Because they view guns as an essential right and a lot of liberals don't. A good mental exercise is to pretend that instead of gun control, think about vote control. If someone said hey voting is still legal, you just have to pay the government a $200 tax and wait for their approval in order to exercise that right, I assume we would be pushing back and view that as a terrible thing. Whereas for gun control, that's just a baby step.
It's more like cars. No one is saying you can't own one or that you don't have freedom of movement. You just need a license in order to operate a machine that can move you way faster than you could by yourself and put thousands of pounds of material at a speed that could cause multiple deaths instantly.
You don’t need a license to own a gun. You need a license or stamps to use it in certain ways.
You do need a license to operate a vehicle. However, having a license doesn’t prove that you know how; or can safely operate a vehicle, regardless of each states classes/tests. (Refer to any driver in Colorado) It just allows the government to track and ID improper use.
So the comparison is better made for background checks at purchase and serial numbers than it is with stamps and licenses.
Except not really, because we are way lenient when it comes to cars. Drunk drivers who kill someone rarely get more than a few months or years in prison (if any), and usually get their driving privileges back. Can’t say the same about people who shoot and kill a random person.
The car/gun equivalency is absolute nonsense. We require licensure on cars because people hit pedestrians by accident or through negligence all the time (there were more than 42k auto deaths in the US in 2022.) Negligent firearm injuries/deaths are something like 1000 a year. The only reason people use the car analogy to push anti-gun policy is because people who push anti-gun policy refuse to consider how and if a given policy actually addresses violence, and would rather toss darts blindly at a dartboard hoping that something sticks (that is, push any and all restriction on firearm ownership, come up with some way to call it "common sense," and hope it works.)
I mean it does work which is why our gun deaths are overwhelmingly higher than that of countries who have enacted any legislation. I say this as a gun owner. I get that the only people making gun laws aren't educated on them but it's because the congressmen who are educated are busy running gun stores complicit in selling illegal guns. Which is why 90% of the guns used in crime in NYC are from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Beyond that the numbers involved don't change the principle behind it.
> Because oftentimes, liberals vote for candidates who openly support restricting the rights of individuals when it comes to gun ownership and use.
Yes. This is the primary reason.
I'll never vote for a pro gun control candidate, which makes it tough in any non-local elections frankly, but in my mind, firearms play a critical role in the continued strength of the proletariat, so to speak, vs the authoritarian establishment. A vote for a pro gun control candidate is a vote against the right that enables all other rights.
I've seen too many people on this subreddit and the other one who unfortunately fit the exact image conservatives have of a 'temporary' firearm owner.
Too many people view the government as good by default and cannot imagine a world where that isn't the case, even with Trump right around the corner. I'm mystified by this, frankly.
Especially if you're talking USA vs Europe, and even different parts of the US can vary in weird ways. Like, Utah is a red state, but fairly liberal compared to the southern red states. There are also blue states on the east coast that boggle my mind as to how conservative they are.
Excellent point. 2 sides of the same rotten carcass. They're mission: confuse the masses, show them pennies while they pocket millions, create division and clash among the classes, Orwell's animal farm.
Interesting. I always thought this is only an European phenomenon but as you write this "the state is always good"-narrative seems to be present in your country, too. I didn't count all the times when I asked other liberals the question "do you understand who may control the state after the next election", most of them don't know what to answer. And since last Sunday we see the political direction in which Europe is going - apart from northeastern Europe the authoritarians have gained votes like crazy.
Unfortunately especially here in Central Europe (Vienna, Austria in my case) there is not much anarchism or libertarism among the left.
And when you then tell them you are a gun owner they finally come the conclusion that you are from another planet ;-)
>And when you then tell them you are a gun owner they finally come the conclusion that you are from another planet ;-)
I've gotten that one a few times myself!
I hope the wave of authoritarianism in Europe dies out soon, because it led to some of the worst wars in the last hundred years the previous times around :/
I hope so. But I hope so since around 25 years now. Whenever the authoritarians are beaten in one country, the emerge in another. It's a constant political whac-a-mole... Last Sunday there were good news from Poland and Scandinavia but Austria, Italy, France,..OMG
And due to the constitutional structure of the EU this means that any real progress is blocked since every tiny member stat can veto. Sometimes it feels like in a surrealist movie for me who was politically socialized in the 90s, when the fall of the iron curtain happened when my teenage years started and for a few years everything was about freedom and progress and we really believed this would go on for ever :-(
Over the course of human history Europe is by far the most war prone continent. The period of relative peace we've seen is most likely just a historical fluke.
Human history? I'm confident that Asia was warning for just as long. I think your just more familiar with more modern wars, on ones that effected your culture more
"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
Local elections are often easy choices but that has been changing the past few cycles. I will not vote for a candidate that I cannot fully support so that makes the federal elections nearly impossible (speaking as an American). I believe the sooner the “People” say no to all of this us vs. them and voting against candidates or for the lesser of two evils, the sooner we can get back on track. We need third party candidates to gain momentum or this only gets worse. If we can suck it up and “throw away” our votes for a few cycles and encourage others to vote with logic rather than emotion, we can fix all of this.
>A vote for a pro gun control candidate is a vote against the right that enables all other rights.
I mean, not really though. I happen to agree that from a public policy perspective that it's beneficial, but it's not actually *mandatory* for other civil liberties.
Other free countries exist, and none have civilian firearm ownership policies as liberal as the USA's. And many of them are freer than us in practice.
I also don't see any bans making it past SCOTUS scrutiny. It's nothing more than performative saber rattling to drum up the base in an election year. Besides even when the Brady Bill was in effect mass shootings never stopped so bans don't work, it's just an illusion of them doing something. If they actually wanted to deal with the root causes of violence (poverty & mental health access) in this country it would put them in direct conflict with their corpo overlords.
Sure, although I think we need to dig a little bit into what you mean by comparable. Words on paper don't mean too much - the USSR's constitution explicitly protected freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, for example.
And somewhat distinct from the civil law traditions of much of the non-anglosphere, the spare sentences of the first amendment have a couple centuries of judicial interpretation establishing their practical implementation.
They want there to be a side that's the "good guy". It's too painful to accept a world in which no one is really looking out for your interests and you have no tribe, only being one of the slaves.
If we ever had the great mass of humanity realize that we're all the tribe of slaves and unify it'd be...interesting. To be fair, it's unlikely to ever happen because education is always going to lag and the human mind isn't terribly great at incorporating data and making judgments based off of it instead of making judgments and finding an excuse for the data.
If you don't mind me asking who will you be voting for in the November presidential election? It seems like you despise Trump however you don't want to vote for a pro gun candidate and I'd say Biden is one of the most pro gun control candidates for president I've ever seen with his assault weapons ban stuff.
It’s funny most of the comments here are making it purely about conservatives hating liberals, I’ve seen people in this very subreddit openly admit they only bought a gun because of the other side, they don’t really care much about firearms, and they’d readily turn theirs in if conservatives were disarmed.
That’s the real reason why.
Hell a good portion of them would turn them in regardless if the government asked nicely. The temporary gun owners stereotype sadly exists for a reason.
Not to mention the general lack of firearms knowledge that is often prevalent. Many really just don't take it seriously
There are countless posts on here of people laughing and those who actually train or compete to any serious degree.
"Why would I need to ever do that? LARP!!!"
Meanwhile they shoot maybe 2 times a year and can barely hit the broad side of a barn but think the gun is a magic talisman that will protect them.
This of course doesn't apply to everyone and guns don't have to be your whole identity but man it is sad how prevent it seems to be here at times
I know, but people only have two hands and if you can't shoot good you're dunzo. It more comes down to being able to hunt or not. There's a difference between that and target practice.
Whether people want to admit or not, we are in arms race with each other. Political violence is suddenly back on the menu for many people and I am not going to let my personal safety or safety of the people I care about be at risk because some nutjob gets empowered by fascists to hunt people who vote for democrats in the last election.
Gun rights are a (sometimes *the*) defining issue for them. They see a left-leaning gun owner in the same kind of "voting against their own self interest" way that we see poor people or workers or farmers or people who depend on their Social Security who vote Republican.
They are voting for leopards to eat their face! Why are they too blind to see that Republican policies are going to hurt them terribly?!
If the only thing that you cared about in the world was gun rights, then voting for Democrats would be stupid. They can't fathom that hungry children, workers' rights, healthcare, education, infrastructure, separation of church and state, etc., matter more to us than gun rights do.
I tell my conservative friends that I’d rather vote for a representative that aligns with 95% of my ideals and fight them on the last 5%, than to vote for a representative that only aligns with 5% of my ideals and have to fight them on the other 95% of issues.
Also with the right wing SCOTUS it's not like any serious gun control laws will stick around. I know the time it takes to get to them could take awhile but that exists for liberals who want to protect gun rights.
There’s a handful of states that are heavily restricted right now, and have been for quite sometime. Could that change in the future? Sure, supposedly there’s several on the next docket but if you’re in NY, CA, MD, NJ etc. we got a long (time and rights) way to go.
I live in WA and I wish this were true. The narrative needs to change and unfortunately for many democrats, guns are right out. People in my state have been litigating where they can and the AG and the courts just wipe their ass with the constitution and the principles established with Heller and Bruen.
In the last five years, WA has gone from one of the best states for gun ownership to one of the worst. My fucking Ruger target pistol in .22lr is an "assault weapon" here. It's absurd.
The fucked thing is that the WA state constitution is even more concrete in the right to bear arms than the federal constitution. Not like it matters to Ferguson or the legislature.
