Mastodawn

are you scared of folks using their hands or their brain?

these are very personal decisions and aren't helped by alarmist paternalism

i'm not gonna be in the Warsaw Ghetto telling people to put down the rocks

the paranoia around this stuff is understandable but leads to lateral accusations/misinterpretation

folks can discuss firearms training/obtaining without insurrection being discussed

community defense is an evergreen, year-round necessity. in regular ol' settler-colonialism or under fascism

and if we actually give a shit, it's still currently legal

we can offer advice for those interested without shouting down the very possibility as literal suicide

diversity of tactics, many roles to play

fluffy 💜Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface @LexYeen at this point I am totally on board with marginalized people arming themselves as long as there is a need for self-defense. I wouldn’t get a firearm myself because I am prone to suicidal ideation but that’s a personal choice.

Universal gun control is, for me, a long-term goal but right now there are more immediate needs that trump that ideology.

@fluffy @LexYeen

i agree with marginalized folks arming themselves. but i see all people as subjugated or marginalized by current systems, only in different ways/degrees.

i would never insist that folks own guns who don't want to do so. because it's a personal choice i think we have to respect each other's decisions.

@fluffy @LexYeen
as an anarchist i don't support universal gun control under current systems. i would like to see a world where guns aren't needed for defense, and i agree it's a long-term goal.

for me, it's something that's hundreds of years in the future, if it happens at all. so many folks are still unwilling to support prison abolition, i think this shows how distorted priorities and realities are in the perspectives of many.

fluffy 💜Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface @LexYeen oh yeah I absolutely agree, there’s a LOT more shit that needs to be fixed before we can even consider universal gun control at this point.

if you talk to people who do community defense you will find gun safety is a paramount, primary focus

if you even look at professional trainers who are conservative or reactionary, this usually still holds

the average gun owner is far more responsible than how they are portrayed by people who don't like guns or who have no experience with them - at least in terms of gun safety and avoidance of injury

Glen T, heated, not stirred Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface That is surprising and different to the US's reputation.

When the laws on responsible gun storage were introduced to Australia -- a gun safe fastened to the building, with ammunition stored in a separate locked container located in another place -- barely any gun owner already had that storage in place.

@glent

your idea of the reputation of the US from an outside perspective probably differs from our lived reality

i'm not speaking specifically of things like gun locks or gun safes, though some use those. i'm talking about safety precautions for the use of firearms

Robin Barton Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface so only bad people kill? not angry husbands? or fathers angry their daughter didn't support Trump? or school shooters who are suffering from mental health issues and loneliness? Suicides? The common denominator is access to guns. USA had about 8,000 - 39,000+ deaths caused by guns

@Robo105
it's axiomatic that gun violence is related to guns

everything else you mentioned is caused by structural issues related to capitalism and authority

foundseed Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface in my years of experience trying to find radical self and community defense, that is not what I have found. In fact, a lot of folks who are doing the work of training people in how to handle extreme situations holistically talk for quite awhile about how guns won't actually factor into most common self defense situations, and in fact are more likely to make things worse. In my experience that is.

@foundseed
i'm not gonna get specific but i'm referring to folks who have done that work, that i've spoken to in person, as well as reading US historical examples

your experience might vary. i'm not sure which training you're referring to, but the people who do the professional training are often ex-military or ex-cops. they are usually conservatives/liberals. they don't have the same perspective as those in community defense

@foundseed
have you talked with people who have done community defense? have you read about historical examples?
i'm not understanding what you say you haven't found. that community defense focuses on gun safety? that the average gun owner is more responsible than portrayed?

foundseed Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface I love reading about historic workers' uprisings, and I've spoken mostly to radical folks who are teaching self defense, who are also likely to be ex-mil, but decidedly not conservative. So the difference in what we hear around gun usage in defense is likely due to the teacher's political center. We are listening to two different groups of thought, train around the use of guns, it seems.

foundseed Feb 21

@johnbrowntypeface and what I have found is most teachers start the "gun safety" talk by asking their students to deeply question why they think they need a gun. And safe usage of guns, is, of course, central to safety training. Once someone already has a gun, usually.

