Gun control is racist, because America is racist. Neither has to be true.
First: it’s entirely possible to believe both that people with obvious violent tendencies should not own guns AND that the way our society determines who’s “criminal” is f***d up, unfairly biased towards young brown men, and driving the militarization of the police. It’s also possible to believe that there are potentially sinister consequences to disarming citizens entirely while also saying that maybe we should be concerned about who is stockpiling guns and why, or that maybe if your ex has a restraining order against you it is ok for people to come and take away the most likely method you will use to kill her.
It’s also possible to uphold the dignity of the mentally ill, and not contribute to stigmatizing a group who already suffer disproportionate violence against them while also agreeing that no one who has expressed intent to harm themself or others should have open access to guns.
“But!” you argue, “I must defend my family from Bad People!” Bad news: Unless you train, weekly, at a range AND can do so under the stress of simulated life-threatening situations, you will not be able to defend your family when you are woken by the sound of breaking glass. You will shoot your cat, or your elderly relative, or your teenager sneaking back in. If there is an actual bad person in your home, you will escalate the situation to lethal violence when the enemy is fully awake and aware of your location. [Hint: this is bad.]
If you actually have reason to fear burglars- and most of us don’t; google the stats in your neighborhood- your best bet is more like a shotgun with broad scatter and non-lethal rounds. Your teenager can recover from some rock salt in his ass. Remember what I said about escalating? The burglar is almost always going to take your shit and leave, unless you shoot at him and miss. Which you will with a handgun, unless you’re a genuine trained badass. [You aren’t.]
Also, if you do shoot someone in what you believe to be self-defense, and you are not a cop and they are not an unarmed black teenager, there will be consequences. They will sue you if they survive. Their family will sue you if they do not. You will have to justify your actions in front of countless men in suits, forever, and you will have to relive that experience. Also forever.
Losing your stuff sucks. Actually causing the death of another person is traumatizing. Losing your kid to an accidental discharge, or mistaken identity, or suicide, is like getting a VIP key to the deepest, shittiest level of hell, every day, for the rest of your life.
And for the love of all that’s holy, human lives are more important than property rights any day of the week. Because that’s really what these “freedom” defenders are protecting- property rights. Did those fucknuts in Oregon occupy a federal park to save lives? No, they did it because they were arguing that *property* is the only valid measure of freedom, and that their grazing rights were more important than conservation, because capitalism or Manifest Destiny or some other justification for spreading our clutching hands to every corner of the globe.
And let’s not gloss over exactly which people have property rights in their imagination. Native Americans? Nope. Don’t see armed libertarians fending off anybody at Standing Rock. Black people? Oh, yeah, remember all the armed freedom defenders who protested the use of eminent domain and the interstate highway system to entrench urban inequalities?Wait, no, that never happened. [Ask me why Interstate 91 on the MA/CT border doesn’t go through Suffield, CT. I dare you.] And all those armed white people, defending their black neighbors from mobs that burn their towns down to punish them for the audacity of succeeding. Oh, it must be when they defended all the Japanese-Americans from having their property seized — wait, no, that didn’t happen either. I bet all those people that were foolish enough to live over coal or oil wish they had property rights like an Oregon rancher.
I studied political science. I love me some social contract theory. But I have no illusion that “tyranny” referred to anything other than the ability of rich white guys to take land away from less rich white guys.
All of the redlining, all of the ridiculous invasion into what we can and can’t do with our homes (like grow food instead of front lawns), “good” neighborhoods — all an assurance that your property values won’t go down. Because ultimately, that’s the only legitimate purpose of the government as constructed by social contract theory- to create an environment where we can achieve our highest social good by… owning shit. Laws. Police. Commerce. All part of a structure whereby we can own things.
WHITE WOMEN: listen closely. This next bit is for you.
When we use the rhetoric of safety and “good” neighborhoods, we are perpetuating some serious bullshit. There are kids on this planet other than yours. Moving to the suburb with the “good” schools comes at the price of screwing over those kids.
[BTW, the one unassailable predictor of stable home values is a “good” school district.]
Gotta protect that investment, amirite? And I do get it- not many of us think we’re in a position to deliberately say no to whatever slice of privilege we can lay our hands on, if you look up from where we’re standing. But maybe look backwards, too.
[And maybe recognize — as wiser people than me have said — that dignity and safety are not actually a pie, and it doesn’t diminish yours to ensure it for someone else.]
The uglier side of that coin is that we are only protected insofar as we are willing to be property. There are no armed mobs for equal pay. There are no armed mobs to actually end rape. There are, unfortunately, plenty to “protect” us from it by blaming brown people, and the blood of countless beatings and lynchings is on our hands.
Because our value diminishes in the eyes of white men if other men can move on in. Just like a “good” neighborhood. Whether you believe that to be true or not, you can’t separate it from the rhetoric.
This country is willing to allow people to take up arms to defend two things: property and whiteness. That’s it. That’s all she wrote.
Until that changes, don’t fucking come at me about inalienable rights. Don’t wrap yourself in the flag or the constitution and claim that it applies to everyone equally. The NRA knows this is true, and they like it that way. Fuck them.
So then what does good policy look like?
Well, for starters, it looks like allowing the CDC to study gun violence. We are all flying blind until there is solid research into what types of policies lower the homicide and suicide rates, and which ones don’t.
It looks like working against racist ideas of criminality and fear, even when — especially when — they are held by law enforcement.
It looks like talking about the way that toxic masculinity drives so many of not only the mass shootings, but the everyday, single-death, unremarked gun violence that kills brothers, partners, neighbors- and takes alienation and anger and turns it fatal.
It looks like addressing the underlying causes of the poverty cycle, giving people options and really, truly caring that their basic needs are met, not tossing them into a system that makes sure every literal carrot has its corresponding metaphorical stick of shame.
It looks like ending the school to prison pipeline and ending the war on drugs, all of which are just fancy ways of saying that we invented a bunch of ways to lock black men up, and that three-strikes laws and drug and firearm charges are less about making things safer and more about how you make a prison profitable once you go and allow them to be privatized.
