Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site qusavx.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!hasmed!qusavx!jon
From: jon@qusavx.UUCP (Jon Lewis)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: The Left and Gun Control
Message-ID: <229@qusavx.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jan-85 23:49:19 EST
Article-I.D.: qusavx.229
Posted: Sat Jan 12 23:49:19 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jan-85 05:16:16 EST
Organization: Quantime Corp., Cincinnati, Ohio
Lines: 27


	I for one would like to put to rest a certain widespread miscon-
ception: that the left favors gun control.  While I have no doubt that
certain left-liberal and socialist organizations do promote either the
registration of handguns or their complete abolition, the genuine 
Marxists I have known (including a former member of the S.D.S
Weathermen) take the line that gun control amounts to "disarming the
proletariat" and you obviously cannot wage a successful revolution 
without firearms.  I used to point out to this fellow that too many of
his intrepid working class army were fascist in their political tastes,
but that didn't sway him or any of his friends.  So when I read on the
net (or in the local paper) that Democrats are socialists and socialists
are communists and communists want to take our guns away, in fact this
plays precisely into the hands of those who believe only violence can
change society or purge it of its dastardly foes (however these may be
defined).
	I find it astonishing that a supposedly well-educated body of
folks (as I believe the vast majority of netlanders to be) can be so
strikingly naive with regard to political distinctions.  This can 
undoubtedly be explained to a large degree from being brought up in the
United States, where Democrats and Republicans are assumed to be
opposites when in fact but two sides of the same coin.  Please
do not insult radicals by lumping them together with liberals: liberals
seek only to alter the system to make it more liveable for all its
elements; radicals seek to replace the system entirely in the belief
that its very nature is to create the havoc liberals hope to mend and
conservatives portray as unfortunate yet inevitable.