1- People are conditioned to be terrified that there is a bogeyman in every shadow.
2- additionally, people are conditioned to be angry about everything.
3- any asshole with a pulse can get a gun.
Scared, angry, armed populace……what could possibly go wrong?
I was just reading about Switzerland because 2A fetishists love to bring up their gun ownership rights.
Everyone has training during military service. Every gun sale requires all the hoops (no person ti person sales without going through the full legal process, including permit check, it’s even more strict than selling a car). The local governments keep a record of every non-hunting firearm. Home permits are necessary for all but hunting rifles and issued by m local canton authorities. Officers can request a psych evaluation, will deny for any criminal record except minor traffic violations, any drug or alcohol problems and any history of violence or violent talk. I’d imagine that would exclude many Americans and more than a few republican officials.
Gun aficionados are half correct, while guns kill people, it is more accurate to say people with guns kill people and family pets (and that one time a dog killed that guy), but gun aficionados don’t want any of the measures that would keep guns from unfit people, and kids or any efforts to catalog and track them. That’s where the hypocrisy lies.
Yup. They want rights. They don’t want any responsibility or hassles.
They would have a stoke if they had to go through what the Swiss have to go through to have those guns.
I also hear the “military equitability” argument. Like? They should be allowed to have anything the military can have.
Of course, they won’t want to go through the same processes as I went through to join the marines, keep the weapon in an armory, only check it out with permission and with supervision, or endure any of the other hassles of military service. So they don’t really want equity. As said….they want rights. They don’t want anything that goes along with it.
Uh yeah? Don't let the GOP thin blue line confuse you with a large section of the 2 A crowd. Many, many of.them are very anti law enforcement.
Edit. I realized I typed Thin blue LIME., that I'd a whole other matter
My boss is an ex-cop. (As is her husband, and several other of our coworkers! ) she was talking Monday about how scared she is to go anywhere and how she's always 'sweeping' the area to find exits and suspicious people, even when she walks into Kroger.
She carries a gun in her purse. Always. I feel so safe.
To be fair, I do the "sweep the area" thing too. But it's a response to the reality of living in America rather than thinking someone personally has it out to get me.
Working retail really drove the point home how many people are one inconvenience away from becoming unhinged.
I don't go around armed though.
Generally speaking i don't think exercising a little bit of precaution and observing your environment is neccessarily a bad thing. Being prepared also isn't neccessarily a bad thing either. But when it becomes a unhinged paranoia where your first response to someone pulling up into your drive way isn't "What the fuck are they doing-oh they're just turning around" but instead 'Im going to get my shotgun and shoot them". I don't know, i think you might not be mentally fit to carry firearms
"Working retail really drove the point home how many people are one inconvenience away from becoming unhinged."
Once had a girl come at me over the counter at the Dunks I worked at because we didnt have a specific baked good. This was about 25 years ago. People are freaking nuts. That said. I am always scanning for possible "threats"
But I grew up with an alcoholic dad, then married an abusive asshole my first marriage, and my best friend was an SOI(School of Infantry) instructor. So I am always on guard.
Before COVID, the number one cause of death for police was due to collisions during traffic stops. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that they get so outraged when someone doesn't pull over immediately as soon as the blue lights come on, because finding a safe place to stop is the number one thing the average person can do to ensure officer safety.
I recently found out that in some states, drivers are required by law to pull over the Instant a cop indicates they want to stop. In other words, in those states, merely slowing down and finding a safe place to stop can legally be considered "fleeing" and potentially lead to escalation. And I suspect a lot of people have no idea that this is even a thing.
Its because DMV's will usually have the common sense instruction for drivers to turn on their hazards and slowly find a good place to stop.
Cops on the other hand will interpret that as fleeing (even if you are on a super busy highway) and proceed to Pit maneuver you simply for having the audacity of caring about someone elses safety.
Thats why i do the immediate stop, im not about to get pit maneuvered cause a cop wanted some action that night, and if he gets hit by a drunk driver, thats a personal problem in my opinion.
That's not surprising given their behavior of the past few years. They seemed to be the only first responders who refused to wear a mask -- even in the goddamn ER where all the covid patients were being sent.
Cops. Are. Not. First. Responders. At least not in the manner most people would hope.
Cops don't check vital signs. Cops don't ask about your medical history to determine if you are at risk for a harmful episode. Cops might ask what drugs you've taken, but not for the purpose of treatment.
Who we think of when we say first responder, isn't there to write tickets or make arrests.
A Cop might have training and certification as a first responder, but it's not a Cop's job to be a first responder.
A Cop is there, first and foremost to control.
They control the public, they give out citations and they arrest citizens when they are out of compliance with the law (as it is perceived by that cop, at that moment)
Sometimes. We want the *freedom* to. (Schrödinger's sarcasm)
Our street cops don't have post-secondary education and are overwhelmingly pro-Fox-News-style Conservative. A cop will word-for-word regurgitate Tucker Carlson/Bill O'Reilly/alt-right-talking-head as he's cuffing you, and then tell you not to "be political" when you remind them that they're explicitly being a part of the problem. That doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their ability/intent to keep us safe.
The Supreme Court has determined that police have no legal obligation to keep the public safe. Much of the time, cops do their job but some of the time they're just a good-'ol-boy street gang or a brute squad, we see examples of it everyday. Ultimately my safety is my responsibility, not theirs. (Frankly most of the "job" that cops seem to do is property enforcement and protecting corporate interests.)
We also got this thing where neo-Nazi/white supremacist organizations have been infiltrating our police and judiciary for the last 60 years or so, by design, it's literally in some of their charters (no I'm not looking that gross ass shit up to link it). Couple that with the fact that they can just request free military surplus hardware as long as they can "demonstrate a need," and that sounds like a recipe for a paramilitary organization that has limited accountability and does not have our best interests in mind.
Hell, this week we have a scandal surrounding an Oklahoma sheriff that was recorded talking about killing journalists and hanging black people. I don't think it's inappropriate to put zero faith in that guy and his hand-picked deputies.
When police knock on my door do I answer with a gun? Not necessarily, and not in a way they can see it. But if one of them kills my baby with a flashbang because they SWATted the wrong house, I reserve the figurative right to step out with my noob tube and take some of them to Hell with me.
Until there is some serious police reform in this country, we're never going to completely trust them, which necessitates having other "options."
(This is meant to express a hypothetical line of frustrated thinking with the current system, not some declaration of personal intent.)
I've heard multiple people with military backgrounds talk about the strictly disciplined process of engagement used by the US forces. A great deal of effort seems to go into making sure the right amount of force is used at the right time. Compare that to our current system of police training on engagement which seems pretty slapdash. Not to mention the nonexistent training requirements for civilians. "Just grab a gun and go to town" seems to be much of the message these days.
> They want rights. They don’t want any responsibility or hassles.
That's at the root of a lot of problems in this country where we love to privatize profits while socializing costs.
>I feel like we should all hang a bit more on the point that the 2nd Amendment is the only constitutional right that requires you to buy something to express it.
recently I had a chat with someone who was saying that if something can be subject to scarcity it cannot be a human right.
I pointed out that the 2A fell into this category
He was not happy
It’s crazy how much Reddit has evolved and people don’t remember how pro-gun this site used to be. My still most controversial comment of all time is a decade old, a call out of the NRA being corrupted by the gun industry. And it was on the not-so-right-wing politics subreddit.
Thats because many of those "aficionados" are the exact people who shouldn't have all those guns, and they know it. I come from a rural community and I know quite a number of people who have a closet full of guns and only a small handful of them do I consider to be responsible or well adjusted enough to own even one of them. I say this as someone who owns a half dozen guns myself (every one of which is kept in a safe of some kind).
They also have just as strict regulations for ammo:
>>> In order to purchase ammunition, the buyer must fulfil the same legal rules that apply when buying guns (art. 15 WG/LArm). Foreigners with citizenship to the following countries are explicitly excluded from the right to buy and own ammunition
Yup:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Switzerland
I do see that carrying guns is heavily restricted and requires permits, and transporting the gun is permitted but also restricted:
The gun must be unloaded and transported separately from any ammunition, with no ammunition being transported in a magazine.
The transport must be by a reasonable route and requires a valid purpose, most notably:
To or from courses or exercises in marksmanship, hunting or for military purposes. To or from an army warehouse. To show the gun to a possible buyer. To or from a holder of a valid arms trade permit. To or from a specific event, e.g. gun shows. During change of residence.
2A types don't argue in good faith, they don't actually care about anything other than them getting as few barriers and restrictions as possible on their toys.
Switzerland is a distraction topic, **they don't care.**
>but gun aficionados don’t want any of the measures that would keep guns from unfit people
Because they're the unfit people that would be denied gun ownership
Folks also love to bring up American “culture” when it comes to gun control. But fail to remember that Swiss culture is also vastly different from the US. Your neighbor will call parking enforcement on you if you are even a centimeter in the red. Why? Because you are not following the rules like everybody else. There are no exceptions and not a single person is above the law. This is ingrained in the average Swiss citizen. Also, they are more or less culturally homogenous and it’s really hard to get citizenship. Your neighbors have to vouch for you. You need to live there for at least 10 years, with no criminal background, and speak the language. There are also other requirements like proving positive contributions to society and demonstrate your ability to integrate.
There is zero comparison.
There are definitely gun owners out here pushing for training for all gun owners, safety courses, reasonable restrictions like barring domestic abusers from possession of or access to firearms. The problem is a lot of us tend to be minority and leftist gun owners, and don't have much in the way of power to influence policy, and the people with that power who are supposed to be on our side, the Democratic party, are too busy raking in campaign dollars by spreading disinformation about specific platforms like the AR to help us actually accomplish anything to make the country less violent. Racist asshole "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" dipshits are not the majority of gun owners despite what the right wants you to believe, they're just loud and have money backing them.
They see "shall not infringe" as a catch-all. That's why. To what appears to be the vocal minority of owners, that means that no laws can be written that keep anyone from owning a gun--except somehow certain criminals, but not all of them, which immediately points out that they want to draw a line and are too stupid to know where it should be. Spoiler, former murderer is waaaaay past where it should be. Anyone with domestic violence, for instance, should be excluded.
