Anarchist take on gun control

Communists should support the arming of the working class because any other position means they support the disarming of the working class by the ruling class, nuff said.

Here's a comic that shows my preliminary opinion about the idea that having no gun regulations will make anarchism a much more likely scenario: https://i.redd.it/itu25w1hm2a51.png

What criticism can be made about this view?

I currently support gun laws.

Barcelona, July 19, 1936.

Those soldiers did not have the same kind of technological leverage over their opponents as the modern military has over people today.

Guns were controlled then. And half of the military and police fought against the fascist uprising. You'll have to say more.

In short, I don't think anyone halfway sensible thinks it's possible to win a shooting war with the US Army, I think the usefulness of guns would come more in dealing with non-state reactionary actors like the III%ers, Oathkeepers, Boogalooers, etc etc, who are likely to have access to guns but not to tanks, nukes, that plane Elon Musk's baby is named after and so on.

I think the other really important criticism that gun control advocates have to deal with is that any gun laws would be enforced by the same cops that we have now, in the same way as they enforce the laws we have now - that is, by turning a blind eye to those they generally look favourably on (which might well include members of those far-right groups mentioned above) and enforcing it super-strictly against those groups that they tend to enforce laws super-strictly on generally. So not so much "if guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns" as "if guns are outlawed, then only people who the cops are prepared to give a nod and a wink to will have guns".

I don't really have a neat answer to all of this, btw - I definitely don't think the US's status quo with guns is a good thing and think a bit more disarmament would be positive, I'm just not sure what the best way to get there is.

During capitalism, you mean? I don't know...Are you sure it's a likely scenario that anarchists would be equal or superior to reactionaries in strength, knowledge or technology if they went out and bought guns?

Not necessarily. If we're talking about the United States, I don't think (but feel free to critique) that it's an unrealistic notion that the police can be reformed when it comes to recruitment.

I doubt that the percentage of racist or incompetent police of any Western European state is anywhere near the level of said people within the American police force.

All these killings of people who've often done nothing or done only a minor crime...surely they're not nearly as common in, for example, Britain? Those are my spontaneous opinions at least. And I would assume that that has something to do with the process of recruiting. Fix that and you'll have less awful people.

I think a lot of anarchists would say that I have a naive view of the "armed bodies of men", but I have a hard time accepting what appears to be the orthodox anarchist/communist view that the police are mostly terrible people. At least when it comes to Western democracies.

I mean, I'm not from the US so feel free to take my opinions on this subject with as many pinches of salt as you want, but I think that certainly that gap would be much smaller and easier to close than the same gap in force if they didn't go out and buy guns. I'm not really wildly pro-gun so don't want to argue as if I am, but I think that there is at least an argument that in a situation where both sides have guns, there is at least a bit of a "mutually assured destruction"-type thing where people are less likely to wildly escalate, whereas if you have a situation where the reactionaries are armed but no-one else is, they can throw their weight around a lot more.

As I understand, I think the rate of killings in the US compared to other places is more to do with the cops being better armed. Anyway, while other countries might not have police forces quite as bad as the US, I don't think that anyone who's had much contact with British or European police forces would want to romanticise them much. There's a reason why the French say "tout le monde déteste la police", after all.

As far as police reform goes, I think the problem is less "police are terrible people" - I'm sure some of them are probably perfectly lovely when you meet them outside the job - and more "the job the police do requires them to do terrible things". So, even though British police might arguably not be as racist as US ones, there's still cases of them mass arresting hundreds of antifascists at a time, and if you go back further there's cases where they've beaten antifascists to death. That's not because all cops are terrible individuals who support the National Front or English Defence League, although I'm sure lots of them are, it's because it's their job to uphold law and order, and so in a situation where there's a lawfully protected fascist march and antifascists attempt to disrupt it, antifascists then become a threat to law and order, and so the enemy.

Similarly, even if you recruited less bigoted individual cops, that wouldn't change the fact of their basic job involving the protection of private property. So, going back to gun control, perhaps if you recruited nicer, less bigoted cops then they might be less likely to shoot unarmed black people on the grounds that they might have a gun, but it's harder to imagine a cop looking at a militia who declare themselves to be patriotic, constitutional, pro-law-and-order and so on, and then an "antifa mob" who the president has just described as terrorists, and judging them both according to exactly the same criteria and standards. Does that make sense?

