Today, the subject of defense has become an important component in the discussion of our society. With the rise of white supremacist violence and continued police murders, not to mention the hysteria around mass shootings, many are beginning to ask questions about how we are to address these issues. Some of these responses have come in the form of the discussions and debates surrounding gun control. Gun control, however, is hardly the issue at hand. It acts merely as a distraction pulling both liberals and conservatives into a never ending debate on less/more guns being the supposed issue, when in reality tragedies such as mass shootings, have much larger, systemic causes than a cursory analysis of the assailants weapons can reveal.

For example, gun control advocates will often site Australia as a prime example of the positive effects of gun control. Australia enacted the “National Firearms Agreement” in 1996 after the tragic Port Arthur massacre. These restrictions severely limited whom could own and possess firearms, allowing those to own them for reasons other than personal protection. While there was a drop in gun related homicides, did the gun ban have any over all effect on violence within Australia?

This doesn’t seem to be the case. Data taken from the government run “Australian Institute for Criminology” shows that the years after the passing of the N.F.A. Homicide rates actually remained steady until 1998 where it saw a small spike, decline and then another spike in 2001-2002. Over all, homicide rates have been declining since 1989, so one can hardly point to gun control as a primary factor in these lower rates.i

In fact, knives and sharp objects seem to be the weapon of choice based on available homicide statistics, out pacing gun violence in Australia, where as with sexual assault the majority of cases involved no weapon at all.ii In fact, domestic and acquaintance homicides represent the largest percentage, with women at 73% of domestic violence victims.iii Here in the United States, the over all rate of violent crime has actually decreased since 1993iv, along with a clear drop in non-fatal firearms violence.v Between 2014-2015 we saw an increase in rape/sexual assaultvi, with a slight decrease in 2016, however, as with previous years, there was a higher rate of unreported cases than reported.vii

Suffice it to say, attempts to regulate gun violence through gun control measures seems to have had a negligible effect on the over all violence that permeates our society. It does nothing to assist the poor, oppressed and subjugated peoples within our communities. In fact, the very way in which “gun control” as a term is defined and used has had historically oppressive connotations.

Some of the earliest gun laws in colonial America pertained particularly to defense against Native American tribes.viii While of course we cannot ignore the context that firearm ownership played both practically and rhetorically during the American Revolution, it must be noted that part of that revolution was against the local Native American population as well. While Native American tribes fought on the side of the British and other European colonial forces, they were also those who chose to fight along side the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries though seemed more interested in using and abusing the natives rather than seeking a unified cause. Not long after the conclusion of the American Revolution did the expansion, colonization and genocide of the Native Americans begin to exponentially escalate.

Native Americans weren’t the only ones effected by racially biased gun control. Slaves were prohibited from owning firearms from the earliest colonial formations, with Virginia as early as 1639 excluding the ownership of blacks from possessing firearms.ix After the Civil War during the periods of 1865-1866 southern states attempted to enact “Black Codes” which, among other incredibly racist restrictions, included banning the possession of firearms by black people.x

In post-WWI Germany, The “Treat of Versailles” severely restricted gun ownership in Germany, up until about 1928 where in gun controls were relaxed through a strict licensing bureaucracy, which while opening up access to firearms ownership, those who were essentially deemed untrustworthy were denied access. This was due to fears of uprisings, from both radically left and right groups, within Germany. However, after the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party, the 1938 gun laws were implemented.

The “German Weapons Act”, while superseding the previous 1928 law by greatly reducing the barriers to gun ownership by deregulating long guns and rifles, lowering the age of ownership from 20 to 18, longer validations of permits and allowing those within the Nazi Party, as well as government workers and hunters to effectively ignore gun restriction laws all together. However, this came with a caveat. The disarmament of the Jewish population:

“Jews…are prohibited from acquiring. Possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.”xi

It should be noted that I am not, in any way suggesting that more/less firearms would have made a difference for the Jewish population. I am suggesting, however, that when it comes to the enforcement and control of firearms it tends to be in the interest of oppressing and/or disarming already vulnerable, marginalized minorities and populations.

Among the radical left, the most striking example of this was the 1967 Mulford Act, which banned the open carry of firearms in California. This was a direct response to the opened armed carry that was strategically employed by the Black Panther Party, in defense of their communities. Famously, the Panthers marched on the state capital in protest of the bill, but to no avail. The bill would be signed by then California governor Ronald Reagan.

This history of gun control is one that shows a clear, deliberate attempt to disarm the most marginalized, subjugated and oppressed communities in favor of fermenting the power of the state and its supporters. This mentality within our society, one that simply proscribes that if specific, supposedly dangerous segments of the population are controlled and disarmed then it will lead to a more peaceful and just existence.

The most recent incarnation of this is the scapegoating of the mentally ill. While nobody can deny the tragedies of mass shootings like the one that took place at Parkland High school, the response in regards to the tragedy has lead to some fairly disturbing ideas in order to supposedly deal with the sources of the issue, which are aimed at access to firearms and the mentally ill.

The Parkland Students Manifesto contains a number of points that are haphazard, dangerous and simply show a lack of knowledge of firearms generally. While much of this manifesto is questionable in its effectiveness and understanding, its echoing of the supposed threat of violent mentally ill people is alarming in that it perpetuates a stereotype that ultimately puts those who are already vulnerable and in need of assistance at greater risk:

“As seen in the tragedy at our school, poor communication between mental healthcare providers and law enforcement may have contributed to a disturbed person with murderous tendencies and intentions entering a school and gunning down 17 people in cold blood.

