Hello everybody and welcome back to Red Menace.

Today's episode is going to be a much more somber one where we're recording in the wake

of the horrific shooting in Uvalde, Texas where multiple 19 at this point children were

murdered and two teachers.

That of course was coming on the heels of a brutal shooting in Buffalo where neo-nazi

specifically targeted black grocery shoppers.

And actually in that case there was also an attempt or at least a scheme that was he was

planning on going to a black elementary school at first felt he could not get in adequately

easily enough and then decided to turn to a grocery store instead.

So one seems very ideological, one seems just nihilistic and things could come out in

the future.

The most recent shooting as to what his motivations were but much like the sandy hook shooting

it just seems like a very disturbed individual with no real political vision carrying out

violence for its own sake whereas in the Buffalo shooting it was clearly ideologically

motivated and this is becoming just par for the course in American society unfortunately.

And what we wanted to do in this episode is kind of offer if not answers the beginnings

of the search for answers of what a principled socialist position could be on these issues

specifically around gun policy because I feel like there's two major extremes.

There's the liberal extreme which is like ban everything you know we shouldn't have

guns what the fuck do you need a gun for etc which is you know par for the course on the

liberal center left.

And then we have on the far left basically a regurgitation of the far right wing position

...