Do you think that there is a risk that they would target unarmed/weak friends or family members? I have no real evidence, but I suspect that neo-nazis would be less worried about that than other people.

I have no experience with police so I guess I'd have to rely on first-hand testimony. Though maybe people here wouldn't like to share their personal lives? Maybe I'll find a Reddit thread.

I guess this is somewhat off-topic, but my current attitude is a bit like this: the police are a reflection of society as a whole. Most people are (sadly) not in favour of abolishing private property.
So I don't bear any particular grudge against the police for arresting people who try to take over factories: they have the working class as a whole on their side -assuming of course they're not being like Southern riot police in the 60's.

I don't know...I think you're correct when you say that they're here to enforce the law, but I don't know if they turn a blind eye to fascists that often.

I have known only one sole person who believed the revolution would mean armed struggle, a WRP member, and he joined the Territorial Army Parachute Regiment, to acquire his weapons training.

There was debate in the late 19th C and early 20th C concerning support for conscription and creation of militias rather than a voluntary standing army, even Engels endorsed the proposals.

The argument was that workers must be combat prepared but even more importantly it would also lead to a disloyal, disaffected military that the State could not rely upon.

Perhaps more influenced by the Paris National Guard and the Communards, rather than the National Guard units deployed in the cities of the United States.

I keep meaning to come back to this conversation because I'm aware I kind of dropped out of it, and I still intend to at some point, but just quickly:
I remembered a discussion around similar issues happening here relatively recently, and I've now found it was on this thread, from this post onwards, so that might be of some relevance. Also, see this recent Washington Post article for a fairly sensible argument on gun control that doesn't seem to be based on wild fantasies about outshooting the US Army.
On whether or not cops turn a blind eye to the far-right, I'd say that the relationship between Portland Police and Patriot Prayer is one recent example worth looking at; the Greensboro massacre is a much more dramatic, if somewhat older, one.
I don't really know where the best place to start would be, but a comparison of how the police treated Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries during the Northern Ireland conflict would be an interesting case study - like, from a brief google I was able to find:

Northern Ireland police accused of concealing data on loyalist killings
Loughinisland: Ombudsman confirms collusion between police and loyalist killers
And then see the wikipedia pages on the Stevens Inquiries and Pat Finucane for more - again, I don't think this is a case of the cops individually being bad people, I think this is a case of there being violent organisations that break the law while also pursuing goals that are in some way aligned with those of the state, if that makes sense?
Edit: And just to build on that a little more, you can contrast that with the undercover police operations targeting family justice campaigns like the Lawrence family (the family of a teenager who was killed in a racist murder, which the police failed to investigate properly), and the family of Christopher Alder, who died in police custody. So we can see the police behaving relatively lenient towards murderously violent organisations with aims that coincide with that of the state on one hand, and then running operations targeting entirely legal, peaceful campaigns with aims that would tend to undermine their authority on the other. I don't think that's either the result of individual bad apples who can be replaced, or the police just reflecting general public opinion, if you see what I mean.

I only read that Washington Post article once but it seemed very aimed towards Biden's proposal ("make guns more expensive") rather than gun laws in general.

Cops being happy about the far-right or being nasty to families of victims seems to me to be an issue of poor recruitment. It's nothing that the police are more or less forced to do just because of their profession; what I mean is that I don't think that cops have to break the law in order to be cops.

Innocent black people don't have to be shot for capitalism to be maintained, neo-nazis murdering people don't have to walk free for capitalism to be maintained, etc.

That being said, in some situations cops have to be bad. Like in a dictatorship, where people have to be afraid in order for the government to remain in power. But I don't think that's analogous to the UK of today or other Western liberal democracies.

A group of heavily armed Black protesters marched through Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday demanding justice for Breonna Taylor

The NFAC - Not Fucking Around Coalition'

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-louisville/black...

