Oppose excessive gun control

After the tragic events that left 32 victims and the shooter dead at Virginia Tech, there have been calls to increase gun control.   I'm sure there is room for reasonable controls to prevent dangerously mentally ill individuals and repeat offenders from getting guns so easily, but guns should still be readily available.   I am not very concerned at this point about needing a gun for my personal safety or hunting, and I'm a generally mild-mannered person depending on the police forces for now, but an armed citizenry is still important to protect democracy.   Violence is the last resort to protect our rights, and I doubt the security forces and paramilitaries will tolerate even a totally constitutional socialist revolution.   When the American socialist revolution comes, it will have to have the support of the majority or a large percentage of Americans (just like the first, bourgeois, revolution did), but the capitalists and their tools (not necessarily every officer, at least some would refuse to attack their fellow workers and citizens) in the military, intelligence, and police establishments, along with rightwing militias will most likely use sabotage and violence to try to overthrow that government.   Other countries might even try to intervene.  Look at what happened in Venezuela, where the US and the Venezuelan establishment tried to violently overthrow democratically elected President Hugo Chavez, and he isn't even a communist (he even pays the capitalists for what he nationalizes!).   I believe it was the Russian revolutionary communist leader V.I. Lenin who wrote that only a strong revolutionary force will discourage the losers from resorting to violence to oppose the wishes of the majority.  

 

Even just protecting the Bill of Rights and our (bourgeois) democracy might require violence, as Thomas Jefferson and the other framers of the Constitution knew.   It took being armed to protect activists fighting Jim Crow in Monroe, NC in the late 50's-early 60's (see www.pbs.org/independentlens/negroeswithguns/more.html for more info) and a coup overthrew the elected progressive black and white government of Wilmington in 1898 (the report by the NC Office of Archives & History are online at www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/), and they did it because they could

 

As Lenin shows in his book, The State and Revolution (online at www.marx2mao.org), written in 1917 after the first, bourgeois democratic, stage of the Russian Revolution, the existing government bureaucracy and military structure has to be destroyed to build a more democratic and socialist government.   The military and police exist in modern society to protect the class rule of the capitalists, even though workers can vote and be elected to government, and the police generally prevent non-government violence.   Therefore a socialist government can't just use the old institutions, assuming the security forces were not trying to exterminate the communists by then, which they probably would be doing.   Lenin quotes Marx on the history of the Paris Commune, the first working class government, established in Paris in 1870, and later slaughtered by the French capitalist forces with the support of the Prussian German occupiers.   "The first decree of the Commune was the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the nation in arms" along with reform of the police force, making politicians and judges recallable and paid no more than workers, etc.  

 

So far from true communists wanting to disarm Americans, like the Nazi fascists did in Germany, we want the American working class to be armed and trained in how to use weapons (a benefit of being in the US military).   I've heard that socialist Albania was apparently full of guns and even authoritarian capitalist Iraq seems to have been full of arms, though maybe that is only since 2003 (but what about the custom of shooting off guns in celebration?).   Being armed is currently perfectly legal and it is the best way to prevent worse bloodshed, by showing the reactionaries that they won't be able to use violence with impunity.   This probably scares the pro-gun lobby (perhaps all the way over to being with the anti-gun lobby for some reactionaries), but I can agree with them that guns should be kept legal, and I think the government couldn't disarm the people at this point anyway.  

 

Some say that military technology has advanced so much that there is no longer a point in armed revolution.   In that case we all should just give up and remain content with wage slavery.  This is obviously false.  Look at the examples of the Hezbollah nationalists defeating Israel last summer, the Maoist victories over the royal military in Nepal, and the nationalist Iraqi resistance that is holding its own against the US and British militaries.   I'm not talking about trying to wage a Maoist "people's war" like the Nepalese, but these examples show that modern militaries are not invincible against the will of the people.   A rocket propelled grenade launcher or machine gun or howitzer would be more useful against a military than a rifle, but having only a gun is better than only a knife.  The capitalists could in theory use nuclear or other massive strategic weapons and win, and that is the self-defeating worst they can do, while the working class numbers in millions and builds and operates those weapons.   It is basically only a matter of hearts and minds, brought about by one of the recurring crises in the capitalist system.

      

The Constiutional right to bear arms

 

If the framers of the US Constitution meant for citizens to be privately armed, as the Supreme Court currently interprets it, than Amendment II in the Bill of Rights is very progressive.   State operated militias are of some use in opposing tyranny, but most likely they would be a prop for it.

 

The 2nd Amendment

 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.