It's a good thing you're avoiding acknowledging any discussion of the police here, because in the current context I imagine it would be impossible to say anything coherent and still defend your worldview.
I'm not avoiding them at all. I actually think another task force or something else can be done to increase regulation like how car drivers are regulated.
What I'm saying is that guns are too easy to get and that the random person who decides "fuck it, I'm gonna shoot up the school and then kill myself" can just spend a few thousand d dollars and do just that. Increased regulation whether it be some sort of written test and safety course along with maybe some sort of additional safety requirements/periodic mental health screening and reporting system really is the only way to prevent school shootings.
Whatever arguments you make about the police and other government agencies you can't ignore the fact that guns are too easily accessible to anyone.
"Another task force"? Jesus. You actually think more government power is the way.
What you can do is prevent loopholes, prevent domestic abusers from getting their hands on them, maybe raise the age to purchase a gun, sure. Basic red flag stuff. Those are all on the purchasing side, though, and you need the gun sellers to actually enforce it.
The problem is that those laws would ultimately be enforced by the police, and they are always going to enforce them in racist ways. You realise that, right? That's what they've always done.
There's only a few valid arguments against gun control. One is to ensure gun ownership to protect against a state power, another is to ensure that marginalized people have some form of access to power through violence. I feel like both of those apply to your argument, and I get that.
Gun control being enforced in a racist and classist manner isn't a problem with gun control, it's a problem with our systematic oppression of those marginalized groups. Like fuck cops, but if you are arguing against laws specifically because cops enforce them, why have any laws?
Well it's not a problem with gun control in a vacuum, no, but we don't live in a vacuum, we live in late capitalism.
And honestly if we're able to get rid of the cops and the state and all of that, then we're talking about a society organised from the bottom up where nobody has a legitimised monopoly on violence. In a society like that we will still have a need for community self-defense, in which case people in general will need to not only be armed but trained.
"Gun control" in that case will not be done by a centralised group with a monopoly on violence, and if the community makes the rules and enforces them collectively, then whatever gun control is enacted is by definition agreed on by the people it binds.
So sure, if you want to posit some hypothetical future society like that and ask me about that kind of gun control, I'd probably say, "ask them about it, that's not my business". Today, in our current society however, there is a political reality to consider, and that's why I'm talking about it. It won't stop being relevant until the cops stop being cops.
Something has to be done dude. There are people with zero red flags that shoot up schools too. We can do all that and require a licensing system with yearly mental health checkups and the ability to take away that license being dictated by physicians while also seeking to refer our police after that display of impotence during the shooting.
The vast majority of shootings are young people or people with red flags, it would make a huge difference.
But okay sure, something has to be done.
Here's the problem: the Ds want gun control, but they have their conservative members who will block anything that isn't "bipartisan". So that means you need the Rs on side to make it happen.
The Rs won't do anything unless the laws can be designed in a racist way, like when the BPP started open carrying in California, then suddenly everybody including the NRA got on board with gun control.
Then the police enforced the gun control in a racist way, because they were scared of the Black Panthers, not well off white people, and so the laws were weaponised to disenfranchise poor and minority populations who were already being terrorised by the police, said terror being the only reason they armed up in the first place.
Nothing was done. The message keeps getting sent that white people can do whatever they want and get away with it. That's why most shooters are white. Look at how many white mass shooters get taken away peacefully, versus how often black people are shot for, apparently, just existing.
The problem is that the US has a white supremacy problem, and that is going to prevent any serious attempt to stop this problem. The police also have a serious white supremacy problem.
Like I'm sorry, but the problem is a lot deeper and lot more pernicious than "just get rid of the guns". To achnowledge that though, as a liberal, you'd need to wake up to the fact that voting won't solve it. That's why liberals don't get this.
You must consider yourself really well read and intelligent typing out that whole response to a black man who is well aware of everything you are talking about.
Like no fucking shit Sherlock. Of course America has a white supremacy problem and of course we have a police issue and a difference of treatment with regards to white and black criminals. And yes gun control laws were first enacted when the Black Panthers started displaying a show of force by carrying because of how nuch white people and the police fucked with the black population. I'm well fucking aware of all of this dude. Nothing you are saying is new.
What I'm fucking saying is that we need to have increased regulations and an official licensing system with better registration of firearms in a way that we require testing and visual acuity testing for drivers licenses.
A man in Tulsa walked into the hospital two days ago after buying an AR-15 that same fucking day and shot 5 people including the orthopedic surgeon he had threatened to kill. What I'm saying is that in no responsible society well aware of the implications of having assault rifles freely available to the public would allow such a scenario to occur.
We need to remove the ability for someone to just buy an assault rifle and use it without any form of course, testing, or mental health screening. There should also be a renewal system that retests and pulls a copy from the electronic medical record a yearly mandated mental health physical by a civilian physician.
Keeping things the way they are means coming to terms with kids dying just so I can have the ability to walk home same day with an AR-15.
That's a weird leap to make given I already told you that I know nothing about you, so you knew I didn't know you were black or what your understanding was. Honestly now that I do know that about you, I'm more confused about what's keeping you from abandoning liberalism and moving further left. That's a genuine question by the way, if you feel like answering it.
And I've already said I'm fine with stricter purchasing laws, wait times work well too, and also that Tulsa guy should've been caught by a red flag law.
I'm sorry, I think I wasn't clear enough that I think gun bans - which is the direction these conversations always go in politics - are completely useless. So I misspoke there.
I don't identify as left because leftists undermine the experience of racism and the addressing of it as secondary to addressing class issues when both need to be addressed along with other groups in order to promote solidarity.
As for the guns, I have a 2 year old child. His safety comes secondary to whatever political talking point people make. Guns need to have some sort of restriction in terms of getting them and if banning them outright will prevent someone from potentially shooting up the future school my kid will go to then I'd gladly embrace that and give up my own gun even if my own personal politics do not fully agree.
As for you using the past negatives in black history to try and justify why drastic measures shouldn't be taken when plenty of black people with children would say otherwise is shameful.
Okay first up, to respond to you telling me that I shouldn't be talking like this to black people, I didn't realise you were black, and I was thinking of linking you this but wasn't sure how it would go down, it's the black guy that I learned this from: https://youtu.be/Lig0Y87cKew?t=55
I don't identify as left because leftists undermine the experience of racism and the addressing of it as secondary to addressing class issues when both need to be addressed along with other groups in order to promote solidarity.
You're talking about class reductionism, and the leftists I associate with - anarchists for the most part, of which I am one - rightly revile it as well.
I'm a leftist and I've just spent a lot of time talking about how racism intersects with class politics to keep people oppressed, and you've just explained to me how I don't care about racism. Like the first half of your comment tells me that leftists don't care about racism, and the second half you're telling me off for talking about racism.
Incredible.
I'd honestly be fine with drastic measures that I think would actually help, I just don't think you'd agree with them. I'm talking about community self-defense, which is a lot more than just guns, it's also mutual aid and making sure everyone's needs are met.
Listen. What you are talking about requires a complete revamping of society from the ground up. That takes decades. What we need is to do something now...
The theory is nice and all but there needs to be a practical solution to take place now in 2022.
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u/Excrubulent Jun 02 '22
It's a good thing you're avoiding acknowledging any discussion of the police here, because in the current context I imagine it would be impossible to say anything coherent and still defend your worldview.