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title: ""Let’s start with the basic difference in principle: Some people…"
date: 2021-06-22
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
---

# "Let’s start with the basic difference in principle: Some people…

*June 22, 2021 · Facebook*

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[https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/12/the-rifle-on-the-wall-a-left-argument-for-gun-rights/](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/12/the-rifle-on-the-wall-a-left-argument-for-gun-rights/){target="_blank"}
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\"Let's start with the basic difference in principle: Some people consider the citizen's right to possess firearms a fundamental political right.\
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The political principle at stake is simple: to deny the state the monopoly of armed force, and, obversely, to empower the citizenry, to distribute the power of armed force among the people. The "sub-political" concerns---hunting, collecting, individual self-defense---are valid in themselves, but they are not as important to the gun rights question as the political concern about the distribution of power in a polity.\
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This is not a right-wing position. Only in the ridiculous political discourse of the United States, where Barack Obama is a marxist, can citizens' right to gun ownership be considered a purely right-wing demand. The notion that an armed populace should have a measure of power of resistance to the heavily armed power of the state is, if anything, a populist principle, and has always been part of the revolutionary democratic traditions of the left. Per George, above, and Karl, here: "The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition... Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary."\"\
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[https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/12/the-rifle-on-the-wall-a-left-argument-for-gun-rights/](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/12/the-rifle-on-the-wall-a-left-argument-for-gun-rights/){target="_blank"}
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