Monday, September 12, 2011

Why Liberals Should Support the Right To Keep and Bear Arms

I consider myself pretty liberal as well as a socialist. One item I have largely been ambivalent about was gun rights till recently. Democrats largely shot themselves in the foot in the 90's by insisting on gun control. Since them most of them have learned and won't go near the issue with a ten foot pole except for a few California and New York liberals. Guns can be a dangerous tool and should be used with care. There is no doubt about that. However, the right to bear arms is sometimes what enables the oppressed to throw off their oppressors. This was the case in Libya most recently. This is also something that is well understood by the Black Panthers as well. During the civil rights era, they took a stand against gun control because they knew how the right to bear arms empowered an oppressed people.


The case of Libya left me thinking recently that those of us who are liberal and support gun rights should let our views be known. Guns have often empowered workers in many places where they were being exploited such as in Chile till Allende's government had them disarm which made it that much easier for Pinochet to begin his reign of terror. Here in the US, we see an increasing infringement upon the rights of the working class by the corporate elites as well as an increasing police state where people are forced out of their homes by banks who can't even pay their bills without help from the government and where workers are intimidated by large corporations to prevent them from organizing into unions. Guns are a great equalizer though and they can enable the powerless to have some defense against this form of economic bullying by the plutocrats.


I would suggest that it is a good thing as well for working class people in the US to organize into armed militias. That shouldn't be left to just the hate mongers and the crazy right wing idiots who subscribe to every conspiracy theory known to man. For further reading, check this article out:



Gun-Control & Workers' Militias: How Socialists View the Issues:

'via Blog this'

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