Orwell on gun control

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H/T Richard

Human Events:

[…]

But Orwell viewed gun control through a socialist and not any law-and-order lens:

That rifle hanging on the wall
of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage
is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there.

These sentiments were not based on any theory, but hard worn experience. As a soldier on the Loyalist side during the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was aware that it was only the citizenry breaking into the armory that initially repelled Franco’s fascist rebellion. When Stalin sought to import his murderous purge trials into Spain, and thus kill off any leftist opposition, his first order of business was confiscating their weapons. Having the misfortune of belonging to a Trotskyite militia, Orwell engaged in street fighting with these gun confiscators.

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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

4 Replies to “Orwell on gun control”

  1. “Franco’s fascist rebellion”

    Franco wasn’t a fascist he got support from them but he never helped the fascists when they needed help. He didn’t like them at all. What the article calls the loyalist he was a leftists hard core. Both sides of the war were leftists. it was a lose lose

    The truly hard core leftist do not believe in weapon control. For the same reason conservatives see it. Resist government that goes bad.

    There is a lot of mistakes in this article

  2. Ox AO – Franco was indeed a Leftist, but don’t assume that fascists aren’t Leftists too. Communism, Fascism and Nazism are all extreme left-wing groups. The media only started calling Nazis extreme right-wing because the cry-baby communists didn’t want to be associated with them. It’s just another example of changing the meaning of words and terms in the same way that the word ‘racist’ has been hijacked.
    Extreme right-wing ideology, if it exists at all, would actually be Libertarianism to the point of anarchy – extremely small government or no government at all.
    We’ve been deliberately misled over the years by propaganda and language manipulation that is designed to confuse. It’s led us to the point where we are now, dripping wet with political correctness and thoroughly muddled by the actions of revisionist historians.
    No wonder that so many people are unable to tell the difference between right and wrong (or indeed right and left).

  4. The thing that struck me about this article was how Orwell a leftist and myself a rightist both realize that all freedom comes from the barrel of a gun. During the Feudal era England was the only nation that allowed the peasants to own weapons that could take an armored knight out of his saddle, feudalism fell when muzzle loading firearms became cheap enough for everyone to own.

    Always remember that an armed citizen is a citizen, a disarmed citizen is a subject.