What do you mean when you say 'pro gun?' Do you mean you are in favor of guns being legal with absolutely no regulation whatsoever or do you mean that you are in favor of guns being legal but highly regulated?
It's really not an either/or situation like some people think it is.
And are they pro-gun where it’s on the side or do they talk about being all supportive while prioritizing it over healthcare and actually well supported and well researched economic policy? I think guns are neat and used to have my license but I’d never put them ahead of literally any issue. Progun politicians don’t build better societies or respect people’s basic human rights.
Kinda sick of the “I care about human rights up until they affect my ability to own a firearm” group. They’re just tiresome.
I'm in Texas right now, and tbh I feel like Democrats would be able to do a lot more good here if they let go of gun control for now and focused on actually being electable in Texas so they can work on the multitudes of other issues there are to fix. You could even probably reduce shootings by fixing social issues, but you have to be elected first. If they did well long enough to prove some more liberal ideas work, people may trust them enough for gun control to happen one day.
Bruh, after Beto lost to Greg Fucking Pissbaby Asshole Fuckface Abbott, I started to think the Dems here are doing it on purpose. Beto got decently close, and the only thing Republicans could play against him was the "Hell yeah I'm taking your guns!" Clip over and over. If they didn't have that clip of him getting emotional (in response to a hometown shooting), then he would have won.
I really am wondering why we don't have a decent pro-2A Dem candidate, and the only thing I can think is that Texas Dems don't want to win.
The backbone of the Democrats as a party is the reliable fundraising from the liberal-conservative dems. The corpo Dems like Biden and Harris. They allow the progressives to say the promises and then withhold those promises. Those corporate pandering Dems are also the ones who scream loudest about guns being evil instead of finding understanding, like so many other issues.
Those corporate Dems are also likely to collab with Conservatives and then say "I know they have only been acting in bad faith for a decade but maybe THIS time things will be different." And no one is surprised or learns anything. Then repeat.
Progress doesn't happen with corporations involved. Progress happens when decision are made and enforced upon corporations.
I’m with OG OP, liberal with firearms. Raised in Texas, veteran, and came to my senses regarding the politics I was raised in. I both (a) like shooting and (b) feel the need to have home protection. I think they should be regulated.
With that, I don’t understand your comment at all.
being all supportive while prioritizing it over healthcare and actually well supported and well researched economic policy
I will be honest with you. This makes no sense. One is economic while the other is fanaticism. You are comparing apples to oranges. Let me flip your closing statement on you:
Kinda sick of the “I care about human rights up until they affect my ability to take away firearms” group.
Because, again, this proposed stalemate is idealists vs fanatics drawing lines in the sand. You can’t just blame one side. The fact there is no movement is the entire point of polarization in politics.
It makes plenty of sense: There are scores of people who will vote for the absolute scum of the earth if it means they can keep their firearms. Losing even the slightest grip on their firearms is the dealbreaker and not the myriad of human rights abuses and other heinous shit conservative parties get up to.
You can separate the groups out all you want but it doesn’t matter once that vote is cast, and pro-gun politicians come with all the extra baggage. Your vote doesn’t come with a note saying “guns only, please don’t violate minorities’ rights/destroy the economy to enrich the least deserving people imaginable”. Your vote just says “yes” and they take that as far as they can go. They don’t give a shit about you or your opinion after you helped put them in power.
You know what will make you safer? Voting for parties that will create policy that helps reduce poverty. Unlike gun ownership that’s actually a well-documented way to make everyone safer.
I'd describe myself as fairly liberal. I'm from Vermont and I am pretty bummed that neither Howard Dean nor Bernie Sanders got to be president. I've voted D in every presidential and congressional election for the last twenty years.
A couple elections ago I was doing non-partisan voter registration, just standing out in front of a big box store asking people to register to vote. It felt great because I got the feeling that I was directly helping, and even if I was registering some people who would go on to vote R, I actually believe that the more voters there are, the healthier the democracy.
I asked one young guy to register and he asked me "Do you believe in the right to keep and bear arms?"
And I thought about how the marjority of gun deaths in any given year are suicides and how we have an absolutely unacceptable number of mass shootings in this country, and how by all that is reasonable that we ought to be able to do something about it.
And then I thought about my uncles who hunt white tail deer to help control the population, and my friend who is a self-employed gem cutter and who has been robbed and who now owns a pistol for self defense.
And in all honestly, I said "Yes," though on the inside I thought "...but probably not in the exact same way that you do," and that young guy registered to vote.
Yes is probably the best answer you can give someone like that because they see it as only having two absolute answers. To say yes with conditions would be heard as a no after years of brainwashing.
I support the spirit of the second amendment, but also think it was written badly, or at least very restrictive to the time period it originated in and not adaptable to a changing society. It's not a surprise that it remains hotly debated and disagreed on its meaning though, since even the first amendment that is much clearer on its intent is now also debated by some to suit their own purposes and not for the greater public good.
In my state you can just walk into a store at 21 and buy a handgun then concealed carry it. You don't have to prove proficiency, know you to service or maintain it, or even prove you know basic gun safety rules. All you do is bring money and ID, then wait for the waiting period to expire. It is bonkers.
I want them to repeal the NFA, along with many of the other laws designed to disarm the poor, and people of color. And in general getting rid of a lot of the laws that do virtually nothing to affect criminals.
Should there be any laws at all regarding guns and who can have them? Should five-year-olds be allowed to have guns? Should dangerously psychotic people who are regularly institutionalized have guns?
Do you want many gun regulations, some gun regulations or no gun regulations? Because people who want any of those things can and do call themselves "pro-gun."
Why you and others seem to think "pro-gun is what I believe and not anything else" is beyond me.
If you are over the age of 18 and not mentally adjudicated you should be allowed to purchase guns. If you're under 18 and "gifted" a gun then just like the child, it's the parents prerogative to make sure it's safe. If we trust you to be out of prison then you should be allowed all of your rights back as a citizen (none of this you got a felony you're never allowed to vote garbage). Outside of that I want very few other restrictions.
What if OP thinks differently? What if they think you shouldn't have a gun if you're mentally ill but also believe that 12-year-olds should be allowed to purchase guns?
Does that mean they are not pro-gun or does that mean "pro-gun" is too broad a term?
me personally, i like the fact that i have the capability of owning one. Much like anything else in life, i like being in control of things i interact with and use from day to day life. It's why im a linux user, it's why i self host a lot of services that i use. I do not like being dependent on others for things that i know i adequately provide for myself.
It's no more than feeding my individualism at the end of the day. And i don't think that's a negative thing. I'm sure people would tell me im a shitty person for not wanting to contribute to society, but i also never wanted to exist in the first place, so i think it's a little fucking daft to claim that i owe something to a thing i'm not particularly fond of to begin with. But that's a different rant altogether so.
I'm in favor of guns the way they do it in, IIRC, Switzerland? One of the countries in that part of the world anyway (I'm always confusing them with each other). They have nearly as many guns in the hands of public citizens, with none of the crime. If they can do it, so can we.
I want sensible gun laws, but I also want gun laws to make sense.
That means, removing all restrictions on items like suppressors, AR15s, SBRs, etc. But allowing only people that can show they are competent to own them.
Agreed. Especially about suppressors. It’s a safety devise. It will save your ears. Countries like Sweden and Norway even get that aspect, suppressors are encouraged to keep the peace with neighbors and are not regulated like firearms even. Anyone can own one as soon as they can own a gun.
I was shocked at the suppressor cost and process having recently gone through it. I got a suppressor for my .22, I primarily use it when I’m out walking my small dog. I can fire the .22 and it isn’t loud (I was not expecting it to be movie gun quiet but it is) so it is ear protection for both of us, he doesn’t startle, and my neighbors are far enough apart they would never hear it. So next time coyotes see him as food instead of challenge my unarmed willingness to defend my dog I’ll be more prepared.
It’s an expensive, long, and involved process that disadvantages folks with less resources than myself which bothered me.
Yeah, I guess it’s relative. It didn’t bother me paying for the stamp but I’ve been at points in my life where I had to make sure I could get enough gas to make it to work. Granted a firearm and suppressor wouldn’t be on my radar in those conditions but my mind has a tendency to go that direction whenever I’m exercising what I consider a freedom. In another conversation I’m complaining about $3,500 so far into ortho treatment for one of my sons, with insurance. Not because it put me out but how many families and kids aren’t getting effective care because they’re in a less fortunate place? Sorry, got off topic.
I believe guns should be able to abort as many babies as they want to. But I don't believe in Marijuana. Like, I don't believe pot exists. It's a conspiracy theory to make people think a plant could make you lazy or creative. Think about it.
Marx also wrote extensively on "the Jewish question", the man should not, nor would he have wanted, to be taken as an orthodoxy of leftist doctrine.
I believe the proletariat can well be armed without anything of the sort of shameful nakedness which governs US gun ownership and responsibility, gun ownership of the proletariat is well possible in many countries that have far more sensible laws regarding firearms than the US.
Marx routinely expected too much from people. The proles do nothing with their guns except execute each other while their government gets away with horrific things and the human race hurtles towards extinction.
It's time to accept that guns are no better at solving social problems than they are at solving plumbing issues and tech complaints.
I like guns too. I shot them at a range and I'm pretty good. It's like a video game where you make you're breathing right and all that jazz.
If someone asked me if I wanted to fire guns but also children were to die in schools due to unfettered gun access thanks to those rules. I'd say, thanks but no thanks.
No but you don't understand -- fixing the "children die in schools" part would be inconvenient for gun owners. They'd have to do things like "wait longer for a gun" or "prove they know how to handle and store firearms" and ultimately, isn't that a bigger tragedy than the murder of someone else's kids?
Pfffft just make it a law that keeping your weapons accessible for children equals death by firing squad. Your child is talented with lockpicks? Sucks to be you.
I love this dumb as fuck talking point. I know your goal is to suggest "if you support gun control then you're racist" but you've done so little critical thinking about it that you've forgotten that it's the pro-gun community that supports keeping the current, racist laws and the gun control advocates who want to change them.
Whatever the "people you know" think, it doesn't change the fact that the current laws were written by pro-gun groups and significant changes to them have been blocked by pro-gun groups. They've been in control of those laws for 20 years and they've delivered on absolutely none of the things they promised.
But don't worry, it's extremely on brand for "responsible gun owners" to deny they're in any way responsible for guns.
I'm not an american and guns are not legal where i live. And i'm sorry but most people in the world are way to daft and angry and should NOT be allowed to be anywhere near a gun.
And no, just because someone with a gun would want to hurt me but then i would have a gun too, is not a valid response. I'm not gonna survive a shootout. I'm not john wick.
I'm not sure you're correct. If you're from a European country, chances are you have very good gun laws, and a lot of people in your country own guns. The difference is, you also a have working healthcare system that helps people with psychological problems.
I live in Sweden. Most people would assume there are no guns here, but I can tell you that's wrong.
I train with them a lot, so if and when I need to, I can safely use them.
I am a bit curious where you live. Most places with decent gun control doesn't outright ban guns, you just have to earn the privilege to own one, and you can't treat them like toys.
idk it's an interesting conversation to have, but it's also like saying that owning swords should be illegal or at the very least highly regulated because they can be dangerous.
I don't have a fundamental problem with people owning guns, or dangerous things, i have a fundamental problem with people who have a violent history getting access to guns however.
A sword is nowhere near as dangerous as a gun, Evan a pistol. A pistol can kill from many feet away, a sword you need to be close. Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean it should be banned, but when you get to a certain level of danger, such as guns, where you could kill 10 people in a second, then they need to be banned. Even pistols are way to dangerous. Also, swords are highly regulated in some states.
yeah, that's not my point though, do you think swords were designed to sit on a wall and look pretty? They were an instrument of war.
My point is pretty explicit. Also, melee weapons, in particular ranged melee weapons can be incredibly dangerous. You need to be close sure, but you can be behind someone, or they could simply not be paying attention, or you could be concealing a knife as you walk past someone for instance. Technically you can do it with a gun also, but a knife is vastly easier to control.
