[Quincy Lehr]

I'm actually with Tim on this one, though my reasoning against gun control owes far more to the Panthers and Malcolm X than the NRA. This is a country with heavily armed police and a huge military--both being bad news for democracy. I'd prefer they have as little of a monopoly on violence as possible.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Oh, yeah, sure, I want my fair share of violence!
Well don't worry, we'll all apparently get it whether we like it or not.
Welcome to Hell. I'd rather be dead than to shoot someone.

Nemo

[Roger Slater]

Yeah, Quincy, and Adam Lanza's mother having a couple of guns in the house was our protection against overreaching by the US military? When the army comes to round up citizens, I'll just stand behind Tim and feel safe.

[Quincy Lehr]

Yes, I'd like the Oakland cops to think twice before beating up a black kid due to the presence of the Black Panther Party, say. The right to self-defense is a natural right, as Malcolm X noted in his "By Any Means Necessary" speech. A lot of gun control laws came about in the 1960s to crack down on the black power movement. If the cops are armed, if the neo-Nazis and Klansmen are armed, so should the citizenry be armed.

[Roger Slater]

Armed citizens helped the cause of civil rights? It was an armed citizen who killed Martin Luther King, to give just one counter-example. But it was armed policemen who arrested the assassin. Other armed police and national guardsmen escorted black students into schools that wanted to defy court orders to enroll them. And it was an armed citizenry that allowed for a culture of condoned lynching throughout the south from the time of the Reconstruction to passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Indeed, it's the "black kid" you speak of who is most victimized by our gun culture. Just look at the statistics. It's not even close.

The idea that you will discourage rogue racist policemen from shooting innocent people by giving everyone a gun strikes me as silly. Indeed, you will give the rogue police a perfect defense because they can always point to the victim's gun and claim that they were acting in self-defense. It would be far better to weed out the bad cops then to make guns so readily available that the Adam Lanzas of the world can kill more people in a day than the police department kills in a decade. Do you actually believe the Newtown police department posed a bigger threat to its citizenry, and was more likely to kill them if they were unarmed, than Adam Lanza did?

[John Whitworth]

Oh come, Nemo. I'd rather shoot someone than be dead. Of course you'd have to show me how to do it. Point the thing. Squeeze the trigger. All that.

[Quincy Lehr]

Roger--

Weeding out the "bad cops" rather miscasts the nature of the state in a capitalist society, in much the same way that discussing the sky-high rates of gun violence in this country without discussing the massive class and racial disparities in this country, for instance that Harlem has had Depression levels of unemployment for the past ninety years or so misses the point of why this is such a violent country. You are right, however, that most gun violence is not Columbine- or Sandy Hook-style indiscriminate massacres. But why not legalize drugs and prostitution and drop the bottom out of an organized crime racket or ten? Or actually address the problem of a large part of this country's population's economic insecurity. Oh right--Obama got re-elected. I'm sure it will all be fine, in that case.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr

my reasoning against gun control owes far more to the Panthers and Malcolm X than the NRA.

But Quincy, Malcolm didn't have the 'net. If he'd had access to it, he would have been organizing four man camera crews, dressed in suits, to walk around and document police actions. Recording and exposing their behavior is a far more effective deterrent than retaliatory violence. And it's perfectly legal, since last week...

I hear the 'armed citizenry prevents dictatorship' argument all the time. I've even heard it said the collective group of US armed civilians is the largest armed force in the history of the world. But in real-politik terms, they would be swept aside like a gnat by the military, if a crisis came about. Besides, these days, in democracies at least, dictators tend to get voted into office. Your historical knowledge means I don't need to supply examples for that.

Nor do I need to point out the irony of citing Malcolm here, given the way his final day played out...

Peace,

Bill

[Quincy Lehr]

But Bill, I mentioned self-defense. And yes, in most cases, the military splits. Certainly did in 1917. The cops generally don't, though. This is also a fairly quiescent time on the left. Times do change, and the Reagan Years can't last forever, they just can't. And when they don't, I'd prefer it if They didn't have all the guns.

[Tim Murphy]

What Quincy is saying. I had a young cop bang on my door at 3 AM in August, shining a flashlight, with an unholstered gun. I answered with a much brighter flashlight and a much bigger gun. She ran away.