@foundseed

sure, but that is a very politically loaded question. people teaching self defense won't necessarily support community defense or know what it is. most often they support police.

community defense doesn't advocate for attacking folks

@johnbrowntypeface @foundseed

🌌Feb 21

Ugh, kind of a tangent, but so many ppl I've run into on the left who talk about armed community defense don't seem to be very down to earth about it. (full disclosure: I am absolutely not opposed to armed community defense. just to the ways in which it gets talked about - or rather, NOT talked about - so often!)

The radical gun club in my area specifically teaches (and requires) a class on the ethics of self-defense where they explicitly ask everyone attending to consider whether their threat model involves guns actually making them safer. These are all folks who own multiple guns, are and have been involved in community defense, including trans-specific community defense and BIPOC-specific community defense - so by and large I trust them.

It's an important conversation because it's good to actually think about what armed self- and community-defense means for you, but unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think that armed community defense stops at owning a gun and getting a lot of range time in. Obviously that's part of it, but if you are going to broaden self-defense to community defense, you need to train WITH your guns AS a community. And that part, sadly, is often lacking (in my experience).

These things should involve: knowing who you're talking about when you're talking community. As in, individual names & faces. What guns do they have and what is their skill level/personal threat model? Are we talking neighborhoods or fast response teams called from disparate locations? If the former, you gotta know a LOT about the layout and makeup of those neighborhoods. If the latter, who are on those teams and how often do they train together? What scenarios do they train for? For both, what are your options up to the point you collectively decide to fire your weapons and how do you come to that decision? Who has de-escalation training? Who has has critical GSW intervention training? What are your plans for higher-level medical care?

The last community defense collective situation I was in as a household was HORRIBLY lacking in a few of those crucial considerations despite all of us having firearms and training with those firearms. And no one wanted to do weekly, or even monthly, drills. I think the issue of armed community defense is far more intricate than, unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning leftist gun owners think it is.

But I definitely agree that it is and should be a choice, albeit one carefully undertaken and carefully considered.

@angelteeth @foundseed
i think those are all good considerations and get more into what is meant by community defense

my experience with it is that folks who are involved in it are aware of those intricacies and incorporate training (including things like stop-the-bleed)

what certifications or specific skills people have will vary across groups. the ability to train regularly involves discrepancies in free time and money

@johnbrowntypeface You really don't understand the issue folks have?

If firearms were only usable for suicide and didn't work to kill or maim anyone but the owner, then yeah totally "it should be the choice of the individual" would be sound. But the reason people buy guns is almost always to kill someone else (usually someone else TBD, but occasionally an already determined someone else).

You can't see why people other than the one buying the guns have concerns?

i never said i don't see why anyone would have issues with firearms in general. what i'm talking about is folks telling other people what to do and think according to their own biases, beliefs, & experiences

sure, guns are used to injure and kill. which includes State/fascist violence, revolution, hunting, and community defense.

my concerns are not a reason to make other people's decisions for them. do we think that they've never considered that guns are dangerous?

@johnbrowntypeface I mean, we live in a society and that means we (collectively) do sometimes make people's decisions for them.

I can't actually keep enough explosives in my apartment to level the building. "Do you think I've never considered that ammonium nitrate is dangerous?" doesn't cut it as a counter-argument.

And while we've societally decided vehicles with bad sightlines are road-legal, we've decided other vehicles aren't, making some of people's car-buying decisions for them.

@johnbrowntypeface In that framework, if a thing is straight illegal - that's "making people's decisions for them" IMO.

If a thing is legal, arguing that someone should do one legal thing and not another legal thing, is not "making their decisions for them", it's just advocacy. We do that all the time.

Yeah, I'll encourage people to buy vehicles with good sightlines, because it makes us all safer, even if it's legal for them to buy the more dangerous vehicle.

yes, prohibition is making people's decisions for them. it's not a common leftist position and especially not an anti-authoritarian one

advocacy can happen simply through discourse. but advocating for what you want versus against what someone else should be able to do is more constructive and respectful to others' agency

@johnbrowntypeface So where does what I do land for you?

