From Maxistentialism
I am unapologetically an anarchist, I have experienced mental illness in my life, and I do not own a firearm. I know the word ‘anarchist’ scares people, because the corporate media has done a damn good job of misrepresenting what the movement is all about. It’s not like they’ve ever done that before. Why would a corporate media owned by billionaires ever smear the beliefs of anti-capitalists? Really, we aren’t that scary though. We have never started a war, owned a slave or committed an act of genocide. We’re doing pretty well, I’d say.
I want to own a firearm, but current stigmatic beliefs propagated primarily by the media and Hollywood about mentally ill people and our propensity for violence leaves me reluctant to even type out this article in my unfiltered, raw, and authentically honest writing style, the only way I know how.
I want to own legally. I want to get it registered and I want to take classes and learn how to handle it, how to clean it, how to safely transport it. I want to confess my ignorance about firearms safety, and confess the way mental illness has affected me in the past, and I do not want this to be held against me in the present. I want transparency.
I want the stigma gone. Now. I want the blaming and the gaslighting and the abuse of mentally ill people to end. I want pro-gun control liberals to solemnly admit the ways their language unfairly targets mentally ill people and contributes to social beliefs that inevitably result in acts of violence being committed against us, and I want an apology that I’ll probably never receive. I want to have a gun locked away in a safe in my house, with the ammo in a different room, also locked up. I do not want to open carry it at Target the way some people do. I do not want the KKK, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, or some ultra-religious queer hate group to show up outside my house and verbally threaten me or worse for being an outspoken advocate of radical solidarity, pro-liberation and anti-oppression politics.
I am pretty heavily involved with anti-fascist activism in an area that isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of radical progressivism, and I oftentimes feel pretty alone in my efforts. The activism community around here straight up sucks, to put it bluntly. I live in Maryland 30 minutes south of Gettysburg, PA, 40 minutes east of the WV panhandle and 20 minutes north of the Virginia state line, all areas where firearms can be obtained legally or illegally with relative ease. There’s a major, active KKK chapter within a 10 mile radius of my house. This area lacks well organized radicals, has a good ol’ boys militarized police force and is full of extraordinarily privileged middle class liberals who play ‘peace police’ who would rather see rads die than defend ourselves and others from a fascist.
This is what unconditional pacifism gets you. Also, MLK was a socialist and owned a gun. They won’t teach you that in 6th grade social studies, white people.
I do not want to own a gun so I can stroll around all over the place and make people feel uncomfortable and threatened. I do not want to own a gun to keep in my car so I can go downtown and start fights at bars and know I’ll be okay no matter what. I do not want to own a gun so I can threaten or scare people with it. I do not want to own it so I can go on a shooting spree, which most people can easily acquire a gun illegally to do so anyway. I wanna keep a gun in my house so I can never, ever use it unless I’m shooting at paper targets, or unless there is a credible threat against my life.
I know damn well I can’t rely on the police to protect me. I know hateful, xenophobic, and violent people are armed and do not care about or respect what the law says, and I know they do not value the lives of people who are different from them. I know how easy it is to obtain a gun illegally no matter where you are. I know how easily I could cobble together a PVC pipe device that could severely injure or kill someone from 100 yards away. I know how to use common household chemicals, fertilizer, chlorine, industrial agriculture chemicals, etc to make all kinds of shit that goes boom. I know how to use a hollowed out pen and the gunpowder from fireworks to make a one-time-use device that can easily expel a projectile capable of killing someone. But I don’t do any of that shit, because even though I have a mental illness, I’m not a hateful, violent asshole.
Let’s no longer talk about disarming everyone but the police, the military, and fascist right wingers. Let’s not scapegoat mentally ill people. Let’s not pretend laws keep people safe from violence. More often than not, in my experience, laws form the backbone of a violent, class based society….the legal barrier of separation between the haves and the have-nots.
There needs to be a way to keep guns out of the hands of antagonistic, bigoted, hateful people with poor intentions. Everyone should be able to qualify for gun ownership once they can prove themselves able to handle the responsibilities associated with it, the way I seek to do so, and the way I encourage others to do so. We can’t pretend that violence will just go away by disarming people. No, violence will just change forms and become sneakier. Instead of a gun, it’ll be a knife next time. Or a fertilizer bomb. Or a group of Neo-Nazis with baseball bats raining blows and racial slurs on someone’s head. Or a homeless man freezing to death under an overpass because he can’t afford to keep a roof over his head. Violence takes many forms.
What do you have to prove?
There is no good reason why bigots should own firearms in a polite and civilized society. By requiring everyone to attend college level anti-oppression trainings and establishing healthy and significant waiting periods and a streamlined licensing process, we can thoroughly vet the intentions and the stability of others, and probably reach a good deal of people who are otherwise unwilling to learn about oppression. Second chances should exist for people who demonstrate they deserve them; education and outreach should be the priority. Nothing should be forever.
Obviously, there is no perfect system, but unless we are going to disarm every last human being on the planet including the police and military, I truly believe this is the best way to not only keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people, but also a way to put guns into the hands of marginalized people who need access to them. More importantly, this also allows for a better possibility of helping people with problematic beliefs overcome them and eventually become trusted allies over time.
Let’s talk about the root causes of violence. Let’s talk about toxic masculinity. Let’s talk about 3D printers and how you can legally order a lower receiver online without a background check and finish milling it yourself with only a drill press. Let’s talk about why violence exists. Let’s talk about why people sell drugs on the street to survive. Let’s talk about why carjackings occur. Let’s talk about why people shoot at cops during evictions. Let’s talk about capitalism and poverty and crimes of desperation. Let’s talk about domestic violence and the commodification of women as another product to be consumed, and let’s talk about male ownership and entitlement. Let’s talk about killer cops and how well armed they are. Let’s talk about the military, conquest and imperialism, and let’s connect the violence of our foreign policy to capitalism and the pursuit of land and resources.
Let’s acknowledge that we live in a world full of violence that pre-dates gun ownership, and let’s acknowledge that asking the government to create more laws to disarm people inevitably harms those must vulnerable in society, and those least able to defend themselves.
Taking away guns is not the answer. Deconstructing the social conditions that lead to violence is the answer. Poverty, toxic masculinity, gender policing, homophobia, white supremacy, police forces, the military, propertarian land ownership norms, manufactured scarcity, privatized healthcare, capitalism, food insecurity, homelessness, addiction, desperation.
I am mentally ill and my voice and my exposure to danger gets ignored in these conversations because of the other ways I am privileged. It is necessary that we truly enact common sense gun laws. Hateful, bigoted people who desire to harm the most vulnerable people in society do not need guns, and everyone else does not need to suffer the consequences because of the same hateful people and the disregard they continuously show to human life.
It takes more work than electing a president or a senator and asking them to solve our problems for us. It takes more work than just passing a law does. It is scarier to acknowledge the root causes of violence than it is to continue pretending the government can keep people safe as long as the oppressive social conditions we all live and die experiencing continue to exist.
But no one will ever be safe unless and until we make these things a priority, and that’s the truth of the matter.