I may have missed the boat on something, but on this subreddit it seems like a lot of vocal “Liberals” are very pro 2nd amendment. I consider myself a liberal and this doesn’t align with my beliefs or values. I don’t believe in repealing the 2nd amendment but I believe guns and ammo ownership have requirements including mandatory safety training, and maybe a written and/or practical test. Can anyone explain where this super pro gun movement is coming from on the Left?
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I may have missed the boat on something, but on this subreddit it seems like a lot of vocal “Liberals” are very pro 2nd amendment. I consider myself a liberal and this doesn’t align with my beliefs or values. I don’t believe in repealing the 2nd amendment but I believe guns and ammo ownership have requirements including mandatory safety training, and maybe a written and/or practical test. Can anyone explain where this super pro gun movement is coming from on the Left?
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Reddit’s demographics skew in a manner that makes support for more conservative gun positions seem more common than they are on the left. Actually, Reddit demographics also make support for the most conservative gun positions seem more common than they are on the right as well.
On top of that, Reddit has a lot of people whose main or only purpose for using Reddit is to talk about guns and they will search for the topic outside of gun related subs and enter the conversation.
We see it in this the sub as well. We actually have some users who I would consider regulars whose only participation in the sub is to take anti-gun regulation positions.
Cause its losing and just not worth it
Plus this admin is the first time where people probably should get a gun for self defense.
It’s coming from the liberals and leftists outside of either dense urban areas or the coastal areas.
Guns are a fact of life in rural America, and there’s liberals here. We’re tired of our party taking nonsensical positions that would not reduce violence, are a massive infringement, and accomplish nothing more than getting us slaughtered in winnable elections.
Then there’s the fact that we’re in the middle of a literal fascist takeover of the country. There are literal Nazis marching in the streets threatening violence. That’s driven a ton of left leaning folks to guns.
We should abandon extremist positions like Assault Weapons Bans and magazine limits immediately.
The threat of an authoritarian government we may need to resist has risen dramatically over the past 12 months.
All the leftists I know, listen to or watch own and train with their firearms. All of them support stricter measures to own firearms as well. Owning firearms and desiring more regulation is not an unusual position. I myself would encourage everyone of a left persuasion that can safely store them, train regularly, legally own them, and are in a stable mental condition to own firearms.
This is due to a variety of factors, mostly revolving around security. Historically minorities have been harder to suppress or victimize when they have open access to firearms. See the Black Panther movement in California, which resulted in firearm regulation. Either way, it’s a win. Though I would state that the regulations in CA are ridiculous and do not accomplish what they set out to do and should be changed accordingly.
The left has been pro-gun since Marx.
Lots of left wing people support guns but they also support gun control.
You’ll find very few that are staunchly anti gun, but you’ll find some that want to do what Australia did.
u_butgravityalwayswins is right that Reddit’s demography of liberals is more pro-gun than your average liberal. Having said that, I’ll also add that the zero progress made by the gun control side federally, some less than thoughtful regulations that have been floated and the current political temperature has also cooled a lot of liberals fervor for gun control.
You can still be pro gun and believe in common sense gun laws
Many leftists see self-arming as a form of legitimate self-defense against bigotry and fascism. There’s an argument that people who are viable targets for being lynched should be trained and armed since they cannot trust the police to protect them.
I’m liberal and have believe it’s your right to have a gun & ammo without jumping thru hoops
There are 3 reasons.
1 Preserving the power balance between labor and capital
There are a very privileged class of liberals who have enough proximity to capital that the violence of the state exists to protect their property interests, and they cannot imagine capital using the violence of the state against them. They are after all in the same communities and social circles as those who hold the levers to this power.
Then there are leftists like me who grew up in Appalachia, and even though I’ve made something of myself I’ve never forgotten where I came from or the long history of violence from capital against labor in that region.
Under no circumstance should anyone who trades their labor for survival surrender their weapons, and any attempt by capital to take them should be met with all possible resistance.
Because capital always has armed thugs and always has the violence of the state at its beck and call. If you cannot counter it, you will become a slave, if not in name, in practice.
2 Self Defense
The Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that the police are under no obligation to protect you. Protect and Serve is a public relations campaign.
