dksuddeth

I don't see your answer as an attack on me, so it's all good.

'Liberals' as a whole, do not oppose gun culture. I've met quite a few liberals who are very ardent 2nd Amendment supporters and gun owners. That subset of liberals who ARE anti-gun, are just anti gun.....or as rat put it, violence averse. That's a good segue in to another part of the conversation, by the way.

there are different types on both sides but get largely ignored in the effort to cage ones arguments in definable tracts. I'll come back to this later though, i'm being told to get ready for work.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

powerclown

Yeah I don't see the connection between liberals and anti-gun sentiments, I think this was pulled out of thin air. If you're saying that far left liberals are somehow less extreme in their views I have prime real estate in the Everglades you may be interested in purchasing.

Willravel

I'm only basing my opinion of how common gun-aversion liberals are on how many of us vote in favor of gun control. It's not all Democrats, but it's most of us.

Edit: And right now the Democrats have the bulk of the anti-war movement. Forgot to mention that.

roachboy

well, i position myself pretty much on the left (surprise) and my position about guns actually varies quite alot depending on who i am talking to and what the situation is. i'm not particularly opposed to guns per se, i just don't like them being carried around alot in, say, a city. i don't assume that everyone who buys, uses, enjoys having guns is a nutcase, nor do i assume that the only reason anyone would buy or use a gun is violence. but for some reason, it's alot easier to have a conversation about this when you're not writing stuff on a messageboard and have the nuances of your position come through. i think messageboards may push people toward speaking in generalities because there's a pressure to keep things short. and because these are typically argument-based encounters.

if you know anything about the history of the political left, there is certainly no history of being violence-adverse or being shy about guns. almost from the start of the modern left, there has been a school of thought about revolutionary tactics that sees it on the model of a civil war. within that, some folk saw violence and organizing for it as a necessary response to what they assumed would be a violent state response to the surfacing of a revolutionary threat to it. others saw violence as a necessary weapon, something to be proactive about, to organize around. whichever way you see it, within the left there's long been a tendency toward military-style organization. the history of that organization hasn't worked out so well at times--you know, when these organizations actually took power and deployed themselves not only around what they said they were after, but also in ways shaped by their own organizational periods in the underground. think lenin.

there's also been a more diffuse anarchist tradition, which was overlayed with another tradition that reacted against leninism and it's unfortunate (um....yeah) effects on the soviet union. this tradition typically thought alot about general strikes, so about a non-violent way to accomplish revolutionary goals predicated on a mass withdrawal of consent from the existing order. personally, i like the idea of this, even though in the present world i can't quite figure out how exactly folk would go about withdrawing consent and have it register, given that the existing media apparatus tends to focus only on those sections which have not withdrawn consent and positions everything else outside it. whence "terrorism" and other fictions. image effects.

the point of all this is that it simply is not true that there's any coherent opposition between the political left and guns--or violence as a political weapon. what there are mostly are projections--if folk themselves oppose violence and construct a sense of the tradition they align with, they tend to make it over into the image of their preferences.

personally i have a hard time doing that because i've spent way way way too much time working on the history of the left and thinking about it's collapse.

i tend to oppose guns when i oppose the politics that people trot out that inform their use, really.
this because i see guns as neutral, as objects, and focus instead on how people seem to think about political objectives that they imagine would inform how they define which types of violence would be acceptable to them.


so in a conversation about the appearance that the ultra-right might be organizing some kind of putsch, i will definitely argue against the politics--which i oppose entirely---and by extension against the idea that this kind of politics should inform how "legitimate" violence is defined.
and i find it a bit alarming that there are still ongoing consequences which benefit the ultra-right which follow from the nra getting in bed with them at the organizational level (as an organization, then, which isn't the same as the membership)


this because not only do i oppose these politics on principle and logically--but also because i know that if such a "revolution" were to happen, people like me would end up in nice rural camps somewhere in all likelihood, learning the errors of our ways by digging canals or moving rocks back and forth.

just thought this an interesting place to say this.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

rahl

I really think people try to read too much into this. The vast majority of people who own guns do so for varioius reasons. Among them are hunting, protection, collection(antiques), or just general target shooting. the ones who use them for protection genuinely see it as a last resort defensive weapon, not offensive. It's the batshit crazy 1% who take all the focus on this issue, and muddy the waters. Just my opinion.

---------- Post added at 02:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:12 PM ----------

I just heard on msnbc that there is a police standoff with a man in LA who allegedly made threats against the whitehouse.
here comes the revolution

Willravel

I have no problem with people owning guns for hunting. I have no problem with people having non-working guns as a part of a collection (I even have a few rifles from the civil war era from my grandfather in a big ceder chest). I can't understand the necessity of being constantly armed due to fear of eminent attack, as it's something that runs counter to my way of thinking, but I've learned to accept that mostly it's harmless. Most liberals are mainly like this, and many have even backed off gun control more recently. My point about many people on the left is that we don't buy into the "someone is probably going to break into your house and rape you, and you have the right to murder this phantom" way of thinking. We're also less likely to buy into war rhetoric. It's not that we're less naive on average, our naivete just manifests in different ways.

