It’s time to embrace legally owning guns

It must be political sleaze month at WSU. The school has scheduled right-wing TV pundit John Strossel, the tireless crusader against health care reform and recently presented conservative columnist Star Parker. According to The Wichita Eagle:

“Yet “conservative crusader” Star Parker, speaking Monday as part of the Civic Engagement Lecture Series at Wichita State University, compared accused killer (of abortion Dr. George Tiller) Scott Roeder to Nat Turner, who led an uprising against slavery in 1831. She said that Roeder illustrated the hopelessness among those who oppose abortion.”

So killing people is now just one more tactic of the American right-wing. More and more, conservatives seem to threaten that they will come to rallies armed and shoot to kill if they don’t get their way politically. I suppose those of us on the left are expected to just cower away in fear and let the bullies have things their way.

But I don’t think so!

I originally opposed the new conceal carry weapons laws, passed recently here in Kansas and other parts of the country, because I didn’t want to see right-wing kooks running around the streets with their guns blazing. Now I’ve decided it is time that I and other leftists like me embrace gun ownership as a way of life here in the US.

What is legal for the right is legal for the left. We can carry guns. I personally like a .22 long pistol with a fairly long barrel.

They can be comfortably concealed and they are accurate. If I aim for a person’s eyes, there is a good chance I can drop them before they can shoot me with their miniature cannons they all insist on carrying. The size of a bullet only matters if it hits its intended victim first. There are a lot of strategies to carrying a loaded gun. Most important is that we need to learn how to use guns as effectively as those on the political right.

Guns and violence is about all the right-wingers understand. They are like animals. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t have that ability which is why they resort to bullying and intimidation as they have done at the town hall meetings for health care.

We need to defend ourselves, but not make the kinds of mistakes that the now defunct Communist Workers Party made during The Greensboro massacre, November 3, 1979. That year members of the CWP took guns to a “death to the Ku Klux Klan” rally. The Ku Klux Klan showed up with their own guns and actually shot and killed two party members and three other marchers. In court, the KKK was acquitted once they explained to the jury that they were simply killing communists. The CWP actually expected justice. They never used their own guns. Apparently they thought they could just intimidate the far right. We have to take guns seriously. No one should carry a gun they are not willing to use. A communist should never expect fair play from this government or its right-wing supporters.

As Mao Zedong said; “revolution is not a dinner party” and “political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” People on the right seem to realize that. On the left we still have a lot of denial.

But we also have to stand up for our rights. We may not actually have to shoot anyone. Often just not running away or cowering when bullies try to intimidate us may be all it takes. Standing our ground and showing the right-wingers we are not afraid of them is a weapon in itself. Hopefully that’s all we really need to do for now. But we also need to be ready to physically defend ourselves if the right-wingers insist on pushing us up against the walls. Let’s make it clear to the right;. we won’t allow our culture to make heroes of the Scott Roeders among us.