I had already finished three hard years of doctoral studies in a university in the American west. I had also recently moved into my very own apartment around the university area. Years before, I had to share a disgusting flat holding other university students, some nice while others not so nice. Changes were coming into my life. I was advancing into a new level of my studies with my comprehensive exams scheduled in the fall. There were no more classes to take, and I was no longer a member on the corrupt graduate student council. A celebration was truly in order. I would reach the level of doctoral candidacy, and with this, a student should enjoy his or her own, cozy, personal space.

Personal protection entered my mindset too. After settling into my own place, I decided to buy my first gun at a local gun show, since I resided in a state where it was easy to buy them. In the city where I lived, every month there was a gun show at the local convention center. With a graduate student friend at the time, we walked into my first ever gun show. I looked around for about an hour, and then spotted a gun for a good price seated on a local dealer’s table. The weapon felt comfortable in my hand, and it seemed easy to operate. I then purchased my first gun, and it felt good to become a gun owner. With purchasing a weapon, an actual gun, I was helping to put my Anarchist politics into practice.

Anarchy and guns make a very good match. There are Anarcho-Leftists that will say otherwise, such as all violence is wrong, guns are right wing, and other Leftist-phony pacifist crap – but they are actually wrong. They are either Communists masquerading as Anarchists because we are a lot cooler than them, or maybe it is because these same Anarchists have allowed Liberal media manipulation into their minds with supporting Leftist-Activist positions, or as they say in America, ‘progressive causes.’ Absurdity is a part of the human condition, and self-proclaimed Anarchists are not immune to it. But if you look at Anarchist history, there is a motto that still maintains it is force: ‘Propaganda through both the word and the deed.’ Or as the first revolutionists stated, the Christians, in the book of St. James, ‘Faith without works is dead.’

An Anarchist that only blabbers the revolutionary talk loses respect in radical circles. If the Anarchist wants Anarcho-street cred than the revolutionary has to walk the walk too. This walking the walk can imply many things. Some examples have included writing and visiting prisoners, feeding the homeless through Food Not Bombs, offering natural herbs and salves to sick brothers and sisters, or setting up a Really Free Market with lots of free clothes and knick-knacks lying around on blankets. Other examples have comprised opening up abandoned buildings, or Squats for the homeless, paying respects to our fallen comrades in the struggle, and even buying a round of beers, drugs and handing out free cigarettes for everyone, including friends, acquaintances, and even for enemies. And yes, there is showing up at a boring demonstration in a Black Block outfit, or not going in an outfit at all, and in addition, posting articles for the local Indymedia. There are also the deeds of sabotage and self-defense. This is where the guns come into play.

For an Anarchist, the gun is the tool that defends our rights to live without molestation, whether it is against a criminally minded hoodlum intent on robbery, murder or rape, or against a racialist skinhead grabbing a bat or chain, and ready to do some physical damage to his racial enemies. Anarchists believe in the right to self-defense. So why don’t American Anarchists join with the gun owner rights movement in the States?

The answer is that we do sympathize with their cause, but we also know that the movement represents a highly diverse salad of ideological interests. Some of those ideological interests also represent our political enemies in our struggle against the State and Capitalism. The diverse American gun owners’ rights groups include Tea Party Conservatives, war wimps that sympathize with right-wing militias and mercenary groups, pro-US military diehards and extreme American patriots, a few hard right Christian Conservatives, Libertarians, gun collectors, sports shooters, and small arms sellers, such as Ruger and Smith & Wesson. As Anarchists, nor do we join groups like the NRA, Gun Owners of America, hunters associations, and other gun rights groups out there – but we stand with the right to bear arms, meaning guns, and defending ourselves by any means possible – Second Amendment or no Second Amendment.

Recently, US state political hypocrites have run on the media offensive against America’s gun culture. The state spongers in the capital of the Empire manipulated another mass shooting attack. Like previous attacks, the shooter was taking legal psycho-drugs, or ‘meds,’ and then decided to murder a bunch of people. But for this recent episode, it was the theme of the ‘children’ as the victims. Of course, the shooting happened at a gun free zone, such as a school, similar to previous mass shootings. Gun free zones make it a felony to possess weapons on the premises. These are the perfect places for gun attacks to proliferate, since the victims cannot defend themselves. Some months ago, an angry, psycho-med guy entered a mall ready to murder people. The perpetrator murdered one person until a concealed carry individual, also inside the mall, took the murderer down. The corporate media did not report much on that story.

We are actually dealing with some real nasty sociopaths in power, on both political aisles. They will say anything in order to win elections, and they will mythologize any event in order to move their agendas into enacting more criminal laws. The corporate media immediately jumped into the fray with its usual attacks on ‘gun violence,’ while American urban politicians that are more like local tyrants in the Third World, demanded some legal actions to ban the guns. Even the next year’s Super Bowl had pre-game and half time spots against guns. Of course, the corrupt bosses that control the NFL had to do their parts too. It was obvious to observers of the media, state politics and hype manipulation, that powerful manipulators were trying to whip up a phony social movement and ‘build momentum’ against America’s gun culture.

What really surprised me was that some of the Leftist websites where I have normally read interesting articles against the Amerikan Empire, such as Counterpunch, soon published a litany of anti-gun articles. Some of the authors were the typical tenured coward gang from cozy university offices. But other authors shocked me completely, and especially those that have written articles exposing government-state lies and murders. Those authors seemed to equate gun ownership with right-wing assholes tied to the NRA. Yet, do these insightful Leftists trust the same government that they curse and criticize regularly to faithfully hold a monopoly on violence? However, a few courageous authors on the Internet defended the use of weapons, and including the use of weapons by Leftists and radicals, against the US government. And yes, many gun guys in the States are right wing, patriotic, white skin privileged, fat boys – but not all of them are like that.

Guns are ubiquitous to the American landscape. There are also us Anarchists and radicals that own guns and know who the real enemy is. The true enemy is an Imperial state located in D.C. where sociopathic mass murderers plot endless wars against the Earth’s humanity. This constant and eternal war against the life, liberty and happiness of humanity has been ongoing since the founding of this monstrosity, in the year 1790. Some Anarchists have guns and train with them – and we will use them against the common enemy of humanity, the imperial state apparatus and their parasitical elites, if and when they decide to confiscate them and/or imprison us. Like I stated before in this post, ‘Propaganda of both the Deed and the Word.’ A good Anarchist knows his or her weapon of choice because a well-used tool furthers the revolutionary spirit.