Likely not as dangerous, but idk how good those stats would be to begin with, a well placed knife wound can fuck someone up proper. Even a center of mass shot with a gun can be trivial to survive.
Also i'm pretty sure 10 a second is hyperbolic, 1 per second i suppose.
Even pistols are way to dangerous. Also, swords are highly regulated in some states.
im pretty sure most states highly regulate guns as well, there are a few that have pretty lax carry laws. But it's questionable how much impact those have.
Then again, an assault rifle can fire roughly ten rounds a second, and you'd have great difficulty stabbing ten people every second with a sword, there is a difference in dangerousness
I’m not an american and guns are not legal where i live.
What about your police? What about your military? Do they fight with swords and bows and stuff? Actually that sounds pretty cool where do you live I wanna move
and should NOT be allowed to be anywhere near a gun.
The only problem with that concept is that it assumes there's a class of people that know better and are entitled to rule us, but in actuality, political office attracts the worst of us. Why should the worst subset of humans control whether the everyone else is allowed self-defense?
And yet the only BLM protests during the summer that didn't get blasted with beanbags and pepperballs were the ones where armed protesters stood in front of police. It's almost like fascists do not relish the thought of taking on armed citizenry.
The real problem, is people being stupid enough to believe owning guns is going to protect them from a fascist government. (Hint they won’t)
The only hope is voting against fascists NOW. Once they get control, that gun in your closet ain’t going to save you.
I have a kind of problem with rhetoric like this, because it implies that shooting and killing fascists is broadly an ineffective tactic, which I do not believe to be the case
Shooting and killing fascists generally is not effective as a spontaneous demonstration of opposition.
If you've ascended to the point of shooting and killing fascists, acquiring weapons is probably pretty low on your list of practical problems to solve (in order to be able to shoot and kill fascists).
Shooting and killing fascists generally is not effective as a spontaneous demonstration of opposition.
I mean do we have a whole lot of like, examples of this happening as a case of action? I really can't think of any, I dunno if we'd be able to ascertain it's efficacy without that.
Lots, generally in the lead-up and early years of fascist takeovers. Lone wolf assassinations, attacks by small groups, the like. The 20s had numerous anti-fascist assassinations, and the early-mid 30s had anti-Nazi assassinations.
Effective resistance movements only develop out of the roots of organization, direction, and subversion, at which point there are numerous paths to getting the needed weapons and shooting some fascists. Prior gun ownership is a footnote in such operations at best - a liability at worst.
The other points are well taken, I wasn't really thinking so much along those lines. Dunno so much what lines I was thinking along honestly. Probably armed resistance leading up to a fascist government, including armed protest sort of thing, which doesn't really involve shooting people so much as it does just kinda standing around with a gun so other people don't get shot most of the time, I think.
Do you have a problem with gravity? I mean it's going to be the same thing... Especially since most of the gun nuts that believe "they could do something" are going to be cheering the fascist government on while it goes after lbqt, immigrants, non Christians, libtards... And by the time they realize something's wrong there ain't going to be jack shit to do about it. (See Nazi Germany in the late 30's when the population started realizing this shit might not be cool) History repeats...
People overwhelmingly agree that (broadly speaking about the US here) the government isn't working for us, hasn't been for a long time, and is infringing on our rights constantly.
So where are all those gun people with their guns given all this government tyranny going on? What are they doing?
And besides, if any gun owner thinks that they wouldn't be absolutely steamrolled by the military, they're lying to themselves.
So where are all those gun people with their guns given all this government tyranny going on? What are they doing?
pissing and shitting themselves over the concept of liberals and queer people owning guns because it makes them quake in their boots.
(not all of them to be fair, a lot of them are pretty chill, and i respect them for that, but there is a CONCERNING amount of these people regardless.)
It's not just defense against government tyranny. I'm a trans person, I'd like to not feel helpless when attacked and the cops are on the attacker's side. If I'm gonna die or end up incarcerated, I'm gonna do the community a good one and remove a threat on my way out.
So where are all those gun people with their guns given all this government tyranny going on? What are they doing?
Most people on both sides of the gun debate are the victims of propaganda ensuring most guns are in the hands of those controlling the propaganda.
And besides, if any gun owner thinks that they wouldn’t be absolutely steamrolled by the military, they’re lying to themselves.
Full out war against the state isn't the only way guns can be useful for self-defense against tyranny. I don't want my rights taken away because your imagine is small. I agree, a few people w/ AKs are no match against the military.
If I'm gonna die or end up incarcerated, I'm gonna do the community a good one and remove a threat on my way out.
I get that you're in a social group that is more at risk of attack, and I really wish it wasn't that way. However, the kind of mindset you're espousing here is the same justification people use to shoot minorities, or shoot children for walking into their lawns, or to shoot people turning around in their driveways. Too often, people are jumpy, racist, and not mentally equipped to handle guns. There are other things that can be used to defend yourself.
Full out war against the state isn't the only way guns can be useful for self-defense against tyranny.
Please tell me what other way there is. When fighting the government, there's no middle ground between a small group attacking targets and all-out war. And all-out war is not the way anyone wants things to go.
I get that you’re in a social group that is more at risk of attack, and I really wish it wasn’t that way. However, the kind of mindset you’re espousing here is the same justification people use to shoot minorities, or shoot children for walking into their lawns, or to shoot people turning around in their driveways. Too often, people are jumpy, racist, and not mentally equipped to handle guns. There are other things that can be used to defend yourself.
ok, but there's a difference between your rights being actively infringed upon, and being an entitled piece of shit. This is why things like prison exist. And laws.
That guy in florida that mag dumped on the middle of the fucking highway? Definitely shouldn't own a gun, but he also got no punishment for it That shit should be illegal. There are a lot of states where stand your ground laws aren't a thing, my state for instance has pretty specific and strict laws around when you can and cannot shoot people in your own home.
There isn't another way, like almost ALL gun owners they are deluding themselves... Guns aren't even good for self defense, for the average person. They are like 5 times more likely to kill themselves with it, or accidentally shoot/kill an innocent...
I mean, you brought it on yourself. If you live in the U.S owning a gun should be controversial. Ya'll have proven incapable of using them responsibly.
Here's the real problem. Guns are basically dangerous tools, and should be treated as such. Instead, they have a cult of personality. I've got no problem with people owning knives and hammers, but if some dude has a bunch of pro-knife, and pro-hammer stickers on his car, joins the knife and hammer Association of America, regularly shows up to angrily protest restrictions on where you can carry knives and hammers, walks around with a concealed knife and hammer at the mall because a box or nail could be around any corner... I might start to think that nut job should not be allowed to have a knife or a hammer.
I did physically type it out. I doubt the idea is original, I'm sure I've heard similar sentiments elsewhere, but at this time I cannot attribute it to a particular source.
if some dude has a bunch of pro-knife, and pro-hammer stickers on his car, joins the knife and hammer Association of America, regularly shows up to angrily protest restrictions on where you can carry knives and hammers, walks around with a concealed knife and hammer at the mall because a box or nail could be around any corner
That sounds like a really cool person compared to a pro-gun nutter honestly. I'd think that guy is probably an expert satirist
The problem with the “guns are tools” categorization is that the only job they’re for is killing people, or threatening to do so. Unless you’re talking shooting at the range, in which case that’s really more of a toy than a tool.
The reasons those protests don’t happen for tools is because they generally serve some other primary function which is useful, and that they’re not nearly as likely to be used accidentally.
TL;Dr yes, the enthusiasts say it takes more skill, which is true, so fair enough, though I'd argue it's more likely to just make you miss a killshot and lead to unnecessary suffering.
Just get closer with a rifle if that's your thing.
100% this - if we had the gun violence Switzerland saw (who has a comparable number of firearms per person as the US) I would be pro gun too.
Instead we've got a lethal cocktail of incompetence, entitlement and mental illness where gun owners and firearms industry simps see dead children as the 'price of freedom'.
Sounded good on paper but those workers kept their guns and still gave the government and capitalists everything they wanted without a single shot fired.
All you're doing is posting a picture of Marx with an example of him being wrong.
The only part he missed from this quote was in the context that followed, where he then said to surrender your guns after the revolution, because the proletariat would be armed through the People's Military (paraphrased, obviously)
Empowering Corporations restricts the rights and freedoms of individual peoples, so no. Also, in the USA at least, I've never met a self-described liberal who supports deregulation or opposes taxation of corporations.
It's literally the foundation of neoliberalism, my guy.
If you want to draw a line between neoliberalism and liberals, fine, but when you start asking "liberals" for their stances on the distinguishing beliefs not a whole lot of them support going back to the New Deal or even Kennedy era type beliefs on the role of government.
Yeah, I'm telling you that they don't exist for decades now. Modern day neoliberals call themselves Libertarians. In the 1900s there were self-identified neoliberals who copied the moniker used to describe 1800s thinkers. Nowadays it's just an insult that tankies use to justify their both-sides bullshit.
With a quick search on multiple search engines I cannot find any modern groups who self-identify as Liberal and also as Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Capitalists. Because deregulation generally opposes liberalism as it stands in today's politics.
More or less. The idea of "life, liberty and private property" from og liberalism didn't specifically mean a right to be alive or have one's needs met it was more about individually choosing what style of life and career you want. Likewise the ideology of having your personal property always protected as sacrosanct from the government mediation has been pretty good for corporate interest.
That whole "pursuit of Happiness" thing was just Jefferson riffing on John Locke but the sentiment was basically the same. Liberal was hot branding back in the day to mean "generally permissive" but it's been a hot minute and people have really started to peel back the label.
For most of the 19th century and most of the 20th one, liberals were divided at best and opposed at worst when it came to positive rights (this is, rights tied to positive freedoms that the state must ensure you have, as opposed to not preventing you from reaching them, such as getting access to social housing even if you're bankrupt); while left-wing ideologies (save for leninists) were promoting both political and social rights.
Even if you want to refer to contemporary liberals in the current year 2024 (and forget what liberals were doing in 2007), the leaders of political liberalism in the US aren't keen in creating real public housing options (while the cost of housing skyrockets) or public healthcare options (while medicare eats away the government's budget (without offering full coverage for everything to everyone) because it's paying a premium, since it depends on private prices). In Europe, liberals are the ones who promote market economy over social rights, with their only saving grace being that they aren't as batshit crazy as plenty of parties to their right. If you want to find political camps that defend both political and social rights, you have to look at socialdemocrats and socialists.
Present some examples, I've never met self-identified liberals who oppose public healthcare or housing. Literally all of the public healthcare and housing options available in the USA were from progressive reform from what the media often refers to as "liberals". Where are these supposed "Negative Liberty Liberals" that you people keep ranting about? That Stanford paper you brought up uses an example from 70 years ago, when Liberal was a moniker chosen by Laissez-Faire Market and Anti-Tax proponents who today would align with what is referred to as Libertarian.
(Article in Spanish) The origins of the healthcare collapse: the cuts of CiU and the tri-party ; Note: Catalan politics have long consisted a competition between liberal, socialdemocratic and left-wing parties, where the liberal ones have always incentivized private companies over public services, with the support of minoritarian Conservative parties.
There is little doubt that the positions of the FDP on healthcare could be shared by the businessmen who built their fortune on private for-profit clinics. In its electoral platform, the party says: “We reject unequal treatment of private, public and non-profit hospitals operators just as strongly as we reject a planning sovereignty of the health insurance funds for health care structures”. That means that the FDP thinks that private hospitals should, for example, get the same amount of public investment than public and non-profit hospitals.
Which is ultimately a form of corrupting the basis of a public healthcare system, making people think they will receive worse care if they won't pay for private services and pushing the public system towards its collapse.