Scores of the demonstrators, carrying semi-automatic rifles and shotguns and clad in black paramilitary gear, marched in formation

NFAC marched armed a few weeks back, only this time there were far-right Three Percenters in attendance, also armed. The "Grandmaster Jay" guy, founder of the NFAC group/milita, holds some antisemitic views, along with calling for the handing over of Texas for the setting up of some type of "black nation." Not sure to what extent everyone marching shares his views. I don't see why the armed-to-the-teeth thing is necessary or where exactly it's going.

Militarisation of resistance will be met by superior numbers and be out-gunned

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/27/utah-militia-armed-group...

The Utah Citizens’ Alarm is only a month old, and yet it already boasts 15,000-plus members. The citizen militia’s recruits wear military fatigues and carry assault rifles. Their short-term goal, they say, is to act as a physical presence of intimidation to deter protesters from becoming violent. Their long-term goal: to arm and prepare the state of Utah against underground movements that they believe will incite civil war. Utah Citizens’ Alarm is now organized under the guidance of ex-military and ex-law enforcement on their newly formed board of advisers.

I keep on meaning to come back to this, but I think this is one of the big important points of disagreement. I don't really believe in "public opinion" as a unified static thing in general, and I also think it's worth looking at situations where society's been very divided (say, France in '68 or the UK in 84-85) - in those situations, if the cops really did just reflect society as a whole, you'd expect them to be similarly split, instead of lining up behind the government. This contrasts with the armed forces, who I think are genuinely a bit more reflective, and do have more of a history of mutinies, forming veterans anti-war groups and so on.

That's true enough, although I do think that KK is probably pro-guns in general as well, I think more so than I am. But it does at least show that it's not simply "gun control: for or against?", but that the type of gun control and how it's enforced is as important as anything else.

I mean, right now feels like a bit of a strange time to be making that particular argument. What about, for instance, COINTELPRO? Do you think that with better recruitment, the FBI would just have not done COINTELPRO? Because I think that was pretty much essentially part of their job, asking them to not do it would be a bit like asking them to not be the FBI.
And as for the "poor recruitment" thing, which seems to me to be like another way of saying "a few bad apples": doesn't it seem like a bit of a far-fetched coincidence that you have such poor recruitment for the cops in the USA to spark off a massive nationwide uprising there, and also such poor recruitment for the cops in the UK that they sparked off big uprisings in 1981 and 2011, along with various smaller/more local ones along the way, and such poor recruitment for the cops in France that they're having a huge movement against police brutality there, and such poor recruitment for the cops in Greece that they caused a huge revolt across the country there after they shot Alexis Grigoropoulos, and such poor recruitment for the German police that they're implicated in the activities of the National Socialist Underground nazi terror cell - at some point, doesn't it make more sense to say perhaps this isn't all just an accidental coincidence, perhaps there's something more structural about the nature of the police happening here?
Also, I think it's a bit misleading to describe the undercover spying operations as just "being nasty to families of victims". Anyone can be nasty, on an individual basis; but the undercover spying thing was official police business, something that was signed off by superior officers. Again, that points to it being something more structural than just bad individuals.

That doesn't mean that there's no such a thing as a majority in favour some variant of capitalism in Western states.

That's a fair point, but I think that, in many Western countries, the police, to a very good degree, is doing what most people want them to do. And that includes making sure that people don't break laws about, say, property.

But we're talking about the police, not the FBI.

I think that some states and cities may very well consist mainly of racists. Poor recruitment could be really, really bad in some areas and less bad in others.

I think it is probably the case that there are a larger percentage of far-rightists in the police force than in society as a whole.

The revolutionary left tends to not want to be part of any coercive state machinery under capitalism, whilst far-rightists see it as a chance to beat up commies. So revsocs are probably underrepresented while rightists are probably overreprepresented. (I don't have any figures, it's just an assumption that makes sense.)

What I have big doubts about is the idea that most cops are, in practice, legal criminals. Most cops have never shot a black kid in the face, or beaten up a homeless person, or been part of a fascist organization.