We must improve this channel of communication. To do so, privacy laws should be amended. That will allow us to prevent people who are a danger to themselves or to others from purchasing firearms. That could help prevent tragedies such as the Parkland massacre.”

Calling for less privacy of those with mental health issues, when doctors are already required to report violent behavior or threats, does nothing but create a situation in which those with such issues may be more suspicious of getting help and less willing to seek assistance. While the students do call for more funding towards mental health, it is undercut by the underlying notion that the issue of mass shootings lies not in larger systemic causes, but in the idiosyncratic tendencies of those who commit such acts. This is further perturbed by the call for government access to the mental and physical health of its citizens in order to supposedly regulate who can have access to firearms, this being incredibly ill defined and ripe for abuse.

To what extent though, are the mentally ill an actual threat? Based on what we currently know, not much. In fact, those with a mental illness are actually more likely to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator of it.xii When violence is committed by those with a mental illness, it is often in co-morbid with other factors such as a history of violence, drug abuse, financial instability, age and sex, as well as other social factors.

Nikolas Cruz, the individual responsible for carrying out the shooting at Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida had their own history of mental illness and violence. However, they were also an active participant in virulently racist online chat groups where Cruz himself would espouse their hatred for blacks, immigrants and white women on the grounds that they were “traitors” for dating non-white individuals.xiii

Elliot Rodger, whom is responsible for the murder of 6 students on UCSB campus in 2014, expressed their rationale in a video manifesto posted to YouTube describing how they wished to seek revenge against women who they claim rejected him and wanted to make them “…finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male.” Elliot Rodger would go on to shoot himself.

More recently on April 23rd in Toronto, Ontario in Canada, a van driven by a man named Alek Minassian ran over and killed 10 pedestrians, a predominant number of which were women. Alek specifically made reference to the “incel” community, a group of men who consider themselves “involuntary celibates” due to the supposedly unfair rejection of sex from women. They even went so far as to hail Elliot Rodger in a Facebook post not long before the attack.

In one of the most infamous cases of a mass shooting, on April 20th 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. A history of violent threats and general disdain for human life present among the two, such as Klebold writing an essay about a man killing innocent people and Harris writing vitriolic things in their personal journal such as “I want to grab some weak little freshman and just tear them apart like a fucking wolf. Strangle them, squish their head, rip off their jaw, break their arms in half, show them who is God.”xiv Harris also showed Nazi sympathies claiming that Himmler was someone who “got it”. They too, like Elliot Rodger, would shoot themselves after committing their horrific acts of violence.

Something that becomes obvious, when we analyze the similarities between mass shooters and their thoughts, identities and rationale we find striking examples. Many of these shooters are straight, white, cis gender men whom internalize their hatred for a society that oppresses and subjugates them as individuals and points it towards other, vulnerable minorities and peoples whom they believe to be the cause of all their problems.

In their book “Fascism Today: What it is and how to end it” Shane Burley writes:

“While murderers like Dylann Roof are part and parcel of white nationalist movements, and that violence will only increase as those ideologies gain footing, the philosophies themselves are codified violence, an attempt to use the failures of the liberal state to provide an alternative that would privilege few and would take the worst atrocities of capitalist modernity and flip them into explicit tyrannies.”xv

These Fascistic calls and actions of violence and retribution committed by these mass shooters are symptomatic of larger, systemic political, economic and social issues that go far beyond any amount of legislative fixes. When we live in a society that actively is supported by and feeds off of white supremacy, hierarchical mentalities and notions of violence, is it any wonder that these mass shooters seek solace in communities that will claim to empower these individuals?

It is my contention, that to really address issues such as violence, mental illness, poverty, starvation, exploitation and domination generally is for the oppressed masses to seek their own power through their own capacity to defend their own communities. I do not limit “defense” in this sense to the simple defense of our communities through physical violence, although sometimes that may be a condition given the circumstances. To “defend” ones community in this sense is to defend the well being of it generally, mentally, emotionally and physically. The physicality of this defense can include protection from disease, starvation, lack of housing and of course, physical violence.

The capacity for such a system of community based self defense would be nourished by a system of directly democratic self-organizing bodies within our towns, villages and city neighborhoods. Such bodies would be able to include not only the voices of the community members themselves, whom would be able to share specific knowledge of the problems that inflict their locales, but would also be able to invite the voices of those with expertise in fields outside of the communities preview. Such a context could, for example with the issue of gun control, include the democratic dialogue between community members, firearms experts, mental and physical health professionals, as well as any other voices a given community may wish to include. In this sense “gun control” would be defined in the sense of self-governing communities controlling how and in what way they choose to regulate firearms.

Such a system of self-governance and community defense, while in my opinion desirable, requires a fundamental shift within both our political and economic structures, but also the very culture of our society as a whole. Suffice it to say, nothing short of a full social revolution will confront the ills that plague our society. Until such a change is made, until we confront the very systems of hierarchy and domination can we ever begin to hope for something better.

xvShane Burley; Fascism Today: What it is and how to end it; pg158