Photo by Chela B.
The shooting deaths of teen perpetrators and adult victims at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, recently are horrific. This horror, part of the 121 gun deaths (homicides and suicides) in the U.S. daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024, demands drastic measures. In brief, now is the time to call for an immediate ban on the production of guns stateside.
Decisive action to prevent the chronic problem of firearm deaths in the U.S. is long overdue. How? The answer seems plain as day: ending the for-profit production of guns.
Gun control, while I support it, does not address the root of this problem. Gun production is where the focus belongs, economically and politically. There is no market with politics.
This “hidden abode of production” that Karl Marx writes of in Capital, Volume 1, is the location of making guns, a deadly commodity. Politics is the grease that makes the market move, extracting and exploiting humans and Nature.
Ending the scourge of gun deaths is a left-center-right, or working class, issue. Why? The working class is centrally involved as perpetrators and victims, with an estimated 383,000 employees involved in the firearm industry, from the factory floor to the gun store (direct, supplier and induced), according to the The Firearm Industry Trade Association figures for 2025.
Taxpayers can compensate the 383,000 employees in the firearm industry, earning $89,000 (salaries and benefits) annually, for a total payout of $34 billion. Before you recoil in outrage, recall that President Obama gave $290 billion to bail out the bankers that caused the housing crash and Great Recession (Troubled Asset Relief Program). The TARP bailout is nearly nine times the dollar amount of a firearm industry employee payout.
Consider a related taxpayer expenditure. According to the Costs of War project, and the Climate Solutions Lab, at Brown University: “The costs of the Iran war that started on February 28, 2026 extend well beyond the missiles, bombs, and deployment of personnel and munitions that have totaled upwards of $29 billion thus far.”
Think of the spending impacts of this war on American consumers, according to the Brown University researchers. “As of May 18, 2026, our calculations show that Americans have spent over $40 billion of extra gasoline and diesel costs, above what they had been paying in February.”
Let’s be real. The working class does not control production of guns or goods generally. That productive control resides in the ruling class, if I may use that term, that profits from the labor services of the working class. Class control of production and distribution propels the for-profit system.
Politically, the pro-war two-party system is the main obstacle to a ban on gun production. It’s a morbid symptom of the system of legalized bribery (campaign donations) from the gun lobby (e.g., National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Second Amendment Foundation). This political economy makes corporations and the wealthy richer via their tight control of the local, state and federal governments.
To this end, an effective strategy for a minority to dominate a majority is to encourage working class hatred of the government. That can and does work, maintaining a dollar-drenched ruling class control of the government for reasons of growing profits and market share. Controlling the economy and polity is key.
The gun lobby calls the shots, economically, politically and thus socially, at the workplace and away from it. However, on the shop floor is where this action begins. This “hidden abode of production” is the place where the making of guns, a deadly commodity, originates.
Controlling guns post-production is assuming what requires explaining. Class control and power over production is where the focus belongs. Politically, the working class needs a party that represents its interests, a gun-free society that benefits Americans on the left, center and right.
The rulers, a demographic minority, have two parties that represent their interests, and it’s time for the majority to have theirs. Demanding a ban on gun production could open the door to that end. The political obstacles are formidable, but what is the alternative if the status quo keeps raising the body count of gun deaths?