If I decide to wade in with someone I think might listen to me, who is proposing to get a gun for self defence, I'll point to the stats on gun deaths in the US:
58% suicide
38% murder (which doesn't include murder by cops)
4% "other"
where "other" includes all of
- murder by cops
- negligent and accidental discharge
- self defence by cops and non-cops
...

@johnbrowntypeface
... and I'll argue that no matter how different they think they are from the American average, those are some hard odds to beat, and that the suicide risks go up not just for the owner but everyone in a household with even one gun.

So, is that, for you, disprespectful advocacy against what someone else should be able to do? Or is it respectfully pointing out information that the person may not be very aware of given US culture and media landscape?

@johnbrowntypeface And, for that matter, same with arguing that someone shouldn't buy an F-150 or such with unsafe sight lines - which you may think they should be able to do - because, selfishly, I don't want them to avoidably kill my child, and altruistically I don't want them avoidably killing some other child either.

Am I violating anarchist principles there? (if I am, I guess I'm fine with that because I don't think of myself as an anarchist, despite agreeing with some anarchist theory)

i don't think this tangent about vehicle sight lines has much relevance to this discussion

it involves a personal consumption choice that relates to collective safety. it does not involve anything directly relating to a tactic used by liberatory movements.

i'm not so sure the argument will be useful. i'm talking about a general idea of allowing people autonomy, especially with tactics for organizing/activism

i don't believe that arguing is particularly fruitful in general

personally i think using statistics to convince people of how they should act is the legacy of liberalism. i don't think stats have no place at all but reliance on them as determinative for individuals denies their autonomy and agency

i also don't think people tend to change their opinions by hearing statistics

we are not all the same

i don't really argue with people about the specific personal choices they should make tactically. whether that's guns or anything else

my take is it makes more sense to advocate for what you support instead. discourse will never stop gun violence or the use of guns. it also won't remove them from the history of liberatory movements

we have structural problems to deal with that require a diversity of tactics.

@dragonfrog @johnbrowntypeface

Daniel Lakeland Feb 20

Also useful in the question of whether you should be a gun owner is the stats on gun ownership, it's hard to get precise numbers, but they're around the region of:

99.98% not involved in sucide/homicide in any given year
0.02% involved in some suicide or crime or other related incident.

(estimated 150-200M gun owners in US, estimated ~30,000 suicide+homicides typically in a given year)

@dlakelan @dragonfrog
yeah, that's getting at what i mean about stats not determining individual behavior

guns are not sentient and humans are not identical. there are particularities that lead to gun violence that have nothing to do with the tool itself

@johnbrowntypeface @dlakelan @dragonfrog

John Feb 20

Capitalism, for example, is simply a tool for distributing resources.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but eliding the moral and social outcomes of "tools", or the material conditions of the society in which those tools are made available, strips consideration of that tool of context.

By that logic, the negative externalities of "AI" - the destruction of civilization, certainly - are not relevant to the discussion of making it available.

@johnbrowntypeface @dragonfrog

Daniel Lakeland Feb 20

@johnzajac
context is important for sure.

for example, independent of guns per capita, across all countries, homicide goes like H_0*exp(k*income_gini)

so, when discussing violence in society we should always be discussing the income inequality context because its the largest factor available in predicting violence

@dlakelan @johnbrowntypeface
Sure, your "self defence" gun is overwhelmingly likely to not be used in any way your whole life and the only effect is you're out $300.

But if it does ever end up being used, there's maybe a 3% chance it's for the self defence you intended when you bought it, vs a 97% chance it will be a suicide, murder, or unintentional killing, probably of someone in your own household.