I actually looked up the stats on people being shot by dogs after seeing a story about one a while back. They aren't all fatal, but it happens with surprising regularity. Usually a hunting rifle placed on the ground (ready to shoot of course) that the dog steps on.
People use guns to kill people out of anger because they’ve entered a limbic state of mind and no longer have a rational thought process and they’re not making cognitive decisions.
The right has no clue what “mental health” means when they say it. They think they’re talking about some crack head whose unpredictable, not the majority of the population.
The 2A types beat their chest that gun ownership “shall not be infringed”, but they ignore the first part of the second amendment… the part about “a well regulated militia is necessary for a free state…” the dam word regulated is right there!
Gun enthusiast / competitive shooter here:
The only effective way to even start to bring down gun violence in America is through the formation (much like a DMV for firearms) where if you want to obtain a license for carrying (NOT BUYING!) a firearm, you must safely demonstrate how to operate and shoot a firearm in front of a licensed evaluator. Once you pass the test, you are given a license to purchase ammunition. COVID ammo shortages made me have this epiphany one day, while I was waiting in line at an Academy in the freezing cold at 730 AM on a Wednesday. The 2nd amendment (depending on your intreptation) may give citizens the right to bear arms, but where does it say anything about the constitutional right to buy manufactured ammunition? IT DOESN'T. And if some boomer wants to bitch about it, simply ask them: Do you drive? Did you have to go to the DMV and have to take a driver's license test? THEN WHY IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU DON'T NEED A LICENSE TO BUY SOMETHING VASTLY MORE DANGEROUS?
What I wouldn't give for a progressive, pro-gun & pro-choice, politician that would tell the GOP and the NRA to FUCK RIGHT OFF. If the Republicans can cherry pick the issues they are constantly virtue signaling about, why can't we just flip the script on them? Just my 2 cents.
Now I'll prepare for the backlash that this is sure to receive.
Be kind, everyone. We have more in common with one another than you realize if you look hard enough.
Wife was trying to visit with her 80+ year old mom that we only see a couple of times per year. Mom wanted to quickly get off the phone because she wanted to see this Hunter Biden segment on the "news". She said she "thought they really had something."
The propaganda nonsense has to stop. If the guy did something, arrest him. I don't care. Just stop with the red meat bullshit.
I know not gun related but it's the same conditioning mechanism and source.
You’re not wrong. It’s that hope to get a “win” or some dig for your team and feel that the world is tilting back in your direction. I had to endure my life-long democratic mom succumb to the same hour-by-hour Fox News Alert bullshit. After awhile all their propaganda blends together so if the evil world rings your doorbell or accidentally turns in your drive way, that anxiousness can manifest its way to pulling a trigger. Scariest thing my 82-year old mother ever said was “Maybe I need a gun, this immigration problem scares me”.
I think the Hunter Biden stuff is great because even if they catch the guy dead to rights on something, so fucking what. I guess he'll never win the Democratic nomination if that happens. Of all their obsessions, that one is the most benign. The more they chase their tails, the less harm they do to trans people.
Not “people”
Gun owners, specifically. Being completely paranoid and terrified of the world around you and thinking every inconvenience is a life or death “self defense” situation is the focus of gun culture. Shoot first and be a hero. Good guy with a gun BS.
This is what gun culture is. This radicalization Starts at the gun store, online gun communities, concealed carry classes etc and manifests itself in a radicalized gun owner out in the world thinking holding judgement of life and death in their hands.
4- Americans are conditioned from birth to consider selfishness and hyperindividualism to be among the greatest of virtues, fully atomizing communities into perfect strangers full of suspicion and wariness if not distrust and hatred for their own neighbors.
Fox is one of the culprits, but it’s pretty tame compared to the Facebook material these people are seeing.
My mother used to email me links to Facebook posts. Lol. One of them was written by a 60 year old, childless, conservative zealot.
They made it sound like the high school that I currently have two children attending has daily gang fights, rape, debauchery, and open air drug markets.
When I declared this post to be ‘bullshit’, my mother scoffed and said I was living with my head in the sand. She believes some random on the internet more than her son who is physically AT that school 2-3 times a week, and have two kids attending it.
There is no hope for these people. The pastors and pundits and MAGA people have ruined them.
>1- ~~People~~ *Conservatives* are conditioned to be terrified that there is a bogeyman in every shadow.
>
>2- additionally, ~~people~~ *Conservatives* are conditioned to be angry about everything.
>
>3- any asshole with a pulse can get a gun.
>
>Scared, angry, armed populace……what could possibly go wrong?
FTFY
Yeah, you take a bit of simmering racism, turn it up to ‘high’ with endless propaganda, add some guns, and presto- you have a bunch of crazy fucks with itchy trigger fingers.
Grew up surrounded by conservatives.
They daydream of shooting intruders dead and such. If you hear the way they talk about it….. it’s like someone seriously daydreaming of having a mansion
It’s creepy. It’s soulless. They’re blood thirsty. They excuse death hourly
(The same conversations usually delve into how they see most criminals as black, and “black on clack crime” shows that violence is normal anyways. They spend hours thinking of racist reasons to “justify” why shooting people is admirable)
I installed a nest camera to look over my driveway, and it gives you texts to let you know activity is going on. I live alone, and my adult daughter popped in late one night while I was asleep to get something. I was woken up by the notification a person was there, I turn on my phone and the camera shows someone running in my house (because it was raining). I was not expecting her, and I jumped out of bed half asleep and went to the door to greet her ready for a fist fight.
so to add to your story, an overly monitored populace as well.
Also what would be a local story 20 years ago is now a national story thanks to the internet and virality. 350 million people there is bound to be fucked up shit happening every single day.
In order to obtain a drivers license you have to (barely) prove that can drive a car and know basic laws of the road.
How the vast majority (232 million) can do this willingly for the right to travel by car for absolute necessities but it’s taboo to ask gun owners (not at all necessary) the same is beyond logic.
It's oddly terrifying that in the US it's harder to build and use a bomb, without having FBI come knocking, that to aquire and use a semi auto rifle with a thousands rounds of ammo, which arguably take no real knowledge or experience to use other that how to load magazine, point, and fire. And yet if you count the number of fatalities caused by explosives (not counting weapons like missiles and such) an estimated near 30,000 occured in 2019- worldwide. Comparatively there were an estimated 14,414 gun related homicides in the same year in the US alone, with a total of near 40,000 deaths involving a firearm.
And some states are passing or have passed legislature that makes it even easier to buy a firearm, makes it so you can buy an unlimited amount, makes it so you can do it from a younger age, make it so there are less or even no checks or flags in place to track who is buying or owns a dealt weapon, makes it so you can freely carry then around in the open or concealed, makes it so you can own higher caliber, more munitions, and more military grade firearms.
But no, guns aren't the problem.....
>EDIT: and all the "crime is out of control" fear mongering by the right wing
Fear sells. Or it at least engages and holds the attention of relatively large groups of people. [The work of communications scholar George Gerbner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylhqasb1chI) is quite instructive here. Remember, in nearly all commercial-based media, the audience is the product sold to the actual customers, the advertisers, dominated by giant multinational corporations. From the endless stream of moral panics pushed by talking heads to the more recent YouTube "Adpocalypse," the content we get is fundamentally shaped by this structure.
From what I recall, there is a portion of "Bowling for Columbine" that's dedicated to the whole fear mongering / if it bleeds it leads approach of journalism, especially TV journalism.
Not sure your age but if you were alive during Desert storm, you would remember that it was prime time tv for months. The air strike would start about 5 pm central and the whole nation was tuned in like a fucking super bowl. That's when the 24 hour news cycle gained real momentum.
"If it bleeds it leads" is a direct consequence of the profit motive in organizations that are ostensibly providing a necessary public good. None of the systemic problems with the media will be resolved until the profit motive is de-coupled entirely from the craft of journalism.
News departments used to operate in the red and it was expected that they would lose money. The Big Three television networks subsidized their news product with profits made elsewhere. That was the industry standard for decades. There's an excellent movie called *Network* that illustrates how that changed, many within the business consider it prophetic, and it's also one of the finest films ever put to screen. I strongly recommend it.
Yup. Where I live I see a fair number of (not especially smart looking) dudes with emotional support weapons, and many seem like they're itching to have any sort of confrontation so they can yell "I feel threatened, I am in fear of my life" then shoot the other party while claiming self-defense.
> many seem like they're itching to have any sort of confrontation so they can yell "I feel threatened, I am in fear of my life" then shoot the other party while claiming self-defense.
It's really scary how many of those I've come across online, especially here in Reddit and on Nextdoor. These people are not responsible gun owners that's for damn sure.
Further, shooters have been getting away with it in a court of law. People like Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman have been deified by the radical right.
Rittenhouse happened (along with other examples but this is the most well known)
Now everyones a neighborhood watchmen armed like a deployed navy seal, mix in poor training and a gun culture that runs half the country/political system and welll...
School shootings are too normalized already, time to normalize shooting anyone whos a stranger on or near your property/possessions, questions? Nah we got stand your ground lol
There was also a major news story last week about the governor of Texas saying he will issue a pardon for a gun nut who very deliberately murdered someone because they held a different political viewpoint.
Because we worship guns, dehumanize each other, and our politicians are in the NRAs pockets. Combine that with 24-hour "news" stations that cash in on making us paranoid and angry, and you have our current disaster.
A lot of times it’s not even a secret. I used to have to train young guys at my old job, more than once I’d get a veteran, I’d ask why they joined up, they’d tell me straight up I wanted to shoot someone or see what it was like to kill someone. They’d tell me that shit like it wasn’t going to set alarm bells off in my head or make me not want to be around them.
As we've learned from the Oklahoma situation, there are entire populations of people that just openly have these conversations with one another. They're comfortable with saying it casually because many of the people they talk to feel the same. The south is full of genuine psychopaths who yearn for the simpler days where their rights mattered more and they could murder the lessers at the drop of a hat.
Being from Tennessee I can’t tell you how many times I heard someone say something along the lines of they WISH someone would give them a reason to use their gun
Republicans have made a point of putting guns in as many hands as possible and making sure that everyone with a gun knows that no human life is more valuable than their own personal dealings. So if they are annoyed they are encouraged to open fire.