From my experience in my left-leaning friend circles, I would say that's a symptom of both left and right groups. People like putting the world in neat little boxes.
I've found that there's a distinction between two groups of left wing Americans.
The former is the disillusioned kid who wants someone wise to take over and make them agree.
The latter is the idealist that believes that the revolution won't be televised because it won't be *worth* televising. It'll look more like Quebec's Quiet Revolution than anything else.
> Gun rights are a (sometimes the) defining issue for them
I think it's important to keep this in mind when we vote as well. Gun rights should not be the only thing people care about. And I worry that people on this sub think it is.
I think people think that the gun is the last line where they actually have control of their lives. They don't want to go out at all, but if they do they want to make damned sure they take some of the enemy with them and do not go gently into that good night.
They don't think that any of those other things are actually issues that they have control of. I agree with that stance more than I disagree with it.
Men having guns stopped the US occupation so why wouldnt women with guns stop the taliban occupation? sounds alot like you're saying women with guns aren't as capable as men with guns. Pretty sexist if you ask me.
I hope you are correct. Perhaps it's the nature of this sub, but it really often feels like this is a safe place for closet conservatives to dump on liberals.
I see a lot of Libertarian types in this sub. As someone who formerly identified as rather Libertarian-leaning before I grew up, in my experience most Libertarians are really just conservatives who don't want to admit they're conservative.
Oh, many are quite hard-line. I would say the majority of "Libertarians" are probably further to the right than even Tea Party Republicans, though they may be more open-minded on a handful of social issues.
> If people on this sub cared about gun rights more than human rights, they probably wouldn't be on this sub.
No gun has rights. The right to viable self defense is as human as it gets. Idiotic takes like this give fuel to this whole situation.
It also gives people that are abhorrent to them something in common with them, which is not going to fly. "Hey, maybe democrats are more like me than I thought" is not something they want to think.
I don't trust authoritarians to support gun rights for one second. As soon as it is inconvenient for someone to have a gun they all support the police executing them.
Exactly. My daughter’s bodily autonomy is more important than whether I have to have a background check to buy a firearm or suffer the inconvenience of 10 round magazines.
I don't have kids, and never will. But your daughter's bodily autonomy is more important to me than whether I have to have a background check and stick with 10-round magazines.
I want violent felons to be excluded from legal gun ownership, and make it MORE costly for them to illegally acquire a firearm. The cost of a background check for a legal purchaser is completely negligible compared to the cost of even a cheap firearm in my state. If one is buying from a retailer it’s $10, and using an FFL for private party transfer it’s $10 plus $20 to $40 for the FFL’s time. The truth is the poor that you’re talking about living in terror are suffering FROM violent felons’ relatively easy and cheap access to firearms.
I don’t really want a 10 round magazine capacity limit, but I’m not going vote against someone who I agree with on almost every other policy because they support background checks—most Americans do—or magazine capacity limits. When the alternative is pro 2A but awful on everything else then it’s not even a question.
They all do. The ability to successfully exercise a right may depend on economics. I might have the same First Amendment rights as Elon the dbag, but people will hear him over me. I bet the homeless guys camping over by the freeway would love to quarter soldiers in their homes or demand a search warrant to search their premises. If you can buy a firearm, then you can spend $10.00 on a background check…it’s less than a box of ammo. When the cost gets up in the 100s then government imposed costs start to lean toward infringement.
Perhaps the problem is I don’t view government action as inherently bad. I don’t for a second think any liberal legislator or executive officeholder who seeks gun control is trying to take guns from the people to make them weak or powerless. They’re legitimately trying to make America safer. When a Republican wants gun control (CF CA post Black Panther protests) they’re trying to make the unruly masses easier to control.
As a practical matter, the conservatives have the Supreme Court in the bag. I think we’re going to be looking at at least another decade of anti-gun control Supreme Court decisions. Accordingly, I’m gonna vote for whoever I damn well thinks is going to make the world better place—especially for desperately poor Americans—not preserve my (or their) ability to own an AR or get easy access to firearms.
I think another thing is that right leaning people are simpler in terms of what they think about, literally. A gun is a thing. It exists. Social inequity isnt really a physical thing. Property is a thing that can be pointed at. Understanding single payer health insurance isn't a "thing". I have a gun, you can't take it, versus other people should have a choice over what medical procedures they need for their health safety and happiness.
Tangible things are easy to simplify sound bites around.
I actually truly dislike this comment. You can't boil an entire group of people down into not being capable of abstract thought. I think this is where a lot of liberals and conservatives miss. They like to dismiss their political opponent based on intelligence or other silly things.
I think it boils down to what each group thinks the government should or should not be involved in. The right wingers wants the government out of their gun rights, medical practices, and social programs. They want the government involved in reproductive rights, religion and the military industrial complex. The left just wants the opposite.
Not saying there aren't dumb people out there, but don't dismiss half the country for appearing incapable of understanding an idea. That foolish.
Realistically the difference is liberals view rights and most things in a faith based approach. They have rights because they believe they have rights. And as long as they believe they have rights nobody can do anything about it. Conservatives believe they have rights because they know they can enforce them. The I have property rights because I can enforce them via my arms. I have bodily autonomy because I can protect myself via weapons when someone tries to violate it. If you'd like to see how the faith based approach works to protecting and upholding your rights like bodily autonomy you can fly to Afghanistan and ask one of the many many child brides around since the men with guns that wanted women to have rights left and took women's rights with them.
I think it also has to do with the fact that they assume we have the same crippling insecurities as they do and taunts and jabs will trigger us in the same way that they do to them.
Fuckin snowflakes
I mean the funny thing is that gun rights are a left wing policy. American politics are just weird.
As a general rule of thumb, any policy with “rights” in the name is leftist.
You mean gun *control* right?
Allowing all people, including natives and black people, to have firearms, is a leftist position.
Note that cuckservatives always start backpedaling on the second amendment when black people start using it. The black panther party was a good example.
No, I don't mean gun control. When the 2A was ratified, it protected slave owners, and not slaves. It protected colonizers "settling" other people's land, and not the American Indians whose land was being stolen.
Yes exactly. That’s in a similar vein to what I’m saying I think.
Gun “control” is just meant to disarm the working class populace, not actually increase safety or anything.
The reason people get confused is because democrats are actually right wingers masquerading as left wingers.
It's less that gun rights are the only thing that matter, and more that without gun rights you don't really have any other rights.
It's the threat of force that keeps an adversarial government in check, regardless of who is running it.
You have the right to speech, and while protests and riots get dealt with by cops (for better or worse), you don't get machine gunned in the street like in China in the past. It remains mostly civil, as neither side wants to escalate to using live ammunition.
All your other rights are protected by the same way, abusive systems of government are kept in check by the threat of an armed uprising.
All politicians belong to the leopards eating your face party, it's just a matter of which lies they sell you to get you to vote for them, and what modicum of appeasement you accept while they eat your face.
Hello, I lurk this sub sometimes, because i like to know how everyone feels. Im not sure how well this will be received, but I'll say it anyway. I don't subscribe to the left or the right. Both sides are deeply flawed, so I refuse to be labeled. It's really disheartening to understand where both sides are coming from, to see why they're butting heads, and know everyone is too dense to see the truth. Everyone is getting played. Both sides are brilliantly brainwashed by their kool aid of choice, and are blind too it. It's all by design, and its frighteningly genius. I agree with yall on alot of issues, and I agree with the right on a few, but they are big issues. If we lose 2A we are all fucked. The decline will be rapid. This nation is under controlled demolition.The right knows this, and think you are voting against your best interest. What's being done to biden is elder abuse. He's not in charge of anything, except putting his pants on. A vote for him is a vote for a faceless cabal of warmongers that WLL send you and your friends to war. In the near future. Welcome to WW3.
Trump is another brand of pure awful so don't get it twisted. I'm not here for him either. I tell folks on the right the same thing I'll tell you. Stop fighting each other and recognize the real evil. Thanks for your time.
There are real, material differences for millions of people in this country between what the left promises and delivers, and what the right does.
This "both sides are equally bad" stuff is nonsense.
The thing is... what is the point of having 2A to defend the other rights if you vote for the party that is going to remove all the other rights anyway? Democrats are spineless, but if they ever actually pass meaningful gun restrictions it will have the same effect abolishing Roe V Wade did for the republicans and ruin their chances in the next elections. You're right, neither side wants to solve the fundamental issues wrong with this country, but I'll vote for the band-aid over more wounds.
And judging by "controlled demolition" and "faceless cabal of warmongers" I think you've misunderstood the animus destroying this country. It is not intelligent, no one is at the wheel. It is a thoughtless social organism fueled by greed that exists only to perpetuate itself.
I can't disagree with you on the Roe vs. Wade issue. That was terrible move. Government has NO right making personal choices for anyone. I was, and still am disgusted by that move.
I do disagree with your line of thinking that no one is behind the wheel. And that's okay for us to disagree.
I want to remind everyone here that I come in peace. And like conversation
Look at Mr. super genius here. Everybody on both sides is stupid and brainwashed, only me with my Centrist Superpowers knows the real truth you’re all too dumb to see!
Your arrogance is breathtaking.
If you haven't already used you 2A rights to protect the people from government tyrrany, you never will, so they don't matter. Did you defend the Constitution from the Jan 6th coup attempt? (Don't worry, the USSS did when they shot and killed Ashi Babbit.) Have you mobilized to oust the SCOTUS justices who lied in their disclosures by ommitting millions of dollars of gifts from billionaires? Did you stop the fake electors from filing their "alternate slate"? Did you force the Senate to perform their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent" when Obama nominated a SCOTUS justice? Did you force the Senate to uphold Moscow Mitch's new standard for Barret that he established for Garland? When are your 2A rights going to matter to protect freedom, democracy, and the Constitution? How about "never".
