There are few evils in the world on par with communism. There are some evils that are bad enough I won’t debate which is worse, but I will never waiver on communism being among the worst of the worst. The fact that many swallow it as some kind of good is even more disgusting.

So imagine my surprise when I came across a blatantly communist website espousing opposition to gun control, of all things?

In fact, this piece not only acknowledges the racist past of gun control in the US but even makes an argument that other communists would probably listen to.

What are the origins of gun control in the United States? The United States “founding fathers” were advocates of revolutionary violence. But after they used revolutionary violence to overthrow the British and gain independence for the U.S., they also advocated state violence, especially against workers, indigenous people, and enslaved Africans. The right to bear arms was formalized by the Bill of Rights, which included the Second Amendment, though in practice this only applied to white citizens, and was driven primarily by fear of slave revolts.

In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that citizenship didn’t apply to people of African descent. Chief Justice Roger Taney, in arguing against equal citizenship to African Americans in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case, worried that it “would give to persons of the negro race” the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

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This was a lesson Karl Marx also emphasized, saying, “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” Again, we can look at history to understand this concretely. In fact, this is exactly what happened in Chile after the election of the President Salvador Allende, who was a Marxist. The U.S. funded a military coup in 1973 and installed the fascist Augusto Pinochet. The coup was successful largely because the Chilean people were not armed to resist it. A 1972 gun control law put civilian arms under military supervision, that is, under Pinochet’s control. As a result, more than 3000 Chileans were executed or disappeared.

Indeed, Lenin writes in “The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution” from late 1916, “An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves.” He goes on to say that “We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle.” Further, Lenin drives home the point, saying,

Lenin favored disarmament, but only of the “bourgeoisie,” not the common man.

At least, that’s what they wrote.

Marx never got a chance to show what would happen after he achieved the glorious revolution he espoused. He died before getting the chance, thus likely becoming the first good communist in history: A dead one.

Lenin, however, did show what would happen. After the rise of the Soviet Union, gun control became a major effort by the communist government. You see, the bourgeoisie cannot have guns until the communists become the bourgeoisie.

In China as well, we see a complete disarming of the populace. There is no armed proletariat holding the regime accountable. On the contrary, the elite have all the guns and, as a result, all of the control.

Yet it still strikes me as funny that opposition to gun control here in the US comes from both the right and even the extreme left.

The difference is that most of us pro-gun folks favor gun rights as an enduring part of the fabric of America, understanding that preserving that right means that even those we disagree with have the same right to keep and bear arms that we have.

I have no confidence that even American communists would do the same.

Instead, they favor gun rights up until they want to use their’s to line us all up against a wall.