Present some examples, I’ve never met self-identified liberals who oppose public healthcare or housing
Yeah, no shit? The average voter in the US doesn't understand the difference between liberalism, socialdemocracy and socialism, so they'll call themselves liberals even if they don't understand the nuances of the term, while the average Democratic politician understands that they shouldn't express opposition to public policies that poll well with voters, even if they certainly don't intend to promote them. Because they barely have any politicians competing against them from their left, they aren't exposed not defending an actual public option.
Your ass in here making me study Canadian Politics all of a sudden, but fine I'm game. Two things:
The Liberal Party of Canada is the oldest party of Canada founded in 1867, their name by now has absolutely zero bearing on the definition of the words. That said, Trudeau is more unpopular with Canadians with each passing day, clearly not aligned with his constituents. The conservative proposal by Doug Jones was discussed by Liberal Party members in September as something they oppose.
I literally cannot find that vote that NDP talks about in the current session of the 44th Parliament of Canada, not saying I don't believe you, but I cannot actually find out more about it because none of the articles actually mention the name of the Bill. I did, however, find information about the Pharmacare Act C-64 which will potentially make medications for Diabetes as well as contraceptives free for all citizens and funded by the public entity. So, I guess you have the "fake" liberals to thank for it.
I joined up with liberalgunowners on that other site for a while, thinking I might find kindred souls that were pro-shooting sports, but understood that the way we handled gun ownership in this country had some problems.
Nope.
They were just as devoid of nuance and reason when it came to gun ownership as the conservatives. They figured slapping a rainbow or a “no step on snek” patch on their molle tacticool gear was good enough, but thoughts and prayers if a gay nightclub got shot up.
So yeah, I think guns are fun and have a place in hunting and other sports. But not like what we’ve got now.
Yeah I'm a gun enthusiast. I really like the laws the way they are now as they relate to me. So I get it. But how many mass shootings do we need before we admit there's a problem right now? Maybe far in the future we can consider relaxing some of the regulations again. But right now, something about the current social situation is basically creating domestic terrorists. We need to start locking things down until it stops.
Personally, I'm going to need at least 10,000 kindergarteners gun down in their class room before I'll consider changing our sacred god given gun laws.
Jesus wouldn't want it any other way, as specified in Arms 3:16-108 in the Bible.
How can you be anti something another person chooses to do privately with their body blows my mind
How you can be anti able to end others lives using a tool specifically crafted, to not hinder or disable, no but end other peoples ability to continue breathing and living, is beyond me
People have such paranoid hate towards others and then treat themselves like shit and rationalise instead of just fixing their own doorstep before attacking others
I've seen a conga line of Joe Rogan heads insisting there is an underground anti-meat campaign to target and harass carnivores, nationally.
However, I was eating bbq down in Texas just this weekend, completely unmolested.
The argument is always for the greater good and from a position of superiority.
Sure. Because we produce (and then waste) enormous amounts of meat. And the production of meat consumes an enormous amount of arable land and potable water. And we absolutely would be much better off - from a climate change perspective - if we weren't growing almonds to feed to cows to feed the choicest bits of to people.
Vegans have us all dead to rights, logically and ecologically.
But they're a tiny minority working against the capitalist drive, and also they're soy and gay.
Mostly they're the whipping kids of an industry that does unfathomable cruelty and waste and then feels the need to complain about how they're the victims.
That’s just authoritarianism
Go look up the time Oprah Winfrey was forced to apologize to the Texas Cattle Ranchers Association because she mentioned a burger gave her food poisoning.
Right wing objections are different topic. I was speaking as a liberal/leftist and their feelings towards vegans.
Veganism has its own propaganda. The claims that it is better are always cherry picked to prove the point. I am not interested in arguing with what is essentially a religious movement.
Your mention of Oprah apologizing isn't authoritarianism. It's capitalism. The force was monetary.
Veganism will happily pass laws to enforce their belief that meat eating is evil.
The meat industry will happily pass laws to protect their profits.
Veganism has its own propaganda. The claims that it is better are always cherry picked to prove the point. I am not interested in arguing with what is essentially a religious movement.
Right, so here's where the conversation really breaks down. There's some really basic math that goes into why - up until very recently in human history and a very agriculturally rich area like the territory over the Ogallala Aquifer - you couldn't get a pound of rib eye for $5. Raw material consumption to produce a pound of beef is orders of magnitude above production of wheat or corn or rice.
That's not an article of religious dogma or a cherry picked factoid. That's a hard truth anyone in the cattle industry can tell you. You're not driving hundreds of thousands of head of cattle through Southern France or Ukraine's black earth or the central desert of Australia. The industry only works because of an artifact of geography that is the central plains. And we get to produce these enormous surpluses for a limited time, as we cannibalize the territory with an invasive disease-spreader replacement to the native species.
How quickly we move through our available surplus is predicated on how aggressively we farm cattle. And thanks to our capitalist growth model, we're going through it at a breakneck pace. All the moreso because of state subsidies fueled by kickbacks and corrupt business practices.
Your mention of Oprah apologizing isn’t authoritarianism. It’s capitalism. The force was monetary.
It wasn't just monetary. The terms of the settlement required Oprah to apologize on air. What's more, there is always an implied threat of violence behind a monetary penalty. Try not paying a fine or a debt and see what happens next. Repo men routinely pack heat.
The meat industry will happily pass laws to protect their profits.
I love guns. I adore guns. Guns are great. They're fascinating pieces of engineering, tools, and exercises of skill. I would never own one (to my great regret) due to the increased risk of suicide from gun-owners, but I think that responsible gun ownership is a great thing and a cultural cornerstone of Americana.
But no one in the US who claims to be pro-gun should be allowed anywhere near a gun.
Maybe in some frozen waste like Canada where it's not completely piss-easy to get a gun, one can describe oneself as pro-gun. But in the US? No.
Oh it's piss easy to get a Gun in Canada... You just have drive down to the States.
Seriously though around 70 percent of guns used in criminal activities up here are traced back to sources in the States and were never legally imported, purchased or even stolen from homes inside Canada. When people point at us and say "Gun control doesn't work see!?" it's in part because gun trash bleeds over boarders.
I have a sense that you know all this, but, just wanted to chime in- the system in Canada where you have to take a course and pass a screening is costly & a pain in the ass. Bottom line, legally, it's neither fast nor easy to get a firearm in Canada, and on top of that, the RCMP can deny any application that they see fit. But ultimately, I think the existing licensing system is a reasonable management of risks, and overall a good thing.
Unfortunately, gun control here is a wedge issue, and political points are easily scored by banning / confiscating guns from legal owners, who, as you mention, were never the problem in the first place. Actually fixing the gun crime issue here would be difficult, costly, and an optics minefield.
IMO, the penalties for being found with an illegal firearm or using a firearm to commit a crime should be much more severe. Surely people of all political stripes could get behind that? But, no. We're in a situation where, on the left, any policy that doesn't include a sweeping ban is criticized as unacceptable and weak. It sucks, because it means that the actual problem affecting citizens goes unsolved, and nobody seems to care.
Edit: I love the downvotes trickling in from the pro-gun cultists. Usually they pretend it's because I used rude words but there's nothing to hide behind this time. I asked a simple question and that made gun owners salty.
Anything really, if you live rurally that be quite a number of things, hell even if you live in an urban environment. Queer people have been arming themselves as of late, given the more restrictive nature that legislation has taken against them. POC and other minority groups have been doing this regularly for decades. None of this is new.
How are guns going to solve oppressive legislation?
they aren't. At a federal level, and even a state level, they won't. As for the doing it for decades part, it's because they're pansies who like to dick ride on a concept that makes them feel better. For some reason.
Regardless, it's technically a non answer, but this is also a form of a non question. "why would you need to own a gun" can range from literally anything to "i hunt" to "sport" to "self protection" to "self protection but from the wild" to "the sock pill" There are a million and one reasons someone could own a gun. And a million and one purposes for it to serve.
And nope, your sexuality doesn't matter at all. You can claim to be absolutely anything online and the pro-gun community seems to be riddled with sock puppets who can't keep their story straight.
But a fantasy that most of the pro-gun community just can't resist. The reality is likely even worse than those figures show since permissive gun laws arm criminals in the first place, making that justification more common.
Zombies, aliens, foreign armies, roving feral pigs, cosmic horrors, muggers handing you mugs. It's about having the option if you need it. Same way I feel about going prochoice. It's there if you need it.
Besides No one wants to occupy a country with more guns than blades of grass.
Okay, so please tell us all exactly when they should pull a gun on police and what the outcome is because otherwise, you sound like someone who is either far-right or has taken on far-right propaganda without thinking.
Guns have brought zero police reforms. Pulling a gun on police gets you shot and killed. There won't even be an investigation. American police get away with executing minorities because they might have a gun.
Oh, no, the implication wasn't that you would normally pull a gun on the police. That wouldn't normally be effective. They close their ranks pretty quick and are pretty prime to kill, maim, abuse, and mud sling at cop killers, and I don't think you'd probably get away with that with the proliferation of body cams and all the other forms of digital recording devices.
No, the implication I was trying to suggest was that you would have a gun on you to dissuade the police from killing you. I.E. The same strategy that the black panthers employed when they patrolled their neighborhoods, one most effectively done in numbers. Really a lot of forms of civil disobedience are made available with the use of guns.
I mean if you're visibly not cis or straight then the police really don't need a whole lot of reason to kill or harass you anyways, going by the numbers. Certainly I don't think that mere possession of a gun would be a terrible idea, in that circumstance, though I couldn't really encourage drawing or shooting at the police or otherwise giving them a reason to shoot you if you're pulled over.
The same strategy that the black panthers employed when they patrolled their neighborhoods, one most effectively done in numbers
This strategy didn't work. The BPP was painted as a dangerous group of extremists and the police used their guns as an excuse to execute multiple members of the party.
So again, unless your goal is to get minorities killed by police, I have no idea why you're advocating they walk around with guns.
Certainly I don't think that mere possession of a gun would be a terrible idea, in that circumstance, though I couldn't really encourage drawing or shooting at the police or otherwise giving them a reason to shoot you if you're pulled over.
Then it's nothing more than a magic talisman that's supposed to ward off bad things. We're supposed to accept a homicide rate far in excess of other countries -- complete with the biannual execution of a room full of children -- and you can't even tell people when they're supposed to use their guns and what it will fix.
This strategy didn’t work. The BPP was painted as a dangerous group of extremists and the police used their guns as an excuse to execute multiple members of the party.
Yeah, cause they needed an excuse to do that, it's not like they were doing that already/are still doing that commonly, which was the main problem they were seeking to solve. It's not like the tactic of stealing from wealthy white neighborhoods in order to fund the free meal programs was already a pretty dangerous tactic that also was pretty likely to get them shot, but I dunno. maybe you'd advocate against that as well. Despite all of this, I can't really find any evidence of any member of the black panther party getting shot before the Mulford act was signed, at which point that form of protest was basically no longer possible. I dunno, maybe you can prove otherwise. You also say "painted as a dangerous group of extremists", but that kind of makes it pretty hard to take you seriously. MLK was painted as a dangerous extremist. Anyone seeking any change will be painted as a dangerous extremist, an argument against that is an argument against change, and an argument in favor of the current state of affairs in which the current violence is occuring.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's more frequent than a biannual execution of a room full of children, at this point. That's evidenced as a pretty high profile instance of gun crime, but if you wanted the real story on that, you'd probably look at the violent crime statistics and find out that the majority of gun crime comes about as a result of both suicides and gang violence, i.e. poor mental healthcare and drugs being overly valuable property which gangs use guns to protect. Other gun violence is a much lower fraction. Most of the time the people committing crimes like school shootings are already flagged as having serious problems and could've been stopped beforehand.