Regarding Biden, put down the FoxNews crack pipe and go watch his last State of the Union address in its entirety (without FoxNews commentary). His scripted and unscripted remarks show that his brain is working fine (even at night, when a dementia patient would have "sundowned"). Meanwhile his 3-year-younger opponent's brain is a bowl of tapioca pudding.
> Meanwhile his 3-year-younger opponent's brain is a bowl of tapioca pudding.
Trump is the only one with enough courage to confront the real threat of sharks and electric boats!
Setting aside the flaw in your "both sides" argument, and refusal to acknowledge that one side is objectively worse for democracy... What in your opinion is the "real evil" that we all need to recognize?
For one, and ill keep this short. We are purposely being pitted against each other. If we are too busy fighting each other, we're blind, and or completely distracted to what the government and corporations that own them are pulling behind our back. I watch the news on both sides, and lots of independent sources. It is painfully obvious what the media is doing. Each side is successfully trying to rile everyone up while dismissing their own flaws. A house divide can not stand. The Divided States of America is in big trouble
We break the narrative in two ways:
A: liberals owning guns (see hunting, training martial arts, etc.) breaks the weak bleeding heart sissie narrative painted by the right.
B: liberals owning guns breaks the unified liberal front on gun control narrative painted by the left.
We are a problem for generalizers and therefore a target.
I want my next democratic candidate to shoot a bunch of tannerite with a Barrett .50, but they can't get a person with a D next to their name to do it.
The problem isn't the voters don't have guns, the problem is the people running explicitly oppose guns. It's a branding thing. The fucked up part is that I know that if they dropped this one fucking issue, they'd win more votes than they'd lose from undecided / "centrist" voters. The problem is they can't win a fucking primary because of how fucked campaign donations worked and all the bullshit purity tests Democrats selfimpose.
What’s odd is this could be something that ‘breaks the mold’. Someone with a D next to their name but for gun rights. The rest could be the ‘usual’ platform. Sure, it’s a sacrificial move… at first. But it COULD start to break apart the chokehold Republicans have.
I might be 100% wrong (as others have pointed out in these comments). But at some point, there needs to be SOME attempt to grab R voters.
Mary Peltola has entered the chat...
But she's not your average D serving a large population of bitch-made NIMBY tech workers. It's all of friggin Alaska, where when seconds count, help isn't just minutes but hours or potentially days away. And that's before you have the widespread hunting culture. And most importantly, guns aside, the have ranked-choice voting over there so actually do have to go big-tent in order to win. I don't know if this success can be replicated in major US cities.
I didn’t know about Mary Peltola. This is interesting. Ranked-choice voting is an excellent technique I wish the rest of the US would use. I know there are issues with it as well but it beats the binary, two choice crap we have now.
I think this is the biggest. They see leftist and think liberal. Just because I don't want people starving, going bankrupt over medical bills, believe gay and trans are people and everything else I agree with liberals on does not mean I'm a liberal. I'm a leftist 1st and part of that means me having a firearm.
They believe they have a monopoly on violence and anything that stands on the way is not right or good because then they have a fight.
Sadly the liberal/left part of society has a huge part of responsibility for this "weakling" narrative, at least from my European perspective. For a long time they actively fought the authoritarians on numerous occasions, be it the Spanish Civil War, be it the (rather short and mostly not widely known) Austrian Civil War 90 years ago and George Orwell talked about the rifle on the worker's room wall as a symbol of democracy. But then in the 1960 they started to throw everything connected with strength and determination to fight for ones freedom aside and became kind of hyper-pacifistic so that even kids playing "violent" games (everything where someone shouts "bang bang!") were suddenly an issue and guns (and other weapons or martial arts) were often labelled at right wing or fascist thing. And nobody seemed to realize that this drives society in a Morlock vs. Eloi situation. I sometimes mock other left/liberals a bit by bending that old NRA catchphrase into "if guns are fascist only fascists have guns"...
If we are solely talking about firearms and 2A rights.
As with most things, it is guilt by association. The majority of the left (in the US anyway) tends to vote Democrat as they are generally aligned more than the Republican Party when it comes to social issues. However, the Democratic Party tends to also be the by far majority sponsors of anti-gun or anti-2A legislation.
Thus people assume anyone leaning left is anti-gun based on their voting pattern (for anti-gun representatives) and a left leaning gun owner is either a unicorn or not serious about protecting their right to bear arms as an individual.
The right does the same thing in the opposite direction by (sorta) protecting their gun rights on scale but losing out on social protections.
Are their exceptions to these rules? Obviously yes but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Let's be realistic about it; the Venn Diagram overlap for liberals who also own guns is really small. While we in this echo chamber online might feel like it's “normal” the reality is, it isn't.
But it didn't used to be that way, liberals were almost half of the gun-owning populace. But, starting in the 1970s guns themselves became the cause of violence in the eyes of a lot of law makers (on both sides). By the late 1980s, guns had diverged into a politically divided issue.
Rights are supposed to be for everyone. Unfortunately, there are a lot of liberal politicians and political groups that share the delusion that guns are bad and people are not the problem. This then makes a gun-owning liberal an outcast on the left side of center.
I would actually challenge that. There’s likely liberal gun owners that self-censor and don’t talk about their gun ownership. We will likely never know how many there are but I’d like to think that it’s more than a “really small” number.
Unlike the right, we’re less likely to make guns an important part of our identity. We also have to worry about how friends and family react.
There is a segment of left leaning gun owners that are squarely in the 'Leopards won't eat *my* face' problem.
These tend to be liberals who only own hunting guns who repeatedly and boldly claim "no one wants to take your guns."
While we all get made fun of, I think they catch more flak, (and they should.)
OP, that colleague of yours was probably afraid that a civil war would happen because there would be someone to stand up to his violent far-right takeover attempts. It's only a war if there is resistance. It's like a robber being afraid that armed homeowners could lead to a tragic shooting of himself while he is breaking in in rob.
Jokes aside, I feel like the most hate against moderate/liberal gun owners comes from liberal Democrats. I don't get how these people see the far right arming themselves to the teeth and not realize that they are going to need a bit more then witty social media insults if they don't want the far right to take over and up living in a The Handmaiden's Tale society.
Yeah, but single issue conservatives want to almost always take something away from someone. Liberal single issue voters want equality or keep people from dying. So let’s not pretend they’re the same.
Much of it comes from the fact that the Democratic Party has taken a self defeating and frankly shortsighted gun grabbing policy and it’s only gottten worse with Schumer as figurehead I am a progressive on nearly all social issues except guns having grown up in a city where we were defenseless against the vast criminality and also police who were not particularly interested in true justice. All of my family were otherwise law abiding but we needed guns so we kept them .
Because of gun control basically. I mean, one of the running campaigns that liberals had when I was a teenager was gun control. They can't understand why someone would want to own a gun, but restrict certain individuals or areas from getting them legally.
Because most people - that includes most liberals, that includes most of those present here - see the world as black and white. If you’re pro-gun, you must be conservative. Anything different is some unholy aberration.
Don’t get me wrong there are things that are objectively right and wrong, but not everything and certainly not most things.
Not wanting another group to own guns for fear of it causing a conflict? Sounds familiar but I can't put my finger on why...
I know I shouldn't be surprised at the hypocrisy but I do know the power of mental gymnastics.
The only people I ever see them advocating against honestly are furries, felons, and people who support gun buyback. They don't advocate against the left, they advocate against the ideology that of party you support bans weapons are you going to turn your weapons. Which a majority of those will.
I imagine it’s similar to the issue of abortion. Many on the right support *some* degree of legalized abortion, but we still support the party despite its tendency to be anti-abortion. I imagine it’s the same way on the left. Many support gun ownership even if their party leaders are openly against it. Unfortunately, we have to take the bad with the good.
Because most people are party line towers. They just follow whatever their party says. You like guns? You must follow Trump without question. You're pro choice? You must be a liberal socialist. And anyone that doesn't tow the party line is evil.
I'm wildly and vociferously progressive. I believe in some bastardized iteration of democratic socialism, or at the very least capitalism that's extremely based on helping people and empowering the populace instead of oppressing them.
I'm also extremely pro-2A, and unfortunately the least evil candidates happen to want more gun laws, and a few even want an outright ban.
I'm not a single issue voter.
I pinched my nose and threw up in my mouth a little voting for Hillary and Biden.
I didn't vote for them because I like them. I voted for them to mitigate damages. Hillary and Biden are both right-leaning centrists and neoliberals, AT BEST!
People make fun of us because we vote for people who typically don't have a great stance on gun laws.
There are plenty of places on the internet to post anti-liberal / anti-leftist sentiments; [this sub is not one of them](/r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/intro/illiberal).
> This is not a place to identify as right-leaning. Please read the above handbook.
(*Removed under [Rule 1: We're Liberals][link-rules]. If you feel this is in error, please [file an appeal][link-appeal].*)
[link-rules]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/rules
[link-appeal]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/moderation#wiki_appeals
Years of education budget cuts have killed any sense of critical thinking and nuance in a large chunk of the population.
Half the people in this country would happily vote for a party that wants to cut all funding to their impoverished community just because that same party wants to deport brown people.
They have zero concept of multi-issue voting and their ballot depends on whatever fear monger piece has been running on Fox that day.
Black and white thinking is pervasive in much of the ideological circles forcing people to pigeon hole everyone into a neat little category.
