So I am a bit aware of the John Brown Gun Club and Socialist Rifle Association, but I am looking for more information.

Do any comrades here know of or are part of any gun groups for Marxists? Any information could be helpful, including about the two I mentioned. I’ve heard mixed reviews on both and would like it kind of straightened out. Also additional options or what have you would be nice.

I am US based.

  • seahorse [Ohio]
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    112 years ago

    I’m a provisional member of my local SRA chapter. It’s not all Marxists, so you’d have to play nice with other ideologies there as well, but I like what I’ve experienced so far. So far I haven’t seen any flame wars between ideologies on there. We all hate capitalism and imperialism. They’re friendly people focused mainly on mutual aid while also being pro-gun. I haven’t heard about any gun orgs that are strictly for Marxists.

    The way it worked for me was I signed up for a paid membership online which got me access to the forums where I then posted an introduction about where I’m from. Someone should reach out to you on the forum to give you more info about the chapter you’d join. In my case they invited me to a discord room where you set up a time for a Jitsi video chat with members, after which they voted in private to approve me and I was then allowed into the rest of the discord channel where everyone communicates. I wish it wasn’t on discord and would be on Matrix or something but they said it’s the easiest to use and set up at the moment.

    • d-RLY?
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      32 years ago

      I am happy to hear that you did join and have been on-boarded! Your first paragraph sums up how things have been in my own experience. The org being a broad spectrum of the anti-capitalist left (imo) makes it a good place to meet and respectfully interact with comrades and learn more stuff you might not otherwise have.

      My chapter primarily uses Signal for our primary communications and working groups. Though we have used Discord for chapter meetings (we have also used other options to see how well they handle video and audio). The real annoyance with Signal is that it can’t do sub-chats/rooms like Discord or Slack. You can only “pin” like four group chats to the top. So as more working groups are made it becomes a “which chats should be pinned” issue.

      • seahorse [Ohio]
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        52 years ago

        Yeah, we use Signal for when we have to organize actual events. I offered to someday set up a Matrix server for them.

        • @cayde6ml
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          22 years ago

          I’m pretty sure Signal is a honeypot.

          • @dghgrdesxc
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            10 months ago

            Proof? Sorta hard to justify such claims without it.

      • @cayde6ml
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        32 years ago

        Isn’t Signal a honeypot?

        • d-RLY?
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          12 years ago

          Off-hand I am not aware of any proof of this. Do you have any sources or other communication apps that can be used? Basically all chats get called this, and based on all the Snowden stuff alone it is possible. But again the SRA isn’t trying to be anything other than a non-profit pro-gun and gun education org. We all try to keep that in-mind and if anyone that slips into anything even mildly “fedposting” gets quickly reminded of this in constructive ways. Also to my knowledge the org doesn’t allow members/chapters to officially attend protests. Members are free to attend them, just not with anything SRA on them if they go. Which makes for a super low priority honeypot-wise compared to stuff like the old version of the Black Panthers (which was a real political party with real demands and seen as a real threat to racist white folks).

  • d-RLY?
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    72 years ago

    Like [@seahorse@midwest.social said, the SRA is a broad anti-capitalist left org. So both on the national boards and within a chapter you might be seeing a random mix of Black Bloc and Red Bloc and the various subsets of both. However it is also not trying to be a political party or a militia. So just keep that part in-mind if you do sign-up. Also I can’t speak towards any chapters other than the one I am a member of. So how it has been for me might not be a 1:1 for the chapter closest to you. As membership being active or not can change things. You might even find that the one closest to you has reading circles/clubs that focus more on Marxist theory to get involved with.

    The primary things that the SRA is concerned about is helping comrades on the left learn and teach safety and proper handling of guns. To be a place where folks that are often times harassed by the right-wing gun owners can safely interact. The right has for too long been “the gun folks”, and it isn’t helped that basically the default for most libs has been “the right-wing are crazy gun nuts and bad, so therefore guns and gun owners are bad”. For me I have hated that anytime I bring up being a gun owner with someone I don’t know well (or wasn’t aware I have them) there is utter shock. They may know me enough to be friendly, but then have a mild panic that I am like a secret conservative or something. Often then being confused as to why I think various kinds of guns should be kept legal given mass shootings.

    The SRA has been a great starting point for helping me grow as a leftist and is (along with many other leftist gun groups and even some liberals) putting in efforts to “arm the left” by not just allowing the NRA and other right-wingers to have the monopoly on guns and gun rights. You also might be able to learn about other groups via SRA comrades that are more specifically Marxist. It also might be worth seeing which chapter is closest to you and reaching out to them to see if they are down to being asked questions you might have.

    I don’t personally know enough about the John Brown Gun Club, but I think they are more about active community defense. So they might be a better option for learning more militia-ish stuff. They are at least another group that is large enough to be in multiple states.