Nowhere here have I advocated against common sense gun laws or licensing that would stop the production or overwhelming supply of guns into this country, but I do also find it suspicious that, say, shit like the mulford act seems to be some of the only times politicians are really willing to roll out gun laws. I can explain to people how the prison industrial complex works, how the school to prison pipeline works, how the government doesn't give a shit about moving anywhere to combat climate change, how we exploit third world countries for resources at a massive institutional level and subvert their governments constantly, even to the point where there's currently war in the Congo ongoing as a result. People will wholeheartedly agree with all of that as the reality, but then when you turn around and start talking about gun ownership, or armed resistance, as a means to combat this, armed resistance that doesn't even require like, actually shooting anybody, necessarily, or even having a loaded gun, and suddenly people are super trusting of the government which we've previously established to be pretty relentlessly villainous and despicable, super trusting to make legislation that limits this responsibility rather than functionally limiting just like. Black people, from having guns.. If you look at any of that legislation, it's always the most insane, dumb bullshit that doesn't actually make any sense. Go look into the origins of the difference between a pistol, a short barrelled rifle, a destructive device, a shotgun. None of that shit's even necessarily a distinction which makes things illegal, as long as you have the dosh, you can pay tax stamps and get your shit. You can still get automatic firearms, if you have the money. Alternatively, you can acquire them illegally, or use a wheel grinder from harbor freight and then spend like 20 dollars once. Felons also can't own firearms, as an example of the idiocy. Check the difference between sentencing of felonies on the propagated crack throughout the hood vs the cocaine that the CIA was intentionally smuggling in. Even just possession of weed is a felony in some states. It can also even be the case with the illegal possession of hormone treatments, like what trans people might use, which I'm pretty sure is the case in New York.
Like I dunno, even at a basic level here, if you don't trust the fucking police to protect you, the fucking, institutional mechanisms by which you are to be protected, who is to protect you then? I dunno. If Trump gets elected and project 2025 comes to pass, I would probably not trust the government, and me personally, I would probably want a gun, yeah.
I also like how you're framing it that, because I'm just advocating for guns generally, right, as a devil's advocate, or, advocating for the use of guns as a legitimate political tactic, you're framing it that actually, what I'm advocating for is that minorities get shot and killed by the police, as though that's something that doesn't already happen in extremely large numbers. Yup, that's definitely a good faith extrapolation there.
Yeah, cause they needed an excuse to do that, it's not like they were doing that already/are still doing that commonly, which was the main problem they were seeking to solve
This paragraph functionally just admits that there was a problem and walking around with guns didn't solve it. They did nothing except give the illusion of power which was no match for actual power.
look at the violent crime statistics and find out that the majority of gun crime comes about as a result of both suicides and gang violence, i.e. poor mental healthcare and drugs being overly valuable property which gangs use guns to protect
Means reduction is one of the most effective methods of suicide prevention but sure, sweep them under the rug.
Gang violence is still gun violence so I've got no idea why you're trying to present it as "this doesn't count". Also, there is no magical gun fairy arming gang members -- the current gun laws give them an infinite supply of cheap, accessible firearms (including ones that are perfect for crime).
poor mental healthcare and drugs being overly valuable property which gangs use guns to protect
Most wealthy countries have underfunded mental health services and drugs. America the only one that enthusiastically escalates these problems into homicide and mass killings.
Most of the time the people committing crimes like school shootings are already flagged as having serious problems and could've been stopped beforehand.
But they weren't and one group consistently opposes anything designed to address that.
Nowhere here have I advocated against common sense gun laws or licensing that would stop the production or overwhelming supply of guns into this country
You suggested an answer and I asked you to justify that answer.
I'm pro using torts to make everyone in the chain of a gun tragedy pay for their externalities. Didn't secure your gun and got it negligently stolen and someone was killed? That'll be bankruptcy. Marketed something you knew would kill someone unlawfully? Good luck staying in business friend.
It'd be interesting if folks had to pay for the real cost of gun ownership.
Don't stop at money. Where are all the gun owners offering to mop up the blood after Ulvade?
In fact, fuck it. There's people out there who want to kill children. There are pro-gun people with children. They can offer their own children up to these fucking psychopaths, rather than gambling that it'll be other people's kids.
Same. But I'm also for gun control as well. Like, don't ban them outright, just make them a whole hell of a lot harder to get. Like really hard. I live in an area that has bobcats, bears, and the occasional mountain lion. I own a pistol to protect myself and my critters (a flock of ducks and two dogs) in case of an attack. I don't want to use it and it won't kill a big predator like a bear or mountain lion, but I only want it to scare the animals off if they get too close. It hasn't left the locked drawer I keep it in since I bought my house in 2022. I'm hoping it'll never have to come out.
Part of the problem is that nobody is actually "Pro-Gun".
What you have is "Pro-White people gun dealers" on one end and "Pro-Cop" on the other. Selling AR-15s and antique rifles to people who think having more hardware in the house makes them safer? Sure. Giving the municipal government endless license to harass and surveil anyone too young or brown to be considered a Real American? Absolutely.
But neither of these groups want you to carry a gun into, say, a congressional building. Neither want to disarm the police or downsize the military. Neither want to see an armed Black woman or Arab man walking towards them.
The only real debate is whether a cop should be allowed to arrest a white guy at a gun show
Okay so most people would be like, "Oh everyone but me, should not be allowed to have guns, because I'm morally righteous, and think of the power, and think of how cool I am and how cool I would be with a cool gun.", right. That's the only position people have, I think, there's people who have that position, and liars who are lying. Okay, cool.
But me, no. Me, I think everyone but me should have a gun. To even the odds, for the rest of you.
Reading these comments it seems like most of the anti gun crowd thinks pro gun is about machismo at the cost of tragedy. It's mainly about protection of the people from the government. It's the last failsafe to keeping free in the case of tyranny.
We all agree there needs to be better regulation because in the past and currently the laws are designed over feelings and not facts, for example barrel length restrictions or pistol grips that mainly only effects the ergonomics.
Your government fucks you up, every single day, week after week, year after year and the only people who own guns are the ones that are too cowardly to use them.
As someone who flips between the two I’ve noticed neither side seems to really get where the other side is coming from. The anti gun people don’t get that there is a certain amount of fear of government, or how guns work. The pro gun people tend to not understand that the government is already tyrannical, the cops have military weapons, and that a lot of gun enthusiasts are exactly the sort of people who we shouldn’t let have guns.
The people I want armed are the people who dread having to use a gun on another person and have a level of fear and respect for these tools and a level of trust that very few strangers have any desire to initiate violence. Meanwhile I keep hearing coworkers talk about how they have couch guns and saying how they draw when strangers approach them. Mentally unstable people with guns are a real problem and we as a country seem to insist on doing nothing that could actually help.
It's mainly about protection of the people from the government.
Lol sure there John Wayne.
I legit can't think of another country with people that LARP more about revolution than the US. Most affluent country in the world and you're constantly imagining youselves forming up and fighting back against tanks and helicopters (or your fellow citizens who happen to vote for the other team). It'd be funny if it wasn't so tragic and bizarre.
to be fair, being pro gun is typically about machismo power fantasy at the cost of that.
if youre going to fight the people who are genuinely ruining your life, guns, especially in the way Americans think of them, are not the primary tool for the job. if youre going to defend your home, also a bad tool. do not fire a gun indoors.
add to that: the people mostly advocating for chemical guns are against the proliferation of other effective weapons for the purpose (anti drone and anti armor weapons, ied's) and against fighting the people you actually need guns to fight, and can't just talk shit out with.
so while I do not give a shit about guns, someone saying they're pro gun is a huge red flag, and most 'pro gun' rhetoric is shit.
guns to me, are more about sport and the potential for them to be useful to you in rare circumstances, more than shooting at an f35 that is launching a nuclear warhead at me from three miles away.
One problem with the anti-tyranny argument is that guns would much more easily be the means by which tyranny is implemented than the means by which it is taken down. Imagine a more well-armed Jan 6. Then of course once the dictatorship is in place, eliminating the right to bear arms - or more likely, making it exclusive to the dictator's allies - becomes trivial.
Now in that case, conceivably a pre-existing right to bear arms could be used to stash weapons for a resistance movement that might gradually over the course of a decades-long civil war reestablish some semblance of democracy. But by that point we've already lost, haven't we?
Also, how come when people argue about like, gun related shenaniganery, they always talk about like, oh, well, if the government comes and hits you with a drone strike, then, you'll be fucked. I mean, no shit sherlock.
For one, that'd be fucking nuts, I think that'd probably make it on the nightly news and probably the president would undergo serious investigation and maybe get impeached.
For two, I think probably you are more likely to use a gun to walk around and not get fucking killed by the police when you decide to protest outside of a courthouse, or walk around your community to make sure the cops don't harass people or shoot people without being beholden the the community which they are also supposedly serving. Especially if there's more than one of you, if there's only one of you and the cops come around and have no idea who you are and you're waving a gun around, then you're probably gonna get the police called on you, and you will probably maybe get shot. Black panthers did it, anywho, and they were cool, so that's really all I'm saying.
For three, how does this like, insane civil war scenario come about? How come that's the main default scenario everyone's heads go to whenever this shit comes up? That's insane. You're telling me that the military, a military made up of like, a bunch of dudes who mostly just wanted free college as far as I can ascertain, you're telling me that they'd just like go and unflinchingly steamroll the normal citizenry and become part of a fascist dictatorship? That also strikes me as kind of nuts. You might not be wrong, but it does strike me as kind of nut,s and probably like they would have a huge discipline problem considering the amount of the military which has like pretty radically different political views. You'd probably have to see the centrist liberal types, the monoculture, slide way harder to the right, by which I mean, a couple inches. I find it more likely that, as we saw with BLM, if the US was to undergo civil unrest, it would probably be confined to a couple discrete locations and probably it wouldn't be that well organized, both in execution or opposition. Probably also you'd just see an embrace of guerilla tactics, and, I mean, we've seen the modern military's track record as far as that goes.
So, I dunno. Seems like a pretty stupid conversation to me. Someone hit me with the self-defense thing too so I can argue about how that's really stupid and self-defense is stupid and dumb
What do you mean when you say 'pro gun?' Do you mean you are in favor of guns being legal with absolutely no regulation whatsoever or do you mean that you are in favor of guns being legal but highly regulated?
It's really not an either/or situation like some people think it is.
And are they pro-gun where it’s on the side or do they talk about being all supportive while prioritizing it over healthcare and actually well supported and well researched economic policy? I think guns are neat and used to have my license but I’d never put them ahead of literally any issue. Progun politicians don’t build better societies or respect people’s basic human rights.
Kinda sick of the “I care about human rights up until they affect my ability to own a firearm” group. They’re just tiresome.
I'm in Texas right now, and tbh I feel like Democrats would be able to do a lot more good here if they let go of gun control for now and focused on actually being electable in Texas so they can work on the multitudes of other issues there are to fix. You could even probably reduce shootings by fixing social issues, but you have to be elected first. If they did well long enough to prove some more liberal ideas work, people may trust them enough for gun control to happen one day.
Bruh, after Beto lost to Greg Fucking Pissbaby Asshole Fuckface Abbott, I started to think the Dems here are doing it on purpose. Beto got decently close, and the only thing Republicans could play against him was the "Hell yeah I'm taking your guns!" Clip over and over. If they didn't have that clip of him getting emotional (in response to a hometown shooting), then he would have won.
I really am wondering why we don't have a decent pro-2A Dem candidate, and the only thing I can think is that Texas Dems don't want to win.
The backbone of the Democrats as a party is the reliable fundraising from the liberal-conservative dems. The corpo Dems like Biden and Harris. They allow the progressives to say the promises and then withhold those promises. Those corporate pandering Dems are also the ones who scream loudest about guns being evil instead of finding understanding, like so many other issues.
Those corporate Dems are also likely to collab with Conservatives and then say "I know they have only been acting in bad faith for a decade but maybe THIS time things will be different." And no one is surprised or learns anything. Then repeat.
Progress doesn't happen with corporations involved. Progress happens when decision are made and enforced upon corporations.
I’m with OG OP, liberal with firearms. Raised in Texas, veteran, and came to my senses regarding the politics I was raised in. I both (a) like shooting and (b) feel the need to have home protection. I think they should be regulated.
With that, I don’t understand your comment at all.