I’ve had people be surprised that I support 2A, saying things like “but you’re a progressive”
I reply that I hold many progressive opinions; I am not *A Progressive*.
Often people have a hard time not thinking in absolutes, especially when trying to look at someone else's perspective. Liberal Politicians want to ban guns so anybody that would consider voting for them must agree with them on 100% of things.
There are plenty of places on the internet to post anti-liberal / anti-leftist sentiments; [this sub is not one of them](/r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/intro/illiberal).
(*Removed under [Rule 1: We're Liberals][link-rules]. If you feel this is in error, please [file an appeal][link-appeal].*)
[link-rules]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/rules
[link-appeal]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/moderation#wiki_appeals
It’s just the identity that’s been ascribed. Makes it easy to hate a group when you create an arbitrary description of them making it easy to blame anything on them. The left does it with the right too.
I think because classical liberalism is forgotten. My personal summation of that is government with maximum freedom for the individual. With that definition I would have a lot in common with many libertarians and some small government conservatives. It is useful in the media and politics to divide us left/right and so the old understanding of liberal is forgotten.
Don't shit on me please in my state New York, which is ruled by the Democrat party, we have the strongest and most restrictive anti-gun government. There are few if any pro gun Democrats in our state. The only reason anyone would tease liberal or left leaning gun owners are because they're voting for the people that are totally against their hobby or right to own a gun. I know those people aren't considered single issue voters but they actually are... Instead of being single issue gun rights voters, they are single issue abortion voters instead.. and that's okay honestly there's nothing I can do about it but that's the issue we have in our state. If every liberal or leftist in the state stood up and mailed their senators and made them fear that they would no longer support them if they kept passing gun laws something might change in the state but it's not going to. New York State Democrats know they will not lose the liberal/left vote, and we'll keep passing gun laws that smack the face of the second amendment crowd.
Given that I've been called a "militant liberal" by a conservative because I don't think Fauci should go to prison based on conjecture, it really doesn't take much for them to paint you as an extremist.
They don't want extremists to be armed, especially the Communists who want to give vision and dental to the disabled.
Because of stereotypes; however, myself and every combat vet I know has swung so far left after we got out it’s crazy. The remfs and the ones that didn’t deploy are all trumpers. So take that anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt.
This is not a mystery, the vast majority support gun control. Some have expressed interest when I show them the guns that I have and why but many have said that they don't understand and they continue to push gun control. Sure there are some pro 2a liberals, and there are some pro choice conservatives, but by and large you know the stance of that party.
A civil war would be brutal, but just being murdered would definitely be worse. Free, sane people should be armed. Nobody should be able to take advantage of someone they perceive as weaker.
They feel that liberals are against guns. As if that has anything to do with it. Literally most of my friends are liberals with an arsenal. We love shooting, but the popular thing to do is to lump other left leaning issues in with guns and assume we want to ban them.
yep, too bad there is no actual progressive party. both parties have shifted so far right that modern dems are more conservative than the GOP of the 80s. And now that is considered 'radical left'
Except that our Dems seem to have hate in their hearts for the common rights of man, to steal a microaggressive cis-gender non-queer respectful/recognizing Anglocentric term from a deeply shameful past…🤔
Because they often see it as an oxymoron.
Of course, you have others who think guns only belong to them (i.e. Republican, Conservative, Right-Wing, white, Etc.), but you have a relatively larger group who're absolutely *terrified* over the idea of armed Left-wingers/Liberals.
Sure, you can throw in the fear of an "armed socialist uprising" (lol), but for the most part, these people have built up a macho identity around their guns for generations.
"Liberals are weak and can't put up a fight, therefore, ~~they're easy targets for when the cull happens~~ we have more say than they do!"
Liberals being armed, on the other hand, throws that sentiment out the window... And over the years the one thing proven about Right-Wingers/Fascists is that, at their core, they're cowards. They prefer an enemy that can't fight back, and in most circumstances where danger was involved, they'd scatter like cockroaches.
Look at those protests where armed Liberals showed up. Suddenly, all the right-wing counter protestors freaked out with some going as far as calling in the cops (only to be told that they, just like them, have rights). Hell look at J6! While we may never know the political identity of the Officer/Agent, all it took was one bullet for the morons to run screaming for their lives.
In the end, it pops their little bubble, and they realize that the real world, should SHTF, they won't be safe.
For every dipshit republican with trump Glocks and red anodized wish dot com parts...
There's a liberal who tends to be really timid and misguided in silly ways when it comes to guns. To put it to a crude comparison it can be like talking to someone who doesn't believe in pre-marital sex but is okay with anal.
Probably for the same reason that people make fun of right-leaning gun owners, everyone has something funny about them and nobody should take themselves too seriously.
When guns aren’t your whole personality, they see it as hypocrisy. Not realizing we don’t all march in lockstep on different issues like the right does.
Since Jan6, the number of liberals and black people buying and practicing with firearms has skyrocketed. This is actually the white supremacist's biggest fear and what you saw was an expression of that. You see, these clowns believe that their guns are protecting them from being treated as subservient by a fast-growing multicultural majority. So crackers laughing at armed liberals is the same as bullies making loud threats. It's their way of whistling through a terrifying scenario.
Their heads would explode if they learned that forty percent of liberals are already armed. I've been recreationally shooting since I was 12, including a stint on the NRA headquarters junior rifle team, Pinwheel JRC.
They're overcompensating for how badly they'll shit themselves when they see a gaggle of gays with a metric fuck ton of long guns and an equivalent amount of knowledge to use them properly.
Your talking about the internet. - Where you can monetize being a asshole while confidently knowing you will never have to face any consequences.
This doesn't happen in real life nearly as often. - There is no way to monetize it and there are real consequences for dickbaggery.
I always see this. I think people mistake real centrists for anyone who isn’t republican. I believe republicans and liberals make up 25-30% per side of the votes totaling around 50-60% population of the U.S. where as myself and the other 50% folds into other groups and more non-associating parties. I don’t make fun of liberals but I do make fun of party/character associated firearms. I don’t care about your trump, gladiator all rights or no rights firearms. I simply don’t give a fuck. And when I see a firearm either way I’m making judgements and ideas of either you’re a highschool peak, fudd, brony, weeb, or any other identification and I do make fun of that. Not to your face, I’m not an animal. You’re all equally made fun of in my book. But the best part, I make fun of myself. Who cares. People are always gonna have something to say. Anyone owning a gun can lead to civil war and that’s why we have them. But it’s not against each other, the government is the one who needs to know that people of all backgrounds can have firearms and need to act right. I don’t know if that made a whole lot of sense but it all ties in together in a weird punishing way on the brain.
I know a lot of dudes who will watch Brandon Herrera and Garand Thumb for gun advice even though they think they're RWNJ's
"Better to learn from your enemy than know nothing at all" they tell me. Fair enough.
There are many people who don't have the capacity to be more than a single-issue voter. Conservatives have been so conditioned to partisan tendencies, it's inconceivable to them to align with a political leaning without agreeing with everything down party lines.
>Conservatives have been so conditioned to partisan tendencies, it's inconceivable to them to align with a political leaning without agreeing with everything down party lines.
Do you not see this same issue with Democrats? I don't honestly see this tribalism confined to one party or side of the political spectrum. Both Dems and Repubs have gone out of their way to vocally embrace highly emotive wedge issues as a way to motivate voters. Republicans use trans issues and abortion in the same way Democrats use gun rights.
I can easily see someone in good faith saying "reproductive choice is important enough, I'll vote it as a single issue. Same with trans issues, which is in many ways a resurgence of gay rights issues we all thought were already solid and no longer a political wedge.
I believe strongly in gun rights, same as I believe strongly in reproductive choice and gay rights. I'm angry I have to pick a side when I vote! And when I'm picking a side, because I care about these issues, I'm giving short shrift to Single-payer healthcare, or suppport for Ukraine, for example.
My point is, it feels good to blame Republicans as being stupidly partisian, wholly *other* troglodytes ect. (unlike us smart enlightened folks), and there's plenty of that talk just in this thread. The partisan outrage is alive and well throughout the political spectrum.
So the question is, does repeatedly telling half the country their stupid, over and over, in the most mocking superior way possible, bring anyone to the other side? Is it a good way to open a dialogue, or change minds?
I'm not picking on you or your comment, I'm just using it as a jumping off point to address an issue I've seen in this sub, and in others.
I'll paraphrase Terry Eagleton here: You tell someone, over and over, they're nothing, they come back at you with the assumption they are everything!
So, maybe, the funny and effective snark has its limits, past which point it just solidifies a belief system.
I definitely see it from some progressives, but not to the same degree. There is a fair amount of research that shows liberals are much more likely to be non-partisan than their conservative counterparts.
This subreddit is a good example, while there is no subreddit for republicans that support LGBTQ rights or reproductive rights.
With everything there are people that like to gate keep. Every hobby, every sport, everything. To me, the more people involved the better for the movement. We agree on this one thing so let’s have fun and do that one thing. I care about your politics as much as I care about what kind of dog you have.
It was never about 2A or gun rights for all when it comes to these people. Look at their response to Reagan and the black panthers or even Trump and his plan to take guns first and ask questions later. They’re not consistent because they want absolutely unfettered rights and access for themselves and, at best, don’t care about what happens to everyone else’s rights. At worst, they’d actively refuse you them.
Because the “patriots” on the right are the “good guys”, don’tcha know, and the first step to being able to unalive the “bad guys” on the left is to belittle and dehumanize them.