I think the aim of discussion should be mainly about the relationship between modern far-right conservative politics, extremist gun culture, insrectionism (a made up word meaning individuals that live in a constant state of readiness to insurrection), and the willingness to commit attacks against innocent or pseudo-innocent people. It's where those avenues meet that we find our most recent generation of home-grown terrorists, people willing to blow up abortion clinics or shoot up holocaust museums.

I wasn't surprised to find out that James von Brunn, the man indicted in the shooting at the holocaust museum, is a "birther", someone that believes that President Obama's birth certificate is a fake. I was also unsurprised to find out that he has been militantly opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve since at least the early 1980s. I was not surprised to find out that James von Brunn had very conservative views on illegal immigration, rooted in his own racism.
James Von Brunn: A Profile | TPMMuckraker

rahl

I don't know at what point extremely uneducated, conspiracy theorist, gun fanatic, zealous religious nutjobs became the republican base. That isn't directed at anyone by the way. I just don't remember the Republican party catering to these people 15-20 years ago. Or why people in conservative media put forth this insane propoganda. All it is doing is fueling the hate and further dividing this country

Walt

I’m not a fan of gun owners being labeled as extremists…or even conservatives. I don’t consider myself either though I do own firearms and agree with some conservative principles.

The recent explosion in gun sales isn’t indicative of any collective effort to arm a revolutionary militia. Rather, it’s in response to the current administrations gun control rhetoric. President Obama has repeatedly stated that he is in favor of renewing the 1994 assault weapons ban as well as enacting other far reaching gun control measures. Gun enthusiasts are simply responding by buying what they can, while they can.

This imminent national threat from right-wing radicals seems to be a bit blown out of proportion. The fair and unbiased media seems to be focusing on a select few extremists who have mentally created a scenario in which armed government officials go door to door, forcibly taking away privately owned guns. I would venture a guess that most of these people are living unremarkable lives. Creating an enemy in the government gives them a cause in which they can play the role of the lone hero. Owning firearms is a necessity, then as it gives these select few a legitimacy that they would otherwise be without – kinda like North Korea and its nuclear weapons program.

The only realistic way for the government to confiscate private firearms is through a long series of small legislative acts. These acts would have to make it so hard and expensive to own a firearm, that folks would have no choice but to give them up. Because of the cyclical nature of politics, I don’t see this scenario ever playing out in full.

I’m guess that the reason that people were willing to hand over their weapons during Katrina was simply because they were scared. They were scared and believed that the government would help them if they surrendered to its demands. I can’t see people willingly giving up their firearms unless they were under extreme duress. They would need to be motivated by the kind of fear that’s created in a “holy shit, the worlds gonna end!” disaster.

We all suffered massive invasions of privacy under the previous administration. Yes, there was outrage but there was also a lack of violence in the form of an uprising. Electronic surveillance is a vague idea for most, leaving those who were upset no tangible villain.

Dk nailed it when he talked about drawing a line in the sand. Political ideology aside, there are more than a few average citizens out there who are willing to fight and die should armed government officials come into their home and demand that they hand over their legally owned firearms. Being willing to go down swinging over a hunk of steel and wood may sound silly and overly dramatic to some. To others, it’s a matter of principle.

__________________
Calmer than you are...

Willravel

I think it has a lot to do with the failure of Reagen-based conservatism both politically and economically. What happens when your party reinvents itself and 30 years later (20 years of which were Republican) nearly everything about that reinvention has failed? Reaganomics failed, the military industrial complex has failed, the marriage of the right and the evangelicals has failed, fiscal conservatism turned out to be a promise no Republican could keep, etc.

So the right has to either face the truth, that it's time for another reinvention, or they can radicalize and go into denial. Some conservatives are waking up to the fact that it's time to reexamine the ideology and clean house, but the right wing media has chosen the other path for the most part, and the right wing of the media does represent the center of conservative power and influence right now. In order for conservatism to survive, it has to do something it's not comfortable with: change and adapt. I know conservatives willing to change, but they're not in the seats of power or influence, so they're largely marginalized by their fellow conservatives. What we need is a moderate conservative on the Republican ticket in 2012 to bring with him or her a new conservative vision, followed by replacing Beck and ORly and Hannity on Fox News with more moderate conservatives.

Walt

I think you're reading too much into this. I'd be SHOCKED if 2% of the extremists from BG's videos could define "socialism", let alone the tenets of Reaganomics.

