A few years ago I got involved with a local community group whose membership was quite a bit different than the left-leaning activist crowd I’d been accustomed to dealing with. Local farmers, construction workers, a couple of veterans, retirees, and so forth; your typical white, second- and third-generation semi-rural Ontario working-class types. Good people, for the most part, although I knew going in I was going to be dealing with a much more conservative group than I was used to.
But I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not, even for the sake of an easy time, so eventually the conversation drifted to politics and it was discovered that I was, in the parlance that a couple of the folks decided to use, a “liberal.” (I don’t describe myself as a liberal, mostly because Canada has a Liberal Party that emphatically isn’t; I prefer the term progressive.) And a couple of the middle-aged men decided to chide me for what they considered my “liberal views” must be; mostly, they harped on the “fact” that I as a “liberal” must be anti-gun. I must want hunting to be illegal. Criminals love unarmed victims. How would I defend my family without a gun, and so forth.
This went on for a while, and I became increasingly irritated because they weren’t letting me get a word in edgewise, so finally I burst in and explained that no, I actually don’t have a problem with guns, I personally don’t own a gun but I used to target-shoot when I was younger, I have no moral objection to guns and please don’t call me a “liberal”, I’m a leftist.
They were surprised at my vehemence; I don’t think a couple of these guys had ever even met anyone who would admit to voting further left than the CPC. Certainly they’d never discussed politics with someone like me, and we kept running up against the fact that they weren’t debating me, they were debating this weird caricature of a left-winger that they’d built up in their minds. It was a weird combination of frustrating and revelatory. In the end we ended up bonding over our shared distaste for Justin Trudeau, although I think they found it entertaining that my primary objection is that while Trudeau talks a big game he’s not nearly progressive enough.
The media coverage of yesterday’s second amendment rally in Virginia has, for obvious reasons, brought that conversation back to the forefront of my mind. I’d been keeping an eye on the buildup to it, especially when the FBI arrested rogue Canadian reservist Patrik Matthews and several other members of the neo-Nazi terrorist group “The Base” for planning an attack on the rally itself. (The details of that planned terrorist incident is absolutely horrifying, an “accelerationist” attack on the pro-gun demonstrators as part of a plan to sow chaos in the hopes of sparking a new American civil war.) There were genuine fears, however, that even after the foiled terror plot was revealed that other extremist elements would try and do the same; most left-leaning groups in Virginia called for their members to stay home in order to keep the situation calm and avoid any violence.
Fortunately, the gathering of more than twenty thousand pro-gun demonstrators (many of them ridiculously heavily-armed) went peacefully, despite tension. I was frankly amazed considering the presence of violent alt-right hate groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and others; the amount of firepower displayed; and, let’s face it, the somewhat less-than-responsible behaviour of a number of the participants.
For a while I feared that all it would take was one moron dropping his loaded firearm and a massive free-for-all gun battle would ensue but mercifully, nothing like that happened. (As my father was fond of saying when I was young: “God protects fools, drunks and little children.”)
That being said, my attitude towards guns and gun ownership hasn’t changed. This might not be popular but for the record here it is: A gun is just a potentially dangerous machine, nothing more, nothing less. I view a gun like I view any other potentially dangerous machine, for example a chainsaw or a forklift or a car: You treat it with care and respect, you keep it out of the hands of children, and if you want to operate one you damned well better be able to prove you can do so safely.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to own and operate a firearm. Hell, there’s plenty of places in this country where owning a gun is a practical part of life, if not a critical necessity: When I was in university I had a friend who was part of a group of young and progressive would-be social workers who spent a semester in Nunavut; she was quite surprised when they arrived at their new quarters and immediately got a lecture on the care and safe operation of the cabin’s Lee-Enfield rifle and advice on where best to shoot any polar bears that encroached on the town.
Here in Canada, gun ownership is subject to a reasonable degree of restriction, mostly to do with licensing, registration and limiting magazine capacity. Similar to Canadian laws about car ownership and operation, you’re required to complete safety training, apply for (and regularly renew) a license, register ownership and maintain safe operation. If I wanted to buy a gun, I’d have to complete a safety course (several local gun ranges offer them at a nominal fee), apply for and pass the test to get a PAL (possession and acquisition license), receive my PAL and, as a first-time gun purchaser, sit out the mandatory 28-day waiting period. I would also be required to install a locking gun safe in my home and store all firearms in it with trigger locks in place.
