WeeklyWorker

09.06.2010

Silence of the left

Should socialists demand tighter gun control? Jim Moody calls for a different approach

Derrick Bird’s murder spree on June 2 exercised news channels, tabloids, and so-called quality newspapers alike for some days after he had shot dead 12 individuals and injured another 11. Nothing like it had been seen in Britain since Dunblane in 1996, when Thomas Hamilton fatally gunned down 16 schoolchildren and a teacher. Previous to that, Robert Sartin shot 15 people (killing one) in Monkseaton, North Tyneside in 1989; and Michael Ryan killed 16 (and wounded 15) in Hungerford in 1987. All the murderers’ guns had been held legally under licence.

Following Hungerford and Dunblane, governments moved to circumscribe legal gun ownership, on the publicly asserted presumption that restriction would address the problem. So the Hungerford massacre prompted Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government to introduce the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988. Its effect was to extend the definition of prohibited weapons to cover many more firearms, including most rifles and smoothbore guns.[1]

Immediately after Dunblane, the John Major Tory government introduced a ban on most cartridge ammunition handguns; then Blair’s newly elected Labour government, through the Firearms (Amendment) (No2) Act 1997, banned all remaining .22 cartridge handguns.[2] Now, even replica and non-lethal guns that could be converted to fire live rounds have more recently become illegal: for example, anyone owning an Olympic .380 BBM starter gun for use at athletics events had until June 4 to hand it over to the police without fear of prosecution.

Interestingly, parliamentary questioning of the home secretary, Teresa May, the day after Bird’s killings was mostly about police response times and a forthcoming review of sentencing guidelines (though the latter could hardly be expected to moderate the behaviour of someone like Bird contemplating murder and suicide).[3] May agreed with Labour MP Kate Hoey that already “we have among the most stringent gun regulations in Europe ... I am very clear that we must not have a knee-jerk reaction to this incident.” She completely rebuffed another Labour member, Chris Williamson, who asked her to “give an undertaking that she will not rule out the possibility of the complete prohibition of the private ownership of firearms as the best way of preventing such atrocities in future”.

Clearly, the Conservative government’s approach to the Bird killings is unlike the cringingly execrable, Daily Mail-driven stance of the New Labour administration. During his visit to Cumbria the day after the shootings prime minister David Cameron was quoted as saying that he did not want to pre-empt debate about the effectiveness of existing gun laws: “We do have very tough gun control in this country and what we need to do is take the time to allow people through that phase of mourning and realising and understanding … not leaping to conclusions.”[4] Presumably, Cameron still has many friends in the hunting, shooting and fishing fraternity and does not want to upset them with further gun controls.

Although those who favour ever tighter restrictions often cite the USA, where guns are frequently involved in deadly civilian violence, they usually ignore the social aspect to crime. However, as well as looking at the USA, we can point to Canada, whose population also has a high level of gun ownership, but where gun crime is very much lower. In Canada, there were 1.7 murders per 100,000 population in 2008, whereas the rate in the USA was 5.2 (in England and Wales the murder rate was 1.2; in 2007 in Scotland it was 2.2 per 100,000).[5]

Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world through its militia system. Between the ages of 20 and 30 (or 34 for officers) every male citizen is required to keep his army-supplied personal weapon at home with 48-50 rounds of government-issued ammunition, which is sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorised use takes place. When their period in the militia reserve ends, militiamen can choose to keep their personal weapon; the rifle is at that time modified from fully automatic to semi-automatic or self-loading. Ammunition can be bought at shooting ranges and is subsidised by the Swiss government. In 2008, Switzerland’s murder rate was 0.7 per 100,000.

Indeed, plenty of individuals commit murder without firearms. The impetus to murder relates to everyday questions that stare us in the face constantly. It is the grossly alienating ‘free market’ economy that causes individuals to run amok in this way. Bird supposedly had tax problems and a figure of £100,000 debt has been mentioned. For a petty bourgeois in his situation, pushed to the edge as he was by these troubles, it was no coincidence that he killed both his twin brother (who inherited his father’s wealth) and the family’s solicitor. We hardly need to delve into one man’s psychology to realise how people can break down in this way.

