If the target audience could read, they d be very upset
At least that'll keep them safe from being turned gay.
I know a gay person who can read. It checks out.
Whew, they sure dodged a bullet.
Books don't gay people. Gay people gay people.
Did I do it right?
Correct, in the same way that guns are not inherently evil and require someone with bad intentions to use them in a bad way. Both are correct, but sadly the folks who believe a certain way (books are bad or guns are bad) will not be convinced to change their point of view by a snarky sign.
Ofc guns aren't evil. They're objects. A chair can't be evil. And yes, you can bash someone over the head with a chair, yet there is a glaring difference. A gun is made for the sole purpose to shoot someone. You can't really use it for anything else. It's absolutely it's intended purpose and what it's used for. So, if we were to assign 'good' or 'evil' to inanimate objects, guns would certainly lean way more into the evil side.
I am proud to be pro gun and pro lgbtq+ ✊"No, not like that" -- NRA, ATF, and FBI
If only the Black Panthers and Native Americans had been armed...
Black Panthers in California were famously armed, until Ronald Reagan signed the NRA-supported "Mulford Act" which prohibited them from carrying loaded weapons.
There were similar racial motivation behind the wave of legal prohibitions on concealment in the late 19th century. The thinking was that only "criminals" needed to hide the fact that they were armed; "honest" and "law abiding" people had no need to hide their weapons from other "honest" and "law abiding" citizens or the police. The supporters of these laws didn't make it a secret that their intentions were to disarm former slaves, who would certainly draw unwanted attention from racists if they attempted to carry openly as the law allowed.
Before the emancipation proclamation, the only restrictions on guns were based on criminal conviction and race, specifically, the disarmament of "Negroes" and "Indians".
What I've always thought would make an interesting alternative-history story would be if the Native Americans (or aboriginals in any place really) had something akin to a modern compound bow.
I've been shooting bows since I was six. I've also fired matchlock smoothbore guns. The matchlock is more powerful, but less accurate, slower to fire, noisy, it takes some setup before you can fire it the first time. Compound bows are crazy accurate in the right hands, and some can launch an arrow weighing 40-50 grams at 100 meters per second. Add a sharpened tip and it will penetrate a lot of armor, too.
Same! I actually volunteer with an organization called Operation Blazing Sword where we teach LGBTQ+ folks how to safely use firearms by taking them to the gun range and providing ammunition for practice.
Banning guns keeps the people who most need to protect themselves from being able to do so.
Gun control was started in the US as a racist measure to make it difficult for black Americans to protect themselves.
Hey! Nicely done I have my own private range and have been wanting to volunteer for blazing sword. Especially in this rural ass area I'm in.
Self defense with a firearm is exceedingly rare in the US. People who claim that guns are used for self-protection haven't done any research to back it up and don't realize that more guns in people's hands just leads to more danger for everyone.
https://vpc.org/revealing-the-impacts-of-gun-violence/self-defense-gun-use/
https://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable17.pdf
And often, firearms in the home cause more danger for domestic violence victims than protection because abusers escalate to homicide using the weapons available to them.
Sorry if you're being sarcastic, but why then do the workers with the guns have the least rights?
Remember, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gay is a good guy with a gay
Hi I'm gay, where are the bad boys?
Hi Gay, I'm dad. I mean daddy 😈
Ray a tay tay that's the sound of my gay
So anyway, I started blowing
Dude talks about bringing the big guns out, unzips and an actual pistol falls out! Anyone would be shitting themselves at the balls
"Books are just guns that fire gay rays" - some MAGA, probably.
I saw this on Facebook. The dumb typical reply was "the only people who say this are people who want to show children porn" or something else insane
Every accusation is a confession
This guy took the last slice. 😐
The far-right accuses the LGBT+ community (and anyone who supports them) of being child predators because child predators are the last remaining group of people you can openly advocate violence against.
They want to say "lets kill all the gay people" but they need to maintain a shred of plausible deniability.