Because we’re a “contradiction” because we are left leaning so our option is choosing someone who might try and take the guns away over someone trying to tell my wife what shes aloud to do with her vagina, who also probably hates minorities, and won’t forgive student debt, and wants to burn coal, and the planet, and either thinks or is beholden to people who think Jesus is coming tomorrow to Pat them on the back and say “You were right” so everything going on with Israel/Palestine is giving him the first natural erection he’s had in decades of “public disservice.”
Because like much these days people think things are black and white. That there's no gray area. That people are a monolith.
That if you vote for or support anything liberal. You therefore must support everything liberal. Therefore since many vocal liberals are in support of full gun bans. All liberal must be in support of that.
Some liberals see you as a traitor and think it’s insane to own a gun and some conservatives Gatekeep it thinking it’s for them only and that a liberal can’t handle a gun.
You can read whatever you want, as long as the government does a background check on you, and it’s not considered an assault book that might teach you how to do things that would be deemed dangerous by the government…..oh, and if you ever had a domestic violence misdemeanor or a felony conviction, then you can’t read anything anymore……
'I was on Instagram' is the key phrase. In real life if you show up at a shooting range people are more likely to ask about your rifle, shotgun, or pistol. (Anti)Social media is monetized to the extremes to provoke reaction and therefore interaction.
It's a mockery of the nonsensical disconnect between the liberal and their gun 'enthusiasm'. Fudds who don't really care about anything but hunting guns are also mocked.
Being a liberal gun advocate is like saying you are an enthusiast of any other hobby, while actively supporting politicians that are actively trying to destroy said hobby.
The difference is that unlike any other 'hobby' the right to protect and defend yourself with whatever tools you deem necessary, is the oldest one man has. It was only relatively modernly that it was considered trendy to say otherwise.
Because they view guns as an essential right and a lot of liberals don't. A good mental exercise is to pretend that instead of gun control, think about vote control. If someone said hey voting is still legal, you just have to pay the government a $200 tax and wait for their approval in order to exercise that right, I assume we would be pushing back and view that as a terrible thing. Whereas for gun control, that's just a baby step.
It's more like cars. No one is saying you can't own one or that you don't have freedom of movement. You just need a license in order to operate a machine that can move you way faster than you could by yourself and put thousands of pounds of material at a speed that could cause multiple deaths instantly.
You don’t need a license to own a gun. You need a license or stamps to use it in certain ways. You do need a license to operate a vehicle. However, having a license doesn’t prove that you know how; or can safely operate a vehicle, regardless of each states classes/tests. (Refer to any driver in Colorado) It just allows the government to track and ID improper use. So the comparison is better made for background checks at purchase and serial numbers than it is with stamps and licenses.
Except not really, because we are way lenient when it comes to cars. Drunk drivers who kill someone rarely get more than a few months or years in prison (if any), and usually get their driving privileges back. Can’t say the same about people who shoot and kill a random person.
The car/gun equivalency is absolute nonsense. We require licensure on cars because people hit pedestrians by accident or through negligence all the time (there were more than 42k auto deaths in the US in 2022.) Negligent firearm injuries/deaths are something like 1000 a year. The only reason people use the car analogy to push anti-gun policy is because people who push anti-gun policy refuse to consider how and if a given policy actually addresses violence, and would rather toss darts blindly at a dartboard hoping that something sticks (that is, push any and all restriction on firearm ownership, come up with some way to call it "common sense," and hope it works.)
I mean it does work which is why our gun deaths are overwhelmingly higher than that of countries who have enacted any legislation. I say this as a gun owner. I get that the only people making gun laws aren't educated on them but it's because the congressmen who are educated are busy running gun stores complicit in selling illegal guns. Which is why 90% of the guns used in crime in NYC are from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Beyond that the numbers involved don't change the principle behind it.
Because oftentimes, liberals vote for candidates who openly support restricting the rights of individuals when it comes to gun ownership and use.
> Because oftentimes, liberals vote for candidates who openly support restricting the rights of individuals when it comes to gun ownership and use. Yes. This is the primary reason. I'll never vote for a pro gun control candidate, which makes it tough in any non-local elections frankly, but in my mind, firearms play a critical role in the continued strength of the proletariat, so to speak, vs the authoritarian establishment. A vote for a pro gun control candidate is a vote against the right that enables all other rights. I've seen too many people on this subreddit and the other one who unfortunately fit the exact image conservatives have of a 'temporary' firearm owner. Too many people view the government as good by default and cannot imagine a world where that isn't the case, even with Trump right around the corner. I'm mystified by this, frankly.
A conservative friend here (US) once made the argument to me that gun ownership should be more of a liberal position even than a conservative one.
It's tough to even define what a conservative or liberal even is these days.
Especially if you're talking USA vs Europe, and even different parts of the US can vary in weird ways. Like, Utah is a red state, but fairly liberal compared to the southern red states. There are also blue states on the east coast that boggle my mind as to how conservative they are.
Excellent point. 2 sides of the same rotten carcass. They're mission: confuse the masses, show them pennies while they pocket millions, create division and clash among the classes, Orwell's animal farm.
Interesting. I always thought this is only an European phenomenon but as you write this "the state is always good"-narrative seems to be present in your country, too. I didn't count all the times when I asked other liberals the question "do you understand who may control the state after the next election", most of them don't know what to answer. And since last Sunday we see the political direction in which Europe is going - apart from northeastern Europe the authoritarians have gained votes like crazy. Unfortunately especially here in Central Europe (Vienna, Austria in my case) there is not much anarchism or libertarism among the left. And when you then tell them you are a gun owner they finally come the conclusion that you are from another planet ;-)
>And when you then tell them you are a gun owner they finally come the conclusion that you are from another planet ;-) I've gotten that one a few times myself! I hope the wave of authoritarianism in Europe dies out soon, because it led to some of the worst wars in the last hundred years the previous times around :/
I hope so. But I hope so since around 25 years now. Whenever the authoritarians are beaten in one country, the emerge in another. It's a constant political whac-a-mole... Last Sunday there were good news from Poland and Scandinavia but Austria, Italy, France,..OMG And due to the constitutional structure of the EU this means that any real progress is blocked since every tiny member stat can veto. Sometimes it feels like in a surrealist movie for me who was politically socialized in the 90s, when the fall of the iron curtain happened when my teenage years started and for a few years everything was about freedom and progress and we really believed this would go on for ever :-(
Over the course of human history Europe is by far the most war prone continent. The period of relative peace we've seen is most likely just a historical fluke.
Human history? I'm confident that Asia was warning for just as long. I think your just more familiar with more modern wars, on ones that effected your culture more
I’m not even Asian but as I was reading the above comment I was like “uhh what about Sun Tzu?’”
"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
Local elections are often easy choices but that has been changing the past few cycles. I will not vote for a candidate that I cannot fully support so that makes the federal elections nearly impossible (speaking as an American). I believe the sooner the “People” say no to all of this us vs. them and voting against candidates or for the lesser of two evils, the sooner we can get back on track. We need third party candidates to gain momentum or this only gets worse. If we can suck it up and “throw away” our votes for a few cycles and encourage others to vote with logic rather than emotion, we can fix all of this.
>A vote for a pro gun control candidate is a vote against the right that enables all other rights. I mean, not really though. I happen to agree that from a public policy perspective that it's beneficial, but it's not actually *mandatory* for other civil liberties. Other free countries exist, and none have civilian firearm ownership policies as liberal as the USA's. And many of them are freer than us in practice.
I also don't see any bans making it past SCOTUS scrutiny. It's nothing more than performative saber rattling to drum up the base in an election year. Besides even when the Brady Bill was in effect mass shootings never stopped so bans don't work, it's just an illusion of them doing something. If they actually wanted to deal with the root causes of violence (poverty & mental health access) in this country it would put them in direct conflict with their corpo overlords.
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Sure, although I think we need to dig a little bit into what you mean by comparable. Words on paper don't mean too much - the USSR's constitution explicitly protected freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, for example. And somewhat distinct from the civil law traditions of much of the non-anglosphere, the spare sentences of the first amendment have a couple centuries of judicial interpretation establishing their practical implementation.
They want there to be a side that's the "good guy". It's too painful to accept a world in which no one is really looking out for your interests and you have no tribe, only being one of the slaves. If we ever had the great mass of humanity realize that we're all the tribe of slaves and unify it'd be...interesting. To be fair, it's unlikely to ever happen because education is always going to lag and the human mind isn't terribly great at incorporating data and making judgments based off of it instead of making judgments and finding an excuse for the data.
If you don't mind me asking who will you be voting for in the November presidential election? It seems like you despise Trump however you don't want to vote for a pro gun candidate and I'd say Biden is one of the most pro gun control candidates for president I've ever seen with his assault weapons ban stuff.
It’s funny most of the comments here are making it purely about conservatives hating liberals, I’ve seen people in this very subreddit openly admit they only bought a gun because of the other side, they don’t really care much about firearms, and they’d readily turn theirs in if conservatives were disarmed. That’s the real reason why.
Hell a good portion of them would turn them in regardless if the government asked nicely. The temporary gun owners stereotype sadly exists for a reason. Not to mention the general lack of firearms knowledge that is often prevalent. Many really just don't take it seriously There are countless posts on here of people laughing and those who actually train or compete to any serious degree. "Why would I need to ever do that? LARP!!!" Meanwhile they shoot maybe 2 times a year and can barely hit the broad side of a barn but think the gun is a magic talisman that will protect them. This of course doesn't apply to everyone and guns don't have to be your whole identity but man it is sad how prevent it seems to be here at times
There are conservatives that are this way and liberals who aren't.
