Gun Control & Self Defence

[Frew]

@MarkG

t’s interesting to me that some people think more guns would act as a check on government overreach. It seems to go the other way in practice. The more guns you have, the more likely you are to see militarization of the police, more stop & frisks, more curbs on liberty in other areas, and even more overreaction to terrorism. Guns are a negative sum liberty in that their simple existence causes a loss of other liberties, and that loss increases the more freely available the guns are.

I find the gun totting libertarian attitude on guns and self-defence telling, they live in fear of their fellow citizens, which I guess is fair enough when you want to rip away any sort of social safety net. People with nothing and no way to make a living must resort to crime in order to eat. Australia’s convict heritage thrives on that trope. I wonder how much that mythology colours our attitudes to welfare?

I feel pretty safe despite living near the highest crime area in Wollongong. Knowing that people were walking around with guns would make me feel much less safe, especially considering that much of the crime is driven by meth addiction, which has a habit of making people cray-cray.

I think one of the big drivers of unarmed black people getting shot by cops in the US, besides the racism comes from the persistent fear of every possible traffic stop resulting in a gun fight, without the guns, the cops just aren’t quite so jumpy.

@miles_w

I identify as libertarian left. It encapsulates my and our positions too well to be held back by unfair misconceptions. We should be reclaiming innocent words and phrases that groups we may disagree with have coopted.

Yeah I am firmly libertarian left, although if I am not describing myself as a Pirate I generally call myself an Anarchist.

@Simon

even if it is technically correct (the best kind) it’s not worth our efforts to reclaim these words when used together, as when used individually these words refer to something else.

It’s just as much battle as explaining what Pirate means…

The name change debate demonstrated the problem with labelling ourselves libertarian left instead of Pirate, but I think it is still a useful descriptor when talking to the right people. We don’t have to be unified on how we describe ourselves and different words would carry the meaning to different people. When talking to people who already identify as libertarian left, calling ourselves libertarian left makes sense because we agree on most things by default and want them to join us. When talking to the general public there usually no need to explain our politics in such a way. We can talk about freedom and equality and it has the same meaning without the scary words.

@jsky

So what is wrong with the word Freedom?

As a political identifier it has been picked up by various far-right political parties, including The Party for Freedumb in Australia which has ties to Dutch racist Geert Wilders. There is also the Austrian Freedom Party. Not wanting to be associated with that lot, I would want to steer clear of using it as a name. As for general use, freedom is good, just needs to be the right context.