Emphasis on "Facebook" here...
No, the only people that say this are people that don't realize that anarchists and leftists in general (tankies are not leftists) support the right of the people to be armed, and also support your right to read books that you want to, as long as you don't fuck with other people over their choices.
“Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.”
Republicans are really going back in time for their policies.
You lost me there. The penis what?
That takes me back to SNL Celebrity Jeopardy! One of the best recurring sketches in their entire 48-year history IMO!
As a side note, it's not every day you get to share a clip that starts with "I hate you" 😂
PENIS MIGHTIER, TRABEK!!!
There was nothing about a penis. What have you been reading???
That sign won't stop me because I can't read!
Or
If those kids could read they'd be very upset.
Especially religious books. Not going along with some religious book definitely holds the record for most people killed.
That's why my buddy Mike Johnson and I use CovenentEyes (tm) to protect us from all the hot gayness that just absolutely LEAPS out of the computer screens at us, too bad I can't get an analogue version for all the books with hot gayness that tries to attack us!
edit: 1 downvote? I didn't know my boi MJ was on lemmy! Yo whaddup ya fucking theocratic loon
Books don't make people gay. Attractive people of the same sex make you gay.
Well, that, and what I assume is a brain development process before or during puberty that I don't completely understand but I know has to exist, because I don't remember making a concious effort to be attracted to legs and striking eyes, but I sure am. I bet there is a rabbit hole where I could learn about all this.
You mention before puberty, but the research is quite fascinating. There is strong evidence a hormone imbalance in your mother when your are still a fetus can have a dramatic effect on your sexual orientation as an adult. But also on a negative side sexual abuse of adolescents can also have a significant effect on adult sexuality. Human sexual orientation and the factors at play are very diverse and interesting.
Human sexual orientation and the factors at play are very diverse and interesting.
I know! So interesting, but some people make you feel like a pervert for being interested in it. I just want to know how it works, like literally everything else.
My theory is that everyone is becoming more attractive so it's less inappropriate or irrational to think of having sex with said person anymore
Being from a very rural area: guns are tools. They provide self defense against wildlife and crazy humans when you're miles outside of law enforcement coverage, they are pest control, and they are a humane way of euthanasia when a farm animal is suffering.
And like most other tools, such as drills, post hole augers, machine lathes, tractors, cars, etc... they can maim and kill indiscriminately when used incorrectly or maliciously. But you cannot simply ban or remove the tool from everywhere because it is still serves a very important purpose. Can they be more controlled, education made mandatory, more stringent confiscation rules in the case of people with mental illness? Yes, and probably should. But you will never eliminate the firearm completely.
I am prepared to recieve the hate and downvotes for providing a measured, reasonable response.
What I always find hilarious is that the people who claim to be very well versed in firearms safety are the ones who oppose the idea of making people get a license to use one. They'll tell you that you shouldn't even talk about gun laws unless you can tell a .45 from a 9 mm in the dark, but feel that anyone, no matter how drunk or crazy, should be able to buy a gun.
Gunowners don't like licenses because if the goverment can decide who owns guns, then they'll use it to keep guns out of the hands of people they don't like.
New York City abuses its may-issue system to prevent anyone from obtaining a license to carry concealed, unless you pay high bribes to the police (or are police).
Most gun laws disproportionately affect the poor. Polities such as New York State require people undergo a certified training course before they can purchase a handgun (police excepted of course). I see people complaining that a single day of voting is insufficent, that their hourly job doesn't leave them a window to go vote. This is much worse with a carry course, where you have to perfectly attend multiple classes that you're paying hundreds of dollars to attend. It's a steep cost to exercise a right.
These are addressable problems: all handgun licenses should be shall-issue if you meet the requirements, mandated training courses should be free and people should be compensated for their time like jury duty.
