Fully agree. It's only because I live in liberaland that I'm not a gun nut.

f/armedleft

Improved physical fitness also creates an imbalance of power, as does one person being physical disabled and the other not being, or one person having had boxing lessons and the other hasn't. In such situations, firearms can themselves be an equaliser. Firearms only create an imbalance of power when one side has them and the other does not.

The other thing to remember is that an anarchist society can only remain so for as long as it can defend itself from outside influences attempting to assert control over them, and that potential exists so long as any given society chooses not to disarm. Given that there is no way that you'd be able to get literally everybody on the planet to disarm without the use of force (which would necessarily require access to firearms), this would obviously be the case.

There are two ways to fix a power imbalance: make it normal for nobody to have power, or make it normal for everybody to have power.

There will always be some small amount of people who will have guns no matter what, even in some hypothetical demilitarized anarchist utopia. I'd rather make it so that if those people choose to use their guns unwisely, they can be met with equal force.

it's a huge leap from "some men use guns to terrorize and abuse their partners" to "more armed leftists = patriarchy." for my part i don't see how arming women to fight patriarchy is very patriarchal. would you say that john brown was pro-slavery?

guns are tools. just like any machine they can be oppressive or they can be freeing depending on how they are used.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that anybody who can demonstrate to the rest of the community that they can be trusted with the responsibility that possessing weaponry brings should be allowed to possess whatever weaponry they consider appropriate. What that demonstration entails would be down to any given community, but ultimately I believe it should include basic principles of responsible firearm ownership (e.g. the safe storage of firearms and ammunition, if that's the kind of weaponry they intend to possess), target identification in a timed and stressful environment, and general proficiency with the weapon in question.

Before we get to that point, however, there's one thing that needs to be understood: we don't need to attempt to overthrow the state for the revolution to become violent. We can be entirely peaceful in our action, but eventually, if we're successful, we'll be seen as a threat and the state will use violence against us. We need to be able to defend ourselves against that.

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I respect everyone's right to self-defense and protection from the State, but at the same time, most of these recent mass shootings are committed by entitled White Dude bros who usually have some domestic violence charges; to the extent they have an ideology, it's more "I haven't been given what I deserve so I'm going to take it out on everyone else" rather than any kind of belief system.

Regarding domestic violence cases, while if the partner also has a gun, it can level the playing field greatly, there are limits to what a gun can do. The asshole who shot up a church in Texas, had been charged with beating his toddler stepson badly enough to break the kid's skull. I don't think a gun would have helped that poor kid and it's really fucking appalling that the asshole still had no problems getting a gun after all that.

Also in all these gun debates, I find myself thinking in terms of practicality. So many of these assault weapons look cool and can pump a lot of bullets into a lot of people pretty fast, but at the same time, they don't really serve any purpose besides filling a lot of people with a lot of bullets. You can't go hunting with them, unless you don't want there to be any usable meat left on the animal, and they tend to be fussy and prone to jamming. Maybe if you're in controlled circumstances, an assault weapon does okay, but war rarely involves controlled circumstances. Probably good old-fashioned hunting rifles and shotguns would serve the movement better than Uzis and whatever; they're sturdy weapons that can stand up to a lot and can be used for more purposes than just killing people.