Gun control #1
A few comments on Pip Hinman's thought-provoking article "Gun control: are tougher laws enough?" in GLW #230. First, a correction of fact. Pip states that "most of the 500 or so gun deaths in Australia a year are due to careless or drunken shooters mishandling 'licensed' firearms". In fact, according to research by the Coalition for Gun Control, "About 700 Australians die each year by gunshot ... Suicides account for 80% of gun deaths; homicides 16%; accidents 4%". Most of the suicides are teenage boys in rural areas who shoot themselves with their father's rifle. Hence the absolute need for all rifles to be locked away, preferably in community armouries, or, on isolated farms, with the bolt and ammunition locked separately from the rifle.
Pip quotes the Swiss example to show there is "no fixed relation between the level of gun possession and the level of violence in society". The figures from Australia, the US, Britain and Japan all point to another conclusion. For example Japan, where civilian ownership of guns is illegal, had only 34 gun deaths in 1995. The US, with 200 million guns in circulation, has about 38,000 gun deaths a year (Coalition for Gun Control figures). To the question "Would tougher licensing and a national register of all firearms really prevent these random acts of violence?" such as at Port Arthur, the answer is no, but they would make military-style weapons very difficult to get. Also, they would greatly decrease suicides and murders on impulse, most of which occur in domestic situations.
I totally agree with Pip that the true underlying causes of violence are to be found in the system we live under, where inequality, unemployment, poverty and exploitation result in individual acts of despair and violence. But we can't afford to let the gun lobby call the shots.
Brendan Doyle
Glebe NSW
[Edited for length.]
Gun control #2
Reading Pip Hinman's article on gun control (GLW #230) I was disappointed though not surprised by the article's equivocation on the issue. Just as with the Strathfield massacre a few years ago, Green Left's writers have been unable to throw off the shackles of crude 19th century revolutionising to see the way in which guns are used by those in power to scare and demobilise the vast majority of people.
Yes, the article mentions the origins of the citizen's right to bear arms and its association with liberal revolutions of the period. But of course the powers that be in those days didn't have massive standing armies of well trained and armed professional soldiers to protect them from the people.
And then the argument that ownership of guns doesn't equate to a high homicide rate; quite right too. But really, using rich little Switzerland as an example! The role of the gun in the US has been one that has both oppressed and divided those least economically able to defend themselves. Surely the right to be free of gun inspired terror is a fundamental human right that demands no one should have guns.
We need all be careful too of the intrusion of the state into our lives, but let us not confuse freedom from weapons of terror for the right to be free of censorship and police harassment. And the best response to the armed crazies of the Victorian police and their ilk? When society is unarmed why do they need guns?
Col Hesse
Marrickville NSW
Open letter to Socialist Alternative
Congratulations on organising a counter-demonstration to the Right to Life's March for Little Feet, held in Melbourne on April 21. But why didn't you let Radical Women know about it and allow us, and others, to help build it?
Radical Women could have done a lot to build the action. We had our monthly meeting on Thursday night, where we could have announced it and organised more people to go. We could have organised endorsements and spread the word through our workplaces and other movement networks.
Socialist Alternative acted in the most sectarian way, taking ownership of an action which should, and could, have been a broad-based mobilisation of mass movements.
As the capitalists are marshalling their forces, such as the Right to Life, to wage a ferocious onslaught on working people everywhere, united fronts of the oppressed have to be built. Socialist Alternative excluded so many feminists, young and older women, unionists, migrants, Aboriginal people, lesbians and gay men and people with disabilities — all who have a stake in winning reproductive freedom for women — from coming in on what is escalating into a do-or-die global struggle. Sectarianism and anti-feminism, such as that displayed by Socialist Alternative, is not only unprincipled and opportunist — it's politically criminal.
Your sectarianism also put 200 counter-demonstrators in great personal danger and threatened to derail the action. Manoeuvring the counter-demo away from Parliament House, where the RTL march was to finish, was irresponsible. The balance of forces was in RTL's favour: 200 of us, 400 of them and countless cops to protect them. Marching to meet them en route took away our advantage of being positioned at the steps of Parliament House and carried the risk of missing them (which we almost did). Our side were then forced to run across Treasury Gardens, leaving our numbers dispersed and vulnerable. Many couldn't keep up. That we managed to blockade them at Albert Street was due to luck, not strategy.
As it was, the cops had us surrounded. There was no organised marshalling to provide the discipline necessary for our security in such a volatile situation. You can be sure that this high-risk behaviour turned away some counter-demonstrators from future actions.
Socialist Alternative wasn't serious about the action. Confronting the Right — whether it be the Right to Life, Nazis or the bosses — is a very serious matter. History shows how lives are lost and movements crushed by the kind of adventurism and sectarianism shown by Socialist Alternative on this occasion.
Radical Women will continue to keep communication open with Socialist Alternative for united front organising. We hope that you'll be equally collaborative.
Debbie Brennan
Melbourne Radical Women Organiser
[Edited for length.]
Port Arthur
The Hobart Mercury's sensationalised coverage of events surrounding the tragic massacre at Port Arthur has helped to generate a climate of fear and hatred in the community, fuelling death threats to the hospital where the alleged gunman was being held and calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
Newspaper stands all over the south of the state displayed pictures of the alleged gunman with the headline "This is the man!" and two days after the massacre, the Mercury carried close to 10 pages on the alleged killer's personality and life: He was rumoured to be schizophrenic; he reportedly liked young women (maybe he was a paedophile?); suspicion surrounded his father's death; he had a video copy of Friday the 13th in his bedroom; etc.
The Mercury also attempted to rewrite history. Headlines such as "Tasmania has lost its innocence", and stories about "peaceful, tranquil Port Arthur" being altered forever completely blotted out Tasmania's violent history. Port Arthur was one of the first convict settlements, founded upon the massacre of thousands of Aboriginal people.
While not downplaying the tragedy of the massacre in Port Arthur, it is important that we don't allow the media to compartmentalise the "types" of massacres that happen, requiring different responses and levels of outrage — those carried out for no apparent reason become "Australia's shame", while wartime massacres are overlooked as inevitable and those in other countries supported by our government are justified because they serve "important economic ends". One third of the population of East Timor has been killed by the Indonesian military, yet Gareth Evans referred to the 1991 Dili massacre as an "aberration".
Lets mourn for the people affected by the Port Arthur massacre, but lets also acknowledge that the scale of the massacres committed every day by governments around the world is just as horrifying.
Sarah Stephen, Carol Mitchell, Kylie Moon, Matthew Munro
Hobart Resistance
[Edited for length.]
Union democracy
I was present at the Community and Public Sector Union stop work meeting to discuss action against government cuts to the public sector [in Sydney on May 9].
I was appalled at observing how democracy can be manipulated by those heading up a meeting. The first part of the meeting [to vote on the National Executive's motion] was a credit to the union movement and the members. I am concerned however that the meeting degenerated into self interested manipulation following this. Instead of proceeding to directly debate the supplementary motions, of which there were two, the panel reported on the Parramatta results for the Executive's motion and then proceeded to manipulate the proceedings by seeking the members best wishes to sing happy birthday. Neither knowing the person or wishing to divert from procedure I did not sing. Does this make me a bad union member?
The effrontery continued when the panel, during the hurried discussion of the supplementary motions, cautioned the members to be careful in their voting as around half of the members had left and it would be binding on those absent. This I believe was partly because of the chair's conduct of the meeting.
Russell Williams
Worksafe Australia
Sydney
[Edited for length.]