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the argument, then, is basically that easily available guns effectively militarize class conflict--which is continual, everywhere---or, another way, make its violence more explicit. so that areas in which class divisions are more severe and in which the geography of class conflict is such that the groups are closer together would expect to see a different pattern of gun-related violence than would areas which are more segregated spatially.
if you add to this the fact that income levels are not a particularly informative indicator of the nature of class conflict---poverty being in a sense worse in the states than in many other places which are poorer in terms of income across the board (amartya sen correlates income levels with morality rates to generate this argument..it's a pretty compelling one, if you see the data)---adding guns to the routinized violence of class divisions is a real problem.
the "principled"--or platonic--approach to questions of gun control make no sense. it has to be approached on a local basis.
it's not obvious that the decision of last week upsets anything about this--it seems to me that it makes absolute bans more difficult, that's all.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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