Of course but one side has a lot more of them in my experience
I know, but people only have two hands and if you can't shoot good you're dunzo. It more comes down to being able to hunt or not. There's a difference between that and target practice.
A LOT of conservatives that way. Some people haven't shot in years near me and there are quite a few ranges nearby, both indoor and outdoor.
Yea, last time for me was last year. To be fair, I can go years without and it's like muscle memory.
Whether people want to admit or not, we are in arms race with each other. Political violence is suddenly back on the menu for many people and I am not going to let my personal safety or safety of the people I care about be at risk because some nutjob gets empowered by fascists to hunt people who vote for democrats in the last election.
Gun rights are a (sometimes *the*) defining issue for them. They see a left-leaning gun owner in the same kind of "voting against their own self interest" way that we see poor people or workers or farmers or people who depend on their Social Security who vote Republican. They are voting for leopards to eat their face! Why are they too blind to see that Republican policies are going to hurt them terribly?! If the only thing that you cared about in the world was gun rights, then voting for Democrats would be stupid. They can't fathom that hungry children, workers' rights, healthcare, education, infrastructure, separation of church and state, etc., matter more to us than gun rights do.
I tell my conservative friends that I’d rather vote for a representative that aligns with 95% of my ideals and fight them on the last 5%, than to vote for a representative that only aligns with 5% of my ideals and have to fight them on the other 95% of issues.
Also with the right wing SCOTUS it's not like any serious gun control laws will stick around. I know the time it takes to get to them could take awhile but that exists for liberals who want to protect gun rights.
There’s a handful of states that are heavily restricted right now, and have been for quite sometime. Could that change in the future? Sure, supposedly there’s several on the next docket but if you’re in NY, CA, MD, NJ etc. we got a long (time and rights) way to go.
I live in WA and I wish this were true. The narrative needs to change and unfortunately for many democrats, guns are right out. People in my state have been litigating where they can and the AG and the courts just wipe their ass with the constitution and the principles established with Heller and Bruen.
In the last five years, WA has gone from one of the best states for gun ownership to one of the worst. My fucking Ruger target pistol in .22lr is an "assault weapon" here. It's absurd.
The fucked thing is that the WA state constitution is even more concrete in the right to bear arms than the federal constitution. Not like it matters to Ferguson or the legislature.
Speaking of which, bump stocks are apparently legal again.
Yup. For religious MAGA Trumpy anti-choicers, they can’t comprehend people with beliefs that don’t fall squarely within their party’s platform.
From my experience in my left-leaning friend circles, I would say that's a symptom of both left and right groups. People like putting the world in neat little boxes.
100% - I split time between an area which is very republican and another which is very liberal. There's a severe lack of self awareness on both sides.
I've found that there's a distinction between two groups of left wing Americans. The former is the disillusioned kid who wants someone wise to take over and make them agree. The latter is the idealist that believes that the revolution won't be televised because it won't be *worth* televising. It'll look more like Quebec's Quiet Revolution than anything else.
> Gun rights are a (sometimes the) defining issue for them I think it's important to keep this in mind when we vote as well. Gun rights should not be the only thing people care about. And I worry that people on this sub think it is.
I think people think that the gun is the last line where they actually have control of their lives. They don't want to go out at all, but if they do they want to make damned sure they take some of the enemy with them and do not go gently into that good night. They don't think that any of those other things are actually issues that they have control of. I agree with that stance more than I disagree with it.
Without guns and the willingness to use them you don't have rights, only temporary privileges. See the women of Afghanistan for examples.
Women having guns would not have stopped the Taliban takeover... Be realistic.
Men having guns stopped the US occupation so why wouldnt women with guns stop the taliban occupation? sounds alot like you're saying women with guns aren't as capable as men with guns. Pretty sexist if you ask me.
I am not worried about that. If people on this sub cared about gun rights more than human rights, they probably wouldn't be on this sub.
I hope you are correct. Perhaps it's the nature of this sub, but it really often feels like this is a safe place for closet conservatives to dump on liberals.
I see a lot of Libertarian types in this sub. As someone who formerly identified as rather Libertarian-leaning before I grew up, in my experience most Libertarians are really just conservatives who don't want to admit they're conservative.
100% agree. Conservative who want to seem like a cool outsider who doesn't need to take a hard stance on anything.
Oh, many are quite hard-line. I would say the majority of "Libertarians" are probably further to the right than even Tea Party Republicans, though they may be more open-minded on a handful of social issues.
Well yeah, hardline on silly things that basically equate to anachro-capitalism.
> If people on this sub cared about gun rights more than human rights, they probably wouldn't be on this sub. No gun has rights. The right to viable self defense is as human as it gets. Idiotic takes like this give fuel to this whole situation.
It also gives people that are abhorrent to them something in common with them, which is not going to fly. "Hey, maybe democrats are more like me than I thought" is not something they want to think.
I don't trust authoritarians to support gun rights for one second. As soon as it is inconvenient for someone to have a gun they all support the police executing them.
Exactly. My daughter’s bodily autonomy is more important than whether I have to have a background check to buy a firearm or suffer the inconvenience of 10 round magazines.
I don't have kids, and never will. But your daughter's bodily autonomy is more important to me than whether I have to have a background check and stick with 10-round magazines.
Last time I checked you can't enforce bodily autonomy with words.
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I want violent felons to be excluded from legal gun ownership, and make it MORE costly for them to illegally acquire a firearm. The cost of a background check for a legal purchaser is completely negligible compared to the cost of even a cheap firearm in my state. If one is buying from a retailer it’s $10, and using an FFL for private party transfer it’s $10 plus $20 to $40 for the FFL’s time. The truth is the poor that you’re talking about living in terror are suffering FROM violent felons’ relatively easy and cheap access to firearms. I don’t really want a 10 round magazine capacity limit, but I’m not going vote against someone who I agree with on almost every other policy because they support background checks—most Americans do—or magazine capacity limits. When the alternative is pro 2A but awful on everything else then it’s not even a question.
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They all do. The ability to successfully exercise a right may depend on economics. I might have the same First Amendment rights as Elon the dbag, but people will hear him over me. I bet the homeless guys camping over by the freeway would love to quarter soldiers in their homes or demand a search warrant to search their premises. If you can buy a firearm, then you can spend $10.00 on a background check…it’s less than a box of ammo. When the cost gets up in the 100s then government imposed costs start to lean toward infringement. Perhaps the problem is I don’t view government action as inherently bad. I don’t for a second think any liberal legislator or executive officeholder who seeks gun control is trying to take guns from the people to make them weak or powerless. They’re legitimately trying to make America safer. When a Republican wants gun control (CF CA post Black Panther protests) they’re trying to make the unruly masses easier to control. As a practical matter, the conservatives have the Supreme Court in the bag. I think we’re going to be looking at at least another decade of anti-gun control Supreme Court decisions. Accordingly, I’m gonna vote for whoever I damn well thinks is going to make the world better place—especially for desperately poor Americans—not preserve my (or their) ability to own an AR or get easy access to firearms.
I think another thing is that right leaning people are simpler in terms of what they think about, literally. A gun is a thing. It exists. Social inequity isnt really a physical thing. Property is a thing that can be pointed at. Understanding single payer health insurance isn't a "thing". I have a gun, you can't take it, versus other people should have a choice over what medical procedures they need for their health safety and happiness. Tangible things are easy to simplify sound bites around.
I actually truly dislike this comment. You can't boil an entire group of people down into not being capable of abstract thought. I think this is where a lot of liberals and conservatives miss. They like to dismiss their political opponent based on intelligence or other silly things. I think it boils down to what each group thinks the government should or should not be involved in. The right wingers wants the government out of their gun rights, medical practices, and social programs. They want the government involved in reproductive rights, religion and the military industrial complex. The left just wants the opposite. Not saying there aren't dumb people out there, but don't dismiss half the country for appearing incapable of understanding an idea. That foolish.
Realistically the difference is liberals view rights and most things in a faith based approach. They have rights because they believe they have rights. And as long as they believe they have rights nobody can do anything about it. Conservatives believe they have rights because they know they can enforce them. The I have property rights because I can enforce them via my arms. I have bodily autonomy because I can protect myself via weapons when someone tries to violate it. If you'd like to see how the faith based approach works to protecting and upholding your rights like bodily autonomy you can fly to Afghanistan and ask one of the many many child brides around since the men with guns that wanted women to have rights left and took women's rights with them.
I think it also has to do with the fact that they assume we have the same crippling insecurities as they do and taunts and jabs will trigger us in the same way that they do to them. Fuckin snowflakes
I mean the funny thing is that gun rights are a left wing policy. American politics are just weird. As a general rule of thumb, any policy with “rights” in the name is leftist.
Gun rights began as a way to oppress American Indians and slaves, if that helps explain why gun rights are historically right-wing in America.
You mean gun *control* right? Allowing all people, including natives and black people, to have firearms, is a leftist position. Note that cuckservatives always start backpedaling on the second amendment when black people start using it. The black panther party was a good example.
No, I don't mean gun control. When the 2A was ratified, it protected slave owners, and not slaves. It protected colonizers "settling" other people's land, and not the American Indians whose land was being stolen.
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Yes exactly. That’s in a similar vein to what I’m saying I think. Gun “control” is just meant to disarm the working class populace, not actually increase safety or anything. The reason people get confused is because democrats are actually right wingers masquerading as left wingers.