As for the "you shouldn't even talk about gun laws unless you can tell a .45 from a 9 mm in the dark" part/is that really so unreasonable, minus the hyperbole? When Republicans use phrases like "If it's a legitimate rape, the body has ways of shutting it down" and then try to claim that life starts when the heart does, is it OK that they are wildly wrong about the human body and are trying to legislate it?
In your opinion, what new benefits would requiring a license to own guns have? How will requiring this license supplement existing laws? Specifically, how would this change improve the gun "problem?"
Maybe the people you talk to who claim to be well versed in firearm safety oppose licensing requirements like this because they're well versed in existing gun laws and the culture war against ownership? Not because "muh guns!"
Your grandparents could've mail-ordered machine guns to their doorstep, no background check required. Hell, when they were kids, they could've walked into a corner store and bought a rifle with their saved up lunch money. That's what my grandpa did.
If gun laws have only gotten stricter over this time, then why are mass shootings essentially a new thing? What changed between now and then that could explain it? Living conditions have plummeted, people are poorer, breaking the poverty cycle is basically impossible, our public schools aren't getting proper funding, prisons are cruel and don't reform, college tuition has skyrocketed, healthcare has become inaccessible, women are losing bodily rights, etc.
Unfucking our society in all the ways our corporate and political elite have fucked it would do more to curb violence than anything else. Why would anyone mindlessly kill others if society's worth living in?
The NZ gun laws are largely based on this idea, at least in terms of being a tool for use against animals, less so personal defense against other people.
The implication of this is that some types of gun have few/no practical use as a tool other than for personal defense/offense.
Rifles and shotguns are useful for hunting. Fully automatic & select fire weapons are not, or are at least excessive. They're only useful if you intend to attack people.
Same goes for handguns.
The US doesn’t have a problem with fully automatic or select fire weapons. They exist, sure. But given they’ve been banned since 1986 and are prohibitively expensive to own, requiring multiple tax stamps and hoops to jump through, they are almost assuredly not used in violent crime. Or for anything other than hobbyist activities.
What seems to garner the most attention here are semi-automatic rifles with removable magazines. There is almost nothing mechanical differentiating an AR-15 or similar rifle from a common hunting or farming rifle like the Ruger American Rifle. They’re often mislabeled an “assault weapon”, a term without a concrete definition, or worse an “assault rifle” which does have a concrete definition that aligns to the very guns you call out as not having practical use. Namely, to qualify as an assault rifle, it must be capable of select fire or fully automatic fire.
Ironically, most acts of violence committed using a firearm are done with pistols, which outside of demonstrably ineffective magazine limitations have gone widely untouched by proposed or enacted gun control efforts. Which is especially ironic considering that the NFA was enacted in 1934 primarily focused on handguns - this is why the US has restrictions on ownership of short barreled rifles and shotguns, because the impetus was to focus on weapons which could be easily concealed. By the time the law was passed, however, pistols had been exempted, but the weird language around SBRs and SBSs was left intact.
Broadly, though, gun control in the US has been primarily motivated by class and racial division. Most of the FUD you hear about guns is directly the result of Reagan’s gun control policies as Governor of California in response to not wanting the Black Panthers to have legal access to firearms - which they were using to protect their neighborhoods from violent crime that police wouldn’t respond to. Criminalizing certain weapons gave police the ability to profile and discriminate against minorities under the guise of public safety, and we’ve been treading that water ever since.
The solution to America’s perceived gun problem is universal basic income and universal healthcare. Ending the war on drugs would help too. Without the stress of being impoverished and without having to worry about being able to afford medical care, people tend not to commit crimes. Most gun violence in the US is gang related, and US policies today systemically and disproportionately see the incarceration of people of color for violent and non-violent crime alike. Our penal system is geared for punishment, not rehabilitation, so a person who is now a felon is left with very few options to make an honest living. People turn to gangs to make money, because without income you cannot live in this country.
