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The recurring nightmare of mass shootings in the United States is part of a much grislier reality. In 2015, while 476 people died in mass shootings, the total number of gun deaths was 13,286. The US leads in gun deaths by a wide margin compared to other advanced nations; and yet, while, other countries have passed strong regulations to successfully contain gun deaths, our political establishment, slavishly succumbing to electoral calculus and corporate power, refuses to take action. But surprisingly, even as there are finally stirrings of a social movement challenging this status quo, a section of the Left remains indifferent to, or actively opposes, gun control legislation. Some of the objections come from the concern that implementation of such laws will be necessarily racialized. Better, therefore, to address the racist and misogynistic culture that fuels violence. Others, subscribing to notions of armed self-defense and resistance, resist the idea of disarming people. But it’s time for us to catch up with popular outrage and support robust gun control.

Race and Guns After a massacre of children in a largely white Connecticut suburb in 2013, Obama was pressured to acknowledge gun violence in Chicago. Gun control tends to occupy prominence only following mass shootings, and these shootings have mostly victimized whites. The ensuing media discussions on gun control rarely take into account the epidemic of everyday gun violence that largely victimizes black people. Progressives casting gun control as a “white liberal” issue similarly often fail to address the fact that nationally, blacks are more than twice as likely to be killed by guns as whites, and in some states like Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, blacks are killed at a rate four times greater than that of whites in everyday gun violence. Progressives are right in highlighting the racism of the criminal justice system most glaringly manifested in police shootings of black and brown men, and they’re understandably concerned with the possibility of racialized gun control. But they tend to ignore the actuality of the state’s racialized neglect of the gun violence that disproportionately impacts communities of color. The failure of the state to safeguard black lives rarely factors into Left opposition to gun control. Progressives, focused primarily on mass shootings, highlight the fact that it’s some form of toxic bigotry that motivates most of these killings. But mass shootings constitute only a fraction of all deaths caused by guns. The conditions in which a gun culture thrives has little to do with bigotry — it is primarily shaped by gross inequalities. The violence impacting black communities is intricately connected to poverty, unemployment, lack of adequate housing, schooling, and health care. But as socialists, while we struggle against these conditions, we can’t lose sight of the necessity of gun control. Other capitalist countries, like the United Kingdom and France, with their own racist histories also have impoverished minority populations. The difference, however, is that minorities in those countries do not also have to deal with the scourge of gun violence. Again, as socialists we appreciate the violence of capitalism in denying basic necessities like decent housing and schooling to large sections of the population. But do we wait for the overthrow of capitalism and reject interim solutions to remedy those ills? Then why do some on the Left follow this path with gun control, especially, given the impact of guns on minority communities? Even when leftists lend qualified support to gun control, they limit it only to the banning of assault type weaponry. Once again, they’re focused only on mass shootings where shooters tend to use such weaponry. But it’s handguns that are responsible for the overwhelming majority of homicides. In 2013, 84 percent of black victims were killed with guns, and 73 percent of these were killed with handguns. Trayvon Martin was killed by a 9mm pistol. It is no surprise that blacks themselves do not share the Left’s skepticism on gun control. In repeated polls, more than 70 percent of black respondents support gun control, compared to some 40 percent of Whites. This puts progressives casting gun control as a “white liberal” issue in the awkward position of appearing to know better than black communities themselves what is in their interest. The argument, made by some that gun control must be opposed because the criminal justice system is irremediably racist, is untenable. It has been argued that the implementation of laws governing sexual assault and domestic abuse are often racialized. Yet few make the case that the state should therefore no longer criminalize sexual assault. The anti-gun-control position assumes that because the racism of the criminal justice system is immutable, it trumps all possible gains of gun legislation. But if its advocates wouldn’t make the same argument about homicide, sexual assault, robbery, etc., the argument is inconsistent. If in the cases of those laws, the answer is to challenge racist implementation, rather than the laws themselves, the same holds true for gun control laws. Given the history of racialized policing, the call for unarmed police, especially for police on patrol, is certainly one progressives should push. Countries like the United Kingdom, Norway, and New Zealand offer successful instances of the practice. Linking this demand to a wider call for gun control is one way to get it into popular consciousness.