If someone wants to murder you, the job of police is to draw a white chalk outline around your corpse and put a likely suspect in front of the district attorney.
Again, if you have enough proximity to capital, the police may choose to protect you.
If you do not, you should bet against them protecting you, and that’s if they are in range. If you live in rural areas, the police can be half an hour to an hour away.
3 Self Preservation
If you haven’t noticed, we are now living in a fascist state where the rule of law has been replaced by rule of power and due process is already gone.
Republicans in Minnesota are already trying to classify any speech against Trump as a mental illness called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and use red flag laws to disarm anyone who has spoken out against the fascist state.
If they are coming to disarm you, they have plans to do violence against you.
Do you really want Trump and Pam Bondi deciding who should be armed?
Do you really want Democrats to vote that they can?
I’ve always enjoyed guns. I own 3 of them.
I am 1) a leftist rather than a liberal, 2) Canadian and 3) not a gun owner or user, but I think there’s a non-stupid, non-insane way of valuing the right to self-defense and even being a gun enthusiast. It comes down to being a responsible, level-headed person instead of a delusionally paranoid, disingenuous, bloodthirsty hick who thinks they need to own a million prosthetic tallywackers.
There’s a YouTuber called Beau of the Fifth Column who’s basically a left-wing redneck, and he 1) knows his guns more than most Dem politicians and 2) believes that the real root of the issue is a culture of paranoia, irresponsibility and toxic masculinity. As someone who knows nothing of guns or weaponry and is in fact freaked out by them (I’m a city-boy wuss, I admit it), he makes a lot of sense imo.
Reddit isn’t a reflection of much other than people who have opinions they want to share and time to kill.
Reddit is not a good representative sample on this subject.
I’d suggest reading through Pew’s various polls to get a solid understanding of the distribution of views.
I mean your take on guns is basically what most liberals I know believe. Gun ownership is a right according to our constitution but we need background checks, red flag laws and we don’t need high capacity clips. A decent percentage of liberals I know own guns of all types but are very safety conscious when it comes to who should be able to buy.
You are missing that leftists are not liberals. The left is pro gun, the libs are anti-gun
>very pro 2nd amendment. I consider myself a liberal and this doesn’t align with my beliefs or values
>I believe guns and ammo ownership have requirements including mandatory safety training, and maybe a written and/or practical test.
So do you think those beliefs are compatible with the 2nd amendment?
>Can anyone explain where this super pro gun movement is coming from on the Left?
The left has been pro gun for a long time.
The most convincing arguments for me is that 1. Vietnam and Afghanistan proved that yes, a much less equipped army can defeat a much larger superpower. 2. The assault weapons bans are pretty much security theater as they are only involved in a minuscule amount of gun incidents yet are the most popular rifles in America and being able to ban them despite that would open the door for a much more convincing argument to ban handguns. Also there have been many mass shootings done with handguns, even during the first assault weapons ban, so I really don’t see the point of targeting them specifically other than making many, unfortunate to say, ignorant liberals appeased.
This last election showed me that no one will save you and anything can happen, even here. I would much rather be armed and have a fighting chance to save my family if it came to that than not have a chance at all. I believe it’s not a good idea to only have the right armed as I definitely trust liberals more with responsible gun ownership, and gun ownership does act as a deterrent to government overreach. The founders had a profound insight into human nature and didn’t write the second amendment for hunting (or they would have just said the right of the people to hunt wild game shall not be infringed). Yes, there are a lot of bad downsides but I believe we can preserve what I view as an important right while tackling these issues, even if it’s more expensive or takes more effort.
Lastly I believe it’s a losing issue for us and it’s not worth fighting anymore, especially the more extreme bans. The biggest supporters are billionaires like Bloomberg and all the people that are very pro gun control will vote for democrats anyway. There are tons of gun owners that are single issue voters who will never vote Democrat because the second a state flips blue a hole plethora of assault weapons bans and magazine capacity limits are imposed. With gun content being extremely popular with gen Z and us needing to win more men over I feel it’s important to come at this issue in a much different way.
the 2nd amendment is a fundamentally liberal position. power in the hands of the people, as opposed to government.