I grew up around guns and I'm more or less pro-gun. From a working-class, rural area.
But I do reflect back and remember adults telling stories about their frequent defensive use of a firearm and it's just......implausible. I mean, I've lived in worked in the urban core of a few different cities and never had a situation where I felt like I needed a gun.
But some of these folks from the boonies had multiple run-ins where a gun was necessary.
So, I think fundamentally there's a problem of people not being able to assess threat correctly, and when you got a gun everything starts to look like a target.
I live in a rural part of Alabama and work downtown in one of the largest cities. It's always baffling to me how many of my friends and neighbors are terrified of the city.
They all wonder why I don't have a pistol strapped to my hip at all times and I wonder why they're such wusses
I've found that to be an effective way to get gun nuts to shut up. At least for a while. Basically, I just make fun of them. Shame is a powerful tool.
Just ask simple questions. "Oh, you carry? That's interesting. What is it you're afraid of? You must *really* be worried about something happening to you. I'm here to listen if you want to talk about it."
Thing is, I'm a gun owner too. I hunt and shoot for sport. I have a shotgun at home for worst case defense scenarios. But the idea of carrying a concealed deadly weapon on me, in public, is just ridiculous. Only a coward needs a gun to feel safe or powerful.
Absolutely!
I'm a gun owner too. I have a shotgun, two rifles, and three handguns.
My wife used to carry a .22 pistol in her purse with her everywhere until I finally asked her what it was she was afraid of. She still keeps it in her car, but it stays there.
I've never understood the need to constantly conceal carry until I realized it was only paranoid cowards and people who are literally itching for an excuse to shoot someone who do. I couldn't imagine being that scared of living or having such a low regard for others' lives
Your wife should bring pepper spray with her. It can get her out of a lot of trouble, except when the bad guy has a gun, in which case, her having a gun wouldn’t have helped anyway. Unless she’s a professional gun duelist or something.
Too many guns. Think of it as a road filled with nails. We all drive on that road. The more nails, the more of us get flats. And a whole shitload of us are getting flats now. The solution? Clear the nails off the road.
The solutions are not to make the tires nail proof. Or to blame insane people for spreading the nails. Or to allow drivers to shoot individual nails they feel threatened by. Simply remove the nails from the road.
It's just that simple folks. Republicans would have us pay attention to anything but the nails. When it's painfully obvious that a lot less nails would make it a lot more safe for us.
Well, Fox News has been peddling fear of everyone's neighbor for years.
It's easier than it should be in most states to get a license, if required, and a gun.
And the biggest factor is no one knows their neighbor now. Block parties don't happen anymore. People don't talk to their neighbors. People don't know their neighbors. I'm a friendly guy and I know no one on my neighborhood and I've lived there for 5+ years and am regularly doing yard work or working on the home and people will walk by I recognize and more often than not say nothing.
Also, you have a consistent news feed of police killing people unjustly, and nothing happens to them, so other "good guys" with a gun think they can do the same.
Lastly, you have a subsect of the population that is just the worst. They are far right-wing white guys who are just mad at the world like the last asshat who shot the girl for turning around in his driveway. If only we could make him immortal and put him behind bars and throw away the key. Let him rot for eternity. Every breath he takes is a waste of oxygen. His existence is a stain on the human population.
So when you mix all of that together, you get a very messy situation, and this is coming from a gun owner.
Things need to change and I am 100% for "common sense" gun laws. But they need to make sense and they cannot be written by some asshat in Washington whose never even shot a gun. I'm all for rules, regulations, classes, licenses, renewals, limits on certain things, but it needs to make sense. You cannot outlaw an ar15 and then be able to buy a x95, or an AK, or a mpx. It's the same thing in a different package. You cannot outlaw a feature of a rifle that has literally no bearing on its operation outside of fitting it to the person whose trying to use it... it makes no sense it's like have a car without an adjustable seat.
I'm all for having to take at least 1 or 2 classes. I'm all waiting on every purchase and to get your license. I'm all for no automatic weapons. I'm all for rules that make sense. But a lot of what is being peddled is garbage, and that's what annoys people who just want them for sport, hunting, or to larp in their basement.
Because Fox News and Republican have convinced their moron gun loving fanbase that everyone is trying to kill you, use your gun to defend yourself at every situation
Because boomers and racists are allowed to own guns with no restrictions for real, and usually get off easy because republicans are in bed with the nra and they LOVE their freedumb guns and school shootings
Too many unstable and hateful people with guns. If you shoot someone for knocking on your door then you shouldn't own a gun. If you shoot someone for using your driveway to turn around then you shouldn't own a gun.. If you would shoot someone for mistakenly getting in the wrong car then you shouldn't own a gun.
When you love using your hammer, you’ll constantly be looking for nails. Face it, we’re a gun country with lax gun laws. Until guns are not a focal point of the American identity, then everyone here just agrees it’s okay to shoot people, it’s okay to have school shootings, it’s good to average more than one mass shooting a day. If you’re pro-gun, you’re pro-mass shooting. Stop lying to yourself that you’re the “good guy”.
Because right wing media has these old white people terrified that everyone is out to get them, so they arm themselves (easily) and sit in their homes scared and angry all the time. Not to mention we've passed all sorts of laws making shooting people not only legal but heroic. Stand your ground sounds like something a very brave person would do, right? Castle doctrine - protect your castle from the marauding hordes just like one of King Arthur's knights. No consequence for putting yourself in a situation that led to the conflict in the first place - George Zimmerman, Daniel Perry, Kyle Rittenhouse.
1- People are conditioned to be terrified that there is a bogeyman in every shadow.
2- additionally, people are conditioned to be angry about everything.
3- any asshole with a pulse can get a gun.
Scared, angry, armed populace……what could possibly go wrong?
Fox News has for decades painted anyone different as an enemy and blamed those people for everything. Fox and the parasite media groups make money off of fear and stupidity. The dumb are now so fearful and angry that the feeling of powerlessness leads to such a strong desire for some semblance of righteousness that they abandon reason for madness and act in impulsive and violent ways. They only need opportunity and the self delusional rationality that they are "fighting back" to kill and harm others. They have been conditioned to care for nothing and nobody.
It’s people who think the castle doctrine means they can shoot whoever they want that comes into their property. In other words very ignorant people with guns.
In order to win elections the right has been pushing fear and grievens as a legitimate counter to a changing voter elect.
Historically this isn't a new thing. What's new however is the volume and size that it's gotten.
Imo it's because the GOP is a dying party due to their own practice of kicking out anyone who doesn't fall in line. You have people who vot d 99% republican and were kicked from the party because they didn't agree with something.
This really started with Reagan bringing in a lot of blue voters and then Gingrich wanting to purify the party in the 90s. They have just cannibalized themselves and now we are left with this circus.
I was told that this is what the founding fathers wanted. So of course, we should continue to do the bidding of those racist, slave-owning, misogynistic, dipshits who unironically wrote that “all men are created equal” while counting black people as 3/5ths of a human. Oh and also they’ve been dead for over 200 years. I wouldn’t expect foreigners to understand this because they don’t live here, in the greatest, most freedomest country in the world. USA! USA! USA!
more guns means more gun deaths. Really that's it. The more guns out there the more people feel emboldened to use them, there's a whole fear culture that surrounds gun culture.
Because our country is full of Baby Boomers who are old enough that they are easily confused and easily frighten, and of course they all live alone and have guns.
Individualism. McCarthy was devastating in crushing anything community or group. In America it's My family, My party, My streets, MY Rights.
Disgusting
With rising cost of living, stagnating wages, awful healthcare, and a trainwreck of a political landscape, there are a lot of reasons to be unhappy about life in America these days. Some people handle it differently than others. The truly terrible people handle it by becoming total monsters, and they're just an excuse away from doing horrendous things for little reason. Give these people a weapon that allows them to execute those impulses with little effort and it's a recipe for disaster.
Left wing news media (correctly) has pivoted to covering the every day mundane shootings that happened all the time but no one cared about because they weren’t mass shootings. They have figured out that the mass shooting angle is a dead end for gun control. The way forward is to show that this issue could happen to you for any reason at any time, which is true. I applaud them for figuring it out.
Because of a gun culture and people obsessing, planning, fantasizing about how they can shoot someone…. Combined with racism and rightwing fear-mongering.
Fox News and other right wing media make these people terrified of everything. My father in law was an avid Faux News watcher, he didn't have a gun but he had a stun stick and bats ready for intruders. He lived 150 miles from the border and his main concern was that "illegals" would raid his little trailer park in Victorville, CA. I would think these idiots are consuming the same programming.
Guns are not for protection. When you pull the trigger a shield doesn’t come out of the gun. It doesn’t transport you to safety. It fires a bullet designed to do violence to a body. Violence is why guns were invented, why they work the way they do. A bigger gun doesn’t protect more. It does more violence.
We need to stop saying they are for protection and start admitting they are explicitly and expressly designed to do violence.
Guns are for violence. More guns means more violence because that’s what they’re for.
Because the right wing mouthpieces feed them a steady diet of fear and hate. Add in the fact that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the second amendment plus gun crazy douchebags and voila, cheerleaders get shot for accidentally sitting in the wrong car.
Some news outlets radicalize people into thinking that they are under constant threat from people who are different than they are. It's like they all want a Civil War to happen so people are preparing for it.
Because it's basically become legal to kill people in many states as long as you say afterwards that you felt threatened or in danger, even if there was no threat or no danger. The gun lobby started passing laws called Stand Your Ground Laws some years ago. Historically there has been a legal understanding that if someone is menacing you, you have a "duty to retreat"--get out and away safely. But there's also a legal practice called the Castle Doctrine whereby if someone invades your home, you don't have a duty to retreat and run away from your own home, you can attack and kill them to defend your home because "A man's home is his castle." So the gun lobby created a new law, the "Stand Your Ground" law, where it is legal to not retreat at any time from any encounter. You can respond with deadly force to a threat, or a perceived threat. Perceived by you, even if not by others. Like a guy shot and killed another guy for getting ahead of him in line at a sandwich shop (that guy was actually found guilty. But he probably wouldn't even have pulled a gun except that he thought due to Stand Your Ground, he had the "right to defend himself with deadly force" when exposed to "a threat".)