I think its more likely that these extremists are unremarkable people, leading unremarkable lives. Tyler Durden summed it up nicely in Fight Club when he said "Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

People need something to fight for/against. The guv'mint is as good an enemy as any.

__________________
Calmer than you are...

mixedmedia

This would assume that television politics is really about politics and not about making money. Dream on.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Willravel

If they disagreed with the one deemed the future of the party that was energizing the base, they'd simply drop out of the conservatives' interest.

mixedmedia

Perhaps, but I do not see a trend away from absolute conflict. Any more than I see a trend away from any other form of pornography.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

timalkin

..

__________________
Trinity: "What do you need?"

Neo: "Guns. Lots of guns."

-The Matrix

mixedmedia

How do I interpret what is going on it Iran right now? Much the way I interpret my life right now. Having a gun would make minimal difference in the face of state-empowered brutality.
You are soft. A soft, naive dreamer.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Willravel

Oh I admit it's totally wishful thinking that 2012 will bring the next Ronald Reagan-esque conservative reformer. I'd be surprised if it happened in the next 20 years. I'm pretty sure it will happen, though. Eventually.

mixedmedia

Ronald Reagan brough Mobutu to Washington and called him a "a voice of good sense and goodwill."

got anything else?

The thing to realize is that it has been a charade for all of your lifetime...and mine. Who can say when it was real.
Therefore any and all reaction is facile. Sham. Sorry, but there is no going back.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Willravel

I wasn't being clear. Ronald Reagan demonstrated a new generation in conservative thinking, an actual change in conservative vision. The fact that I happen to think he was one of the worse presidents isn't relevant to the point I was trying to make.

mixedmedia

Perhaps he was the beginning of the end of true activist politics in America.
sorry, but I can't buy into your argument, because I do not buy into the perspective at all.
I'm not sure when politics started being sold to us, but I am sure it preceded Eisenhower.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

rahl

politics has been politics for thousands of years, predating roman times. Why are people suprised by this?

dippin

This wet dream that folks with guns will establish democracy is just a wet dream. Iraq, Angola, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Uganda are all nations where the population has (or had) plenty of guns and were far from being a democratic paradise, to say the least. This wet dream presumes that the only source of conflicts are between "the people" vs "the state," and that "the people" all speak with one voice.

In fact, I am quite certain that if one were to look at the big picture throughout history, one would find absolutely no indication that guns=>democracy. Yeah, in some occasions folks with guns overthrew a tyrannical government. And in some occasions folks with guns established a tyrannical government. Much like "guns dont kill people, people kill people," guns don't create democracy, people create democracy.

As for Iran, I find the current reaction of American conservatives about what is going on there to be one of the biggest examples of cognitive dissonance available. The losing party and the protesters there that are now being so idealized are the same ones that were in power up until 2005, long after being branded "axis of evil."

dksuddeth

people do create democracy, but what keeps it that way in the face of oppression?

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

dippin

certainly not guns, as those have been used to know down democracies at least as often as they have been used to set them up.

Willravel

Certinaly you don't expect the answer to such a complex and loaded question to simply be "guns" or "armament". The delicate balance necessary to maintain economic and social prosperity while also maintaining a fair balance of power between people, government, and market couldn't be summed up in 100,000 words, let alone one. Could one of those 100,000 words be something related to weapons? Very possibly. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to earning and maintaining a republic.

mixedmedia

I realize this, but I am taking the conversation off track. My comments are pertaining to American politics and the delusion that our political system is actually 'what it seems.'

/end threadjack.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

roachboy

well, it isn't a threadjack, ms media. you could see gun fantasies as reactions against a combination of things---picking a couple: a society of the spectacle in which everything is image and every image has it's place on the one hand and both the fact of significant socio-economic dislocation and (even more) anxiety about that.

revolution is the introduction of a new product line into a system of products that's legitimated through the new product lines that are introduced. anything and everything is narrated as a variant of the same. on the basis of narratives that make anything and everything variants of the same, image collages are produced and soon elements from these collages end up devices in other collages and so politics becomes entirely a matter of combination and recombination, a sort of shopping for elements as much as a shopping of objects and the personal identities that come packaged along with those objects.

so you can look at guns as they circulate in far right contexts as commodities that come with the consumer identity "free" appended to them. free is an element in a collage that gets abstracted and pasted into other collages: so "free" becomes strapped becomes like a minuteman becomes strict constructionist: "free" means resistant to any and all change that's happened since the 18th century back when scale made sense and there were fewer in the ways of institutionalized Superegos running about, watching, meting out punishments---all of which are decoys behind which the Reality lurks, which is an image of the Persecuting Father....