Eliminate the poverty, decouple healthcare from employers, and stop criminalizing drugs - subsequently arresting and incarcerating so many people for non-violent offenses - and you dramatically reduce the likelihood of a person being left in desperation with few options outside of a life of crime. In turn, gang violence and gun crime overall will plummet.
We’re just too busy picking a team and rooting for the other team’s destruction to actually attack the root of the problem, because doing that might make people realize that it’s all been set up like this to keep us from looking at the class division more closely.
Yanks seem to think that in countries with gun control, you can't get a gun. I could get one if I want. If I needed a shotgun or a deer rifle, I could easily acquire one.
Literally nobody needs an automatic rifle or a pistol, other than to kill another human.
It's that simple, but I think the decades of leaded petrol makes it a bit difficult for them to comprehend
Another sane approach by NZ.
Handguns are excellent for self defense especially while hiking. My sister wouldn't be here today if she didn't carry a .45 everywhere when outdoors. Not all of us live in places where humans have exterminated the dangerous wildlife
The issue here is that it is perceived as a right and not a privilege.
Because of that, anything restricting that "right" at all is perceived as an infringement on the personality of the gun user.
With cars most people are on board with the concept that being caught while DUI leads to a ban on driving.
The same is not true for people handling guns while drunk or in an irresponsible way.
It's also totally understood by people that there are areas where you don't drive (e.g. inside a shopping mall). Again, the same is not true with guns.
And that's the issue here.
The "right" needs to be made into a privilege that is allowed under certain circumstances (e.g. if you need it for work or live in a very remote area). This does not contradict with banning guns in cities, schools, towns or other areas where guns serve no positive purpose.
Your use case is valid, but also many gun owners aren't in your situation.
when you’re miles outside of law enforcement coverage,
See, this might be the problem. Now I know America is a big place, But you can drone strike a wedding anywhere on the planet, it feels like your nation should have the ability to enforce it's laws on it's own ground without having to rely on individuals wielding firearms. And it's not like there is a shortage of police funding. They just don't care about your area in particular. Other places the polices get's to drive literal tanks/apcs.
I don't think you comprehend the vastness and remoteness of the American West.
There are places where the law enforcement response time is over an hour simply because it takes that long for the one deputy working the county to drive from one side of the country to the other. There's no point in having more deputies working a county where there are only 2 people living per square mile. Nor is there the finances to hire additional police protection.
Most of the USA that is not the case, but it is a reality for some places in the lower 48 states. Alaska is that to another level.
Police funding is a function of city or county, and sometimes state population. Metro area have the funding. Rural places just can't afford to employ enough police to reduce response time to under 30 minutes.
Fortunately an unmanned air strike is still considered an unacceptable response to a police assistance request.
There's a saying "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away". That's a best case scenario and usually only true if you're in a good neighborhood in the suburbs. The police can take hours to respond to a call, and that's when you don't live in the boonies. Rural people need to be able to take care of themselves for the most part.
You cannot simply ban or remove the tool from everywhere because it is still serves a very important purpose.
I've never actually encountered someone either online or in person who things we can or should ban all guns in the US. I don't think this person exists in any significant capacity, except in the imaginations of paranoid gun owners. There's definitely nothing in the image above to imply that, either.
I have certainly met them, both online and in person. One of my best friends is one of them. He thinks all guns everywhere should be banned. He gets angry that one of my hobbies is target shooting. He can't comprehend that I'm enjoying it for the challenge it is, and not training to mass murder people with my single shot, bolt action rifle.
I personally know LOTS of people who feel that way. My best friend feels that way. And although I do not feel that way, I do empathise with that position. To suggest no one feels that way seems out of touch to me.
Do you think we don't have guns outside of USA??? I don't think your point is very well measured if you think rural population in Canada do not have guns. Also, books are tools too.
I am prepared to recieve the hate and downvotes for providing a measured, reasonable response.