And I don't believe at all that George Floyd had to be murdered in order for the capitalism to survive.

obviously the state have better weapons, but i'm not seeing why they will necessarily be outnumbered, the article you post uncritically cites the group leaders claim to have over 15000 members, but if you look into it it looks like they are talking about members of a facebook group
i cant find any reports of them brings more than 20-30 people to a protest, there have been bigger protests by armed right wing groups, as a general rule they are not outnumbering black lives matter or antifascist protesters, but it seems like it is encouraging them to get armed

OK, to look at property laws in a bit more detail, and examine why I don't really believe in public opinion: if you did a survey and asked people "do you think people should be able to live in other people's houses for free?", I'm sure that the vast majority would say no, that they'd agree with rent and evictions and all that. But, if you asked the same sample of people "do you think that it's right that your neighbour should be thrown out of their house just because they got laid off due to Covid, and that the same thing should happen to you if the pandemic shuts down your workplace?", you'd probably get a much higher proportion of people saying that evictions are wrong, which is what makes eviction defences possible. But the cops will still enforce very unpopular evictions just the same as popular ones.

That seems like a bit of a flimsy distinction. Like, if you look at the period of time that COINTELPRO was happening, it was the FBI officially running it, but there were plenty of examples of police violence against Panthers, and looking at, for instance, the killing of Fred Hampton, I think it's hard to say where the FBI stops and the police start.

I mean, it probably is true that right-leaning people are more likely to join the cops to start off with, but I also think that being in the police force is likely to turn people more right-wing over time. I mean, who sounds more sympathetic, the people who keep saying that you're bad for killing all those people, or the people who say you're great and heroic and we just need to repeal all that pesky human rights legislation that's holding you back?

I mean, I think we should let the Atlanta Police Department answer that question. Looking at the scale of the unofficial industrial action that took place after Rayshard Brooks' killers were charged, there clearly are a lot of cops whose sense of solidarity with murderous cops is stronger than their devotion to the law.

Well, yes and no. Sure, if you put it like that it sounds absurd. But, I think it is fair to say that the working class has to be divided in order for capitalism to survive, and to say that historically in the United States racial divisions have been among the most important ways of ensuring this. And, further, that for a really quite large chunk of US history, the division between black and white has been a legally enshrined thing, something written into the laws that it was the cops' job to enforce, and that since the 60s when that stopped being the case, those divisions have been maintained through things like the war on drugs and so on, which have had the effect of categorising/portraying certain groups as being inherently criminal, and so as being legitimate targets for police violence. I think there's probably a strong argument to be made that those kinds of division have become increasingly important as capital's got less able to provide actual material benefits. Even if there's not much else left to pay out as "the wages of whiteness", at least the system can still offer the reward that some people are much less likely to become the targets of police violence. Which, in turn, requires that some other people are more likely to have it directed at them.

Yes, if you change the question into a completely different question you might very well get a very different answer than you would otherwise.

Plenty of examples of police violence against Panthers, so that means that the police is the FBI?..

There can be instances where they cooperate but to equate the two doesn't make sense. You might as well equate them with the military aswell, which you have characterized differently in your previous post.

Could be true but could be a minor thing aswell for all we know. You don't automatically become a fascist just because people call you a fascist.

Or maybe we shouldn't judge every police department based on what some police departments did? Most of these cops were probably men, does that mean that most men approve of murder?

But that does not mean that there has to be tens or hundreds of shootings of unarmed minorities in every capitalist country. And that isn't the case in several capitalist countries by the way.

Also, one more point on "recruit better": I think it's worth stressing that what we're seeing now is the outcome of several decades worth of "recruiting better", there's been a long historical trend of police departments hiring more black/poc cops, promoting more black cops to senior leadership roles and so on. I don't know if there's one definitive critique of this phenomenon to point you (beyond KRS-One's), but I think it is significant that you still get police brutality and uprisings against it in cities with very "diverse" management classes - including management of the police - like Oakland and Baltimore.
From Who is Oakland?:

From Rites of Passage:

That information about the Baltimore Police Department is taken from the middle of an article about an anti-police uprising caused by the killing of Freddie Gray. I don't think more inclusion is the answer there.

I wasn't talking specifically about more inclusion of black people but rather about recruitment in general, which can for example be about examining if the potentional employee's worldview is compatible with not killing innocent people.

Btw I have made this thread go too off-topic so I created a new thread about this issue.