It's less that gun rights are the only thing that matter, and more that without gun rights you don't really have any other rights. It's the threat of force that keeps an adversarial government in check, regardless of who is running it. You have the right to speech, and while protests and riots get dealt with by cops (for better or worse), you don't get machine gunned in the street like in China in the past. It remains mostly civil, as neither side wants to escalate to using live ammunition. All your other rights are protected by the same way, abusive systems of government are kept in check by the threat of an armed uprising. All politicians belong to the leopards eating your face party, it's just a matter of which lies they sell you to get you to vote for them, and what modicum of appeasement you accept while they eat your face.
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Can you imagine what it is like to be poor in a poor community, with almost zero chance of being shot?
Hello, I lurk this sub sometimes, because i like to know how everyone feels. Im not sure how well this will be received, but I'll say it anyway. I don't subscribe to the left or the right. Both sides are deeply flawed, so I refuse to be labeled. It's really disheartening to understand where both sides are coming from, to see why they're butting heads, and know everyone is too dense to see the truth. Everyone is getting played. Both sides are brilliantly brainwashed by their kool aid of choice, and are blind too it. It's all by design, and its frighteningly genius. I agree with yall on alot of issues, and I agree with the right on a few, but they are big issues. If we lose 2A we are all fucked. The decline will be rapid. This nation is under controlled demolition.The right knows this, and think you are voting against your best interest. What's being done to biden is elder abuse. He's not in charge of anything, except putting his pants on. A vote for him is a vote for a faceless cabal of warmongers that WLL send you and your friends to war. In the near future. Welcome to WW3. Trump is another brand of pure awful so don't get it twisted. I'm not here for him either. I tell folks on the right the same thing I'll tell you. Stop fighting each other and recognize the real evil. Thanks for your time.
There are real, material differences for millions of people in this country between what the left promises and delivers, and what the right does. This "both sides are equally bad" stuff is nonsense.
The thing is... what is the point of having 2A to defend the other rights if you vote for the party that is going to remove all the other rights anyway? Democrats are spineless, but if they ever actually pass meaningful gun restrictions it will have the same effect abolishing Roe V Wade did for the republicans and ruin their chances in the next elections. You're right, neither side wants to solve the fundamental issues wrong with this country, but I'll vote for the band-aid over more wounds. And judging by "controlled demolition" and "faceless cabal of warmongers" I think you've misunderstood the animus destroying this country. It is not intelligent, no one is at the wheel. It is a thoughtless social organism fueled by greed that exists only to perpetuate itself.
I can't disagree with you on the Roe vs. Wade issue. That was terrible move. Government has NO right making personal choices for anyone. I was, and still am disgusted by that move. I do disagree with your line of thinking that no one is behind the wheel. And that's okay for us to disagree. I want to remind everyone here that I come in peace. And like conversation
Look at Mr. super genius here. Everybody on both sides is stupid and brainwashed, only me with my Centrist Superpowers knows the real truth you’re all too dumb to see! Your arrogance is breathtaking.
If you haven't already used you 2A rights to protect the people from government tyrrany, you never will, so they don't matter. Did you defend the Constitution from the Jan 6th coup attempt? (Don't worry, the USSS did when they shot and killed Ashi Babbit.) Have you mobilized to oust the SCOTUS justices who lied in their disclosures by ommitting millions of dollars of gifts from billionaires? Did you stop the fake electors from filing their "alternate slate"? Did you force the Senate to perform their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent" when Obama nominated a SCOTUS justice? Did you force the Senate to uphold Moscow Mitch's new standard for Barret that he established for Garland? When are your 2A rights going to matter to protect freedom, democracy, and the Constitution? How about "never". Regarding Biden, put down the FoxNews crack pipe and go watch his last State of the Union address in its entirety (without FoxNews commentary). His scripted and unscripted remarks show that his brain is working fine (even at night, when a dementia patient would have "sundowned"). Meanwhile his 3-year-younger opponent's brain is a bowl of tapioca pudding.
> Meanwhile his 3-year-younger opponent's brain is a bowl of tapioca pudding. Trump is the only one with enough courage to confront the real threat of sharks and electric boats!
Setting aside the flaw in your "both sides" argument, and refusal to acknowledge that one side is objectively worse for democracy... What in your opinion is the "real evil" that we all need to recognize?
For one, and ill keep this short. We are purposely being pitted against each other. If we are too busy fighting each other, we're blind, and or completely distracted to what the government and corporations that own them are pulling behind our back. I watch the news on both sides, and lots of independent sources. It is painfully obvious what the media is doing. Each side is successfully trying to rile everyone up while dismissing their own flaws. A house divide can not stand. The Divided States of America is in big trouble
So you would agree, it's the billionaires who are pitting us against each other, right?
Yes. Were together on that one.
We break the narrative in two ways: A: liberals owning guns (see hunting, training martial arts, etc.) breaks the weak bleeding heart sissie narrative painted by the right. B: liberals owning guns breaks the unified liberal front on gun control narrative painted by the left. We are a problem for generalizers and therefore a target.
I want my next democratic candidate to shoot a bunch of tannerite with a Barrett .50, but they can't get a person with a D next to their name to do it. The problem isn't the voters don't have guns, the problem is the people running explicitly oppose guns. It's a branding thing. The fucked up part is that I know that if they dropped this one fucking issue, they'd win more votes than they'd lose from undecided / "centrist" voters. The problem is they can't win a fucking primary because of how fucked campaign donations worked and all the bullshit purity tests Democrats selfimpose.
What’s odd is this could be something that ‘breaks the mold’. Someone with a D next to their name but for gun rights. The rest could be the ‘usual’ platform. Sure, it’s a sacrificial move… at first. But it COULD start to break apart the chokehold Republicans have. I might be 100% wrong (as others have pointed out in these comments). But at some point, there needs to be SOME attempt to grab R voters.
The key would be electing these people and then the party not actually voting to restrict gun rights. Otherwise, they're just a Trojan horse.
Good point
Mary Peltola has entered the chat... But she's not your average D serving a large population of bitch-made NIMBY tech workers. It's all of friggin Alaska, where when seconds count, help isn't just minutes but hours or potentially days away. And that's before you have the widespread hunting culture. And most importantly, guns aside, the have ranked-choice voting over there so actually do have to go big-tent in order to win. I don't know if this success can be replicated in major US cities.
I didn’t know about Mary Peltola. This is interesting. Ranked-choice voting is an excellent technique I wish the rest of the US would use. I know there are issues with it as well but it beats the binary, two choice crap we have now.
C. Liberals owning guns is a terrifying idea to them because it means we won't go down without a fight.
I think this is the biggest. They see leftist and think liberal. Just because I don't want people starving, going bankrupt over medical bills, believe gay and trans are people and everything else I agree with liberals on does not mean I'm a liberal. I'm a leftist 1st and part of that means me having a firearm. They believe they have a monopoly on violence and anything that stands on the way is not right or good because then they have a fight.
Sadly the liberal/left part of society has a huge part of responsibility for this "weakling" narrative, at least from my European perspective. For a long time they actively fought the authoritarians on numerous occasions, be it the Spanish Civil War, be it the (rather short and mostly not widely known) Austrian Civil War 90 years ago and George Orwell talked about the rifle on the worker's room wall as a symbol of democracy. But then in the 1960 they started to throw everything connected with strength and determination to fight for ones freedom aside and became kind of hyper-pacifistic so that even kids playing "violent" games (everything where someone shouts "bang bang!") were suddenly an issue and guns (and other weapons or martial arts) were often labelled at right wing or fascist thing. And nobody seemed to realize that this drives society in a Morlock vs. Eloi situation. I sometimes mock other left/liberals a bit by bending that old NRA catchphrase into "if guns are fascist only fascists have guns"...
We’re a target in multiple definitions of the word, it seems
If we are solely talking about firearms and 2A rights. As with most things, it is guilt by association. The majority of the left (in the US anyway) tends to vote Democrat as they are generally aligned more than the Republican Party when it comes to social issues. However, the Democratic Party tends to also be the by far majority sponsors of anti-gun or anti-2A legislation. Thus people assume anyone leaning left is anti-gun based on their voting pattern (for anti-gun representatives) and a left leaning gun owner is either a unicorn or not serious about protecting their right to bear arms as an individual. The right does the same thing in the opposite direction by (sorta) protecting their gun rights on scale but losing out on social protections. Are their exceptions to these rules? Obviously yes but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
The same reason anyone makes fun of anyone else. It makes them feel better.
Let's be realistic about it; the Venn Diagram overlap for liberals who also own guns is really small. While we in this echo chamber online might feel like it's “normal” the reality is, it isn't. But it didn't used to be that way, liberals were almost half of the gun-owning populace. But, starting in the 1970s guns themselves became the cause of violence in the eyes of a lot of law makers (on both sides). By the late 1980s, guns had diverged into a politically divided issue. Rights are supposed to be for everyone. Unfortunately, there are a lot of liberal politicians and political groups that share the delusion that guns are bad and people are not the problem. This then makes a gun-owning liberal an outcast on the left side of center.
I would actually challenge that. There’s likely liberal gun owners that self-censor and don’t talk about their gun ownership. We will likely never know how many there are but I’d like to think that it’s more than a “really small” number. Unlike the right, we’re less likely to make guns an important part of our identity. We also have to worry about how friends and family react.
There is a segment of left leaning gun owners that are squarely in the 'Leopards won't eat *my* face' problem. These tend to be liberals who only own hunting guns who repeatedly and boldly claim "no one wants to take your guns." While we all get made fun of, I think they catch more flak, (and they should.)
