Firearm ownership in the United States
In the United States, our constitution had 10 amendments added to it known as the Bill of Rights. Of these 10, the one of interest is the 2nd, perhaps the most controversial of them all, as its purpose and its limits are still debated to this day. The second amendment states the following:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
A simple concept, in order to preserve what the founding fathers saw as a free nation, the people must not be disarmed. The intention was that the common populace could organize effectively against a government that violated their rights, due to their access to weapons. Additionally, the citizens of the USA may bear arms for other reasons, including self defense, hunting, and for recreation, like target practice or collecting. Given a robust sense of the legal status of firearms in the US, we can move on to the criticisms of this practice.
Issues of further restricting gun ownership
In the development of firearms in the past century, we have seen the invention of powerful weapons like assault rifles. Because of this, we see a common argument of “We do not wish to remove the second amendment, but no one needs an AR-15. These weapons are simply for killing humans! By banning assault weapons, we’d save lives, and technically you can still bear arms in the form of smaller firearms.” Sounds reasonable, no? Well it’s far more complicated than that. The issue is, this doesn’t really stop the issue of gun-related homicides. Sure you can stop those mass shootings that make national television, where white people are getting shot at by a madman with a bag of rifles, but banning those rifles does not stop most homicides. The majority of gun-related homicides are small-scale, in poor areas, where the weapon of choice is a handgun. The following statistics show that in 2016, of 11,004 homicides where the weapon was a firearm, 7,105 of those firearms were handguns. Potentially more could have been handguns, as 3,077 firearms do not have their type stated. Only 374 classify as rifles. Of course, saving 374 lives is good, but clearly this does not solve the issue of gun-related homicides!
Issues of removing the 2nd Amendment
Let’s say our friends in favor of gun control stick to their position that restricting firearms is the way to go. Now, seeing that their boogeyman, the AR-15, is not actually the culprit of most gun-related homicides, they shift their position to the complete banning of firearms. A mass disarmament of the entire USA. Well, assuming our pro gun control friend supports reformism, we ask how exactly they expect to pass anything like that in the USA. A direct violation of the constitution? Politicians are far too spineless to dare pass anything like that, they would look like a tyrant, a traitor to the constitution. Ironically, in the process of taking guns and ammunition from the people, they hand their opponents a massive amount of ammunition to use against them. They will be denounced, rejected, and unlikely to have a political career again. Even if they could pass something violating the 2nd amendment, it would simply be ruled unconstitutional. And good luck on trying to mobilize any movement in the US government in favor of a reconstitution. The proposition is simply impossible to put in place. In the current state of the USA, where firearms are a part of our national identity, and removing them would violate the other part of our national identity (the constitution), we cannot completely ban firearms.
The impracticality and worrying implications of disarmament
Although we have already made it clear that it would be impossible to ban firearms in the USA, let us for the sake of the argument say that we can pass such a law. Let’s say, the US government had just passed a new law, ordering the complete disarmament of civilians. What would have to be done? Well, the government is suddenly tasked with rounding up about 393,000,000 firearms across the entire USA. And I assure you, not everyone is just going to hand their weapons in. While the “boogaloo boys” may just be a bunch of bluffers, people will still attempt to hide and trade their weapons. With a crisis of millions of firearms illegally circulating around the USA, to fix this would require a massive investment into the already large and powerful surveillance state. Ironically, the same folks who chant “defund the police!” now support dumping billions into the FBI and police just to find all these weapons and kill off the gun trade. Power will continue to centralize into the hands of the state, privacy will be violated more than it is now, and the police state will benefit greatly from this move. Thus, pro-gun control is pro-police, a reactionary position and exposing to the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the liberal types. We can only conclude that under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered. Any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.
ENDING NOTE:
I didn’t even touch upon the role of firearms in revolutionary organizing, but this was made with the assumption a non-revolutionary would be reading, therefore it’s not relevant.
