To hell with being a victim—let’s arm ourselves!

It’s time we left-wingers get our own conceal and carry permits so we can defend ourselves from the George Zimmerman’s of the US. We, 21 and older, can carry guns and we should.

There is no reason that we should be victims to the gun-toting vigilantes to this country. If one of these John Wayne wanna-bes tries to shoot us for taking their parking space, walking through their neighborhood or just getting into an argument with them, we should respond and end their miserable lives.

I for one am planning to get a conceal carry permit and I may carry a derringer or some other easy to conceal gun. I will probably only carry it when there is a chance I will be around right-wing vigilantes, but that is one reason to have it. I know enough about guns to know how a small gun, with a small caliber bullet can do as much or more damage than those small cannons the idiot right-wingers carry for “so called self defense.” Bullets can also be modified for more effectiveness. There are derringers that can shoot 410 shot gun shells to maximize their potential for hitting the target, which is usually some right-wing punk standing a few feet away.

-សតិវ អតុ

Mike Ely of Kasama Project wrote about the blatant racism ofgun laws that seem to favor white people having guns over black people:

 Gun control? 

The question of who has guns, and who is deprived of guns has always been closely connected in the U.S. with the domination and exploitation of Black people.

Look at where there is "gun control" and where there isn't. "Gun control" is encouraged in urban areas where black people are concentrated. Vast military arsenals are legal in rural areas where white people predominate (western mountain areas etc.)

Guns in the hands of black people (especially black youth) are portrayed as terrifying. While guns in the hand of crewcutted middleclass white guys is portrayed as normal, reasonable and self-defense.

You can't look at the history of the 2nd amendment without looking at the wholesale militarization of Southern white men against possible slave uprisings -- in militia and paddyroller patrols. Who were these "well regulated militia" existing to crush?

And similarly, the rightwing arsenal mania is (if you scratch them twice) a stockpiling against some future nightmare scenario of Black people and black helicopters.

It is a civil war locked in pre-position. And the mounting hysteria of the right has to do with the fact that they see the world (that they want and love) slipping away from them (demographically, culturally, through internationalization of life). In my mind I call this "the ghost dance of the white man."

The U.S. state demands a monopoly of violence (for its police and military agents). And the white racist segments demand their part of that monopoly of violence. It is a conflict among reactionary forces -- over what mix of forces in America will have the means of extreme violence.

Revolution is (at one level of abstraction) the overthrow of one social system by another. But it is also (in political reality) an all-out struggle between two sections of the people -- over power and the future. In this conflict of gun control, you can see the faces and organization of those we will be forced to defeat (and disarm).

In a separate article Ely expands on that theme. Here are some excerpts from that:

….This was never about hunting in America. It is about "political power flows from the barrels of guns."

And there is, to be clear, a radicalizing rightwing section of white people who believe they once ruled this country, and that they are losing it. "Give us our country back" is a racist, backward, quasi-fascist demand for a country dominated by white, Christian, English-only, patriachal, property focused culture. This demand, and the forces clinging to it are a central mass obstacle to any progressive (and much needed) change in north america. Any progress requires their historic defeat.

And lets take this further: These forces (who I estimate to be about 15 percent of the population overall, and concentrated in the former Confederate states at about 25 or 30%) feel the future slipping away from them. Gay marriage! Immigration from third world countries! Path to citizenship! 

And they are (with their usual grim hateful calculation) making plans to stop this. If they can't win in national elections (Obama!), they will shift to states rights and non-electoral means. If the Republicans don't serve as a platform for their hatred and goals, they will go "lone wolf" and consider forming a new party (Rand Paul plays George Wallace)…..

….They must be broken -- in a profound historic sense. So they cannot rise again.

Their klan-like networks must be broken (regardless of what political facade they adopt: Tea Party, Defense of Marriage committees, local militias, Aryan Nations, or whatever comes next).Their attempts at armed preparation and attack must be exposed and met. Their kids must be won over to rejecting them and take a different path. 

They must be exposed, delegitimized, and they must be broken up….

Perhaps the most important part of the article is when Ely suggest we arm ourselves and defend ourselves from these fascist vigilantes who seem to act as the equivalent of “black shirts” for groups such as the Tea Party:

….The left is utterly unprepared for this task today. Getting into position to confront the radical and racist right will be a process. It will involve regroupment, fusion of radical and mass forces... in short, it will take real progress in the political work of building a revolutionary movement. But it is worth it to be clear now (among revolutionaries and among the people) that this is one of the tasks that such a movement will take up -- to protect the people, to organize the people in self-defense, to confront and defeat those who would attack them.

For the moment, let's start with trying to be clear about right and wrong: The oppressed have both a legal and moral right to defend themselves. They have (in this country) a legal and moral right to arm themselves, politically and collectively.