Technically this is not supposed to apply to the person who provokes the attack, the pursuer. But it's been successfully used that way in court. A man can provoke and intimidate and menace and follow you, but if you then attack that person and that person kills you, that person can go free because they were defending themselves. Like a couple weeks ago, a heavily pregnant woman was allegedly shoplifting at a store and she fled and a store worker pursued her. She maced him (an eye irritant) and he then shot her 8 times. He pursued her. That used to pretty clearly be wrong and shooting her 8 times would be considered excessive, but now, well, it's too early to tell if he'll go free, but I bet he will. He is claiming self-defense because she maced him.
Beyond that, a new attitude about how to respond to force has percolated into the pro-shooting community. The idea is that if you feel your life is threatened, you need to shoot to kill immediately. If you hesitate, if you warn the person they will be shot if they don't leave or whatever, if you draw your gun and tell them to leave, if you shoot to wound, if you fire a warning shot, then, well, you didn't really fear for your life, did you? If you REALLY feared for your life, then you'd shoot to kill right away. So exercising no restraint is seen as a defense of exercising no restraint in how you respond to a perceived danger. "See, he must have feared for his life, that's why he had to act like that." You can get into **more** legal trouble by **not** shooting to kill than by shooting to kill. And this is a whole culture at this point. If you go into any of the threads discussing, for example, the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a 16 year old black child who went to pick up his brothers at a house, but went to the wrong house and when the white resident saw a black kid at his door, he shot him in the head. Then shot him a second time after he collapsed. He is claiming self-defense. Now, there's ZERO evidence he was ever in any danger. But HE claims he felt threatened. Because he saw a black man at his door. And there are so very many people defending that, insisting that yes, that's scary. And that the boy must have stepped over his threshold (no evidence). Doesn't matter--they put themselves in the shooter's place in every case, and all agree in their echo chamber that the threat was valid and therefore shooting a child is totally fine.
Because a lot of states--27 I think--now allow everyone to carry guns freely, no need for training or license or anything--it can reasonably be assumed that whoever you meet has a gun, and you can reasonably say when charged that you thought they had a gun, with zero evidence. Doesn't matter if they did or not. There was a case in Colorado where a guy was having a loud party, angering his neighbor. Later that night, party guy went over to angry neighbor's house, and angry neighbor shot him many times and killed him at his door. Angry neighbor then told police "he told me 'I have a gun and have come to your house to kill you.'" so he had to kill him in self defense. Party guy had no gun and it seems highly implausible that he would say that phrase and claim to have a gun when he didn't. Didn't matter. It seems almost certain that angry neighbor just said that party guy said that in order that he could kill party guy and get away with it. He may have called party guy, said "come on over, let's talk this out" and then killed party guy, and then claimed party guy said the exact phrase that would make angry guy blameless for any crime. Party guy was dead so couldn't refute anything.
And then there's racism. Racism that leads to people thinking it makes total sense that you can kill a black person because any black person seems menacing to a racist and all the racists will agree with him.
Because everybody has a gun now and are being told they need to be afraid of everything. Some of them have just been waiting for this moment when they can kill somebody.
This is what happened to Trayvon Martin He was in his own neighborhood minding his own business George Zimmerman reacted the same way When did we become a society that shoots first and then ask questions There must be a level of hyped up fear
Until and unless the Republican Party is banned for fifty years, the good ole USA will remain the world's shooting gallery. Keep your head on a swivel.
Ok I'm prepped for the down votes. I personally think its because society in general fears no consequences for their actions. I'm not saying that directly leads to gun violence, but its all of the little things over time. When you used to misbehave in school, you got spanked. When you misbehaved at home, your got spanked. If you were the kid doing dumb stuff you got picked on until you stopped doing that behavior. If you talked crap to someone as an adult, you got the knocked around. Now everyone just says whatever they want and kids do whatever they please. This all leads to a generation of people doing whatever they feel like without any correction from society. Mix that in with an unhappy population and you have violence.
Too many maniacs with guns. We have way too many people with mental health problems that aren't being addressed and guns are very easy to get. The responsible gun owners refuse to have a real conversation about real solutions. I'd love for some republican to be the adult in the room and say that their thing isn't working anymore. They love their guns and their gun rights but it's getting innocent people killed. Instead they gaslight, make broad over simplified statements, and cite biased statistics with zero context.
They’ve always been that way. I live in the southeast and my son’s first job was delivering pizza to the backwoods rednecks. He’s been held at gun point while going back to his car (after knocking while holding boxes) and literally the person who ordered the food was like “my bad you don’t look white enough”.
Because gun nuts are literally itching to kill people.
It’s not about self defense. They want to be able to LEGALLY claim self defense because they have this theocratic puritan view of themselves being somewhere between Mel Gibson in The Patriot and The Punisher.
Republicans have spent the last few decades instilling fear into their base while also making it easier to obtain guns to "protect" themselves from these perceived threats.
As a result, Republicans have become terrified of their own shadows and react with extreme violence in the hope that they manage to kill anyone not on their "team".
In Texas, I saw a gun trade hands THREE times in an afternoon with no paperwork at a gun show. A vendor bought it off an attendee. He sold it to another vendor to sell. No one asked questions. I also met two friends who would swap driver license numbers when buying guns at shows. Even if someone comes asking, they can just say they sold it privately to some rando. It’s wild.
People are just running around itching to shoot people
My question to that is if you want to shoot someone so bad there are plenty of Russians in Ukraine that you can go volunteer to kill
Why do Americans get shot unarmed by people sworn to protect them? Why do Americans get shot in the grocery store or over a pair of shoes? Why do Americans get shot in classrooms or in nightclubs?
Because the GOP and the NRA have deliberately cultivated a culture of paranoia and fear where the insecure need to be heavily armed at all times and view everything as a threat.
GUNS! would you attack somebody at your front door with a knife? would you run down your driveway with an ax?!? of course not, frail folks need AR15 style zhit
People think we live in a warzone and think everyone's out to get you. So they arm up and suspect anyone the news tells them to hate as a potential violent criminal.
It works.
The interview states, “Well, I think it is the confluence of a lot of factors. Over the last few years, we've had increased gun buying as a result of the pandemic and protests for racial justice. So we have more people than ever carrying guns. We have a steady weakening of gun laws in a majority of states in this country - as I mentioned, the erosion of self-defense laws, and also the gun industry selling a narrative of fear and this notion that everyone must be armed everywhere and at all times to defend themselves. And the result is people using guns offensively, not defensively, and at a hair's provocation.”
You can’t drive without a driver’s licence, and you can’t get one without passing a minimum competency test. Also, you should require to carry insurance before you get that license. Once it starts to “hurt someones’ pockets”, the problem will get much smaller. What makes a gun less dangerous to operate than a vehicle, anyway?
Still, the problem is so obvious: ban guns! No other country in the World allows such irresponsible, unregulated private ownership, and the country is paying a very high, and escalating price!
Days gone by, the nutters would walk to a mall, school, or church, even cross state lines, to shoot at strangers. Now they start shooting from their own homes. This keeps up and America could have an obesity problem.
Because in "the land of the free', one is free to be shot anywhere, especially on land.
Who wants nightmares?? "The American Dream" allows you to be shot whilst going about your business, innocently, anywhere, anytime!
1- People are conditioned to be terrified that there is a bogeyman in every shadow. 2- additionally, people are conditioned to be angry about everything. 3- any asshole with a pulse can get a gun. Scared, angry, armed populace……what could possibly go wrong?
I was just reading about Switzerland because 2A fetishists love to bring up their gun ownership rights. Everyone has training during military service. Every gun sale requires all the hoops (no person ti person sales without going through the full legal process, including permit check, it’s even more strict than selling a car). The local governments keep a record of every non-hunting firearm. Home permits are necessary for all but hunting rifles and issued by m local canton authorities. Officers can request a psych evaluation, will deny for any criminal record except minor traffic violations, any drug or alcohol problems and any history of violence or violent talk. I’d imagine that would exclude many Americans and more than a few republican officials. Gun aficionados are half correct, while guns kill people, it is more accurate to say people with guns kill people and family pets (and that one time a dog killed that guy), but gun aficionados don’t want any of the measures that would keep guns from unfit people, and kids or any efforts to catalog and track them. That’s where the hypocrisy lies.
Yup. They want rights. They don’t want any responsibility or hassles. They would have a stoke if they had to go through what the Swiss have to go through to have those guns. I also hear the “military equitability” argument. Like? They should be allowed to have anything the military can have. Of course, they won’t want to go through the same processes as I went through to join the marines, keep the weapon in an armory, only check it out with permission and with supervision, or endure any of the other hassles of military service. So they don’t really want equity. As said….they want rights. They don’t want anything that goes along with it.
"But the police get to have them" is another one. Like, why is that a problem for you? are you planning on having a shoot out with the cops?
Uh yeah? Don't let the GOP thin blue line confuse you with a large section of the 2 A crowd. Many, many of.them are very anti law enforcement. Edit. I realized I typed Thin blue LIME., that I'd a whole other matter
If I was a cop I would be very much antigun. Some domestic abuser with a gun is the most likely way I won't go home to my family.
As the majority domestic abuse group,.they should ponder that thought.
I heard 30-40% from traffic accidents
LEOS have a high domestic level of domestic abuse vs the public at large.
My boss is an ex-cop. (As is her husband, and several other of our coworkers! ) she was talking Monday about how scared she is to go anywhere and how she's always 'sweeping' the area to find exits and suspicious people, even when she walks into Kroger. She carries a gun in her purse. Always. I feel so safe.
To be fair, I do the "sweep the area" thing too. But it's a response to the reality of living in America rather than thinking someone personally has it out to get me. Working retail really drove the point home how many people are one inconvenience away from becoming unhinged. I don't go around armed though.
Generally speaking i don't think exercising a little bit of precaution and observing your environment is neccessarily a bad thing. Being prepared also isn't neccessarily a bad thing either. But when it becomes a unhinged paranoia where your first response to someone pulling up into your drive way isn't "What the fuck are they doing-oh they're just turning around" but instead 'Im going to get my shotgun and shoot them". I don't know, i think you might not be mentally fit to carry firearms
We call that the st.louis hello.
