{"id":5011,"date":"2021-05-07T11:57:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T18:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5011"},"modified":"2021-05-07T11:57:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T18:57:56","slug":"i-am-a-leftist-trans-woman-living-in-the-rural-south-and-a-gun-owner-bidens-proposed-gun-control-legislation-will-only-help-the-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5011","title":{"rendered":"I am a Leftist, trans woman living in the rural South and a gun owner. Biden\u2019s proposed gun control legislation will only help the far right."},"content":{"rendered":"

[This is a reprint from an article behind a paywall; it will remain up so long as it is allowed. The original is here<\/a>. I did some forest activism with the author some years ago, and have always regarded her as particularly thoughtful and well-informed.]<\/p>\n

Margaret Killjoy<\/a>,
\nOpinion Contributor
\n2021-04-18T13:04:00Z<\/p>\n

It was the Pulse nightclub shooting for me. I spent hours glued to the news, shaking with anger and fear. That hate crime<\/a> sent plenty of people in search of more restrictive gun laws, but it sent me and an awful lot of others in the opposite direction. Over the next few years, I started going to shooting ranges more. I took a two-day concealed carry class. Now, like millions of Americans<\/a>, I\u2019m a gun owner. Importantly, I\u2019m part of what looks like a demographic<\/a> shift<\/a> in gun ownership in the US.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a woman in the rural South, and I\u2019m very visibly trans. I unintentionally find myself in the center of a culture war; the way people treat me, in cities or the countryside, has changed dramatically since Trump\u2019s election in 2016. The stares are longer, the sneers more open. Before gender identity became so politicized in the past few years, I was a curiosity. Now, I\u2019m a walking symbol of everything the far-right hates.<\/p>\n

Through my activism and my art, I have found myself in the crosshairs of the local far-right. A local news outlet once ran a satanic-panic style story about one of my music videos, and the more overtly fascist groups have sent me pictures of my family alongside my license plate number and home address.<\/p>\n

I have always supposed that my safety is something I need to guarantee for myself \u2014 that no one else was going to do it for me. Since the people who hate people like me are famously well-armed, I determined I would be as well.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a simple decision, nor one that I would ever recommend anyone take lightly. The risk-benefit analysis of owning a tool like a firearm must always be ongoing. Yet as I\u2019ve become increasingly comfortable with firearms, I\u2019ve also come to realize just how misguided most efforts at gun control truly are.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s gun control legislation is misguided<\/h2>\n

Frankly, I believe that Biden\u2019s executive orders<\/a> and proposed legislation will disproportionately affect marginalized groups, both in terms of enforcement and in terms of access to the tools of self-defense. Because the legislation does not understand the gun community, I also believe the proposed laws are a gift to the far-right\u2019s recruitment efforts.<\/p>\n

When people talk about \u201ccommon sense gun laws,\u201d it sure feels like they mean the opposite. Gun owners are very aware of the labyrinthine laws that surround the ownership and use of guns, how they vary state by state, and what will and won\u2019t bring the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) down on their heads. Many attempts to make laws more \u201ccommon sense\u201d end up making them even more confusing and contradictory \u2014 and can easily criminalize people who are trying to follow the law.<\/p>\n

Take the arm brace for example. An arm brace on a pistol allows you to shoot more accurately. In 2014, the ATF ruled <\/a>that you could stabilize the brace against your shoulder, if you wanted, without the gun being considered a short-barreled rifle, which are more heavily regulated and taxed. Then in 2015, they changed their mind<\/a>. The exact same legal firearm, owned by millions, would be legal if shot normally, but illegal if shot with the arm brace held against the shoulder \u2014 unless the gun owner paid a $200 tax and filed the right paperwork. In 2017, they reversed again<\/a>. All this because of quibbles over the definition of a rifle, which isn\u2019t legally concealable, whereas a pistol often is.<\/p>\n

Now Biden wants to say people can\u2019t have this pistol, modified with the arm brace, at all <\/a>without registering it and paying potentially hundreds of dollars.<\/p>\n

That is to say, Biden is telling millions of law-abiding Americans that they better pony up hundreds of dollars or else become criminals because of arbitrary distinctions in the length of the barrel of a gun they own. If the goal of legislation is to prevent mass shootings, calling a pistol fitted with an arm brace a rifle \u2014 and thus illegal to conceal \u2014 is the most unhelpful of legal technicalities. Shooters planning to murder a crowd of people are not concerned with the legality of how they carry their gun.<\/p>\n

This type of legislation is a gift to far-right recruitment, which, according to leaked Telegram chats<\/a>, relies on using gun rights advocacy and the fear of gun confiscation to push people further to the right. One recruitment guide listed gun control as a way to \u201cfind common ground\u201d before introducing someone to more fringe ideas. Guns should never have become a right versus left issue.<\/p>\n

I grew up largely outside of gun culture. My father is a Marine with a medal for marksmanship, and I shot a .22 at Boy Scout camp in middle school, but guns didn\u2019t play any large role in my life.<\/p>\n

When you don\u2019t own a gun, it\u2019s really hard to care about gun law. It doesn\u2019t risk criminalizing you or too many people you know. We live in bubbles in the US. If you own a gun, your friends likely do too. If you don\u2019t, your friends probably don\u2019t. Most advocates for gun control do not understand firearms, firearm law, or firearm culture. When people tell you what to do, while making it clear they don\u2019t have the first idea what they\u2019re talking about, it is always going to rub you the wrong way.<\/p>\n

I own a gun and most of my neighbors own guns. Some of them hunt. Some of them are veterans. Some of them are concerned with self-defense. My neighbors in rural North Carolina, just like my neighbors when I\u2019ve lived in major cities, run the full gamut of political affiliations. None of them operate under the illusion that the police would keep them safe in case of an emergency. Safety comes from knowing your neighbors. Safety comes, sometimes, from being armed.<\/p>\n

Gun ownership as a symbol<\/h2>\n

What I didn\u2019t realize, until I was in the environment I\u2019m in now, is the importance of the gun as a symbol for many communities. A rifle in a safe, or a handgun on a bed stand, says, \u201cI\u2019ll never go hungry, because I can hunt.\u201d It also says, \u201cI will not be a passive victim of a violent attack.\u201d It says: \u201cMe and the people I love are the ones who keep ourselves fed and safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking that away from someone, or just making it even more legally complex to own a gun, will never go over well. No amount of statistics will ever outweigh the emotional and symbolic importance of that ability for self-determination. The far-right heavily leverages that symbolic weight for recruitment<\/a> \u2014 perhaps more than anything else.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not advocating for universal gun ownership. I don\u2019t believe an armed society is a polite society. I also recognize that for a lot of people \u2014 maybe even most people \u2014 gun ownership makes them less safe instead of more safe<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s poverty<\/a>, patriarchy<\/a>, and racist policing<\/a> that drives most gun violence, and those underlying issues are where change ought to be focused.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a slogan, albeit a cynical one, that people involved in mutual aid organizing use that resonates a lot with me: \u201cWe keep us safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are people who want to hurt me for who I am, and I don\u2019t want to let them. My safety is my responsibility. Maybe it shouldn\u2019t be, in some perfect society, but we don\u2019t live in a perfect society. We live in the USA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This is a reprint from an article behind a paywall; it will remain up so long as it is allowed. The original is here. I did some forest activism with the author some years ago, and have always regarded her as particularly thoughtful and well-informed.] Margaret Killjoy, Opinion Contributor 2021-04-18T13:04:00Z It was the Pulse nightclub […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}