Every time I see someone say that even the most lenient of gun regulations shouldn't be passed in the U.S., all I can do is picture them at home calling their guns "precious" like Gollum.
Im someone who likes to shoot a gun at targets at the range. I find it SO creepy and unnerving when it becomes clear that someone would like to shoot at a person. They don't usually outright say it, but some make it clear in other ways.
Right? Like in my ideal world, guns would be a hobby for weird nerds in the same way fencing is today. The one or two times I have felt like there's even a small chance I may need to use a gun in self defense were terrifying and stressful.
There's quite a few hobbies where the other people who meet up to participate as a group as a group are a huge turnoff.
Guns are one of those hobbies for me.
I would love to talk about the amazing mechanics and different approaches guns have to firing an exploding charge to move a mass of metal at supersonic speeds just like I love talking about the mechanical parts of trains and cars. But the gun crowd tends to have too high of a proportion of very vocal terrible people.
A couple years ago I joined a private shooting club. They have a range with targets from 10-300 yards. It was so cool to shoot there, and all the other members were total marksmanship nerds. Seeing all the great equipment, and ridiculous scopes was always fun, and the other members were nice to talk to. There were no soldier LARPers there. We operated as our own range masters, and everyone took safety very seriously. It was a refreshing change from the public range. Unfortunately I moved a couple hours away from that range, so it didn't make sense to continue paying the membership anymore. Now I just go to the mountains to shoot.
These days it's FAFO. I used to work with someone and he would shoehorn that into conversations completely unprovoked...like he itching to find any excuse to shoot someone
I don’t think this is an actual case of that. I have a few friends that get kitted out with plate carriers and night vision for the range and it’s just LARPing. No different than ren faire people showing up to the faire in steel plate when obviously there isn’t some sword fight that’s about to break out at the fairgrounds.
'Omosexuals, and 'eterosexuals? Yeah I think that place is England and they just talk like that. Its their language they're allowed to speak it horribly
You would have thought that after January 6th/George Floydd protests, and the lack of justice that followed both, would have finally shown liberals they cannot rely on cops and the "justice" system for personal protection.
My body, my choice to protect it the way i wish. Fuck off gun grabbers. Prisoners are forced to give up all their rights and yet they are still not safe in prison. I refuse to be your prisoner.
Some people think that situations where they can rely on others' strength are normal.
Thus they may agree with need for weapons and self-defense, because "it's a dangerous time", but not when everything is in order again. Not even thinking that said "dangerous time" somehow happened and will happen again.
Guns are similar to fire extinguishers and defibrillators in that most of time they are not needed.
I agree. I would much rather rely on myself for protection. Forget trusting the cops, I don't trust the prosecutors. There are so many liberal prosecutors who are just drop cases, and judges who set low bail, or refuse to impose certain sentence types on repeat offenders, etc. People who want to take away guns are retards.
You are seriously arguing that the corruption in our police system means there is no protection? This is objectively false.
I would trust an officer over Ultragagginggunnut any day of the week.
The only prisoners are our school children who have to drill for gun violence in their school. Kids who live in fear that their classmates will kill them because they brought another gun nutters unsecured gun to school.
The prisoners are the wives and partners of every abusive gun owner. Scared to leave because they know that it could cost their lives. You ever been raped at gun point? Yeah, didn't think so.
The prisoners are our society that has to deal with the commercialization of gun ownership and the radicalization of the NRA. Everyday they make our society more unsafe in the name of profits.
The problem isn't guns, it is people like you that think they solve problems. Guns create problems not solve them.
They need to be tightly controlled to keep them away from people who are mentally unwell. People that think they are the "prisoners" fantasizing about defending their rights and overthrowing the government.
I can’t fathom how people saw police beating protesters to death in 2020, are decrying the new Trump presidency as the rise of fascism in America, and still believe that the government should be the only ones with firepower in their hands.
Now is exactly the time when the left should be rallying behind the second amendment.
I dont see a problem with owning guns. Its just taken too lightly in the states. To get a gun where im at, you need to get certified - theoretical, physical and psychological tests are done. And no one starts pissing about personal freedoms if they fail these tests. I think you also need to be member of a shooting club. Point is, you need to demonstrate your ability to handle a weapon responsibly. Im not one to confuse correlation with causation but... you dont see many stories of shootings here.
Aren't shooting clubs and the licensing prohibitively expensive? This is just to disarm the working class. If the poor can't afford equal protection they are slaves.
How would you stop a fascist with a gun that wants to put you in a camp?
If you are lgbtq, on any mental health medication, or a immigrant as a result of natrual born citizenships then you need to realistically ask yourself this question, because that's the stated policy of the new president.
“The actual data show that some of these kind of heroic, Hollywood moments of armed citizens taking out active shooters are just extraordinarily rare,” Mr. Lankford said.
In fact, having more than one armed person at the scene who is not a member of law enforcement can create confusion and carry dire risks. An armed bystander who shot and killed an attacker in 2021 in Arvada, Colo., was himself shot and killed by the police, who mistook him for the gunman.
It was twice as common for bystanders to physically subdue the attackers, often by tackling or striking them. At Seattle Pacific University in 2014, a student security guard pepper sprayed and tackled a gunman who was reloading his weapon during an attack that killed one and injured three others. The guard took the attacker’s gun away and held the attacker until law enforcement arrived.