I’m very progressive and liberal. I own 3 guns and am stockpiling ammunition so I can be able to protect my family from the impending societal collapse of our country.
Being “super pro gun” does not mean that we don’t believe in training, registration, and extensive background checks.
It’s coming from weapons and ammunition manufacturer propaganda quite effectively targeted (sic) to exploit and geneerate fear and anxiety. Morally reprehensible but effective with gullibles.
I’m not a big gun hobbyist or anything, but in general I just want to see us be less maximalist about our policy ideas. I would like the Democrats to have a few big issues that they are very passionate about. Things that strongly impact lots of people’s lives. Things like healthcare, the economy, social safety net, having a well-run immigration system, affordable housing. Reasonable people should be able to disagree on lower priority policies and still coexist in the party.
I’m a leftist, and I believe that gun ownership should look and feel a lot like car ownership.
I also think that a lot of people fetishize gun ownership, and there’s not always good reasons for people to walk around their daily lives carrying a firearm, but I think that problem mostly takes care of itself with requirements for registration and insurance (just like cars).
A lot of people truly believe that Trump wants to send them to gas chambers, for one.
Conservatism isn’t some position that is reasoned into, like liberalism is. Instead, it’s analogous to system 1 vs. system 2 thinking, where the former is universal, automatic, and guided by emotional, often amygdalin, and reactionary cognitive processes. And the latter is thoughtful, deliberative, and more likely to reflect moral thinking that privileges the common good over raw sentiment. System one, and conservatism, everybody shares. System two is difficult to access and is easily overridden, especially when a person feels threatened.
Right now, liberals are feeling cornered, angry, and defensive. That triggers system one and suppresses system two. It’s harder for them to privilege the common good ethics that undergird gun control arguments. So you’re encountering conservatism even from those who often know better.
The logic is analogous to the prisoners dilemma. If we trust others to cooperate, then we can pick the pro-social choice, sacrificing some personal power for the greater good. But if others are not trustworthy, then the cold logic suggests we make the anti-social choice.
I feel like a lot of the people who follow that sort of 2A belief (that there shouldn’t be regulations and whatnot) are left leaning libertarians. They just don’t believe in the gov regulating that in any way.
But for those who aren’t libertarian, and as someone who’s kinda considering buying a gun myself, it isn’t a matter of disregarding those things. I mean I plan on doing whatever my state requires and taking a safety course (probably a couple) so I can properly and safely maintain, store, and use it.
I still believe those who want to own should go through background checks, a psych screen/checkup, and take a safety course that at least covers basic gun safety and how to safely store a gun (since a lot of deaths tragically occur when young kids get into them and treat it like a toy because they don’t realize what they’re messing with).
I also believe we need some form of accountability measure to hold those who provide guns to criminals liable. Currently for private sales you don’t even have to keep a record of said sale. Things like that (among others) make it far too easy for people who should not own/handle guns to do so.
The Oxford shooting in MI is a good example, as was another shooting sometime last year. The parents for the Oxford kid ignored and disregarded concerns brought to them over their child’s health (they were even called in the day of the shooting and they brushed it off), turned out the kid got a hold of their handgun (or his that they got for him, can’t remember the exact details) and brought it in his backpack. The other shooting (I think was in Georgia) the kid had actually been questioned by the FBI for making comments online about shooting up his school. The dad bought him a gun anyways, and he committed a shooting with it.
In situations like that there needs to be accountability for those who made the guns accessible to people who should not have had them. I’m sure many disagree but we’re the only developed nation with this shooting problem in our schools. Making people accountable for their firearms should frankly already be an expectation, the same way we hold parents responsible for if their kid takes their car and injures someone. Guns aren’t toys, they’re tools designed specifically to kill, whether it be animals or people. We should be treating them that way and making sure that the people buying them recognize and respect that.
It’s stupid.
Being pro-gun and liberal or leftist is a very reddit thing. It’s not at all representative of liberals or leftists in the real world. Reddit just loves guns for some reason
I feel like it’s a pick your battles sort of thing.
We can win on so many other issues if we stop harping on this one so much.