but there are many possible combinations

"free" can operate in assemblages that enframe a notion of personal space, and a notion of personal space made inviolable can be a way to compensate for the sense that in socio-economic and political terms the ground is dissolving beneath your feet or (more widespread) anxiety about the possibility that in socio-economic and political terms the ground may well be dissolving beneath your feet or be about to and maybe your consumer identity will allow you to see it maybe it won't.

free can mean that there is some possibility of enforcing a separation between an entirely colonized space of desire and dreaming (ideology, advertisement...no real difference) and some object world that you can pretend is separate from that entirely colonized space, even as you try to enforce that sense of separation using the same kind of device (a commodity) enframed using the same devices (advertisements in the largest sense) and so are acting through what they call an interpellation (through a social identity that follows from the way commodities are framed, so a position for the user of a commodity).

the irony i suppose is that this way you can imagine a gun gets you Outside the entirely colonized spaces of desires and dreams which shape the entirely colonized spaces we (sometimes laughingly) call reality because you can potentially shoot people with it and that, goddamn it, is real. but dying is just an inevitability: it is no more or less real than anything else. killing can be a largely imaginary act---so if you shoot some atf guy who enters your imaginary house under some imaginary scenario to take away your imaginary freedom by taking away your imaginary gun and see in that imaginary act something of a rebellion and not an enactment of a consumer scenario outlined from the beginning, one which appeals to a demographic that you happen to be part of....you're not doing anything but following a script.

all having a gun does is make you a consumer of a particular type of commodity.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dksuddeth

the answer is quite simple, in reality.

what keeps a democracy in the face of oppression is the threat of violence. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

roachboy

Q.E.D.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dippin

No, the answer is quite simple in your wet dreams, but unfortunately reality does not correspond to that.

Im sure the Czar really feared the Bolsheviks, Im sure that the Angola government realy feared UNITA, Im sure the Sierra Leone government really feared RUF, and on and on and one.

dksuddeth

the answer is plain as day. why do you think law enforcement actions use overwhelming numbers? its all about the threat of force. choosing not to believe that moves you outside of reality.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

dippin

they do that in both democracies and dictatorships.

For every American revolution you have a coup.

This little binary system if you assume that the only groups in the world are "the people" and "the state," and that both act as one.

The whole "guns create democracy" is simply magical thinking from, ironically, the same group of people who say "guns don't kill people, people do."

dksuddeth

did you miss the point or are you obtuse?


lets be more accurate. I said PEOPLE create democracies, guns keep them that way. Can guns also destroy them? yes, but in the face of violent oppression your right to free speech only gets you killed.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

Stating your conclusion is not demonstrating your conclusion.

dksuddeth

you want a videotaped occurrence or something? What i've stated has been demonstrated on both sides numerous times.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

dippin

I just love this beautiful world of make believe where actual history doesn't matter.

But hey, Im guessing the UK isnt a democracy then. Or India. Or Spain. Or Brazil. The real democracies must be Somalia, Angola, Iraq and Sierra Leone.
This is not to say that guns are bad, but the real point is that from a democracy point of view, they are irrelevant.

If you want to defend your gun rights because they are your rights, great.

But let's not substitute dreams for actual history. Never mind that most of democracies established during the so called third wave of democratization happened without a gun in sight or the threat of violence use. Solidarnosc, "Diretas Ja," "Revolucao dos Cravos," "Pactos de la Moncloa," and on and on...

roachboy

whence the interest in mapping this whole gun=freedom business into an area of neurotic responses to socio-economic dislocation.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

timalkin

..

__________________
Trinity: "What do you need?"

Neo: "Guns. Lots of guns."

-The Matrix

dippin

Inflamed rhetoric and patriotism are not substitutes for reality.

Guns have been used just as often to overthrow democracy as to sustain it, and unarmed populations have been able to sustain democracies just as well as armed ones.

The_Dunedan

Why the insistance that Democracy is a good thing? Democracy poisoned Socrates, Democracy gave us the French Revolution, Democracy is the rule of the many and powerful over the few and powerless. Why does everyone assume this is a good? Because they assume that the majority will always be on their side?

FREEDOM is the needful thing in question.

dippin

Democracy is a vague concept that just means "rule of the people." It doesn't imply majority elections. And in any case, the point remains.

This is what I don't get about some gun advocates. I think "i have the freedom to own guns and the government shouldn't do anything about it" is a perfectly valid ethical argument. I don't see why the need to make utilitarian claims about all the ills guns magically heal, especially when there really is no substantial evidence for it. What we know, from hundreds of studies and statistical analysis, is, even when people find an effect of guns on some other variable, that effect is quite small. The best conclusion we can arrive at, if we are trying to empirically determine what effect guns have on other variables, is that they are mostly irrelevant. I think an argument that underscores that, along with the ethical questions around banning guns, is a much more powerful pro gun argument than the sort of magical thinking where they solve everything.