This is not what the kids would call a hot take. Plenty has been written on the subject of the left and guns, however what is not being said enough is that gun control cannot be an incarceral policy. We must go after gun manufacturers themselves, not indivudual consumers.
I support an increase in background checks, a banning of sale and production of AR 15s and automatic weapons, I also want to applaud the survivors of Parkland who are taking such eloguent, organized action. However I am not in favor of anything that will increase the incarcerated population of the United States, and arbitrary incarcerating policies will do just that. Working class solidarity means solidarity with prisoners, this is why the DSA voted in favor of prison abolition at their latest national convention. As such it is the duty of socialists to go after the real enemy, the capitalist manufacturers of the weapons who profit off of post shooter paranoia, embodied mostly in the NRA.
Passing carceral gun control laws will inevitably lead to more people of color being targeted by law enforcement, as that is already the problem with American Police forces and our current gun control laws. The fact is we do have gun control in some states like California, but the laws are not used to keep weapons out of the hands of white men, the primary offenders of mass shootings and instead are used to keep people of color in jail. As Woody Guthrie simply put it, the more laws you create the more criminals you create.
To take the guns out of the hands of over priveleged white men, the number one cause of gun violence, we must organize against the group where they have found consolidated organization. The NRA receives funds from its membership and from the gun manufacturers which pays for their pro gun lobby efforts. To cut off the head of the beast that is public shooters, we must kill the queen that breeds them and gives them their stingers.
Further, more carceral laws about guns will only be an expansion of an already capitalist state power. Gun control policy should only be an attack on capitalist power, not a debilitation for the working class to arm themselves against the state, especially people of color of the working class. Gun control should be an all out attack on the NRA, a group of mostly white well paid men who fight for white supremacist capitalist interests. For the sake of those who need to be armed against the state itself, the Black Panthers, Brown Berets etc. the state cannot and must not indulge in further anti leftist fodder, and attacking those who seek self protection from the capitalist state will never end the epidemic of public shooting.
James J Jackson 