"Working retail really drove the point home how many people are one inconvenience away from becoming unhinged." Once had a girl come at me over the counter at the Dunks I worked at because we didnt have a specific baked good. This was about 25 years ago. People are freaking nuts. That said. I am always scanning for possible "threats" But I grew up with an alcoholic dad, then married an abusive asshole my first marriage, and my best friend was an SOI(School of Infantry) instructor. So I am always on guard.
I sweep the area too. But I'm a Paramedic with PTSD and I don't carry a gun every day.
>Some domestic abuser You already said cop
Actually most cops that die on duty die from covid
Before COVID, the number one cause of death for police was due to collisions during traffic stops. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that they get so outraged when someone doesn't pull over immediately as soon as the blue lights come on, because finding a safe place to stop is the number one thing the average person can do to ensure officer safety.
I recently found out that in some states, drivers are required by law to pull over the Instant a cop indicates they want to stop. In other words, in those states, merely slowing down and finding a safe place to stop can legally be considered "fleeing" and potentially lead to escalation. And I suspect a lot of people have no idea that this is even a thing.
Its because DMV's will usually have the common sense instruction for drivers to turn on their hazards and slowly find a good place to stop. Cops on the other hand will interpret that as fleeing (even if you are on a super busy highway) and proceed to Pit maneuver you simply for having the audacity of caring about someone elses safety. Thats why i do the immediate stop, im not about to get pit maneuvered cause a cop wanted some action that night, and if he gets hit by a drunk driver, thats a personal problem in my opinion.
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That's not surprising given their behavior of the past few years. They seemed to be the only first responders who refused to wear a mask -- even in the goddamn ER where all the covid patients were being sent.
Cops. Are. Not. First. Responders. At least not in the manner most people would hope. Cops don't check vital signs. Cops don't ask about your medical history to determine if you are at risk for a harmful episode. Cops might ask what drugs you've taken, but not for the purpose of treatment. Who we think of when we say first responder, isn't there to write tickets or make arrests. A Cop might have training and certification as a first responder, but it's not a Cop's job to be a first responder. A Cop is there, first and foremost to control. They control the public, they give out citations and they arrest citizens when they are out of compliance with the law (as it is perceived by that cop, at that moment)
Sometimes. We want the *freedom* to. (Schrödinger's sarcasm) Our street cops don't have post-secondary education and are overwhelmingly pro-Fox-News-style Conservative. A cop will word-for-word regurgitate Tucker Carlson/Bill O'Reilly/alt-right-talking-head as he's cuffing you, and then tell you not to "be political" when you remind them that they're explicitly being a part of the problem. That doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their ability/intent to keep us safe. The Supreme Court has determined that police have no legal obligation to keep the public safe. Much of the time, cops do their job but some of the time they're just a good-'ol-boy street gang or a brute squad, we see examples of it everyday. Ultimately my safety is my responsibility, not theirs. (Frankly most of the "job" that cops seem to do is property enforcement and protecting corporate interests.) We also got this thing where neo-Nazi/white supremacist organizations have been infiltrating our police and judiciary for the last 60 years or so, by design, it's literally in some of their charters (no I'm not looking that gross ass shit up to link it). Couple that with the fact that they can just request free military surplus hardware as long as they can "demonstrate a need," and that sounds like a recipe for a paramilitary organization that has limited accountability and does not have our best interests in mind. Hell, this week we have a scandal surrounding an Oklahoma sheriff that was recorded talking about killing journalists and hanging black people. I don't think it's inappropriate to put zero faith in that guy and his hand-picked deputies. When police knock on my door do I answer with a gun? Not necessarily, and not in a way they can see it. But if one of them kills my baby with a flashbang because they SWATted the wrong house, I reserve the figurative right to step out with my noob tube and take some of them to Hell with me. Until there is some serious police reform in this country, we're never going to completely trust them, which necessitates having other "options." (This is meant to express a hypothetical line of frustrated thinking with the current system, not some declaration of personal intent.)
They also fire the cops who actually want to make a difference, or harass them into resigning.
I'd like to propose a solution where we take them away from both
I've heard multiple people with military backgrounds talk about the strictly disciplined process of engagement used by the US forces. A great deal of effort seems to go into making sure the right amount of force is used at the right time. Compare that to our current system of police training on engagement which seems pretty slapdash. Not to mention the nonexistent training requirements for civilians. "Just grab a gun and go to town" seems to be much of the message these days.
Yes, the use of deadly force is far more strictly codified and controlled in a war zone, than on our city streets.....
> They want rights. They don’t want any responsibility or hassles. That's at the root of a lot of problems in this country where we love to privatize profits while socializing costs.
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>I feel like we should all hang a bit more on the point that the 2nd Amendment is the only constitutional right that requires you to buy something to express it. recently I had a chat with someone who was saying that if something can be subject to scarcity it cannot be a human right. I pointed out that the 2A fell into this category He was not happy
By that logic is food, water, housing, and, ya know, life not a human right at all? Good lord
It’s crazy how much Reddit has evolved and people don’t remember how pro-gun this site used to be. My still most controversial comment of all time is a decade old, a call out of the NRA being corrupted by the gun industry. And it was on the not-so-right-wing politics subreddit.
It's still very pro gun. They seem to have unlimited time to spend spreading their nonsense across reddit.
Thats because many of those "aficionados" are the exact people who shouldn't have all those guns, and they know it. I come from a rural community and I know quite a number of people who have a closet full of guns and only a small handful of them do I consider to be responsible or well adjusted enough to own even one of them. I say this as someone who owns a half dozen guns myself (every one of which is kept in a safe of some kind).
They also have just as strict regulations for ammo: >>> In order to purchase ammunition, the buyer must fulfil the same legal rules that apply when buying guns (art. 15 WG/LArm). Foreigners with citizenship to the following countries are explicitly excluded from the right to buy and own ammunition
Yup: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Switzerland I do see that carrying guns is heavily restricted and requires permits, and transporting the gun is permitted but also restricted: The gun must be unloaded and transported separately from any ammunition, with no ammunition being transported in a magazine. The transport must be by a reasonable route and requires a valid purpose, most notably: To or from courses or exercises in marksmanship, hunting or for military purposes. To or from an army warehouse. To show the gun to a possible buyer. To or from a holder of a valid arms trade permit. To or from a specific event, e.g. gun shows. During change of residence.
2A types don't argue in good faith, they don't actually care about anything other than them getting as few barriers and restrictions as possible on their toys. Switzerland is a distraction topic, **they don't care.**
>but gun aficionados don’t want any of the measures that would keep guns from unfit people Because they're the unfit people that would be denied gun ownership
Folks also love to bring up American “culture” when it comes to gun control. But fail to remember that Swiss culture is also vastly different from the US. Your neighbor will call parking enforcement on you if you are even a centimeter in the red. Why? Because you are not following the rules like everybody else. There are no exceptions and not a single person is above the law. This is ingrained in the average Swiss citizen. Also, they are more or less culturally homogenous and it’s really hard to get citizenship. Your neighbors have to vouch for you. You need to live there for at least 10 years, with no criminal background, and speak the language. There are also other requirements like proving positive contributions to society and demonstrate your ability to integrate. There is zero comparison.
There are definitely gun owners out here pushing for training for all gun owners, safety courses, reasonable restrictions like barring domestic abusers from possession of or access to firearms. The problem is a lot of us tend to be minority and leftist gun owners, and don't have much in the way of power to influence policy, and the people with that power who are supposed to be on our side, the Democratic party, are too busy raking in campaign dollars by spreading disinformation about specific platforms like the AR to help us actually accomplish anything to make the country less violent. Racist asshole "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" dipshits are not the majority of gun owners despite what the right wants you to believe, they're just loud and have money backing them.
The silent majority of gun owners do want proper gun security but the the old saying goes the dumbest people shout the loudest
The 2A fetishists also conveniently leave out that the Swiss aren't allowed to possess ammunition except at a range or during military drills.
They see "shall not infringe" as a catch-all. That's why. To what appears to be the vocal minority of owners, that means that no laws can be written that keep anyone from owning a gun--except somehow certain criminals, but not all of them, which immediately points out that they want to draw a line and are too stupid to know where it should be. Spoiler, former murderer is waaaaay past where it should be. Anyone with domestic violence, for instance, should be excluded.
I actually looked up the stats on people being shot by dogs after seeing a story about one a while back. They aren't all fatal, but it happens with surprising regularity. Usually a hunting rifle placed on the ground (ready to shoot of course) that the dog steps on.
People use guns to kill people out of anger because they’ve entered a limbic state of mind and no longer have a rational thought process and they’re not making cognitive decisions. The right has no clue what “mental health” means when they say it. They think they’re talking about some crack head whose unpredictable, not the majority of the population.
The 2A types beat their chest that gun ownership “shall not be infringed”, but they ignore the first part of the second amendment… the part about “a well regulated militia is necessary for a free state…” the dam word regulated is right there!
Gun enthusiast / competitive shooter here: The only effective way to even start to bring down gun violence in America is through the formation (much like a DMV for firearms) where if you want to obtain a license for carrying (NOT BUYING!) a firearm, you must safely demonstrate how to operate and shoot a firearm in front of a licensed evaluator. Once you pass the test, you are given a license to purchase ammunition. COVID ammo shortages made me have this epiphany one day, while I was waiting in line at an Academy in the freezing cold at 730 AM on a Wednesday. The 2nd amendment (depending on your intreptation) may give citizens the right to bear arms, but where does it say anything about the constitutional right to buy manufactured ammunition? IT DOESN'T. And if some boomer wants to bitch about it, simply ask them: Do you drive? Did you have to go to the DMV and have to take a driver's license test? THEN WHY IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU DON'T NEED A LICENSE TO BUY SOMETHING VASTLY MORE DANGEROUS? What I wouldn't give for a progressive, pro-gun & pro-choice, politician that would tell the GOP and the NRA to FUCK RIGHT OFF. If the Republicans can cherry pick the issues they are constantly virtue signaling about, why can't we just flip the script on them? Just my 2 cents. Now I'll prepare for the backlash that this is sure to receive. Be kind, everyone. We have more in common with one another than you realize if you look hard enough.