I will be honest with you. This makes no sense. One is economic while the other is fanaticism. You are comparing apples to oranges. Let me flip your closing statement on you:
Because, again, this proposed stalemate is idealists vs fanatics drawing lines in the sand. You can’t just blame one side. The fact there is no movement is the entire point of polarization in politics.
It makes plenty of sense: There are scores of people who will vote for the absolute scum of the earth if it means they can keep their firearms. Losing even the slightest grip on their firearms is the dealbreaker and not the myriad of human rights abuses and other heinous shit conservative parties get up to.
You can separate the groups out all you want but it doesn’t matter once that vote is cast, and pro-gun politicians come with all the extra baggage. Your vote doesn’t come with a note saying “guns only, please don’t violate minorities’ rights/destroy the economy to enrich the least deserving people imaginable”. Your vote just says “yes” and they take that as far as they can go. They don’t give a shit about you or your opinion after you helped put them in power.
You know what will make you safer? Voting for parties that will create policy that helps reduce poverty. Unlike gun ownership that’s actually a well-documented way to make everyone safer.
I'd describe myself as fairly liberal. I'm from Vermont and I am pretty bummed that neither Howard Dean nor Bernie Sanders got to be president. I've voted D in every presidential and congressional election for the last twenty years.
A couple elections ago I was doing non-partisan voter registration, just standing out in front of a big box store asking people to register to vote. It felt great because I got the feeling that I was directly helping, and even if I was registering some people who would go on to vote R, I actually believe that the more voters there are, the healthier the democracy.
I asked one young guy to register and he asked me "Do you believe in the right to keep and bear arms?"
And I thought about how the marjority of gun deaths in any given year are suicides and how we have an absolutely unacceptable number of mass shootings in this country, and how by all that is reasonable that we ought to be able to do something about it.
And then I thought about my uncles who hunt white tail deer to help control the population, and my friend who is a self-employed gem cutter and who has been robbed and who now owns a pistol for self defense.
And in all honestly, I said "Yes," though on the inside I thought "...but probably not in the exact same way that you do," and that young guy registered to vote.
And honestly, I consider that a win.
this is the perfect answer to the entirety of this thread.
Yes is probably the best answer you can give someone like that because they see it as only having two absolute answers. To say yes with conditions would be heard as a no after years of brainwashing.
I support the spirit of the second amendment, but also think it was written badly, or at least very restrictive to the time period it originated in and not adaptable to a changing society. It's not a surprise that it remains hotly debated and disagreed on its meaning though, since even the first amendment that is much clearer on its intent is now also debated by some to suit their own purposes and not for the greater public good.
I'm very liberal and own several guns and I 100% think most people shouldn't own guns because they are not responsible enough for them.
Same on all fronts.
In my state you can just walk into a store at 21 and buy a handgun then concealed carry it. You don't have to prove proficiency, know you to service or maintain it, or even prove you know basic gun safety rules. All you do is bring money and ID, then wait for the waiting period to expire. It is bonkers.
In MO there is really no waiting period and you can ccw with no permit. You can carry a pistol in MO at iirc 18.
I want them to repeal the NFA, along with many of the other laws designed to disarm the poor, and people of color. And in general getting rid of a lot of the laws that do virtually nothing to affect criminals.
Should there be any laws at all regarding guns and who can have them? Should five-year-olds be allowed to have guns? Should dangerously psychotic people who are regularly institutionalized have guns?
Do you want many gun regulations, some gun regulations or no gun regulations? Because people who want any of those things can and do call themselves "pro-gun."
Why you and others seem to think "pro-gun is what I believe and not anything else" is beyond me.
If you are over the age of 18 and not mentally adjudicated you should be allowed to purchase guns. If you're under 18 and "gifted" a gun then just like the child, it's the parents prerogative to make sure it's safe. If we trust you to be out of prison then you should be allowed all of your rights back as a citizen (none of this you got a felony you're never allowed to vote garbage). Outside of that I want very few other restrictions.
What if OP thinks differently? What if they think you shouldn't have a gun if you're mentally ill but also believe that 12-year-olds should be allowed to purchase guns?
Does that mean they are not pro-gun or does that mean "pro-gun" is too broad a term?
me personally, i like the fact that i have the capability of owning one. Much like anything else in life, i like being in control of things i interact with and use from day to day life. It's why im a linux user, it's why i self host a lot of services that i use. I do not like being dependent on others for things that i know i adequately provide for myself.
It's no more than feeding my individualism at the end of the day. And i don't think that's a negative thing. I'm sure people would tell me im a shitty person for not wanting to contribute to society, but i also never wanted to exist in the first place, so i think it's a little fucking daft to claim that i owe something to a thing i'm not particularly fond of to begin with. But that's a different rant altogether so.
I'm in favor of guns the way they do it in, IIRC, Switzerland? One of the countries in that part of the world anyway (I'm always confusing them with each other). They have nearly as many guns in the hands of public citizens, with none of the crime. If they can do it, so can we.
You have to get a purchasing permit in Switzerland and concealed carry permits are rare. Which is more strict than the U.S.
I want sensible gun laws, but I also want gun laws to make sense.
That means, removing all restrictions on items like suppressors, AR15s, SBRs, etc. But allowing only people that can show they are competent to own them.
Agreed. Especially about suppressors. It’s a safety devise. It will save your ears. Countries like Sweden and Norway even get that aspect, suppressors are encouraged to keep the peace with neighbors and are not regulated like firearms even. Anyone can own one as soon as they can own a gun.
I was shocked at the suppressor cost and process having recently gone through it. I got a suppressor for my .22, I primarily use it when I’m out walking my small dog. I can fire the .22 and it isn’t loud (I was not expecting it to be movie gun quiet but it is) so it is ear protection for both of us, he doesn’t startle, and my neighbors are far enough apart they would never hear it. So next time coyotes see him as food instead of challenge my unarmed willingness to defend my dog I’ll be more prepared.
It’s an expensive, long, and involved process that disadvantages folks with less resources than myself which bothered me.
200 bucks Ain’t bad for the stamp honestly. It’s never been inflation adjusted. But yeah the whole process is a massive waste of time.
Yeah, I guess it’s relative. It didn’t bother me paying for the stamp but I’ve been at points in my life where I had to make sure I could get enough gas to make it to work. Granted a firearm and suppressor wouldn’t be on my radar in those conditions but my mind has a tendency to go that direction whenever I’m exercising what I consider a freedom. In another conversation I’m complaining about $3,500 so far into ortho treatment for one of my sons, with insurance. Not because it put me out but how many families and kids aren’t getting effective care because they’re in a less fortunate place? Sorry, got off topic.
I feel similarly to OP, so ill say imo regullations are fine like Brady Bill or Assault rifle bans, but I dont believe in disarming the proletariat.
Marx said under no circumstances should the proles give up their guns, and I tend to agree.
I think you're totally missing my point because my point was that OP hasn't explained how they felt. "Pro-gun" is virtually meaningless.
I believe guns should be able to abort as many babies as they want to. But I don't believe in Marijuana. Like, I don't believe pot exists. It's a conspiracy theory to make people think a plant could make you lazy or creative. Think about it.
Whenever someone tells me they don't believe in vaccines, this is exactly how I respond. "Like, you don't believe they exist? They're not real?"
Guns aren't real. Anytime anyone fires a "gun" they are casting magic missile as a cantrip.
"Alakablam!"
https://youtu.be/t6OBk9YBLQU
He means we should be allowed to use and enjoy guns. Legally.
So without any regulations whatsoever? Anyone can have a gun from age 0 to 100 no matter how psychotic there might be?
Otherwise, I think there needs to be more specification on what "pro-gun" means.
that's still basically meaningless, you can use guns legally in most countries, even the most restrictive ones.
Marx also wrote extensively on "the Jewish question", the man should not, nor would he have wanted, to be taken as an orthodoxy of leftist doctrine.
I believe the proletariat can well be armed without anything of the sort of shameful nakedness which governs US gun ownership and responsibility, gun ownership of the proletariat is well possible in many countries that have far more sensible laws regarding firearms than the US.
Marx routinely expected too much from people. The proles do nothing with their guns except execute each other while their government gets away with horrific things and the human race hurtles towards extinction.
It's time to accept that guns are no better at solving social problems than they are at solving plumbing issues and tech complaints.
My friends and I joke that the inner-city schools in our city don’t have shootings because the children are armed.
Republicans aren't pro-gun. They're pro-republicans-with-guns. Maybe pro-straight-white-christians-with-guns.
I like guns too. I shot them at a range and I'm pretty good. It's like a video game where you make you're breathing right and all that jazz.
If someone asked me if I wanted to fire guns but also children were to die in schools due to unfettered gun access thanks to those rules. I'd say, thanks but no thanks.
No but you don't understand -- fixing the "children die in schools" part would be inconvenient for gun owners. They'd have to do things like "wait longer for a gun" or "prove they know how to handle and store firearms" and ultimately, isn't that a bigger tragedy than the murder of someone else's kids?
Pfffft just make it a law that keeping your weapons accessible for children equals death by firing squad. Your child is talented with lockpicks? Sucks to be you.
PSA: modern gun control laws enacted by Republicans to keep guns away from Blacks
I love this dumb as fuck talking point. I know your goal is to suggest "if you support gun control then you're racist" but you've done so little critical thinking about it that you've forgotten that it's the pro-gun community that supports keeping the current, racist laws and the gun control advocates who want to change them.
I don't know anyone pro gun that wants to keep the current dog shit feel good laws,
Whatever the "people you know" think, it doesn't change the fact that the current laws were written by pro-gun groups and significant changes to them have been blocked by pro-gun groups. They've been in control of those laws for 20 years and they've delivered on absolutely none of the things they promised.
But don't worry, it's extremely on brand for "responsible gun owners" to deny they're in any way responsible for guns.
Go far enough left, you get your guns back.
You don't have to go particularly far.
Just stop having a hard-on for the cops and suddenly guns regain a lot of their appeal
I'm not an american and guns are not legal where i live. And i'm sorry but most people in the world are way to daft and angry and should NOT be allowed to be anywhere near a gun.
And no, just because someone with a gun would want to hurt me but then i would have a gun too, is not a valid response. I'm not gonna survive a shootout. I'm not john wick.
I'm not sure you're correct. If you're from a European country, chances are you have very good gun laws, and a lot of people in your country own guns. The difference is, you also a have working healthcare system that helps people with psychological problems.
I live in Sweden. Most people would assume there are no guns here, but I can tell you that's wrong.
I train with them a lot, so if and when I need to, I can safely use them.
Why would anybody assume there were no guns in Sweden? If they were mentally challenged?
Just saying, the guy that wrote that guns aren't legal in their country.
I am a bit curious where you live. Most places with decent gun control doesn't outright ban guns, you just have to earn the privilege to own one, and you can't treat them like toys.
I would absolutely love to have a gun. But it's not worth everyone else having one too
idk it's an interesting conversation to have, but it's also like saying that owning swords should be illegal or at the very least highly regulated because they can be dangerous.
I don't have a fundamental problem with people owning guns, or dangerous things, i have a fundamental problem with people who have a violent history getting access to guns however.
A sword is nowhere near as dangerous as a gun, Evan a pistol. A pistol can kill from many feet away, a sword you need to be close. Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean it should be banned, but when you get to a certain level of danger, such as guns, where you could kill 10 people in a second, then they need to be banned. Even pistols are way to dangerous. Also, swords are highly regulated in some states.
yeah, that's not my point though, do you think swords were designed to sit on a wall and look pretty? They were an instrument of war.
My point is pretty explicit. Also, melee weapons, in particular ranged melee weapons can be incredibly dangerous. You need to be close sure, but you can be behind someone, or they could simply not be paying attention, or you could be concealing a knife as you walk past someone for instance. Technically you can do it with a gun also, but a knife is vastly easier to control.
Likely not as dangerous, but idk how good those stats would be to begin with, a well placed knife wound can fuck someone up proper. Even a center of mass shot with a gun can be trivial to survive.