When a gunman entered a classroom at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2019, a student tackled him. The student was shot and killed, but the police chief said the attack would have had a far worse death toll had the student not intervened.
It doesn't have to be! It can be fun to go to the range or competitions, you can "get your money's worth" so to speak that way! You don't have to "use" it to use it, know what I mean.
(Of course, if need be it's there for that too, "god" or whatever metaphor you wish willing, yadda yadda you know.)
In fact it's the opposite. A firearm is far more likely to be involved in an accidental injury or death of someone in the household than it is going to be used in any form of self defense.
If you want to effectively protect yourself, invest in actual home security measures.
So rest assured that any firearm you purchase for self defense is always going to be a huge waste of money.
This case is horrible, but you have misrepresented it in your comments. The teens broke a window and entered his house with the intention to rob it—it was not left wide open. The recording devices were turned on because he knew they were robbing the house. His first shots to stop the intruders were legal.
Where the crime occurred is that the original shots did not kill them, and then he executed them after they were downed. He also did not report the bodies for a day.
Don’t get me wrong, dude is a psychopathic asshole, but misrepresenting the series of events doesn’t help anybody.
With the premise the OP presented, I expected something worse than what was actually there. It was still horrible, but the impact was lessened for the reasons you listed.
Interesting how someone can manufacture consent like that by shifting your initial view.
It's been a long time since I've heard about this case, but my recollection was that he left his garage door open and parked away from his house so it would appear open and unoccupied. I didn't see anything on the Wikipedia page that refutes that.
This is the absolute truth. I personally know a guy who pulls out a huge roll of money just to buy a $1 pop from a machine at night. He carries, has been for years. He is trying to get someone to mug him. You know why.
I'm not in any way trying to defend what he did, but am I missing something? It's written that the teens broke in with the intention to rob the house? Still a planned murder of course, but I think it's important to mention it, they weren't just good Samaritans checking in on a neighbour whose door was left open
White Man & Black Man Carry AR-15 Rifles In Open Carry Video Experiment
A recent video posted to YouTube by Willie Upchuck captures the same incident resulting in two distinctively different responses from police. A White gentleman is politely questioned by police, while a Black man is harshly told to get on the ground at gunpoint.
The black man that volunteered for that must have a death wish. He had to have gone into that thinking there was a very good chance the police would shoot him on sight.
If I had to kill somebody, I'd be scarred for life. Even if it was clearly in self defense.
Yet I've talked to gun owners who fantasize about getting the drop on a burglar and shooting them dead or something like that. I don't know if they're actually that bloodthirsty or just delusional, but either way it's pretty disturbing.
Our systems have taught them that criminals are worthless disgusting inhuman animals who deserve death, and they’ve never considered the trauma associated with killing someone.
Plenty of veterans lives are ruined by shit like that, and they signed up for it. A little basement dwelling incel couldn’t even comprehend the trauma.
And let’s not forget the statistics of the people who break into your house. It’s likely someone you know. Are you prepared to shoot your friend?
I think it's the marketing. Everything has to me monetized or giggified and it's hard for us to just do stuff for no good reason (like collect and/or shoot guns). We've got to justify by protecting ou family from the zombie apocalypse or crime waves or something.
I think a lot of it is whistling in the dark as well. Our powerlessness coupled with hyper individualism and lack of social support makes for some pretty uncomfortable truths.
Plus the grab bag of racism and misdirected class fear.
Oh same. I've talked with friends about conceal carry. We all agree it would be the scariest thing possible to actually need to use it. We'll pretty much want to exhaust all other options including running the fuck away first.
We couldn't imagine the idea of actually living with having murdered someone. I know I'd pretty much immediately end up in therapy to help process it.
I do get what you are saying, and may offer some pov. I do not perceive anyone who breaks into my house as human, simply because I am aware of how weak I am. Not a gun owner, but if I am in kitchen, trust me I am grabbing a knife - anything to level the playing field - and setting myself on fight rather than flight.
But it's mostly fear and adrenaline. If something happened, I have no doubt I would go for it to secure mine and my partner security. How much of a wreck I'd be later remains to be seen, though for sure it would hit me hard.
Honestly, not much difference between that and chihuahua. Fight to kill out of fear.
And then there's a ton of people that have guns, train when they can and hope they never have to use their skills outside of the range or competitions. We never ever hear about them because they are normal people
The reality is that most of the imagined scenarios which cause a person to want a gun for self defense are rooted in some form of these same delusions. They really are just not as useful in as many situations as people think they are, and these people almost never take far simpler measures to deal with their real threat profile.
Will it help my wife's best friend who was shot in the stomach six times by her husband when she got up in the middle of the night to eat something in the kitchen?
Let me introduce you to a revolutionary view about gun violence.
Way too true, I know too many people who are genuinely like this my brother included. If people have this kind of mindset they shouldn't be allowed to own guns, it is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Please, Please, Please let the second continuation of this comic be him hearing a doorbell, grabbing some of his guns, then looking through the door's peep hole to see two Mormon's in suits holding a Bible.
Tons of jobs with joke-ass 401ks they wear in their sleeve that they don't match or give any incentive whatsoever for, and hope you'll forget about when you leave.
When my company told us they didn't match, I asked why bother, then found out $25 was mandatory. Hell.