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?
China has a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Red Army is the armed wing of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is disarmed.
I think the USSR had local people’s militias, but that made a lot of sense given the context of the invasions they faced.
Individual gun ownership is not necessarily helpful for a revolution, and exists for the historical purpose of primitive accumulation and enclosure with guns being a means to protect property of individuals. The proletariat collectively owns so the defense of the people’s organized property should also be organized, in general. The disarmament as an exercise of force should be done by the terms of the proletariat.
Great summary, the PRC also still has a militia with around 8 million people in case they’re needed.
This doesn’t really count but technically there’s still a tribe that’s allowed to carry muskets (nowadays it’s ceremonial and it’s a tourist attraction) as it had been part of their culture for centuries.
Good response, thanks!
Cool, thanks for your explanation! Sometimes things I know relatively instinctively just click way better when comrades give detailed comments like this, phrased in a different way than I’m thinking.
China is undergoing socialist construction. The PLA is of, by and for the people. The masses. If you are a worker and you want to get armed, join the PLA. Join a national militia. Guns are not “banned” but safeguarded from the enemy and afforded to the proletariat in an efficient, safe way. Brilliant stuff.
historical purpose of primitive accumulation and enclosure with guns being a means to protect property of individuals
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.
I want to point out that pretty much all the laws that seem extremely random are put in place to prevent that exact situation from happening again. For example, gun ban, or rather “hot weapons ban” were put in place when 2 rural villages got into a territory dispute and rolled out essentially an ww2 artillery battalion and shelled the crap out of each other. Emphasis on the villages, not provinces, not cities, not towns, but 2 villages. Now imagine this on a scale that could affect cities or even provinces, yeah that’s why they have gun ban there.
Also with the amount of western agencies and operatives still operating within, the last thing we’d want is for them to easily arm insurgents to commit acts of terror on the populace and greatly destabilise the place.
I was gonna mention that, lol
What exactly is the cause of the dispute?
Well you already have a proletariat dictatorship, people having guns makes sense if ypu are under a bourgeoisie dictatorship, otherwise what is the purpose? The military is the one in charge of defending the populace. If you want a gun in those conditions is for sports and it should be morw harder to get because it is a big responsability.
My take:
The shit that makes mass shootings and insurgencies possible would have to be addressed first before people willingly disarm with or without gun bans. cough KKKalifornia
Personally as a gun nut I’m not a big fan of it both out of personal desire to possess automatic weapons and because it appears the conditions for mass shooting and insurgency still remain in China. Said conditions seem to be unaddressed by the DoP.