I haven’t bothered to get a PAL and a gun for the same reason that I didn’t have a drivers license or a car in college – I don’t have the time or money to go through all that for something I’m not likely to use all that much. I don’t hunt and I don’t target-shoot anymore (it’s been years since I shot anything heavier than an air rifle on the range.) And, as a friend of mine recently pointed out, Canadian storage regulations make gun ownership for “home defence” kind of pointless because you’re more likely to get stabbed while screwing around with your keys than you are to shoot an intruder. (For “home defence” he advised me to get a can of bear mace and a baseball bat; it’d be just as effective in close quarters and far less dangerous to the neighbours.)
And as for the argument that criminals don’t get licenses for their guns – well, I acknowledge the point. I’m fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where gun-toting criminals are comparatively rare. I’m living in a position of privilege, no doubt about it – these days I’m less worried about a drug dealer or a mugger with a handgun smuggled in from the States than I am about some alt-right chud at a protest armed with a 3D-printed zip gun… or getting caught in a crossfire between trigger-happy local cops.
But yeah, if I cared to I could very easily go through the paperwork and expense and get a PAL and then buy a rifle or shotgun. I could even, if I wanted a handgun, go through another round of safety courses and licensing and get the required restricted firearms license. And if I wanted to drive a forklift, I could get the safety training and license for that, as well. It’s not something I need at the moment, but it’s something I could easily get if I did.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a common-sense approach to gun ownership. And speaking as a Canadian, most of the folks I know have a similar opinion.
Living next door to the United States, however, gives me the heebie jeebies sometimes. A couple of weeks before Christmas, as a specific example, I indulged in the great Niagara Peninsula tradition of cross-border shopping and while in a parking lot in New York state I witnessed a rather alarming incident: Someone got out of his truck and dropped (or dislodged, or whatever) an automatic pistol. It hit the pavement and discharged. Fortunately, it only shot into the bottom of his own truck and nobody got hit, but it could have been a serious incident. The owner was, to his credit, mortified and made sure that no one was hurt, but he shouldn’t have been carrying a loaded (and chambered!) pistol in such a way that it could be accidentally dropped and go off. Period.
Like I said, I’ve handled firearms. I respect firearms. I have zero respect for someone who’d be so careless with a firearm. He might have killed someone – he might have killed me – in a mall parking lot for no better reason than stupidity. It was sheer luck that saved him from serious consequences that day.
Of course, you could make a similar argument about driving a car; and I’ve had more close calls in parking lots with careless drivers than with careless gun owners. Any potentially dangerous machine needs to be treated with care and respect at all times. Period.
The current atmosphere around American gun culture is, unfortunately, not marked by the respectful and careful handling of firearms. Not to denigrate those sensible American gun owners who are careful and respectful of their firearms (and I sincerely hope they’re the majority), but that’s not the image that’s being projected by events in like yesterday’s festival of military cosplaying in Virginia.
The key to understanding the whole “second amendment movement” thing in the States is to realize it’s not about about responsible gun ownership: It’s about protecting privilege and fetishising power… specifically white privilege and white power. More than one person observed yesterday that the heavily-armed demonstrators were overwhelmingly right-wing white males; and many opined that if they’d been leftists or people of colour the police would not have been so sanguine about their presence.
I’ve got no beef with someone owning a handgun or a shotgun or a deer rifle. I’ll even concede that something as heavy-duty as an AR-15 might have its place in the hands of a responsible and licensed gun owner looking to defend their home. But one guy was wandering around Richmond with a .50 cal Barrett sniper rifle: that’s pretty much the epitome of what the actual fuck when it comes to this sort of toxic masculinity privilege-flex. You aren’t hunting deer with a .50 calibre rifle unless the deer is half a mile away and behind a brick wall (and even then I respectfully suggest you find a better angle.)
A lot of the rhetoric shared by the demonstrators and their supporters yesterday was that they needed their guns in case their government became tyrannical, which as a leftist is actually one of the few arguments for that kind of pseudo-military wank-off that I can respect. I know plenty of Left activists here in Canada who would have no problem joining an organization like the Socialist Rifle Association or Redneck Revolt if one were readily available here, and in the face of the increasingly violent and heavily-armed extreme-right in the USA I’m not at all surprised at the growth of leftist second-amendment groups – and bluntly, if I were an American leftist I’d likely be looking into that sort of thing myself.
But the threat to Leftists, LGBTQ+ folks and people of colour is less a tyrannical government and more heavily-armed right-wing extremists who think they can get rid of people they don’t like.
Leaving aside community defense from neo-Nazi terrorists though, more guns can’t make us safe from a government… and it’s a pipe-dream to think they will. Resisting a tyrannical government with an AR-15 is supremely pointless when that government can vaporize you with a drone strike before you ever know it’s coming. The key to our safety is – as it always has been — building strong and supportive communities who can hold power to account. If our community has armed members, then so be it… but let’s all make sure that they’re safe and responsible with their weapons in the meantime.