Also i'm pretty sure 10 a second is hyperbolic, 1 per second i suppose.
im pretty sure most states highly regulate guns as well, there are a few that have pretty lax carry laws. But it's questionable how much impact those have.
Then again, an assault rifle can fire roughly ten rounds a second, and you'd have great difficulty stabbing ten people every second with a sword, there is a difference in dangerousness
you would have incredible difficulty in landing ten rounds per second, into ten different people, per second. Especially from distance.
What about your police? What about your military? Do they fight with swords and bows and stuff? Actually that sounds pretty cool where do you live I wanna move
The only problem with that concept is that it assumes there's a class of people that know better and are entitled to rule us, but in actuality, political office attracts the worst of us. Why should the worst subset of humans control whether the everyone else is allowed self-defense?
The real problem, is people being stupid enough to believe owning guns is going to protect them from a fascist government. (Hint they won't)
The only hope is voting against fascists NOW. Once they get control, that gun in your closet ain't going to save you.
And yet the only BLM protests during the summer that didn't get blasted with beanbags and pepperballs were the ones where armed protesters stood in front of police. It's almost like fascists do not relish the thought of taking on armed citizenry.
I have a kind of problem with rhetoric like this, because it implies that shooting and killing fascists is broadly an ineffective tactic, which I do not believe to be the case
Shooting and killing fascists generally is not effective as a spontaneous demonstration of opposition.
If you've ascended to the point of shooting and killing fascists, acquiring weapons is probably pretty low on your list of practical problems to solve (in order to be able to shoot and kill fascists).
I mean do we have a whole lot of like, examples of this happening as a case of action? I really can't think of any, I dunno if we'd be able to ascertain it's efficacy without that.
Lots, generally in the lead-up and early years of fascist takeovers. Lone wolf assassinations, attacks by small groups, the like. The 20s had numerous anti-fascist assassinations, and the early-mid 30s had anti-Nazi assassinations.
Effective resistance movements only develop out of the roots of organization, direction, and subversion, at which point there are numerous paths to getting the needed weapons and shooting some fascists. Prior gun ownership is a footnote in such operations at best - a liability at worst.
The other points are well taken, I wasn't really thinking so much along those lines. Dunno so much what lines I was thinking along honestly. Probably armed resistance leading up to a fascist government, including armed protest sort of thing, which doesn't really involve shooting people so much as it does just kinda standing around with a gun so other people don't get shot most of the time, I think.
Do you have a problem with gravity? I mean it's going to be the same thing... Especially since most of the gun nuts that believe "they could do something" are going to be cheering the fascist government on while it goes after lbqt, immigrants, non Christians, libtards... And by the time they realize something's wrong there ain't going to be jack shit to do about it. (See Nazi Germany in the late 30's when the population started realizing this shit might not be cool) History repeats...
People overwhelmingly agree that (broadly speaking about the US here) the government isn't working for us, hasn't been for a long time, and is infringing on our rights constantly.
So where are all those gun people with their guns given all this government tyranny going on? What are they doing?
And besides, if any gun owner thinks that they wouldn't be absolutely steamrolled by the military, they're lying to themselves.
pissing and shitting themselves over the concept of liberals and queer people owning guns because it makes them quake in their boots.
(not all of them to be fair, a lot of them are pretty chill, and i respect them for that, but there is a CONCERNING amount of these people regardless.)
It's not just defense against government tyranny. I'm a trans person, I'd like to not feel helpless when attacked and the cops are on the attacker's side. If I'm gonna die or end up incarcerated, I'm gonna do the community a good one and remove a threat on my way out.
Most people on both sides of the gun debate are the victims of propaganda ensuring most guns are in the hands of those controlling the propaganda.
Full out war against the state isn't the only way guns can be useful for self-defense against tyranny. I don't want my rights taken away because your imagine is small. I agree, a few people w/ AKs are no match against the military.
I get that you're in a social group that is more at risk of attack, and I really wish it wasn't that way. However, the kind of mindset you're espousing here is the same justification people use to shoot minorities, or shoot children for walking into their lawns, or to shoot people turning around in their driveways. Too often, people are jumpy, racist, and not mentally equipped to handle guns. There are other things that can be used to defend yourself.
Please tell me what other way there is. When fighting the government, there's no middle ground between a small group attacking targets and all-out war. And all-out war is not the way anyone wants things to go.
ok, but there's a difference between your rights being actively infringed upon, and being an entitled piece of shit. This is why things like prison exist. And laws.
That guy in florida that mag dumped on the middle of the fucking highway? Definitely shouldn't own a gun, but he also got no punishment for it That shit should be illegal. There are a lot of states where stand your ground laws aren't a thing, my state for instance has pretty specific and strict laws around when you can and cannot shoot people in your own home.
There isn't another way, like almost ALL gun owners they are deluding themselves... Guns aren't even good for self defense, for the average person. They are like 5 times more likely to kill themselves with it, or accidentally shoot/kill an innocent...
Skill issue.
I mean, you brought it on yourself. If you live in the U.S owning a gun should be controversial. Ya'll have proven incapable of using them responsibly.
Here's the real problem. Guns are basically dangerous tools, and should be treated as such. Instead, they have a cult of personality. I've got no problem with people owning knives and hammers, but if some dude has a bunch of pro-knife, and pro-hammer stickers on his car, joins the knife and hammer Association of America, regularly shows up to angrily protest restrictions on where you can carry knives and hammers, walks around with a concealed knife and hammer at the mall because a box or nail could be around any corner... I might start to think that nut job should not be allowed to have a knife or a hammer.
Did you write this? It's a perfect analogy.
I did physically type it out. I doubt the idea is original, I'm sure I've heard similar sentiments elsewhere, but at this time I cannot attribute it to a particular source.
That sounds like a really cool person compared to a pro-gun nutter honestly. I'd think that guy is probably an expert satirist
Tools for what job, again?
The problem with the “guns are tools” categorization is that the only job they’re for is killing
people, or threatening to do so. Unless you’re talking shooting at the range, in which case that’s really more of a toy than a tool.The reasons those protests don’t happen for tools is because they generally serve some other primary function which is useful, and that they’re not nearly as likely to be used accidentally.
Intimidation and posturing, mostly, which is why they're attractive to macho fools. Doesn't mean they're not useful for that job, though
Uses for a firearm that don't involve killing people.
Hunting, defense from predators, fire starting, signaling, paper weight, preventing your checked bags from getting lost or tampered...
Fair enough re: hunting.
You really ran out of steam after defense from predators though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_gun
https://youtu.be/KfqtYfaILHw?si=j7x4TyHmk6kMj5cd
There is a good video of Les Stroud showing how to start a fire with a gun, having trouble finding it.
Those were 6 uses off the top of my head.
If you really want to stretch uses, you can use a gun as a hammer, you can use it to pinch your finger, and in dire situations it can be a dowry.
I got my boy scout badge when I used a gun to start the camping fire. True story.
Never had any of my hunter friends (and there's a lot of them) hunt with a handgun. Is that even legal?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handgun_hunting
TL;Dr yes, the enthusiasts say it takes more skill, which is true, so fair enough, though I'd argue it's more likely to just make you miss a killshot and lead to unnecessary suffering.
Just get closer with a rifle if that's your thing.
No, no, look, if we let our gun culture get even more out of control, it'll loop back and become responsible again.
You think our gun problem is bad?
Wait till you see our cruise missile and killer drone problem.
100% this - if we had the gun violence Switzerland saw (who has a comparable number of firearms per person as the US) I would be pro gun too.
Instead we've got a lethal cocktail of incompetence, entitlement and mental illness where gun owners and firearms industry simps see dead children as the 'price of freedom'.
It's fucked.
Most liberals, or most American liberals?
I wish this were true, but it's not.
Sounded good on paper but those workers kept their guns and still gave the government and capitalists everything they wanted without a single shot fired.
All you're doing is posting a picture of Marx with an example of him being wrong.
Oligarchs discovered that you can achieve more with propaganda. And cheaper.
The rebellious youth got utterly subverted, for example.
(Yes yes, rage on about your gender and haircolor. We'll just keep running the world and squeezing the underclass)
We could also achieve more without guns but unfortunately some people are content using guns as magic talismans instead.
Thanks, Santa. Very cool.
He does miss from time to time
The only part he missed from this quote was in the context that followed, where he then said to surrender your guns after the revolution, because the proletariat would be armed through the People's Military (paraphrased, obviously)
i just want to be left alone, and i want other people to be left alone, and i want rights, and i want other people to have rights.
Revolutionary concept.
I'm pro-do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want-as-long-as-it-doesnt-harm-or-negatively-affect-anyone-else
spaces are for cowards, wait fuck
It's called being Liberal.
No it's called being a leftist. Liberals are all that but they suck corporate cock, too.
Empowering Corporations restricts the rights and freedoms of individual peoples, so no. Also, in the USA at least, I've never met a self-described liberal who supports deregulation or opposes taxation of corporations.
It's literally the foundation of neoliberalism, my guy.
If you want to draw a line between neoliberalism and liberals, fine, but when you start asking "liberals" for their stances on the distinguishing beliefs not a whole lot of them support going back to the New Deal or even Kennedy era type beliefs on the role of government.
Yeah, I'm telling you that they don't exist for decades now. Modern day neoliberals call themselves Libertarians. In the 1900s there were self-identified neoliberals who copied the moniker used to describe 1800s thinkers. Nowadays it's just an insult that tankies use to justify their both-sides bullshit.
With a quick search on multiple search engines I cannot find any modern groups who self-identify as Liberal and also as Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Capitalists. Because deregulation generally opposes liberalism as it stands in today's politics.
Lol, okay
More or less. The idea of "life, liberty and private property" from og liberalism didn't specifically mean a right to be alive or have one's needs met it was more about individually choosing what style of life and career you want. Likewise the ideology of having your personal property always protected as sacrosanct from the government mediation has been pretty good for corporate interest.
That whole "pursuit of Happiness" thing was just Jefferson riffing on John Locke but the sentiment was basically the same. Liberal was hot branding back in the day to mean "generally permissive" but it's been a hot minute and people have really started to peel back the label.
Free markets come before free people, because collecting rent is the way you get capital growth in a private economy.
Ah, yes, I forgot no political traditions other than liberalism want people to have rights.
Literally the bare definition of the word, lmfao.
For most of the 19th century and most of the 20th one, liberals were divided at best and opposed at worst when it came to positive rights (this is, rights tied to positive freedoms that the state must ensure you have, as opposed to not preventing you from reaching them, such as getting access to social housing even if you're bankrupt); while left-wing ideologies (save for leninists) were promoting both political and social rights.
Even if you want to refer to contemporary liberals in the current year 2024 (and forget what liberals were doing in 2007), the leaders of political liberalism in the US aren't keen in creating real public housing options (while the cost of housing skyrockets) or public healthcare options (while medicare eats away the government's budget (without offering full coverage for everything to everyone) because it's paying a premium, since it depends on private prices). In Europe, liberals are the ones who promote market economy over social rights, with their only saving grace being that they aren't as batshit crazy as plenty of parties to their right. If you want to find political camps that defend both political and social rights, you have to look at socialdemocrats and socialists.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/
Social democrats are a type of liberal, but otherwise nice breakdown.
Present some examples, I've never met self-identified liberals who oppose public healthcare or housing. Literally all of the public healthcare and housing options available in the USA were from progressive reform from what the media often refers to as "liberals". Where are these supposed "Negative Liberty Liberals" that you people keep ranting about? That Stanford paper you brought up uses an example from 70 years ago, when Liberal was a moniker chosen by Laissez-Faire Market and Anti-Tax proponents who today would align with what is referred to as Libertarian.
The Standford paper explains the development of the historical debate of the issue.
This framing is proof that you don't understand where liberalism comes from. What were liberals defending in 1800, in 1850, in 1900, in 1950?