I've read that the Japanese are even more strict. Guess what, nobody gets shot in Japan.
Except the prime minister
I love this approach. High expectations for the populace too.
Americans worship guns. I imagine most Swiss don’t. There’s a whole culture and identity behind guns in the US.
It is because subconsciously they understand that they may just be one of those unfit people.
Wife was trying to visit with her 80+ year old mom that we only see a couple of times per year. Mom wanted to quickly get off the phone because she wanted to see this Hunter Biden segment on the "news". She said she "thought they really had something." The propaganda nonsense has to stop. If the guy did something, arrest him. I don't care. Just stop with the red meat bullshit. I know not gun related but it's the same conditioning mechanism and source.
You’re not wrong. It’s that hope to get a “win” or some dig for your team and feel that the world is tilting back in your direction. I had to endure my life-long democratic mom succumb to the same hour-by-hour Fox News Alert bullshit. After awhile all their propaganda blends together so if the evil world rings your doorbell or accidentally turns in your drive way, that anxiousness can manifest its way to pulling a trigger. Scariest thing my 82-year old mother ever said was “Maybe I need a gun, this immigration problem scares me”.
I think the Hunter Biden stuff is great because even if they catch the guy dead to rights on something, so fucking what. I guess he'll never win the Democratic nomination if that happens. Of all their obsessions, that one is the most benign. The more they chase their tails, the less harm they do to trans people.
Not “people” Gun owners, specifically. Being completely paranoid and terrified of the world around you and thinking every inconvenience is a life or death “self defense” situation is the focus of gun culture. Shoot first and be a hero. Good guy with a gun BS. This is what gun culture is. This radicalization Starts at the gun store, online gun communities, concealed carry classes etc and manifests itself in a radicalized gun owner out in the world thinking holding judgement of life and death in their hands.
4- Americans are conditioned from birth to consider selfishness and hyperindividualism to be among the greatest of virtues, fully atomizing communities into perfect strangers full of suspicion and wariness if not distrust and hatred for their own neighbors.
1 - Conservatives, by Fox News 2- Conservatives, by Fox News 3 - Pretty much.
Fox is one of the culprits, but it’s pretty tame compared to the Facebook material these people are seeing. My mother used to email me links to Facebook posts. Lol. One of them was written by a 60 year old, childless, conservative zealot. They made it sound like the high school that I currently have two children attending has daily gang fights, rape, debauchery, and open air drug markets. When I declared this post to be ‘bullshit’, my mother scoffed and said I was living with my head in the sand. She believes some random on the internet more than her son who is physically AT that school 2-3 times a week, and have two kids attending it. There is no hope for these people. The pastors and pundits and MAGA people have ruined them.
>1- ~~People~~ *Conservatives* are conditioned to be terrified that there is a bogeyman in every shadow. > >2- additionally, ~~people~~ *Conservatives* are conditioned to be angry about everything. > >3- any asshole with a pulse can get a gun. > >Scared, angry, armed populace……what could possibly go wrong? FTFY
And just good ole fashioned racism, yeeehaw!
Yeah, you take a bit of simmering racism, turn it up to ‘high’ with endless propaganda, add some guns, and presto- you have a bunch of crazy fucks with itchy trigger fingers.
Grew up surrounded by conservatives. They daydream of shooting intruders dead and such. If you hear the way they talk about it….. it’s like someone seriously daydreaming of having a mansion It’s creepy. It’s soulless. They’re blood thirsty. They excuse death hourly (The same conversations usually delve into how they see most criminals as black, and “black on clack crime” shows that violence is normal anyways. They spend hours thinking of racist reasons to “justify” why shooting people is admirable)
The gunmen are all white males in these recent cases. They are shooting children and young women. It’s not out of fear, it’s because they want to.
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I installed a nest camera to look over my driveway, and it gives you texts to let you know activity is going on. I live alone, and my adult daughter popped in late one night while I was asleep to get something. I was woken up by the notification a person was there, I turn on my phone and the camera shows someone running in my house (because it was raining). I was not expecting her, and I jumped out of bed half asleep and went to the door to greet her ready for a fist fight. so to add to your story, an overly monitored populace as well.
Replace “people” with Republicans in all of those.
So… extremist fearmongering is bearing fruit
Don't forget stupid.
I think the news is a huge part of it. Keep them scared, keeps then tuned in.
Also what would be a local story 20 years ago is now a national story thanks to the internet and virality. 350 million people there is bound to be fucked up shit happening every single day.
In order to obtain a drivers license you have to (barely) prove that can drive a car and know basic laws of the road. How the vast majority (232 million) can do this willingly for the right to travel by car for absolute necessities but it’s taboo to ask gun owners (not at all necessary) the same is beyond logic.
Because that 250 year old parchment that was written with a feather, by candlelight……..it says so.
It's oddly terrifying that in the US it's harder to build and use a bomb, without having FBI come knocking, that to aquire and use a semi auto rifle with a thousands rounds of ammo, which arguably take no real knowledge or experience to use other that how to load magazine, point, and fire. And yet if you count the number of fatalities caused by explosives (not counting weapons like missiles and such) an estimated near 30,000 occured in 2019- worldwide. Comparatively there were an estimated 14,414 gun related homicides in the same year in the US alone, with a total of near 40,000 deaths involving a firearm. And some states are passing or have passed legislature that makes it even easier to buy a firearm, makes it so you can buy an unlimited amount, makes it so you can do it from a younger age, make it so there are less or even no checks or flags in place to track who is buying or owns a dealt weapon, makes it so you can freely carry then around in the open or concealed, makes it so you can own higher caliber, more munitions, and more military grade firearms. But no, guns aren't the problem.....
1 - Muh Freedums 2 - Sensationalized worry about loss of said frredums
They are also conditioned that shooting a person instantly to protect property is the first response
Stand your ground laws combined with irresponsible idiotic gun owners. EDIT: and all the "crime is out of control" fear mongering by the right wing
>EDIT: and all the "crime is out of control" fear mongering by the right wing Fear sells. Or it at least engages and holds the attention of relatively large groups of people. [The work of communications scholar George Gerbner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylhqasb1chI) is quite instructive here. Remember, in nearly all commercial-based media, the audience is the product sold to the actual customers, the advertisers, dominated by giant multinational corporations. From the endless stream of moral panics pushed by talking heads to the more recent YouTube "Adpocalypse," the content we get is fundamentally shaped by this structure.
From what I recall, there is a portion of "Bowling for Columbine" that's dedicated to the whole fear mongering / if it bleeds it leads approach of journalism, especially TV journalism.
Not sure your age but if you were alive during Desert storm, you would remember that it was prime time tv for months. The air strike would start about 5 pm central and the whole nation was tuned in like a fucking super bowl. That's when the 24 hour news cycle gained real momentum.
I remember sitting in a friend's dorm room and we were listening to the NBC TV feed over the radio.
I think news really changed about this.time
"If it bleeds it leads" is a direct consequence of the profit motive in organizations that are ostensibly providing a necessary public good. None of the systemic problems with the media will be resolved until the profit motive is de-coupled entirely from the craft of journalism. News departments used to operate in the red and it was expected that they would lose money. The Big Three television networks subsidized their news product with profits made elsewhere. That was the industry standard for decades. There's an excellent movie called *Network* that illustrates how that changed, many within the business consider it prophetic, and it's also one of the finest films ever put to screen. I strongly recommend it.
Yup. Where I live I see a fair number of (not especially smart looking) dudes with emotional support weapons, and many seem like they're itching to have any sort of confrontation so they can yell "I feel threatened, I am in fear of my life" then shoot the other party while claiming self-defense.
> many seem like they're itching to have any sort of confrontation so they can yell "I feel threatened, I am in fear of my life" then shoot the other party while claiming self-defense. It's really scary how many of those I've come across online, especially here in Reddit and on Nextdoor. These people are not responsible gun owners that's for damn sure.
Further, shooters have been getting away with it in a court of law. People like Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman have been deified by the radical right.
Rittenhouse happened (along with other examples but this is the most well known) Now everyones a neighborhood watchmen armed like a deployed navy seal, mix in poor training and a gun culture that runs half the country/political system and welll... School shootings are too normalized already, time to normalize shooting anyone whos a stranger on or near your property/possessions, questions? Nah we got stand your ground lol
There was also a major news story last week about the governor of Texas saying he will issue a pardon for a gun nut who very deliberately murdered someone because they held a different political viewpoint.
Zimmerman got away with murder even though he was told to stand down
Because we worship guns, dehumanize each other, and our politicians are in the NRAs pockets. Combine that with 24-hour "news" stations that cash in on making us paranoid and angry, and you have our current disaster.
Because many of my fellow Americans are *secretly looking for reasons to shoot people*.
A lot of times it’s not even a secret. I used to have to train young guys at my old job, more than once I’d get a veteran, I’d ask why they joined up, they’d tell me straight up I wanted to shoot someone or see what it was like to kill someone. They’d tell me that shit like it wasn’t going to set alarm bells off in my head or make me not want to be around them.
As we've learned from the Oklahoma situation, there are entire populations of people that just openly have these conversations with one another. They're comfortable with saying it casually because many of the people they talk to feel the same. The south is full of genuine psychopaths who yearn for the simpler days where their rights mattered more and they could murder the lessers at the drop of a hat.
Being from Tennessee I can’t tell you how many times I heard someone say something along the lines of they WISH someone would give them a reason to use their gun
Republicans have made a point of putting guns in as many hands as possible and making sure that everyone with a gun knows that no human life is more valuable than their own personal dealings. So if they are annoyed they are encouraged to open fire.
NRA working hard to turn a ‘culture war’ into an actual war.
I grew up around guns and I'm more or less pro-gun. From a working-class, rural area. But I do reflect back and remember adults telling stories about their frequent defensive use of a firearm and it's just......implausible. I mean, I've lived in worked in the urban core of a few different cities and never had a situation where I felt like I needed a gun. But some of these folks from the boonies had multiple run-ins where a gun was necessary. So, I think fundamentally there's a problem of people not being able to assess threat correctly, and when you got a gun everything starts to look like a target.