@dragonfrog @dlakelan

a lot of your argument against gun ownership seems to be against self-defense. whether someone decides to defend themselves with a firearm isn't down to stats, but to the specifics of their life

i focus on gun ownership re: community defense. it relates to self defense but is a political tactic vs simply a potentiality

for the real people who engaged in liberatory community defense (whether or not they fired guns) any citing of statistics is going to be null and void

Daniel Lakeland Feb 20

@johnbrowntypeface
agree. the impression is often that a gun hasn't been used because it wasnt involved in a killing. thats a complete and utter misreading of the purpose of guns. one big purpose is to increase the cost of oppression (both at a personal scale and at a societal scale). a gun that always remains in a safe but some other people have to consider might be used against them, has been used every day it was owned.
@dragonfrog

@dlakelan @dragonfrog
yeah, and with community defense the firearms aren't carried under a pretense that they will be used with certainty, only that those who carry would be capable and willing to do so if needed

if we look at historical examples, be that the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, Robert F. Williams, Redneck Revolt, etc. there are not many cases of guns being fired. And where they were fired there weren't necessarily injuries or deaths.

@johnbrowntypeface @dlakelan
Yeah I had not caught that context.

Personally I would not find it liberating to have some guy who never asked my opinion wandering around my community packing heat, just because he says "don't worry, I'm armed to liberate you and our whole community". I would feel imprisoned in my own home by the armed lunatic outside.

So I'd argue liberatory community defence has some heavy duties to consult with the community first, being ready to hear "no thank you".

@dragonfrog @dlakelan

this is what i refer to in saying we're all different

folks who have engaged in community defense were part of their community. some there may have appreciated them while others didn't. no one person can speak for the whole community

this is also true of armed oppressors like the police, except that their only purpose is violence and subjugation.

community defense isn't intended to "liberate" a community in an acute sense, that would be an insurgency or insurrection.

i'm an anarchist, my principles are autonomy & anti-authoritarianism

the society we live in has perverted conceptions of both individualism & collectivism. people are not respected as individuals & group think and peer pressure are more common than solidarity

under capitalism "we" are not making the decisions that govern our lives

if we’re talking about pursuing a society that values autonomy, we don't get there by denying folks' autonomy & disrespecting a diversity of tactics

@johnbrowntypeface
You likely won't agree with me here, but to me "my personal choice to keep guns" is on a spectrum somewhere between "my personal choice to drive a truck with a super high hood so I can't see if a child is crossing the street in front of me" and "my personal choice to store enough explosives in my apartment to level the whole building"

To be clear, I'm not asking you to *agree* with me, but do you *understand* me? Are you at least no longer confused about *why* we disagree?

https://spore.social/@johnbrowntypeface/115967489338757563

@dragonfrog
i'm not sure i was ever confused about why we disagree

i invite you to look more into community defense

john.brown_typeface (@[email protected])

"This wide-ranging anthology uncovers the hidden histories & ideas of community armed self-defense, exploring how it has been used by marginalized & oppressed communities as well as anarchists & radicals within significant social movements of the twentieth & twenty-first centuries." Setting Sights: Histories & Reflections on Community Armed Self Defense (scott crow, editor) https://www.scottcrow.org/book-setting-sights-histories-and-reflections-on-community-armed-self-defense/ https://archive.org/details/setting-sights-scott-crow #CommunityDefense #SelfDefense #CommunityArmedSelfDefense #Antifascism

Spore by Project Mushroom

@johnbrowntypeface Your initial post read to me like you were expressing confusion.

In any case, I do think we understand one another better now.

@dragonfrog
the confusion is explained in those initial three posts

it's aimed towards a repeated position where folks claim any talk whatsoever of buying or training with firearms implies insurrection or something illegal, with a further connotation that it's reaching some viral pitch and countless folks are actually buying guns or contributing to negative outcomes with firearms

whereas people who advocate for community defense most commonly are strong supporters of gun safety

foundseed Feb 20

@johnbrowntypeface what I am seeing is a lot of people getting freshly radicalized during a very tumultuous and scary time, and asking in a casual, still-feeling-out kinda way, if they should get a gun. This is the kind of reactive gun purchase that often leads to misuse, abuse, and death. This is the kind of person my post was aimed at, not the leftists who are actually trying to educate people on guns and make that training accessible.