As for the examples you ask for:
Trudeau Liberals vote to allow for-profit health care system, NDP blasts flip-flop
(Article in Spanish) The origins of the healthcare collapse: the cuts of CiU and the tri-party ; Note: Catalan politics have long consisted a competition between liberal, socialdemocratic and left-wing parties, where the liberal ones have always incentivized private companies over public services, with the support of minoritarian Conservative parties.
In Germany, founders of private hospital companies are bankrolling the pro-business party FDP: FDP is the liberal party in Germany (with conservative parties to their right and socialdemocratic, left-leaning and green parties to their left). At the bottom of the article:
Which is ultimately a form of corrupting the basis of a public healthcare system, making people think they will receive worse care if they won't pay for private services and pushing the public system towards its collapse.
Yeah, no shit? The average voter in the US doesn't understand the difference between liberalism, socialdemocracy and socialism, so they'll call themselves liberals even if they don't understand the nuances of the term, while the average Democratic politician understands that they shouldn't express opposition to public policies that poll well with voters, even if they certainly don't intend to promote them. Because they barely have any politicians competing against them from their left, they aren't exposed not defending an actual public option.
Your ass in here making me study Canadian Politics all of a sudden, but fine I'm game. Two things:
The Liberal Party of Canada is the oldest party of Canada founded in 1867, their name by now has absolutely zero bearing on the definition of the words. That said, Trudeau is more unpopular with Canadians with each passing day, clearly not aligned with his constituents. The conservative proposal by Doug Jones was discussed by Liberal Party members in September as something they oppose.
I literally cannot find that vote that NDP talks about in the current session of the 44th Parliament of Canada, not saying I don't believe you, but I cannot actually find out more about it because none of the articles actually mention the name of the Bill. I did, however, find information about the Pharmacare Act C-64 which will potentially make medications for Diabetes as well as contraceptives free for all citizens and funded by the public entity. So, I guess you have the "fake" liberals to thank for it.
that would have been the joke, i believe.
I'm so far left that I got my guns back 🙂
The only sticking point is the guns.
I joined up with liberalgunowners on that other site for a while, thinking I might find kindred souls that were pro-shooting sports, but understood that the way we handled gun ownership in this country had some problems.
Nope.
They were just as devoid of nuance and reason when it came to gun ownership as the conservatives. They figured slapping a rainbow or a “no step on snek” patch on their molle tacticool gear was good enough, but thoughts and prayers if a gay nightclub got shot up.
So yeah, I think guns are fun and have a place in hunting and other sports. But not like what we’ve got now.
Yeah I'm a gun enthusiast. I really like the laws the way they are now as they relate to me. So I get it. But how many mass shootings do we need before we admit there's a problem right now? Maybe far in the future we can consider relaxing some of the regulations again. But right now, something about the current social situation is basically creating domestic terrorists. We need to start locking things down until it stops.
Personally, I'm going to need at least 10,000 kindergarteners gun down in their class room before I'll consider changing our sacred god given gun laws.
Jesus wouldn't want it any other way, as specified in Arms 3:16-108 in the Bible.
How can you be anti something another person chooses to do privately with their body blows my mind
How you can be anti able to end others lives using a tool specifically crafted, to not hinder or disable, no but end other peoples ability to continue breathing and living, is beyond me
People have such paranoid hate towards others and then treat themselves like shit and rationalise instead of just fixing their own doorstep before attacking others
specifically crafted to be a significant impediment to living*
There are dozens of us! Tbh, there are lgbt gun clubs afaik. It’s just not a mainstream position, but eh dgaf
Well, as long as the owner instills good discipline and is responsible
There is also the Socialist Rifle Association.
There’s a comedian that pointed out this is why conservative groups garner so much support.
“Do you oppose abortion?” “No.” “Do you hate the gays?” “No.” “Do you think illegal immigrants should be shot?” “Yeah.” “Well, COME ON DOWN!”
Meanwhile, liberal groups after asking about 18 issues: “Are you vegan?” “No.” “Well, I BET you voted for TRUMP!!”
I miss when we could find common ground in politics.
No shortage of carnivore liberals.
But I'll never understand why declining to eat meat upsets people so much.
I don't give a fuck if you don't eat meat up until you start giving me shit for eating meat.
The argument is always for the greater good and from a position of superiority. That's just authoritarianism from a different angle.
I've seen a conga line of Joe Rogan heads insisting there is an underground anti-meat campaign to target and harass carnivores, nationally.
However, I was eating bbq down in Texas just this weekend, completely unmolested.
Sure. Because we produce (and then waste) enormous amounts of meat. And the production of meat consumes an enormous amount of arable land and potable water. And we absolutely would be much better off - from a climate change perspective - if we weren't growing almonds to feed to cows to feed the choicest bits of to people.
Vegans have us all dead to rights, logically and ecologically.
But they're a tiny minority working against the capitalist drive, and also they're soy and gay.
Mostly they're the whipping kids of an industry that does unfathomable cruelty and waste and then feels the need to complain about how they're the victims.
Go look up the time Oprah Winfrey was forced to apologize to the Texas Cattle Ranchers Association because she mentioned a burger gave her food poisoning.
Right wing objections are different topic. I was speaking as a liberal/leftist and their feelings towards vegans.
Veganism has its own propaganda. The claims that it is better are always cherry picked to prove the point. I am not interested in arguing with what is essentially a religious movement.
Your mention of Oprah apologizing isn't authoritarianism. It's capitalism. The force was monetary.
Veganism will happily pass laws to enforce their belief that meat eating is evil.
The meat industry will happily pass laws to protect their profits.
These are not the same at all.
Right, so here's where the conversation really breaks down. There's some really basic math that goes into why - up until very recently in human history and a very agriculturally rich area like the territory over the Ogallala Aquifer - you couldn't get a pound of rib eye for $5. Raw material consumption to produce a pound of beef is orders of magnitude above production of wheat or corn or rice.
That's not an article of religious dogma or a cherry picked factoid. That's a hard truth anyone in the cattle industry can tell you. You're not driving hundreds of thousands of head of cattle through Southern France or Ukraine's black earth or the central desert of Australia. The industry only works because of an artifact of geography that is the central plains. And we get to produce these enormous surpluses for a limited time, as we cannibalize the territory with an invasive disease-spreader replacement to the native species.
How quickly we move through our available surplus is predicated on how aggressively we farm cattle. And thanks to our capitalist growth model, we're going through it at a breakneck pace. All the moreso because of state subsidies fueled by kickbacks and corrupt business practices.
It wasn't just monetary. The terms of the settlement required Oprah to apologize on air. What's more, there is always an implied threat of violence behind a monetary penalty. Try not paying a fine or a debt and see what happens next. Repo men routinely pack heat.
Which is also authoritarian.
K.
shrug
i think most liberals hate vegans but still applies
My carnivore friends are massively more evangelical than my vegan friends. Just my experience I guess.
It's an edgelord thing, it transcends ideology
I love guns. I adore guns. Guns are great. They're fascinating pieces of engineering, tools, and exercises of skill. I would never own one (to my great regret) due to the increased risk of suicide from gun-owners, but I think that responsible gun ownership is a great thing and a cultural cornerstone of Americana.
But no one in the US who claims to be pro-gun should be allowed anywhere near a gun.
Maybe in some frozen waste like Canada where it's not completely piss-easy to get a gun, one can describe oneself as pro-gun. But in the US? No.
Oh it's piss easy to get a Gun in Canada... You just have drive down to the States.
Seriously though around 70 percent of guns used in criminal activities up here are traced back to sources in the States and were never legally imported, purchased or even stolen from homes inside Canada. When people point at us and say "Gun control doesn't work see!?" it's in part because gun trash bleeds over boarders.
I have a sense that you know all this, but, just wanted to chime in- the system in Canada where you have to take a course and pass a screening is costly & a pain in the ass. Bottom line, legally, it's neither fast nor easy to get a firearm in Canada, and on top of that, the RCMP can deny any application that they see fit. But ultimately, I think the existing licensing system is a reasonable management of risks, and overall a good thing.
Unfortunately, gun control here is a wedge issue, and political points are easily scored by banning / confiscating guns from legal owners, who, as you mention, were never the problem in the first place. Actually fixing the gun crime issue here would be difficult, costly, and an optics minefield.
IMO, the penalties for being found with an illegal firearm or using a firearm to commit a crime should be much more severe. Surely people of all political stripes could get behind that? But, no. We're in a situation where, on the left, any policy that doesn't include a sweeping ban is criticized as unacceptable and weak. It sucks, because it means that the actual problem affecting citizens goes unsolved, and nobody seems to care.
I just want my gay married friends to have guns to protect their kids.
Protect them from what?
Edit: I love the downvotes trickling in from the pro-gun cultists. Usually they pretend it's because I used rude words but there's nothing to hide behind this time. I asked a simple question and that made gun owners salty.
Anything really, if you live rurally that be quite a number of things, hell even if you live in an urban environment. Queer people have been arming themselves as of late, given the more restrictive nature that legislation has taken against them. POC and other minority groups have been doing this regularly for decades. None of this is new.
"Anything" is a deliberate non-answer that can't be argued against.
How are guns going to solve oppressive legislation?
If they've been doing it for decades, why hasn't it worked?
they aren't. At a federal level, and even a state level, they won't. As for the doing it for decades part, it's because they're pansies who like to dick ride on a concept that makes them feel better. For some reason.
Regardless, it's technically a non answer, but this is also a form of a non question. "why would you need to own a gun" can range from literally anything to "i hunt" to "sport" to "self protection" to "self protection but from the wild" to "the sock pill" There are a million and one reasons someone could own a gun. And a million and one purposes for it to serve.
Okay, so you can answer it, just not without using a homophobic slur.
when did i use a homophobic slur? I'm genuinely confused.
For what it matters, which is probably none, i'm ace. And pretty fucking gay for one.
Here is the definition of "pansy".
And nope, your sexuality doesn't matter at all. You can claim to be absolutely anything online and the pro-gun community seems to be riddled with sock puppets who can't keep their story straight.
Scary feelings.
Guns are overwhelmingly not used in justifiable homicides (homicides performed in self-defense).
Guns for self defense is a fantasy.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251894/number-of-justifiable-homicides-in-the-us/
But a fantasy that most of the pro-gun community just can't resist. The reality is likely even worse than those figures show since permissive gun laws arm criminals in the first place, making that justification more common.
Zombies, aliens, foreign armies, roving feral pigs, cosmic horrors, muggers handing you mugs. It's about having the option if you need it. Same way I feel about going prochoice. It's there if you need it. Besides No one wants to occupy a country with more guns than blades of grass.
So when you finally give a list, most of the threats are imaginary and the 2 that are left are spectacularly unlikely.
the police probably
Okay, so please tell us all exactly when they should pull a gun on police and what the outcome is because otherwise, you sound like someone who is either far-right or has taken on far-right propaganda without thinking.
Guns have brought zero police reforms. Pulling a gun on police gets you shot and killed. There won't even be an investigation. American police get away with executing minorities because they might have a gun.
Oh, no, the implication wasn't that you would normally pull a gun on the police. That wouldn't normally be effective. They close their ranks pretty quick and are pretty prime to kill, maim, abuse, and mud sling at cop killers, and I don't think you'd probably get away with that with the proliferation of body cams and all the other forms of digital recording devices.
No, the implication I was trying to suggest was that you would have a gun on you to dissuade the police from killing you. I.E. The same strategy that the black panthers employed when they patrolled their neighborhoods, one most effectively done in numbers. Really a lot of forms of civil disobedience are made available with the use of guns.
I mean if you're visibly not cis or straight then the police really don't need a whole lot of reason to kill or harass you anyways, going by the numbers. Certainly I don't think that mere possession of a gun would be a terrible idea, in that circumstance, though I couldn't really encourage drawing or shooting at the police or otherwise giving them a reason to shoot you if you're pulled over.
This strategy didn't work. The BPP was painted as a dangerous group of extremists and the police used their guns as an excuse to execute multiple members of the party.
