Gun Control: A Weapon of Oppression
Gun rights are absolutely vital to all Americans, especially the marginalized, disenfranchised, and vulnerable.
There is an old adage that goes: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” One could also posit: “Gun control doesn’t control guns; gun control controls people.”
Specifically, it unlawfully controls law-abiding American citizens attempting to exercise their constitutionally protected rights. A quick look at the mortifying murder statistics in Chicago, Philadelphia, or New York proves it definitively does not control criminals. Those cities have some of the most onerous gun laws, and some of the most horrifying body counts.
More specifically still, anti-2A legislation controls the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the most vulnerable members of our society. Fear of an empowered black population wielding guns and the same rights as their fellow Americans, for example, has consistently been an insidious impulse behind pernicious “gun regulations” from United States v. Cruikshank in 1876 to the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The role of euphemistic “gun control” in keeping minority groups oppressed is why it is particularly disconcerting to see the horrifying Club Q tragedy in Colorado Springs has already conjured the usual chorus clamoring for The Great American Disarming in order to ostensibly “protect,” in this case, the gay community. This is completely counterproductive. We should be seeking to get more guns out into the hands of law-abiding citizens, empowering socially or physically vulnerable groups and individuals to defend themselves.
You would think the bleeding-heart “Liberals” who have spent years shrieking hashtags about defunding the police—whom they decry as the racist, sexist, homophobic gestapo of a nefarious, straight, white male patriarchy—would be a bit keener on the idea of self-defense. Even those who hold a somewhat less vituperative view of law enforcement will be hard-pressed to deny the verity in the old adage that “when seconds count, cops are only minutes away.”
Thankfully, actual Americans are making use of their constitutional rights in record numbers despite the misguided (or outright malevolent) machinations of faux advocacy authoritarians.
So, for all the wannabe Betos out there rushing to grab guns from their fellow Americans, I implore you to consider several points that often get short thrift:
1) The history of gun control is bigoted and discriminatory:
https://docplayer.net/187814996-The-racist-origins-of-us-gun-control.html
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act
2) Gun ownership is important for black Americans:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/23/us/black-gun-owners-sales-rising/index.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/12/09/944615029/black-and-up-in-arms
3) Gun ownership is important for gay Americans:
4) Gun ownership is important for female Americans:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/female-gun-ownership-and-the-rise-of-fashionable-carrywear/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/21/women-gun-owners-self-defense-urban-survey
5) Guns save lives:
6) Good guys and gals with guns save lives:
https://6abc.com/hero-armed-citizen-in-mall-stopped-shooter-police-chief/12057770/
https://www.wowktv.com/news/local/charleston-police-shooting-victim-pulled-assault-rifle-on-party
7) Nebulous “common sense” or “assault weapon” bans don’t work:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stokes-assault-weapon-ban-20180301-story.html
https://cragop.org/2022/08/13/common-sense-gun-laws-are-based-on-common-nonsense/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/red-flag-laws-and-unintended-consequences
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1525107116674926
I have no doubt that many people arguing on behalf of 2nd Amendment infringement mean well. Of course, all of our hearts break for the innocent victims of any type of violence. However, the pro-disarmament crowd’s quixotic views and proposed policies all exhibit a profound misunderstanding of nearly every aspect of this topic, ranging from basic constitutional law to actual data on shootings. This is constantly on display as the anti-2A crowd, up to and including the current, placeholder president himself, are still incessantly spewing hyperbole and untruths, like cannon ownership was illegal, 9mm rounds “blows the lung out of the body,” and 2A protections are limited to militia service.
These myriad misconceptions—the anti-2A propagandists have amassed a truly impressive stockpile of falsehoods and fallacies—could all be readily remedied if someone just lends an honest ear to experts, like the fantastic Colion Noir, or spends some time in earnest doing their own research. (Sorry, CNN!)
Nonetheless, the media will continue to use emotional manipulation, skewed statistics, lies-by-omission, narrative peddling, and over-simplified arguments to convince people that we can:
Just make all the guns go away, then…
Make all the violence go away!
This is absurd, as we:
Cannot make all the guns go away in a nation with the Constitution and more guns than people, and…
As we see from bombings, stabbings, vehicular homicides, et cetera... across the globe, disarming the citizenry will not usher in a pacifist’s paradise or necessarily even decrease fatalities.
Quite the opposite, especially here in America. If people don’t like that, they can move.
Gun ownership does more than any other factor to level the playing field.