Should murder be in someone’s mind from whatever immediate stimulus, there is a myriad of weapons lying to hand. Prevention of homicide is consequently dependent more on tackling material triggers than removing all weapons, even supposing that were possible. Alternatively, are we to ban all kitchen knives? Should cars and trucks, sometimes used deliberately to kill, be taken off the roads just in case they are used malevolently, and so on? It should be obvious that it is not the objective means of injury and murder that are the problem, but the impulse to use them. That, however, involves taking on capitalism’s failure in respect of humanity, both individually and collectively.

When it comes to choosing guns to kill, maim or threaten, no-one denies that illegal firearms are anyway readily obtainable for a price. In fact, the use of firearms between individuals, as with interpersonal violence generally, has much more to do with disparities so evident within capitalist society. Societal circumstances often lead to violent confrontations within the same social strata.

Of course, restrictions on weapons, either those already existing or any tightening that might be proposed, do not apply to the police or the armed forces. They are free to be armed to the teeth, as bodies that exist ultimately to ensure the continuing rule of the bourgeoisie. Taking their tooled-up status as a given, there is no discussion in the mass media or in the press of the vast majority of the left of the array of armaments that the state’s armed bodies can and do display on the streets at will. The state has a monopoly on such forms of violence or potential violence, whereas the population has no right to protect itself against state abuse of power. There is apparently no understanding among the left that an unarmed working class will find it impossible to defeat such abuse.

It is unsurprising that Labourites and reformists generally warned in the days after Bird’s murders that guns are dangerous (no, really?) and, despite Britain’s already highly restrictive firearms laws, claimed that further tightening needs to be applied. But most of the far left appears to view even discussion of such matters as beyond the pale. Neither The Socialist (June 9) nor Socialist Worker (June 12) gives the Bird killings a mention. There is no desire to enter the debate about arms and who should have the right to bear them; no desire to discuss questions of self-defence or anything that might touch upon it. Supposed revolutionary organisations that have nothing to say about how the state arms itself, or more importantly how we do, are falling down severely on their duty. Do they want a future revolution to fail?

Communists call for the abolition of the standing army, the disarming of the police and the formation of people’s militias. But we have to be realistic and honest about the risk that this carries. Of course, someone like Bird could go berserk and use a militia weapon to commit mass murder - just as individual members of state forces might today. But this is a risk that we have to take. If for social protection each household held firearms, in a secure way and based on the collective operational unit, that would provide the means to keep society democratically defended. We can thus negate any suggestion of or tendency toward a state-based force of repression in either the existing form of a police force or any of the wings of the armed forces. By proposing the formation of a militia in which all adults are required to participate, we ensure that this area of life is democratised and the power of the state diminished.

Disciplined, organised militia formations only appear to be a novelty at this present time, of course. There is a long history of militias in the working class and democratic movement around the world. Workers and revolutionary democrats who took part in militant struggle throughout the 19th century put the defence of their hard won rights to the fore. Codified early on by the Chartists, militant defence became an undisputed democratic demand.

From self-defence formations in the 1926 General Strike to miners’ hit squads in the 1984-85 Great Strike, we have examples in Britain in the last century. Elsewhere in Europe and beyond, defence squads, workers’ self-defence and citizen militias have been considered part of mainstream socialist thought and understanding for well over a century. Even the right wing in the Second International called for measures such as a popular militia. Present-day revolutionaries who are too timid to call for a militia and workers’ self-defence in effect place themselves to the right of evolutionary socialists such as Eduard Bernstein.

jim.moody(at)weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

  1. www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts1988/ukpga_19880045_en_1#pb1-l1g1
  2. www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=1432124
  3. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100603/debtext/100603-0008.htm#10060333000942
  4. The Daily Telegraph June 4.
  5. UN office on drugs and crime homicide statistics (2003-08): www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-statistics/Criminal_justice_latest_year_by_country.20100201.xls