Vermont AFL-CIO releases pro-gun rights statement

James Fonteneaux said:

I find it interesting that my wife and I can be simultaneously considered "working class" and potentially "fascists" and/or "individual extremeists" depending on who you talk to. I'd like to try to understand the other side, to find that bridge... But too many times the flames are too high.

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You're going to be pissing into the wind, but pointing out that it is entirely possible to be working class has very little to do with authoritarian or libertarian politics. People try and bend the Y axis on the political compass and make it touch the X axis in order to paint an opponent in a certain light when it doesn't fit at all.

Personally, I find the same confusion exists on both sides. You might consider yourself a conservative and uphold certain conservative ideological points as being important. Small government, pro-life, pro-gun, whatever. The issue is that many of the more extreme groups on the right who are actually fascists (like the guys wearing the 6MWE shirts) espouse the same beliefs. A crucial difference would be that you're not willing to force a pro-life stance on others. Not trying to ascribe a certain ethical stance to you, this is just an example. Fascism is pretty well defined and most American conservatives don't fit that definition.

In terms of gun rights, I can tell you that as a far left person (I am not a liberal), I am constantly accused of being anti-gun. Reddit is particularly bad about it in the r/firearms subreddit where the mere mention of something that doesn't fit their narrative (like explaining the actual origins of the 2nd Amendment) immediately draws downvotes and accusations of being a gun grabber. Pointing out that quotes from the Founders often used to support the idea of individual firearms ownership, are actually taken out of context and are about something else like the militia, will generate a huge backlash.
When in actuality, I tend to support more gun rights and fewer restrictions. I think any gun laws should be very limited in scope and should err on the side of not doing enough vs. overreach. Things like background checks to avoid selling guns to those with mental illness or violent criminal records are OK in my opinion but waiting periods are not.
I've floated ideas before like having the DMV do a check on a yearly basis and printing FIREARMS OK or NO FIREARMS on your ID or Driver's License would be one way of offering some reassurance that criminals aren't buying guns via private sales. All a private seller need do is ask to see ID before making the transfer. Sure a person could use a fake ID or an expired ID and loophole the system, but its better than requiring all private sellers conduct the transfers at police stations or FFLs and likely have to pay the cost of a check.

but again, I'm not a liberal. I see myself as much further left than American liberals like Pelosi and Biden.

AlexanderA said:

This is a gun forum, not a conservative forum. Gun owners come from all parts of the political spectrum. Therefore, the "we" in the sentence above is misplaced. I, for one, don't consider myself a conservative even though I have lots of guns.

And, in fact, the Left is arming up as never before. Who do you think is driving all these gun sales? New owners, who tend to skew Left. (The Right is already armed to the gills.)

The gun controllers are not the hard Left. They're actually well-meaning, but naive, centrists. Typical soccer moms that know nothing about guns.

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AMEN!!! This right here!

Megawatt maker said:

If one cares to look around a bit, google search or in Reddit, one will find many examples of Antifa using one of Lenin's quotes quite often...

"Never disarm the working class!"...

Its become Antifas moto.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
However, in this case, The enemy of my enemy are not really enemies. Antifa is only the public wing, the tool, the "brownshirts" of those on the hard left.
It's funny the call the right "fascists", when its them themselves who are using the EXACT same tactics the real faschists used 90 or so years ago.
Anyone who has read about that period of history of central Europe can pick this right out.

While I'm all for "spreading the gospel" of gun rights, we must be careful. I dont want to have to rely on, or even have to call...the likes of Antifa my friend just because we all like guns....

Same goes with this AFL CIO thing....be careful of who else is laying in that bed before we jump in it.

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There is a crucial difference in Antifa in the US today and the Brownshirts of the 1940s. Antifa is a loosely organized but disconnected movement among some more radical left groups of people, many of whom found themselves marginalized in regular life.
The Brownshirts were not a loosely organized, disconnected movement. They had the actual support of one of the leading political parties in Germany. The SA was a real division of the NSDAP and had protection in the government with their leader actually acting as something of a cabinet member in the Nazi party. Of course, that changed on a specific night in 1934 but that's beyond the scope of this post.

Point is, Antifa isn't fascist at all. They might be extreme in their message but the fact that they are not a nationalist group with support of their state, prevents them from being fascists. And judging by thenumber of communists and anarchists in their ranks, I think if you called one of them fascist to their face, you might need to duck to avoid the coming punch.

Paul7 said:

No, it will generate a correction.

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I've had that argument a few times and they don't correct anything. You get the same snippets out of context and when you post the full context, the goalposts mysteriously move.

Case In Point: Patrick Henry gets this quote attributed to him all the time in gun rights debates. It sounds very matter of fact too, and would seemingly support the idea that Mr. Henry was all about individual gun rights and that's what the 2nd Amendment is about.

"The great object is that every man be armed" and "everyone who is able may have a gun."
(Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution. Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia,taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg, at 271, 275 2d ed. Richmond, 1805. Also 3 Elliot, Debates at 386)

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But if you read the entire paragraph, you discover he wasn't talking about individual gun rights at all. He was discussing the militia, how they were to be armed and equipped and trained. He was discussing the cost and the fact that if the federal congress held all the power, it could also take that power away from the state. Here's the entire quote.