Other people will surely screech that the groups I’ve listed only need guns because we let other people have them! This is absurd, as well. As the copious links above demonstrate, disarming the population only further advantages physically or socially powerful populations. Carrying a gun is precisely what gives a petite, physically unimposing, young woman walking home alone the ability to fend off a hulking, physically overpowering, male assailant, whether he is unarmed, wielding a knife, or brandishing a gun of his own. And there may be more than one assailant. Carrying a gun is precisely what gives a black or gay couple walking home the ability to fend off a lynch mob or gang of attackers with superior numbers, whether they are unarmed, wielding knives, or brandishing guns of their own. Gun ownership does more than any other factor to level the playing field in these circumstances; it almost makes one wonder if our benevolent, gun-grabbing overlords aren’t really as dedicated to noble “equity” as they proclaim.
One last consideration for my particular framing, i.e., gun control as a weapon of oppression, is that the discriminatory nature of these regulations need not by tethered to the familiar dynamics of ethnicity, sex, or orientation. Though we may see overlap in this Venn diagram historically, these odious restrictions almost invariably disproportionately impact another designation that many modern politicians and media avoid like the plague: class. Tyrants in states like New Jersey, New York, and California, have petulantly responded to rulings like the Bruen decision with dogged attempts to continue circumventing constitutional rights by effectively pricing out poorer Americans of all stripes through inordinate licensing costs and endless paperwork. For “duh billionaiyahs!” such costs are tantamount to change in the couch cushions as they buy another gated mansion or private security details. For us proles left to fend for ourselves, those costs could mean we are locked out of our 2nd Amendment right if we want to afford rent. Admirable though it is to continue defending the civil rights of imperiled demographics, we would be remiss then to ignore the ongoing class warfare being waged all around us—even though it may make for less glamorous headlines. Failure to do so will only pave the path to perilous policies that will disenfranchise and harm the very people being paraded out to push this dangerous agenda of disarmament.
Speaking as a lefty who is perhaps more neutral on guns than many of my brethren, I have some thoughts about this. I personally dislike the idea of taking stuff away from law-abiding citizens because of the actions of guilty people. That said, even putting aside the recent mass-shooting craze, we have a problem in this country with gun violence that simply doesn't exist anywhere else in the developed world. Certainly that's true in countries where guns are illegal or more highly restricted, but even countries where guns are more legal and prevalent, we're still leaps and bounds above them. So what does that suggest? To me, guns may exacerbate the problem but they are not the source. Much gun violence relates to crime, both random and organized, and we tend to have much more of that than most developed nations too. I'm no expert on where crime comes from, but I would say these aspects are linked.
As for mass shootings and such, I would again say that guns might make them easier, but they are not the cause. Most mass shootings are either a difficult to detect form of domestic terrorism enacted by radicalized individuals or a form of suicide enacted by individuals who want the world to feel their absence in the most horrible way possible. Some even suggest that people who would have been serial killers in the past but can no longer escape from modern law enforcement methods turn to mass shootings to satisfy their bloodlust. These things happen in other countries too, even those without guns, but to a much lesser degree.
There's also been a rash in the news lately of people shooting others for the crime of being strangers knocking on their doors or accidentally wandering into their yards. Weirdly enough I think this is probably one of the better indicators of what is really going on. Americans are increasingly alienated from one another and are taught by the various media and social cults we inhabit that outsiders are the enemy out to hurt us. The part unspoken here is that if they want to hurt us, it's okay to hurt them first. Put that kind of increasingly severe mental virus in a country with a lot of firearms and you're going to see a lot of people get killed for no reason.
It's always a bit of a copout to say that the solution to some grave social ill is for people to simply behave better, because it's entirely unenforceable and probably subjective. But understanding that alienation and its cost would go a long way toward mitigating our problem of violence in this country. People are less likely to use violence on someone they feel a connection towards, whether for profit, revenge, or fear. A person who is part of a community is less likely to commit crimes against it, become radicalized, or seek to end their own lives. This doesn't mean some sort of mass conformity so much as understanding to a greater degree that we're all in this together, and, differences and all, we're all we've got.
I fear that the anti-2A cadre will never listen, but you made excellent points with REFERENCES ✔️ for anyone open to a discussion of liberty and personal responsibility. The historical use of 'gun control' enforcement to restrict the safety and liberty of any 'undesirable' group or ethnicity TRULY needs more airplay than it gets!