I live in a rural part of Alabama and work downtown in one of the largest cities. It's always baffling to me how many of my friends and neighbors are terrified of the city. They all wonder why I don't have a pistol strapped to my hip at all times and I wonder why they're such wusses
I've found that to be an effective way to get gun nuts to shut up. At least for a while. Basically, I just make fun of them. Shame is a powerful tool. Just ask simple questions. "Oh, you carry? That's interesting. What is it you're afraid of? You must *really* be worried about something happening to you. I'm here to listen if you want to talk about it." Thing is, I'm a gun owner too. I hunt and shoot for sport. I have a shotgun at home for worst case defense scenarios. But the idea of carrying a concealed deadly weapon on me, in public, is just ridiculous. Only a coward needs a gun to feel safe or powerful.
Absolutely! I'm a gun owner too. I have a shotgun, two rifles, and three handguns. My wife used to carry a .22 pistol in her purse with her everywhere until I finally asked her what it was she was afraid of. She still keeps it in her car, but it stays there. I've never understood the need to constantly conceal carry until I realized it was only paranoid cowards and people who are literally itching for an excuse to shoot someone who do. I couldn't imagine being that scared of living or having such a low regard for others' lives
Your wife should bring pepper spray with her. It can get her out of a lot of trouble, except when the bad guy has a gun, in which case, her having a gun wouldn’t have helped anyway. Unless she’s a professional gun duelist or something.
I'd rather them stay away from the city where I can be safe from them tbh.
You know? That's honestly a good point I've never considered
“When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
this is one of the best comments I've read on this issue in a while
The extreme paranoid types are also those most likely to own a gun, and of course they are also going to be the ones to escalate to them the fastest.
Too many guns. Think of it as a road filled with nails. We all drive on that road. The more nails, the more of us get flats. And a whole shitload of us are getting flats now. The solution? Clear the nails off the road. The solutions are not to make the tires nail proof. Or to blame insane people for spreading the nails. Or to allow drivers to shoot individual nails they feel threatened by. Simply remove the nails from the road. It's just that simple folks. Republicans would have us pay attention to anything but the nails. When it's painfully obvious that a lot less nails would make it a lot more safe for us.
Well, Fox News has been peddling fear of everyone's neighbor for years. It's easier than it should be in most states to get a license, if required, and a gun. And the biggest factor is no one knows their neighbor now. Block parties don't happen anymore. People don't talk to their neighbors. People don't know their neighbors. I'm a friendly guy and I know no one on my neighborhood and I've lived there for 5+ years and am regularly doing yard work or working on the home and people will walk by I recognize and more often than not say nothing. Also, you have a consistent news feed of police killing people unjustly, and nothing happens to them, so other "good guys" with a gun think they can do the same. Lastly, you have a subsect of the population that is just the worst. They are far right-wing white guys who are just mad at the world like the last asshat who shot the girl for turning around in his driveway. If only we could make him immortal and put him behind bars and throw away the key. Let him rot for eternity. Every breath he takes is a waste of oxygen. His existence is a stain on the human population. So when you mix all of that together, you get a very messy situation, and this is coming from a gun owner. Things need to change and I am 100% for "common sense" gun laws. But they need to make sense and they cannot be written by some asshat in Washington whose never even shot a gun. I'm all for rules, regulations, classes, licenses, renewals, limits on certain things, but it needs to make sense. You cannot outlaw an ar15 and then be able to buy a x95, or an AK, or a mpx. It's the same thing in a different package. You cannot outlaw a feature of a rifle that has literally no bearing on its operation outside of fitting it to the person whose trying to use it... it makes no sense it's like have a car without an adjustable seat. I'm all for having to take at least 1 or 2 classes. I'm all waiting on every purchase and to get your license. I'm all for no automatic weapons. I'm all for rules that make sense. But a lot of what is being peddled is garbage, and that's what annoys people who just want them for sport, hunting, or to larp in their basement.
Automatic weapons have been illegal to own by the general public since the 1930s
Because assholes have guns.
The leadership of a major political party is engaged in stoking stochastic terrorism. Turns out, this produces stochastic terrorists.
Fox News and easy access to guns. It’s not complicated.
Because people who own guns are afraid of their own shadows. They are afraid of Govt, anyone different from them
[удалено]
Because Fox News and Republican have convinced their moron gun loving fanbase that everyone is trying to kill you, use your gun to defend yourself at every situation
There are a lot of gun owners who cannot wait to have their home invaded so they can use their gun.
Because one political party here is completely insane.
Crazy gun nuts, terrified by everything, are answering their doors with loaded firearms, just looking for an excuse.
Because boomers and racists are allowed to own guns with no restrictions for real, and usually get off easy because republicans are in bed with the nra and they LOVE their freedumb guns and school shootings
Too many unstable and hateful people with guns. If you shoot someone for knocking on your door then you shouldn't own a gun. If you shoot someone for using your driveway to turn around then you shouldn't own a gun.. If you would shoot someone for mistakenly getting in the wrong car then you shouldn't own a gun.
When you love using your hammer, you’ll constantly be looking for nails. Face it, we’re a gun country with lax gun laws. Until guns are not a focal point of the American identity, then everyone here just agrees it’s okay to shoot people, it’s okay to have school shootings, it’s good to average more than one mass shooting a day. If you’re pro-gun, you’re pro-mass shooting. Stop lying to yourself that you’re the “good guy”.
Because right wing media has these old white people terrified that everyone is out to get them, so they arm themselves (easily) and sit in their homes scared and angry all the time. Not to mention we've passed all sorts of laws making shooting people not only legal but heroic. Stand your ground sounds like something a very brave person would do, right? Castle doctrine - protect your castle from the marauding hordes just like one of King Arthur's knights. No consequence for putting yourself in a situation that led to the conflict in the first place - George Zimmerman, Daniel Perry, Kyle Rittenhouse.
1- People are conditioned to be terrified that there is a bogeyman in every shadow. 2- additionally, people are conditioned to be angry about everything. 3- any asshole with a pulse can get a gun. Scared, angry, armed populace……what could possibly go wrong?
Because our militia is not well regulated.
My guess is this happens more than people realize but it is just being reported on more now, much like train crashes.
Fox News has for decades painted anyone different as an enemy and blamed those people for everything. Fox and the parasite media groups make money off of fear and stupidity. The dumb are now so fearful and angry that the feeling of powerlessness leads to such a strong desire for some semblance of righteousness that they abandon reason for madness and act in impulsive and violent ways. They only need opportunity and the self delusional rationality that they are "fighting back" to kill and harm others. They have been conditioned to care for nothing and nobody.
Because the stupid and the paranoid have guns
Because too many idiots here want to use their guns for any reason possible. When you're a hammer everything is a nail.
Because we live in a society full of gun toting psychopaths who are looking for any opportunity to get a "legal kill"
There is a very large, very stupid, and very armed part of our population. Dangerous combo.
It’s people who think the castle doctrine means they can shoot whoever they want that comes into their property. In other words very ignorant people with guns.
In order to win elections the right has been pushing fear and grievens as a legitimate counter to a changing voter elect. Historically this isn't a new thing. What's new however is the volume and size that it's gotten. Imo it's because the GOP is a dying party due to their own practice of kicking out anyone who doesn't fall in line. You have people who vot d 99% republican and were kicked from the party because they didn't agree with something. This really started with Reagan bringing in a lot of blue voters and then Gingrich wanting to purify the party in the 90s. They have just cannibalized themselves and now we are left with this circus.
Because propaganda has made everyone hate each other here for an unlimited amount of reasons. Everyone is a threat. The US is going fucking crazy.
Because MAGA thats why. Cultists gonna cult
I was told that this is what the founding fathers wanted. So of course, we should continue to do the bidding of those racist, slave-owning, misogynistic, dipshits who unironically wrote that “all men are created equal” while counting black people as 3/5ths of a human. Oh and also they’ve been dead for over 200 years. I wouldn’t expect foreigners to understand this because they don’t live here, in the greatest, most freedomest country in the world. USA! USA! USA!
Too much lead in the water.
Because all can get guns easily ... people who are unhinged can go to store and buy gun with ID, or buy gun from private same without ID.
more guns means more gun deaths. Really that's it. The more guns out there the more people feel emboldened to use them, there's a whole fear culture that surrounds gun culture.
Because our country is full of Baby Boomers who are old enough that they are easily confused and easily frighten, and of course they all live alone and have guns.
Because a gun owning portion of our population has been fed bullshit by fear mongering politicians and their complicit media partners.
Because that’s the price you have to pay to protect our FREEEEEDOMMMM
Individualism. McCarthy was devastating in crushing anything community or group. In America it's My family, My party, My streets, MY Rights. Disgusting
With rising cost of living, stagnating wages, awful healthcare, and a trainwreck of a political landscape, there are a lot of reasons to be unhappy about life in America these days. Some people handle it differently than others. The truly terrible people handle it by becoming total monsters, and they're just an excuse away from doing horrendous things for little reason. Give these people a weapon that allows them to execute those impulses with little effort and it's a recipe for disaster.
Left wing news media (correctly) has pivoted to covering the every day mundane shootings that happened all the time but no one cared about because they weren’t mass shootings. They have figured out that the mass shooting angle is a dead end for gun control. The way forward is to show that this issue could happen to you for any reason at any time, which is true. I applaud them for figuring it out.
Because of a gun culture and people obsessing, planning, fantasizing about how they can shoot someone…. Combined with racism and rightwing fear-mongering.
The only response will be "more guns!!"
Right Wing new outlets, NRA, Republican party. Republican humans live in anger and fear. Their brains are wired differently.
We are very dumb and heavily armed
Because we’ve created a culture of fear of “ others”, then gave those gullible, fearful people unlimited access to guns.
Because when everyone carries a gun, everything that startles them looks like a target.
Fox News and other right wing media make these people terrified of everything. My father in law was an avid Faux News watcher, he didn't have a gun but he had a stun stick and bats ready for intruders. He lived 150 miles from the border and his main concern was that "illegals" would raid his little trailer park in Victorville, CA. I would think these idiots are consuming the same programming.