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined...May we not discipline and arm them, as well as Congress, if the power be concurrent? So that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, and thus, at a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed. The great object is, that every man be armed. But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms, Every one Who is able may have a gun. But we have learned, by experience, that, necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case."
(Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution. Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia,taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg, at 271, 275 2d ed. Richmond, 1805. Also 3 Elliot, Debates at 386)

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entropy said:

Well of course unions would endorse gun ownership and using them on those who oppose them. It makes it easier to break strikes. And as said above, to them, 'the militant militias' are us. Even though in reality they tend to be front groups set up by the FBI to catch "militant extremists". That is, as long as they are right wing. Note they only watch Muslim extremists groups, not attempt to infiltrate them, or set up 'sting groups'. Don't forget, 9 out of every 10 members of any KKK group are FBI agents.

While the AFL-CIO is not as far to the left as ANITFA, I'd rather they kept to labor issues within unions. Socialism and private gun ownership are anathema. This is why it is working so hard to eliminate it.

Spread your disinformation somewhere else.

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All this tells me is that you don't know what socialism is. You would never accuse a socialist of being anti-gun, especially considering the persecution actual socialists have received in this country in the past.
And don't forget that the grandaddy of all the commies wrote this:

“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”

― Karl Marx

theotherwaldo said:

To be a true conservative is to support the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are all that truly support the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Socialists and Communists, by and large, do not support the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Thus, they do not truly support the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Simple, yes?

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Ok, so the true conservatives support the Right of the People To Keep and Bear Arms.
Got it.

NIGHTLORD40K said:

The Militant Left wants guns, great!
Al-Queda wants guns, awesome!
MS-13 wants guns, more the merrier!
Hamas wants guns, yes!
The Taliban wants guns, okay dokey more 2A supporters, right?



Just saying you want to be armed does not mean you SHOULD be. Not with the stated aims of what you want to do with those guns to further your ideology.

Maybe we should invite representatives of those other organizations to espouse their views on THR's platform? Why not, its only about gun ownership, right, no other considerations at all......right?

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Wait a minute, rights for me, not for thee?
I thought this was America?

Megawatt maker said:

I agree we are way out the scope here..but I have to say this..

The only difference between the brown shirts and Antifa is the name. Antifa is just as organized, and most likely better funded at a comparable point of development than the brownshirts were.
Antifa does indeed have the support of one party. A few times leading names in that party have let it slip. Antifa is very well organized too..just look at how many show up at any given point and time to create chaos. I have a hard time getting 4 buddies together for a day at the range...Anifa shows up by the hundreds.
Yiu cant tell me there isn't some serious money and organization behind that. The leader or leaders have learned enough from history to know to stay in the shadows and out if the headlines. They pull the strings from the dark. I doubt antifa is made up if marginzied people either. They seem pretty well equipped to be a bunch of bums...and just the travel costs...that ain't cheap either. The come from all over...at least from what we know from the few who actually have been arrested. They are also very nationalist...in their very unique way.

Dont be fooled. They ARE THE REAL FASCISTS.

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having some private funding, shadowy as it may be, is not the same thing as being the official paramilitary arm of a political party and that party running cover for your activities in the highest levels of government. And again, Antifa is not an organized group. They are a collection of groups, organized locally. You might be able to call them a citizens militia if you really wanted to stretch a term.

The Brownshirts were the equivalent of Hezbollah or Hamas. Antifa is nowhere near that.They aren't a caucus in the Democratic party and receive no official funding or state support. The SA did and they were set loose against a great number of people in pre-war Germany, namely Jews and anarchists/communists.

Antifa isn't fascism. It's not even close. You can openly say you don't approve of Antifa, but calling it fascist is nothing but hyperbole.

I tried to keep this one on point with a gun-related post in between the politics, but this has clearly jumped the rails with the conspiracy nuttery and the fascist poking his head out.

Mods, you can lock this turkey.

Dain Bramage said:

Perhaps Karly could have risen from the grave and admonished the Bolsheviks when they crushed the Kronstadt Uprising.

You're in the envious position of humoring an extreme political position in a free society. If you get what you want, you might join a lot of other socialists in regret.

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Perhaps he would have. I know that considering what Marx and Engels wrote on what would happen to the state, they both would have been aghast at what Soviet Russia became. The Russian Revolution occurred and almost immediately, Lenin turned it into a big government state and he and Stalin set to work moving it from an agrarian economy into one of State Capitalism. Essentially ignoring the parts Marx wrote about removing hierarchies, and throwing the machinery of the state on the scrap pile of history. Engels himself said that the machinery of the state would one day be confined to the Museum of Antiquity, on display next to the bronze axe.

MedWheeler said:

Ivy Mike writes:



You got part of it, at least. You missed the part about "the security of a free State." I don't think conservatives wholly support the right to be armed if the reason for being so is to use violence to disrupt or otherwise undermine that security (that's why we have typically disarmed enemy combatants or violent criminals when we could; we don't allow them to keep their weapons.)

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I am going to save this post for the next time someone on this forum tells me the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is a reset button on the government and trots out that 'blood of patriots and tyrants' quote from Jefferson.

Although I think I got it pretty close with the other part from the guy who doesn't want the left to be armed because they could be politically opposed to him. It's ironic that would be posted in the same thread as someone comparing Antifa to the Brownshirts of Nazi Germany. Especially considering that the tightening of gun laws in Nazi Germany was primarily directed at Hitler's leftist opponents. We can all see what happened to the communists once the NSDAP came to power.