremendously louder, making it more likely to cause serious hearing damage. Shooting any gun indoors without hearing protection is loud, but shotguns are especially concussive, and it's easier to fit a suppressor on rifles and handguns. Shotguns also only hold a few rounds and are slow to reload.
Plausible deniability, eh? I'm sure it was the case of the Jews in Nazi Germany they didn't realise how bad things were going to get until it was too little late.
That is why the internal contradictions of conservatism are so dangerous; those that hold on to them do so with the passion required for consistent reactionary belief. The problem though is that mainstream liberals, and by that I mean the MSNBC-approved academia-sired managerial class, hold onto identical contradictions just as fiercely, if not more, and they are completely honest about their reactionary nature to boot. For them there's just superficial differences; they don't like you or I owning 'assault weapons', but they aren't willing to let go of their private bodyguards (or the police, who essentially serve as the same thing) and/or upper class privilege that keeps them separate from the rabble either.
This is why I think it is far likelier, and evident arguably, that liberal Americans whom listen and sympathize with them by default are far easier to reach on this matter than the dwindling wing of conservatives (a manufactured crowd of intellectuals if there ever were, stealing the pretty-sounding ideas from the ashes of the Old Right they helped annihilate, and use whenever convenient) who wrestle with their own sociopolitical baggage we saw so clearly during W's rule.
"What of grenades, landmines, roadside, anti-tank rockets, anti-air missiles, etc., the type that would make a difference and are used by actual freedom fighters against modern armies? "
Modern rebellions (and armies) rely heavily on small arms. Small arms are useful whether or not you have heavy weapons, and often there are ways of acquiring heavy weapons after a rebellion has started (capture, defection of military units, outside suppliers, home construction).
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
Even if having guns didn't help them, gun prohibition did doom them (that was the motivation for the raid, after all).
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
Many OECD countries have near complete bans on guns. Why should we expect that Americans are never going to move in the same direction.
Municipalities have banned handguns.
The only thing that prevents a bunch of americans from demanding full prohibition is that gun-rights advocates have successfully shifted the debate so that prohibition is considered an extremist position.
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
" I think it is very unlikely that armed citizens will be the force that will end the drug war, American empire or Capitalism. "
But the push to ban guns is just a distraction from addressing the root problems (listed above). Like campaign finance reforms, it consumes all of the energy of people who should be looking for real solutions. If the gun control debate can be used to bring attention to those problems (as Kevin is doing), then let's do it.
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
assault rifles were designed for close quarters combat. I'm guessing it was urban combat.
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
One thing that we should be emphasizing is that guns are a last resort after non-violent forms of resistance. I figure there are three levels:
1) Within the system: voting, lawsuits
2) Protest: Boycott, strikes
3) Non-violent resistance: Civil Disobenience, sabatoge
4) Violent resistance
We often see this progression in historical resistance movement. But the right-wing gun nuts seem to imply that they are ready to go to step four if they lose a couple of elections.
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
I would like to see civilian disarmament legislation tied to police disarmament legislation (and demilitarization in general). The fact that these are not linked indicates that this "pacifist" reform is in fact an attempt to pacify the general population.
My recent post "None but ourselves can free our minds"
Amazing to me the amount of hate against conservatives that I see on this site, and how little of the truly vitriolic hate is directed at those who are most actively trying to take your rights away… Can we please accept that there are statists on the right and left, and the ones on the left are currently the ones who are working the hardest to disassemble your rights and even the knowledge of it? Lets be against the Statists, and not constantly demonize the right, which by the way includes a lot of liberty minded folks.
This may help to clarify C4SS’s use of the terms “left” and “right”:
“At any rate, at some point on the spectrum there is the great modern American liberal position. Through a series of unfortunate but certainly understandable distortions of political terminology, the liberal position has come to be known as a left-wing position. Actually, it lies right alongside the conservative tradition, down toward the middle of the line, but decidedly, I think, to the right of its center. Liberals believe in concentrated power — in the hands of liberals, the supposedly educated and genteel elite. They believe in concentrating that power as heavily and effectively as possible. They believe in great size of enterprise, whether corporate or political, and have a great and profound disdain for the homely and the local. They think nationally but they also think globally and now even intergalactically. Actually, because they believe in far more authoritarian rule than a lot of conservatives, it probably would be best to say that liberals lie next to but actually to the right of many conservatives.” –Karl Hess, the Left/Right spectrum
Enslaved citizens are propertyless citizens and propertyless citizens are disarmed citizens.
Now DaveS, you say there have been people throughout history that supported gun rights that were dictators and other bad folks. Let's be clear about something. No leader would ever allow his enemies to own guns that are BETTER than what they have. This is why virtually every government on the planet has some kind of restrictions on automatic weapons and explosive weapons. Saying that Hitler supported gun ownership is like saying a slave master supports his slaves by feeding them. It is completely missing the point entirely. Hitler would never of allowed the Jews or non-Nazi Germans to obtain truly powerful weapons that were a threat to him. He would of only allowed ones that weren't a threat to him.
Now, you also say that "all the freedoms we owe to the largely non-violent struggles made by labor, women, civil, LGBT, etc". Let's look at each of those.
are there usually points made when you post?
Sorry but this 'short history' is markedly one sided. It leaves out, for instance, the fact that the "ruling elites" in the US congress repeatedly cited the problem of Klansmen attacking freed slaves as a justification for the 14th amendment, to ensure that blacks could exercise their right to keep and bear arms, to defend themselves and their families against Klan terrorism.