by Cam W.
According to the online Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit organization that tracks all gun-related activity in the United States, there has been 37,000 shootings and deaths in America thus far in 2018 alone. While this number in itself is absurdly high, gun violence is only a culturally relevant discussion topic after mass shootings. Think of Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Las Vegas, and, most recently, Parkland. The public discourse is always the same, with conservatives defending gun rights from any legislative action, while liberals demand gun control. Something needs to be done to address mass violence, but conservatives (embodied by the Republican Party) do not care and only make vague and meaningless gestures to addressing mental health issues. Thus, our attention will be placed on liberals, embodied by the Democratic Party, and their ideas.
In the buildup to the 2018 primaries, and even since the election of Donald Trump, liberals and centrists alike have been flooding social media with calls to vote. One of the main problems voting will fix, they emphasize, will be gun control. But, presupposing voting will solve or even address gun violence, who will we vote for? We assume they mean to vote for the Democrats, but will the Democrats disarm the police state in America, where the police essentially have military-grade weapons, so that people of color don’t have to fear for their lives everyday? How would gun control, which simply bans weapons only for citizens, affect the lives of those like Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, and so many others who have felt the cruel and fatal effects of police brutality? Furthermore, would the Democrats, who sanction and support imperialist wars, suddenly turn back and denounce these same policies, which violate the autonomy of the global south and leave them constantly subjected to death, starvation, and Western domination? The Democratic Party’s history, past and present, tells us that they will address none of this. Inserting new individuals into the system, when the system itself is the issue, will not fix anything.
Thus, when people command us to vote to end gun violence, it is clear to us that they only mean ending gun violence for a specific class of people, in specific areas of the country. As socialists, we recognize that as long as capitalism exists, the culture of violence in this country will not be addressed. Capitalism necessitates imperialism, which includes wars and sanctions. It also necessitates that the repressive apparatus (the police, courts, etc.) reinforce the relations of production (bourgeoisie and workers). This is why the bankers that destroyed the economy in 2008 were never prosecuted and were actually bailed out by Obama. This is why those that have been murdered by the police have yet to find justice, and police officers are rarely ever held accountable. This is also why women who have been raped or sexually assaulted rarely find justice. In other words, overhauling the justice system, is unbearable to the ruling classes because it entails a radical change in society which would hold those in power accountable and fundamentally change the social order in America.
Of the 37,000 gun incidents thus far in 2018, only 241 of those have been mass shootings (the Gun Violence Archive qualifies a mass shooting as a gun incident where at least five people are injured). That leaves almost 36,800 gun incidents in this year alone that were not mass shootings. We must shed light on the real victims of gun violence. Every year, about 45,000 Americans commit suicide, and in half of those cases, the victims use a gun to end their life. Thus, about 22,500 people commit suicide every year in the U.S with the help of a gun. Every month, about 50 women are murdered with a gun by their partner, and in total almost one million American women alive have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner. Furthermore, in 2018 alone the police have shot and killed 798 people in the state’s campaign to terrorize the masses and people of color and leave them in a state of fear. Thus, the major gun incidents in everyday life are suicides, domestic violence, and police brutality.
While we believe the change that we need cannot happen under capitalism, this does not mean we will sit idle and do nothing. Now that we’ve shed light on the major victims of gun violence, we can begin to look for real solutions that go beyond banning the tool that enables this violence.
To address gun violence, we must address toxic masculinity and many other conditions that lead to domestic abuse. Toxic masculinity creates the patterns of abuse that women must endure, but part of the reason women can’t escape these abusive environments is that they would have nowhere to go. Due to the capitalist system in America where rent is very expensive, fleeing toxic situations would often mean becoming homeless or living in a precarious state. Thus it is understandable why many women have to endure abusive relationships. There is also the fact that there is little accountability or punishment for abusers. As we have seen in the case of Judge Kavanaugh, the justice system protects abusers and doesn’t believe women even when they do come forward.
To address gun violence, we must address mental illness, alienation, and the consequences of an individualistic society where many people have no support. This means enacting universal healthcare to ensure that any person can receive adequate treatment for mental illnesses. This means rejecting capitalism’s toxic individualism that enforces the idea that if you don’t succeed in the system, whether it be socially or financially, that it is your fault and not of a system that only rewards a small class of people. Furthermore, this means building relationships in our communities, where we support each other and a build a collective strength to make these changes. It also means eliminating the economic conditions that lead so many to have to struggle to survive, and where suicide can appear to be the only way out of a dreary existence. The victims of suicide encompass our entire society, with middle aged white men being the most common, and indigenous peoples being the second highest (a whole other issue that can be discussed elsewhere). There are so factors that can lead to suicide or suicidal thoughts, but fundamentally humans are social beings that thrive off the support of each other, but capitalism eats away at these relationships.
To address gun violence, we must address police violence, where police killed 1,147 people in 2017, and 25% of the victims (about 300) were black despite comprising only 13% of the population. We must not only hold the police accountable (they are rarely ever prosecuted for their crimes), but we must also work to demilitarize and abolish the police itself. The police has grown into a domestic military force, which is evident any time a protest (think Ferguson) breaks out and riot squads are called in. In order for there to be meaningful gun control, the police and military (who we haven’t even talked about here) must be considered in the process.
Real gun control would address the class positions and culture that create gun violence in the first place. Real gun control would address the nature of U.S. imperialism, police brutality, and the justice system. Socialists must address gun violence in a meaningful way by confronting all of these issues. Interestingly enough the only time gun control was ever bipartisanly supported was when the left, led by the Black Panther Party, advocated bearing arms. As Michelle Goldberg points out in her article on the Socialist Rifle Association, the left bearing arms has historically scared the Republicans and forced them into gun control measures. It’s clear that the state is only ever scared of guns when the groups who actually threaten power structures, socialists and communists, decide to use them.
An earlier version of this article was published on the Fenway Socialists blog.