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.