You didn't so much provide a measured reasonable response as you compared actual labor saving tools to a machine designed specifically to kill/maim. Then you patted yourself on the back for being brave enough to make such a comparison while preemptively disregarding any discussions to the contrary.
So many other countries run without guns though. Like i guess canada and russia have bears too but they and us dont get into thr newspapers about gun violence.
How does getting a gun compare to getting a car?
So I guess you're in favor of getting those "crazy humans" the help they need to stop being crazy, and to only allow guns with special permits for things like farm work, hunting and shooting ranges, right?
Because it's a bit of a straw man argument otherwise. People using guns responsibility for their work is not the problem.
Guns don’t kill people, books kill people.
The pen is mightier than the sword, they say.
People kill people and you've a genetic predisposition towards the sexuality you grow into, it's a nurture influences nature situation (i.e. how one is raised) that impacts what alleles become active or recessive and that impacts your sexuality (among a wide array of other things, physiological and psychological).
Just because one group of people can't live within reality doesn't mean you need to be as equally moronic to 'prove a point', especially when the point being presented as 'equal' is unabashedly fatuous.
Alleles becoming dominant or recessive based on upbringing? My brother, what publications have you been reading?
The heritability of sexuality is not a scientifically defensible claim at this point—let alone the other claims you just made.
If you read what I actually wrote down allele expression is INFLUENCED by the environment, regardless of what people want to think or want to believe the research supports the hypothesis that sexual identity is not simply a matter of genetic influence nor of just upbringing but a combination thereof.
At no point was heritability mentioned or posited.
Please read what people write and if you don't understand what is being said you should ask questions instead of exhibiting a clearly sciolist position.
Here's a couple of current research papers to get you started: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5033347/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6677266/
And here's research on genetic expression and how the environment can impact such expression:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9248887/
Once again, and to be extremely clear, heritability is not mentioned nor even involved in this discussion.
You're reading into this too much. We're here to talk about the logical inconsistencies in conservative identity politics. You're here to have some kind of pedantic debate.
Not everyone who says "guns don't kill people" is a conservative. I say it, and I'm pretty far from conservative. Go far enough left, you get your guns back.
Oh, no, I'm most assuredly not here to debate.
I stated facts, not opinions.
No idea what I just read but it sounds cringe and has loads of downvotes so I'm afraid I'll have to downvote you, too
Who is "sure"?
Watch out, you're projecting
Projecting what exactly?
Guns don't kill people there inanimate objects with no emotions or feeling's, people kill people. After all who's pulling the trigger
Guns can be used as a force for good. As they can keep goverments in check as it's harder to have an authoritarian or facist state when you got a massive group of angry armed civvies, and they can protect you and your family from home intruders, and guns may be used as tools for good protecting your crop from wildlife but also they can be used as a force for bad as people may use to guns to fight one another in everyday conflicts and some people can't be trusted with a gun as they could be a danger to themselves and others overall guns can be bad things and good things but I believe the positives outweigh the negatives your always going get crazy nutters endangering themselves and others someway or another regardless if guns are legal or illegal
I think we should pass a constitutional amendment that you need to know how punctuation works, at least as a concept, before you can own a gun.
Don't need to be perfect, but at least be able to use periods.
🎶Guns don't kill people. I kill people. With guns🎶
the positives outweigh the negatives
Yeah, nah.
It would be a huge net positive to the world if there were no guns.
But there are guns. The "world with no guns" already doesn't and won't exist. So our options are to disarm ourselves while other people have guns, thus leaving ourselves vulnerable to any bad actor, or, have a gun and be easily able to defend ourselves.
And, for the record, that's an extremely reductive take on what guns are used for anyway.
You are understandably uncomfortable with violence. That's okay, but wishing it wasn't there and saying it shouldn't be so doesn't ever address the problem. Likewise, asking that everybody else conform to the same mindset is just selfish and naive. You don't seem to realize how many people you're speaking for, and how wrongly you're speaking for them.
You can break nuts with the stock, too! Very useful.
