My general impression is that guns are pretty hard to get, which makes it very safe, but also a disarmed populace can be bad. Is it hypocritical to oppose the disarmament of one population, but not another?
My general impression is that guns are pretty hard to get, which makes it very safe, but also a disarmed populace can be bad. Is it hypocritical to oppose the disarmament of one population, but not another?
That’s an interesting way of putting it, and maybe makes the US situation a bit clearer: for as long as the US colonial project is ongoing, arguments for gun control will be ignored; because the state still perceives itself as under threat in it’s enclosure. Even if the enclosure has grown so much that it encloses e.g. ‘reserves’ and even if the US itself has created internal colonies (legacy of slavery).
(I imagine there’s literature on this, but it’s not something I’ve looked into. Have you? Is that why you phrased it as you did? Or is that just how you’ve analysed things yourself?)
Mostly myself, but for instance militias existed in America before the revolution, they were used in conflict with the indigenous peoples, all males of age were drafted and at the time needed to provide their own resources for armed conflict. Taking a look at other settler societies, Israel, South Africa, (and Latin America, but the racial aspect is different) they also have/had gun laws that overwhelmingly favor settlers. Guns were a necessity on the American Frontier to take new territory and protect it from the indigenous and the armies of imperialist rivals. After the civil war white militias attacked black communities and even performed a coup against the North Carolina government in the late 1800s expelling all of the black elected officials and their white sympathizers.