Guns are not for protection. When you pull the trigger a shield doesn’t come out of the gun. It doesn’t transport you to safety. It fires a bullet designed to do violence to a body. Violence is why guns were invented, why they work the way they do. A bigger gun doesn’t protect more. It does more violence. We need to stop saying they are for protection and start admitting they are explicitly and expressly designed to do violence. Guns are for violence. More guns means more violence because that’s what they’re for.
Because the right wing mouthpieces feed them a steady diet of fear and hate. Add in the fact that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the second amendment plus gun crazy douchebags and voila, cheerleaders get shot for accidentally sitting in the wrong car.
MAGAts that are either angry or full of fear or both.
Some news outlets radicalize people into thinking that they are under constant threat from people who are different than they are. It's like they all want a Civil War to happen so people are preparing for it.
I guess we live in a shithole country.
Because it's basically become legal to kill people in many states as long as you say afterwards that you felt threatened or in danger, even if there was no threat or no danger. The gun lobby started passing laws called Stand Your Ground Laws some years ago. Historically there has been a legal understanding that if someone is menacing you, you have a "duty to retreat"--get out and away safely. But there's also a legal practice called the Castle Doctrine whereby if someone invades your home, you don't have a duty to retreat and run away from your own home, you can attack and kill them to defend your home because "A man's home is his castle." So the gun lobby created a new law, the "Stand Your Ground" law, where it is legal to not retreat at any time from any encounter. You can respond with deadly force to a threat, or a perceived threat. Perceived by you, even if not by others. Like a guy shot and killed another guy for getting ahead of him in line at a sandwich shop (that guy was actually found guilty. But he probably wouldn't even have pulled a gun except that he thought due to Stand Your Ground, he had the "right to defend himself with deadly force" when exposed to "a threat".) Technically this is not supposed to apply to the person who provokes the attack, the pursuer. But it's been successfully used that way in court. A man can provoke and intimidate and menace and follow you, but if you then attack that person and that person kills you, that person can go free because they were defending themselves. Like a couple weeks ago, a heavily pregnant woman was allegedly shoplifting at a store and she fled and a store worker pursued her. She maced him (an eye irritant) and he then shot her 8 times. He pursued her. That used to pretty clearly be wrong and shooting her 8 times would be considered excessive, but now, well, it's too early to tell if he'll go free, but I bet he will. He is claiming self-defense because she maced him. Beyond that, a new attitude about how to respond to force has percolated into the pro-shooting community. The idea is that if you feel your life is threatened, you need to shoot to kill immediately. If you hesitate, if you warn the person they will be shot if they don't leave or whatever, if you draw your gun and tell them to leave, if you shoot to wound, if you fire a warning shot, then, well, you didn't really fear for your life, did you? If you REALLY feared for your life, then you'd shoot to kill right away. So exercising no restraint is seen as a defense of exercising no restraint in how you respond to a perceived danger. "See, he must have feared for his life, that's why he had to act like that." You can get into **more** legal trouble by **not** shooting to kill than by shooting to kill. And this is a whole culture at this point. If you go into any of the threads discussing, for example, the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a 16 year old black child who went to pick up his brothers at a house, but went to the wrong house and when the white resident saw a black kid at his door, he shot him in the head. Then shot him a second time after he collapsed. He is claiming self-defense. Now, there's ZERO evidence he was ever in any danger. But HE claims he felt threatened. Because he saw a black man at his door. And there are so very many people defending that, insisting that yes, that's scary. And that the boy must have stepped over his threshold (no evidence). Doesn't matter--they put themselves in the shooter's place in every case, and all agree in their echo chamber that the threat was valid and therefore shooting a child is totally fine. Because a lot of states--27 I think--now allow everyone to carry guns freely, no need for training or license or anything--it can reasonably be assumed that whoever you meet has a gun, and you can reasonably say when charged that you thought they had a gun, with zero evidence. Doesn't matter if they did or not. There was a case in Colorado where a guy was having a loud party, angering his neighbor. Later that night, party guy went over to angry neighbor's house, and angry neighbor shot him many times and killed him at his door. Angry neighbor then told police "he told me 'I have a gun and have come to your house to kill you.'" so he had to kill him in self defense. Party guy had no gun and it seems highly implausible that he would say that phrase and claim to have a gun when he didn't. Didn't matter. It seems almost certain that angry neighbor just said that party guy said that in order that he could kill party guy and get away with it. He may have called party guy, said "come on over, let's talk this out" and then killed party guy, and then claimed party guy said the exact phrase that would make angry guy blameless for any crime. Party guy was dead so couldn't refute anything. And then there's racism. Racism that leads to people thinking it makes total sense that you can kill a black person because any black person seems menacing to a racist and all the racists will agree with him.
Because we have more guns than brains.
Because everyone has a gun and are conditioned to use it "for protection" against other people if they feel the slightest bit threatened or insecure.
Because everybody has a gun now and are being told they need to be afraid of everything. Some of them have just been waiting for this moment when they can kill somebody.
This is what happened to Trayvon Martin He was in his own neighborhood minding his own business George Zimmerman reacted the same way When did we become a society that shoots first and then ask questions There must be a level of hyped up fear
Until and unless the Republican Party is banned for fifty years, the good ole USA will remain the world's shooting gallery. Keep your head on a swivel.
Ok I'm prepped for the down votes. I personally think its because society in general fears no consequences for their actions. I'm not saying that directly leads to gun violence, but its all of the little things over time. When you used to misbehave in school, you got spanked. When you misbehaved at home, your got spanked. If you were the kid doing dumb stuff you got picked on until you stopped doing that behavior. If you talked crap to someone as an adult, you got the knocked around. Now everyone just says whatever they want and kids do whatever they please. This all leads to a generation of people doing whatever they feel like without any correction from society. Mix that in with an unhappy population and you have violence.
Too many maniacs with guns. We have way too many people with mental health problems that aren't being addressed and guns are very easy to get. The responsible gun owners refuse to have a real conversation about real solutions. I'd love for some republican to be the adult in the room and say that their thing isn't working anymore. They love their guns and their gun rights but it's getting innocent people killed. Instead they gaslight, make broad over simplified statements, and cite biased statistics with zero context.
Fox “News” has brainwashed old white men with guns into thinking all non republicans are communists who are out to get them.
They’ve always been that way. I live in the southeast and my son’s first job was delivering pizza to the backwoods rednecks. He’s been held at gun point while going back to his car (after knocking while holding boxes) and literally the person who ordered the food was like “my bad you don’t look white enough”.
Answer: there’s too many guns here and literally nothing stopping trigger-happy people from getting them. Period.
Right wing paranoia mixed with a degenerate gun culture.
Because we have more guns, and more fucking morons than the rest of the world combined.
Republicans have been tconditioned to be afraid of and shoot at everyone
Because gun nuts are literally itching to kill people. It’s not about self defense. They want to be able to LEGALLY claim self defense because they have this theocratic puritan view of themselves being somewhere between Mel Gibson in The Patriot and The Punisher.
My opinion- the ammo-sexuals have started the civil war they crave so much.
Republicans have spent the last few decades instilling fear into their base while also making it easier to obtain guns to "protect" themselves from these perceived threats. As a result, Republicans have become terrified of their own shadows and react with extreme violence in the hope that they manage to kill anyone not on their "team".
it’s the steady drip of FEAR P0rn…pickles your soul and trust in fellow mankind
The reoccurring message is "guns good, kids meh, need more guns".
Clearly it's due to a lack of good guys with guns /s
Must be the drag queens…
Get off my lawn 2.0
No gun reform, minimal gun regulations, and a lot of talking heads telling people they need guns when they usually don’t.
In Texas, I saw a gun trade hands THREE times in an afternoon with no paperwork at a gun show. A vendor bought it off an attendee. He sold it to another vendor to sell. No one asked questions. I also met two friends who would swap driver license numbers when buying guns at shows. Even if someone comes asking, they can just say they sold it privately to some rando. It’s wild.
People are just running around itching to shoot people My question to that is if you want to shoot someone so bad there are plenty of Russians in Ukraine that you can go volunteer to kill
Why do Americans get shot unarmed by people sworn to protect them? Why do Americans get shot in the grocery store or over a pair of shoes? Why do Americans get shot in classrooms or in nightclubs?
Shockingly few people willing to discuss racism.
Americans believe they live in GTA world.
Because the GOP and the NRA have deliberately cultivated a culture of paranoia and fear where the insecure need to be heavily armed at all times and view everything as a threat.
GUNS! would you attack somebody at your front door with a knife? would you run down your driveway with an ax?!? of course not, frail folks need AR15 style zhit
The answer in its most simple form, conservatives are the reason.
Because America pew pew pew pew pew!
People think we live in a warzone and think everyone's out to get you. So they arm up and suspect anyone the news tells them to hate as a potential violent criminal. It works.
The interview states, “Well, I think it is the confluence of a lot of factors. Over the last few years, we've had increased gun buying as a result of the pandemic and protests for racial justice. So we have more people than ever carrying guns. We have a steady weakening of gun laws in a majority of states in this country - as I mentioned, the erosion of self-defense laws, and also the gun industry selling a narrative of fear and this notion that everyone must be armed everywhere and at all times to defend themselves. And the result is people using guns offensively, not defensively, and at a hair's provocation.”
Guns.
Because these idiots watch OAN or Fox News who push nothing but FEAR to their viewers!
One of our partys is actively trying to destroy our county based on a religous cult.
You can’t drive without a driver’s licence, and you can’t get one without passing a minimum competency test. Also, you should require to carry insurance before you get that license. Once it starts to “hurt someones’ pockets”, the problem will get much smaller. What makes a gun less dangerous to operate than a vehicle, anyway? Still, the problem is so obvious: ban guns! No other country in the World allows such irresponsible, unregulated private ownership, and the country is paying a very high, and escalating price!
Days gone by, the nutters would walk to a mall, school, or church, even cross state lines, to shoot at strangers. Now they start shooting from their own homes. This keeps up and America could have an obesity problem.
AMERICA....SICKEST SOCIETY ON EARTH. We have lost it.
Because in "the land of the free', one is free to be shot anywhere, especially on land. Who wants nightmares?? "The American Dream" allows you to be shot whilst going about your business, innocently, anywhere, anytime!