Statesian here. There are a CRAPTON of mass shootings here. If we do nothing about guns, the shootings will still happen. What is the leftist answer for reducing mass shootings without disarming the proletariat?

  • su25@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    cracking down on the right-wing. seriously. the vast majority of US mass shootings that i can remember are done by violent white supremacists and fascists. the right is dangerous and will always use extreme and horrific violence to achieve their ways. so the leftist answer would be to suppress the activities and organizing of fascists heavily.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      This. The circulation of fascist propaganda in particular must be curtailed and cracked down on to the greatest possible extent. Only a proletarian state can do this since a bourgeois state knowingly tolerates and cultivates fascism as a weapon against the working class and working class unity.

      • Blursty@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        This… Only a proletarian state can do this…

        Sounds like not “This” at all? You don’t agree with him. He’s suggesting fixing it somehow within the current system.

        • diegeticscream [all]@lemmygrad.ml
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          I didn’t read SU25 as saying that it could happen under the current state, just that that’s the action that would need to be taken.

          Edit - sorry, just realized this is an old thread. Feel free to ignore!

          • su25@lemmygrad.ml
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            of course the US government will never crack down on far-right terrorism, then they’d be stopping their own activities. this is purely just my leftist proposition of something that must happen to stop a lot of mass shootings. obviously, though, the US state is more interested in protecting the profits of the gun industry and the activities of the right. this would be an essential thing for a proletarian revolutionary state to do though.

            • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              The fetishization of the second amendment by white reactionaries reveals the true intention, not as a check against a “tyrannical” government as its propagandized to be, but as a securing of settler dominance against Black and Native populations.

              • su25@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                the right trying to “stop tyranny” is like the body trying to stop its own heart from beating.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    How did the Soviets approach the problem of unrest in the youth? Its by helping the youth build communal bonds among themselves, their community, their motherland, and their party that helped extinguish the anarchy left over from the Civil War alongside guaranteeing stability of home through the economic rights their parents had. It means educating socialist values while building a socialist material world to grow in.

    For adults that still retain mindsets of the old world, I would imagine it’d be best to use Axont’s proposal of the Swiss system with modifications for local conditions. Different types of communal depots or arsenals organized by either local enthusiasts, historical collectors, hunters, or outright gun nuts with full state supervision and with the possibility of financial support or other beneficial options as a proverbial carrot to encourage compliance. There’s of course considerations at play for urban and rural people as well. I suppose the goal is to make it so that the huge gun hogs that just want to demo-ranch style shit can do so in a safe environment and sort them out from the outright insurrectionist-brained gun hogs.

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    From what perspective? Am I the president with a compliant legislature or am I just me as I am now?

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    There should be a distinction drawn between how the proletariat should be armed and how right-wingers want to be armed. The right in America uses guns as toys and an intimidation tactic against the poor. They’re armed out of hatred and only care about their own guns, or perhaps that white people stay armed. American gun ownership, especially the 2A people, is an artifact from frontier justice, from slave catchers, lynching, all of that. It’s disorganized, individualized, and fully absorbed within the capitalist framework.

    The proletariat being armed implies for a purpose other than standard American gun ownership. We want liberation, we want to fight racism. So in that sense, gun ownership should be organized. Who commits mass shootings? Mostly disaffected white people who purchase a gun when they shouldn’t have them.

    I’d actually like to point to Switzerland’s model of gun ownership. I know they’re capitalist and imperialist and everything, but the gun ownership model is still interesting to me. You have to be involved in a militia there to have a gun. Guns and ammo belong to depots, so they’re communally owned. You have to do regular training and drills to have access as well. So to have a gun you have to be part of something, you need training on how to use it, you need to be focused on using it for a specific purpose.

    That’s how the proletariat should be armed, in an organized way. We shouldn’t be scared of restricting gun ownership based on purpose. They’re not toys and shouldn’t be bought and sold like toys. American gun culture is severely broken and downright frightening. It doesn’t represent an armed working class at all. It’s a disorganized mass, it’s the working class pointing guns at themselves. Combined with a lack of social purpose it’s like you said, a recipe for mass shootings.

    • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
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      Also the Swiss only get access to rifles and such from the militia right? Not exactly the kind of weapon you can hide under your shirt.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        A bolt action rifle is the only one you can get without an acquisition permit, but you still need a background check. Swiss people can request things like pistols but they need to have a reason unless that reason is hunting, sport shooting, or collecting (like a museum). And I’m pretty sure they have to prove that it’s one of those three things. If the reason is just something like “self-defense” I think that goes through several bureaucratic layers to get issued.

  • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
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    I don’t think the killing in US will ever stop so long as capitalism remains in charge. Most of these comments, while mostly correct, and discussing the symptoms that are causing the mass shootings while the underlying cause of those symptoms is being ignored. Fascist propaganda, white supremacy, mental health, etc? All these things stem from the same general source. They are all a product of rampant capitalism. Especially the mental health. We either don’t treat it at all or give people “antidepressants” that have been linked to erratic and violent behavior. All the stresses, social isolations, poverty, etc. that cause kids and adults alike to just go shoot up schools and shit. It’s all a product of capitalism driving the labor class insane. It’s meant to. To keep us killing each other and not the capitalists.

    Sure, you could enact laws against propaganda, better background checks, all that, but those things will never pass in the US’s hyper capitalist government. In theory they could work but in order for them to be put into practice you have to actually do something about capitalism. And if you end capitalism you get rid of a lot of the factors that cause the shootings in the first place.

    • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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      I don’t think anyone here disagrees with this. It’s just that for those of us living in this shithole country, there’s got to be at least some policy to fight for that make things safer but doesn’t disarm us. Capitalism in the US isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

      • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
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        Oh I get it completely but the issue I see is that there won’t BE any real action or reform taken specifically because the capitalist system doesn’t want it to. It’s like how the vast majority support extended background checks but Congress will never touch that shit. America is so fucked it would take the ending of capitalism in order to implement any of these ideas. At least that’s how it seems to be from my point of view of the society… God I hate it here.

  • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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    Good ideas all over the thread and I don’t have much to add to the specific discussion, but I just want to make a tangential point.

    Gun control has been historically applied selectively to, for example, BPP members. But in the case of a revolution in which the majority of proletarians don’t have guns, y’all are lucky that there are these big gun and ammo depots lying around called “gun nut homes,” and the revolutionaries can send him to the spawn point and steal his house in Minecraft.

    Turns out that a comical amount of guns does not make one bulletproof themselves.

  • Effort0499@lemmygrad.ml
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    The issue is mass shootings have become a part of American culture. Americans not only like killing brown people in other countries, but also themselves. I’m obviously overgeneralizing but it does hold true to at least some degree. The only real solution is a mass reeducation of Americans and that can only happen once the US itself is thrown into the dustbin of history.

    • ihaveibs@lemmygrad.ml
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      I mean yeah, mass murder has been part of the cultural psyche since the beginning. Once genocide and lynching fell out of fashion, the violence simply turned inward. You can see the parallels with relationship between liberalism and fascism.

  • EndOfLine@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago
    • Invest more in mental health programs, including efforts to destigmatize therapy.
    • Teach critical thinking skills in school to give younger generations the tools to be more likely to find an alternative to violence.
    • Encourage more in-person social events and public spaces. It’s too easy to dehumanize these days.
    • Stalinist_Dishrag@lemmygrad.ml
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      I’ve been thinking about your third bullet point a lot lately. I genuinely think that the lack of irl social interaction these days is far more pernicious than anyone wants to acknowledge. I don’t think it’s social media and technology that are the problem, rather, the LACK of third places and irl social interaction is the problem, if that makes sense.

      • Arachno_Stalinist@lemmygrad.ml
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        I went through online learning back in 2020 until early 2022 (Although this was probably justified due to the pandemic) and I can confirm that the lack of irl interaction (Combined with being overworked with constant online activities, where I had to work even during weekends to submit them on time) during online learning is what caused me so many problems and is what made me realize how shitty the status quo is, and that eventually radicalized me into becoming a ML, even if there were some bumps on the road. (although I overcame them by reading more theory)

        While I still hold a personal grudge against the internet and (mainstream) social media, and have a desire to keep usage of it to a minimum, I agree that the technology itself isn’t the problem. It is how it is used under Capitalism which is the problem. The internet has so much potential to connect and unite people for the better, but under Capitalism it isolates and alienates people. The internet could have been (and still could be) a great place to express human creativity and solidarity, but Capitalism has turned it into yet another place for consumerism and profit for the sake of profit, not to mention how corporations gather your online data and sell it.

  • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Community ownership of weapons. If you want to do a mass shooting or whatever, you have to convince your local community.

    Specific details discussed later

    • lil_tank@lemmygrad.ml
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      Damn why are you getting downvotes that’s basically the most based answer so far.

      Maybe some people haven’t got the idea that, precisely, no one in going to convince their local community to hand them guns and ammunition with no scrutiny or to commit mass murder.

      • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        What’s a downvote?

        This was one of my ideas from anarchism that I carried over to Leninism that I think is applicable to any citizen’s militia. Obviously, I could point to reactionary militias in the US to see how the idea could be corrupted, but if you’re at that point already…

        It also means that the community has a Space for regular training of skills relevant to insurgency, in case a larger state rolls by.

        Idk, I’d be happy to bash out more ideas regarding this.

  • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Red flag laws for extreme behavior (domestic abusers, those making active, credible, and targeted threats against themselves or others), allowing psychiatrists or psychologists to place holds on a persons ability to own guns, cracking down on straw purchases especially for known “under the table” gun distributors.

    Mandating that firearms be purchased with either a gun safe or trigger lock as to prevent accidental discharge and to keep them out of the hands of children.

    Mandating first time gun owners take a short class in proper gun storage, handling, cleaning, and safety.

    All of these things can be reasonably done without disarming the proletariat and they would reduce the gun death statistic SIGNIFICANTLY. The disarming of the suicidal or those in psychological distress along with domestic abusers would cut the amount of guns deaths by nearly 2/3rds.

    • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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      In general, I would also support additional barriers for firearm ownership under the age of 25. Not make it illegal persay, but give some extra hoops to jump through.

      Most of these mass shooters are men in their early twenties, where the decision-making part of the brain is not fully developed and most are in a very vulnerable transition stage in life.

      • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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        Ehhhh I’m not sure about this one either. If a person can sign up for the military at 18, own a car, vote, sign legal contracts, etc, or buy alcohol and tobacco at 21, then limiting firearms to 25 seem infantilizing and misguided.

        It’s a similar argument that a lot of right wingers use to say “raise the voting age”.

        Also the brain development is a decent point, but its a lot more overblown then people make it out to be. 25 is actually the general average as people can be done at 22 or need until 27, and the level of development relies more on life experience and education then it does on some brain wiring.

        If a person is hellbent on killing people like a mass shooter, then they will use anything they can get their hands on, hence why they’ve used cars before for example. Limiting everyone based off of a handful of the most deranged people is a bad idea.

        • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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          Ehhhh I’m not sure about this one either. If a person can sign up for the military at 18,

          Well… to add some context to this, if you’re in the military you don’t walk around every day with a weapon/ammo. You are not allowed to keep personal firearms on your person while one duty or on post without a really REALLY good reason. You are not allowed to store privately owned firearms in your barracks or on post housing (and probably off post housing too but you’d have to piss off all sorts of people to get them to comb through your house looking for stuff to gig you on). So its not that far out there.

          • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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            The point is that in this hypothetical, you can go and use a gun, along with grenades, rockets, missiles, bombs, jets, tanks, gunships, helicopters, ships, and satellites to kill those your government has declared enemies. All at 18 years old.

            But for some reason a civilian can’t own a gun till 25?

            • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Correct, its not that big of a deal to live in a society organized around the organized use of firearms instead of unorganized individual gun ownership.

        • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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          Fair points. I didn’t say I supported banning young people from firearms though, but would entertain giving them extra scrutiny depending on the legislation.

    • cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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      To be fair, there was relatively widespread banditry after Mao’s death and before Deng’s policies were put into effect. But that could be pinned to factors unrelated to guns themselves.

    • jlyws123@lemmygrad.ml
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      Who told you that,Back then, fighting between the two villages, using RPGs.A lot of paper documents from the '60s are not online.