So again, unless your goal is to get minorities killed by police, I have no idea why you're advocating they walk around with guns.
Then it's nothing more than a magic talisman that's supposed to ward off bad things. We're supposed to accept a homicide rate far in excess of other countries -- complete with the biannual execution of a room full of children -- and you can't even tell people when they're supposed to use their guns and what it will fix.
Yeah, cause they needed an excuse to do that, it's not like they were doing that already/are still doing that commonly, which was the main problem they were seeking to solve. It's not like the tactic of stealing from wealthy white neighborhoods in order to fund the free meal programs was already a pretty dangerous tactic that also was pretty likely to get them shot, but I dunno. maybe you'd advocate against that as well. Despite all of this, I can't really find any evidence of any member of the black panther party getting shot before the Mulford act was signed, at which point that form of protest was basically no longer possible. I dunno, maybe you can prove otherwise. You also say "painted as a dangerous group of extremists", but that kind of makes it pretty hard to take you seriously. MLK was painted as a dangerous extremist. Anyone seeking any change will be painted as a dangerous extremist, an argument against that is an argument against change, and an argument in favor of the current state of affairs in which the current violence is occuring.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's more frequent than a biannual execution of a room full of children, at this point. That's evidenced as a pretty high profile instance of gun crime, but if you wanted the real story on that, you'd probably look at the violent crime statistics and find out that the majority of gun crime comes about as a result of both suicides and gang violence, i.e. poor mental healthcare and drugs being overly valuable property which gangs use guns to protect. Other gun violence is a much lower fraction. Most of the time the people committing crimes like school shootings are already flagged as having serious problems and could've been stopped beforehand.
Nowhere here have I advocated against common sense gun laws or licensing that would stop the production or overwhelming supply of guns into this country, but I do also find it suspicious that, say, shit like the mulford act seems to be some of the only times politicians are really willing to roll out gun laws. I can explain to people how the prison industrial complex works, how the school to prison pipeline works, how the government doesn't give a shit about moving anywhere to combat climate change, how we exploit third world countries for resources at a massive institutional level and subvert their governments constantly, even to the point where there's currently war in the Congo ongoing as a result. People will wholeheartedly agree with all of that as the reality, but then when you turn around and start talking about gun ownership, or armed resistance, as a means to combat this, armed resistance that doesn't even require like, actually shooting anybody, necessarily, or even having a loaded gun, and suddenly people are super trusting of the government which we've previously established to be pretty relentlessly villainous and despicable, super trusting to make legislation that limits this responsibility rather than functionally limiting just like. Black people, from having guns.. If you look at any of that legislation, it's always the most insane, dumb bullshit that doesn't actually make any sense. Go look into the origins of the difference between a pistol, a short barrelled rifle, a destructive device, a shotgun. None of that shit's even necessarily a distinction which makes things illegal, as long as you have the dosh, you can pay tax stamps and get your shit. You can still get automatic firearms, if you have the money. Alternatively, you can acquire them illegally, or use a wheel grinder from harbor freight and then spend like 20 dollars once. Felons also can't own firearms, as an example of the idiocy. Check the difference between sentencing of felonies on the propagated crack throughout the hood vs the cocaine that the CIA was intentionally smuggling in. Even just possession of weed is a felony in some states. It can also even be the case with the illegal possession of hormone treatments, like what trans people might use, which I'm pretty sure is the case in New York.
Like I dunno, even at a basic level here, if you don't trust the fucking police to protect you, the fucking, institutional mechanisms by which you are to be protected, who is to protect you then? I dunno. If Trump gets elected and project 2025 comes to pass, I would probably not trust the government, and me personally, I would probably want a gun, yeah.
I also like how you're framing it that, because I'm just advocating for guns generally, right, as a devil's advocate, or, advocating for the use of guns as a legitimate political tactic, you're framing it that actually, what I'm advocating for is that minorities get shot and killed by the police, as though that's something that doesn't already happen in extremely large numbers. Yup, that's definitely a good faith extrapolation there.
This paragraph functionally just admits that there was a problem and walking around with guns didn't solve it. They did nothing except give the illusion of power which was no match for actual power.
Means reduction is one of the most effective methods of suicide prevention but sure, sweep them under the rug.
Gang violence is still gun violence so I've got no idea why you're trying to present it as "this doesn't count". Also, there is no magical gun fairy arming gang members -- the current gun laws give them an infinite supply of cheap, accessible firearms (including ones that are perfect for crime).
Most wealthy countries have underfunded mental health services and drugs. America the only one that enthusiastically escalates these problems into homicide and mass killings.
But they weren't and one group consistently opposes anything designed to address that.
You suggested an answer and I asked you to justify that answer.
It's ok you can call yourself a leftist...
I'm pro using torts to make everyone in the chain of a gun tragedy pay for their externalities. Didn't secure your gun and got it negligently stolen and someone was killed? That'll be bankruptcy. Marketed something you knew would kill someone unlawfully? Good luck staying in business friend.
It'd be interesting if folks had to pay for the real cost of gun ownership.
Don't stop at money. Where are all the gun owners offering to mop up the blood after Ulvade?
In fact, fuck it. There's people out there who want to kill children. There are pro-gun people with children. They can offer their own children up to these fucking psychopaths, rather than gambling that it'll be other people's kids.
actually, someone should start a biological clean up crew for pro gun people. That would be fun.
Non profit of course.
of course.
There’s hundreds of us!
That's me, but I live in a red state, so everyone says I'm far left (to put it nicely).
Same. But I'm also for gun control as well. Like, don't ban them outright, just make them a whole hell of a lot harder to get. Like really hard. I live in an area that has bobcats, bears, and the occasional mountain lion. I own a pistol to protect myself and my critters (a flock of ducks and two dogs) in case of an attack. I don't want to use it and it won't kill a big predator like a bear or mountain lion, but I only want it to scare the animals off if they get too close. It hasn't left the locked drawer I keep it in since I bought my house in 2022. I'm hoping it'll never have to come out.
Yup that's me. No major party has all 3.
Sigh
Part of the problem is that nobody is actually "Pro-Gun".
What you have is "Pro-White people gun dealers" on one end and "Pro-Cop" on the other. Selling AR-15s and antique rifles to people who think having more hardware in the house makes them safer? Sure. Giving the municipal government endless license to harass and surveil anyone too young or brown to be considered a Real American? Absolutely.
But neither of these groups want you to carry a gun into, say, a congressional building. Neither want to disarm the police or downsize the military. Neither want to see an armed Black woman or Arab man walking towards them.
The only real debate is whether a cop should be allowed to arrest a white guy at a gun show
I mean I know black gun enthusiasts who are pro-gun...
I'm also familiar with the Nation of Islam
Saw this on lemmy recently ❤️
Yeah that's sound great me.
Okay so most people would be like, "Oh everyone but me, should not be allowed to have guns, because I'm morally righteous, and think of the power, and think of how cool I am and how cool I would be with a cool gun.", right. That's the only position people have, I think, there's people who have that position, and liars who are lying. Okay, cool.
But me, no. Me, I think everyone but me should have a gun. To even the odds, for the rest of you.
Hey all I am saying is hand a gun to one side in this image and one of them is trigger happy versus the other.
Reading these comments it seems like most of the anti gun crowd thinks pro gun is about machismo at the cost of tragedy. It's mainly about protection of the people from the government. It's the last failsafe to keeping free in the case of tyranny. We all agree there needs to be better regulation because in the past and currently the laws are designed over feelings and not facts, for example barrel length restrictions or pistol grips that mainly only effects the ergonomics.
Your government fucks you up, every single day, week after week, year after year and the only people who own guns are the ones that are too cowardly to use them.
They couldn't protect you against a fucking duck
Prove me wrong
As someone who flips between the two I’ve noticed neither side seems to really get where the other side is coming from. The anti gun people don’t get that there is a certain amount of fear of government, or how guns work. The pro gun people tend to not understand that the government is already tyrannical, the cops have military weapons, and that a lot of gun enthusiasts are exactly the sort of people who we shouldn’t let have guns.
The people I want armed are the people who dread having to use a gun on another person and have a level of fear and respect for these tools and a level of trust that very few strangers have any desire to initiate violence. Meanwhile I keep hearing coworkers talk about how they have couch guns and saying how they draw when strangers approach them. Mentally unstable people with guns are a real problem and we as a country seem to insist on doing nothing that could actually help.
Lol sure there John Wayne.
I legit can't think of another country with people that LARP more about revolution than the US. Most affluent country in the world and you're constantly imagining youselves forming up and fighting back against tanks and helicopters (or your fellow citizens who happen to vote for the other team). It'd be funny if it wasn't so tragic and bizarre.
to be fair, being pro gun is typically about machismo power fantasy at the cost of that.
if youre going to fight the people who are genuinely ruining your life, guns, especially in the way Americans think of them, are not the primary tool for the job. if youre going to defend your home, also a bad tool. do not fire a gun indoors.
add to that: the people mostly advocating for chemical guns are against the proliferation of other effective weapons for the purpose (anti drone and anti armor weapons, ied's) and against fighting the people you actually need guns to fight, and can't just talk shit out with.
so while I do not give a shit about guns, someone saying they're pro gun is a huge red flag, and most 'pro gun' rhetoric is shit.
You've read too many fairy tales if you think a gun will protect you from the government ... Haha
guns to me, are more about sport and the potential for them to be useful to you in rare circumstances, more than shooting at an f35 that is launching a nuclear warhead at me from three miles away.
One problem with the anti-tyranny argument is that guns would much more easily be the means by which tyranny is implemented than the means by which it is taken down. Imagine a more well-armed Jan 6. Then of course once the dictatorship is in place, eliminating the right to bear arms - or more likely, making it exclusive to the dictator's allies - becomes trivial.
Now in that case, conceivably a pre-existing right to bear arms could be used to stash weapons for a resistance movement that might gradually over the course of a decades-long civil war reestablish some semblance of democracy. But by that point we've already lost, haven't we?
Underpinning that argument is the argument that you need a good argument if you want me to respect your opinion.
Which is fucked up.
Also, how come when people argue about like, gun related shenaniganery, they always talk about like, oh, well, if the government comes and hits you with a drone strike, then, you'll be fucked. I mean, no shit sherlock.
For one, that'd be fucking nuts, I think that'd probably make it on the nightly news and probably the president would undergo serious investigation and maybe get impeached.
For two, I think probably you are more likely to use a gun to walk around and not get fucking killed by the police when you decide to protest outside of a courthouse, or walk around your community to make sure the cops don't harass people or shoot people without being beholden the the community which they are also supposedly serving. Especially if there's more than one of you, if there's only one of you and the cops come around and have no idea who you are and you're waving a gun around, then you're probably gonna get the police called on you, and you will probably maybe get shot. Black panthers did it, anywho, and they were cool, so that's really all I'm saying.
For three, how does this like, insane civil war scenario come about? How come that's the main default scenario everyone's heads go to whenever this shit comes up? That's insane. You're telling me that the military, a military made up of like, a bunch of dudes who mostly just wanted free college as far as I can ascertain, you're telling me that they'd just like go and unflinchingly steamroll the normal citizenry and become part of a fascist dictatorship? That also strikes me as kind of nuts. You might not be wrong, but it does strike me as kind of nut,s and probably like they would have a huge discipline problem considering the amount of the military which has like pretty radically different political views. You'd probably have to see the centrist liberal types, the monoculture, slide way harder to the right, by which I mean, a couple inches. I find it more likely that, as we saw with BLM, if the US was to undergo civil unrest, it would probably be confined to a couple discrete locations and probably it wouldn't be that well organized, both in execution or opposition. Probably also you'd just see an embrace of guerilla tactics, and, I mean, we've seen the modern military's track record as far as that goes.
So, I dunno. Seems like a pretty stupid conversation to me. Someone hit me with the self-defense thing too so I can argue about how that's really stupid and self-defense is stupid and dumb
That just means you're reasonable. So yeah, both parties aren't big fans of that.
Centre right - like Sanders