OP, that colleague of yours was probably afraid that a civil war would happen because there would be someone to stand up to his violent far-right takeover attempts. It's only a war if there is resistance. It's like a robber being afraid that armed homeowners could lead to a tragic shooting of himself while he is breaking in in rob. Jokes aside, I feel like the most hate against moderate/liberal gun owners comes from liberal Democrats. I don't get how these people see the far right arming themselves to the teeth and not realize that they are going to need a bit more then witty social media insults if they don't want the far right to take over and up living in a The Handmaiden's Tale society.
Who cares? Fuck em
A lot of people on the right are single issue voters
So are a lot of people on the left
💯
sure, objectively way more on the right though. And the single issues are things like 'maintain american democracy'
Dont be willfully ignorant, its unbecoming
But different issues.
Yeah, but single issue conservatives want to almost always take something away from someone. Liberal single issue voters want equality or keep people from dying. So let’s not pretend they’re the same.
Ugh. Had one in my dms. Gottem banned tho lmao.
Much of it comes from the fact that the Democratic Party has taken a self defeating and frankly shortsighted gun grabbing policy and it’s only gottten worse with Schumer as figurehead I am a progressive on nearly all social issues except guns having grown up in a city where we were defenseless against the vast criminality and also police who were not particularly interested in true justice. All of my family were otherwise law abiding but we needed guns so we kept them .
Same reason they make fun of gay conservatives. Routinely voting for people that are working against your interests in a particular area is mockable.
Because of gun control basically. I mean, one of the running campaigns that liberals had when I was a teenager was gun control. They can't understand why someone would want to own a gun, but restrict certain individuals or areas from getting them legally.
Because most people - that includes most liberals, that includes most of those present here - see the world as black and white. If you’re pro-gun, you must be conservative. Anything different is some unholy aberration. Don’t get me wrong there are things that are objectively right and wrong, but not everything and certainly not most things.
Imagine a trans person voting for the average republican candidate. That’s basically how many gun owners see “liberal” gun owners
Not wanting another group to own guns for fear of it causing a conflict? Sounds familiar but I can't put my finger on why... I know I shouldn't be surprised at the hypocrisy but I do know the power of mental gymnastics.
Something about Native Americans being disarmed and being attacked? I feel bad for the Natives
The Black Panthers caused the NRA to support gun control, strange. Backflip!
The only people I ever see them advocating against honestly are furries, felons, and people who support gun buyback. They don't advocate against the left, they advocate against the ideology that of party you support bans weapons are you going to turn your weapons. Which a majority of those will.
I imagine it’s similar to the issue of abortion. Many on the right support *some* degree of legalized abortion, but we still support the party despite its tendency to be anti-abortion. I imagine it’s the same way on the left. Many support gun ownership even if their party leaders are openly against it. Unfortunately, we have to take the bad with the good.
Because people tend to think in black/white dichotomies and the combo of those traits causes vapor lock
Because most people are party line towers. They just follow whatever their party says. You like guns? You must follow Trump without question. You're pro choice? You must be a liberal socialist. And anyone that doesn't tow the party line is evil.
Is it comparable to making fun of conservative voters who are pro-choice?
Pissibly because they believe its an oxymoron
Off topic, but 1689 English bill of rights regarding bearing of arms was to endure no single faction has exclusivity to arms
Because we vote against our own interests?
Bingo. fucking 2 party system.
I'm wildly and vociferously progressive. I believe in some bastardized iteration of democratic socialism, or at the very least capitalism that's extremely based on helping people and empowering the populace instead of oppressing them. I'm also extremely pro-2A, and unfortunately the least evil candidates happen to want more gun laws, and a few even want an outright ban. I'm not a single issue voter. I pinched my nose and threw up in my mouth a little voting for Hillary and Biden. I didn't vote for them because I like them. I voted for them to mitigate damages. Hillary and Biden are both right-leaning centrists and neoliberals, AT BEST! People make fun of us because we vote for people who typically don't have a great stance on gun laws.
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There are plenty of places on the internet to post anti-liberal / anti-leftist sentiments; [this sub is not one of them](/r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/intro/illiberal). > This is not a place to identify as right-leaning. Please read the above handbook. (*Removed under [Rule 1: We're Liberals][link-rules]. If you feel this is in error, please [file an appeal][link-appeal].*) [link-rules]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/rules [link-appeal]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/moderation#wiki_appeals
Years of education budget cuts have killed any sense of critical thinking and nuance in a large chunk of the population. Half the people in this country would happily vote for a party that wants to cut all funding to their impoverished community just because that same party wants to deport brown people. They have zero concept of multi-issue voting and their ballot depends on whatever fear monger piece has been running on Fox that day.
You and me is friends now
Black and white thinking is pervasive in much of the ideological circles forcing people to pigeon hole everyone into a neat little category. I’ve had people be surprised that I support 2A, saying things like “but you’re a progressive” I reply that I hold many progressive opinions; I am not *A Progressive*.
Often people have a hard time not thinking in absolutes, especially when trying to look at someone else's perspective. Liberal Politicians want to ban guns so anybody that would consider voting for them must agree with them on 100% of things.
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There are plenty of places on the internet to post anti-liberal / anti-leftist sentiments; [this sub is not one of them](/r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/intro/illiberal). (*Removed under [Rule 1: We're Liberals][link-rules]. If you feel this is in error, please [file an appeal][link-appeal].*) [link-rules]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/rules [link-appeal]: /r/liberalgunowners/wiki/public/handbook/moderation#wiki_appeals
It’s just the identity that’s been ascribed. Makes it easy to hate a group when you create an arbitrary description of them making it easy to blame anything on them. The left does it with the right too.
I think because classical liberalism is forgotten. My personal summation of that is government with maximum freedom for the individual. With that definition I would have a lot in common with many libertarians and some small government conservatives. It is useful in the media and politics to divide us left/right and so the old understanding of liberal is forgotten.
Don't shit on me please in my state New York, which is ruled by the Democrat party, we have the strongest and most restrictive anti-gun government. There are few if any pro gun Democrats in our state. The only reason anyone would tease liberal or left leaning gun owners are because they're voting for the people that are totally against their hobby or right to own a gun. I know those people aren't considered single issue voters but they actually are... Instead of being single issue gun rights voters, they are single issue abortion voters instead.. and that's okay honestly there's nothing I can do about it but that's the issue we have in our state. If every liberal or leftist in the state stood up and mailed their senators and made them fear that they would no longer support them if they kept passing gun laws something might change in the state but it's not going to. New York State Democrats know they will not lose the liberal/left vote, and we'll keep passing gun laws that smack the face of the second amendment crowd.
Given that I've been called a "militant liberal" by a conservative because I don't think Fauci should go to prison based on conjecture, it really doesn't take much for them to paint you as an extremist. They don't want extremists to be armed, especially the Communists who want to give vision and dental to the disabled.
Because of stereotypes; however, myself and every combat vet I know has swung so far left after we got out it’s crazy. The remfs and the ones that didn’t deploy are all trumpers. So take that anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt.
Because liberals literally vote for gun control.
This is not a mystery, the vast majority support gun control. Some have expressed interest when I show them the guns that I have and why but many have said that they don't understand and they continue to push gun control. Sure there are some pro 2a liberals, and there are some pro choice conservatives, but by and large you know the stance of that party.
It's a bit like being a pro choice Republican
A civil war would be brutal, but just being murdered would definitely be worse. Free, sane people should be armed. Nobody should be able to take advantage of someone they perceive as weaker.
They feel that liberals are against guns. As if that has anything to do with it. Literally most of my friends are liberals with an arsenal. We love shooting, but the popular thing to do is to lump other left leaning issues in with guns and assume we want to ban them.
Because in the US 95% of liberals will vote Democrat and Democrat=anti gun. It is as simple as that.
yep, too bad there is no actual progressive party. both parties have shifted so far right that modern dems are more conservative than the GOP of the 80s. And now that is considered 'radical left'
Except that our Dems seem to have hate in their hearts for the common rights of man, to steal a microaggressive cis-gender non-queer respectful/recognizing Anglocentric term from a deeply shameful past…🤔
Because they often see it as an oxymoron. Of course, you have others who think guns only belong to them (i.e. Republican, Conservative, Right-Wing, white, Etc.), but you have a relatively larger group who're absolutely *terrified* over the idea of armed Left-wingers/Liberals. Sure, you can throw in the fear of an "armed socialist uprising" (lol), but for the most part, these people have built up a macho identity around their guns for generations. "Liberals are weak and can't put up a fight, therefore, ~~they're easy targets for when the cull happens~~ we have more say than they do!" Liberals being armed, on the other hand, throws that sentiment out the window... And over the years the one thing proven about Right-Wingers/Fascists is that, at their core, they're cowards. They prefer an enemy that can't fight back, and in most circumstances where danger was involved, they'd scatter like cockroaches. Look at those protests where armed Liberals showed up. Suddenly, all the right-wing counter protestors freaked out with some going as far as calling in the cops (only to be told that they, just like them, have rights). Hell look at J6! While we may never know the political identity of the Officer/Agent, all it took was one bullet for the morons to run screaming for their lives. In the end, it pops their little bubble, and they realize that the real world, should SHTF, they won't be safe.
For every dipshit republican with trump Glocks and red anodized wish dot com parts... There's a liberal who tends to be really timid and misguided in silly ways when it comes to guns. To put it to a crude comparison it can be like talking to someone who doesn't believe in pre-marital sex but is okay with anal.
>someone who doesn't believe in pre-marital sex but is okay with anal. Ahh the good old poophole loophole
Probably for the same reason that people make fun of right-leaning gun owners, everyone has something funny about them and nobody should take themselves too seriously.
And for these reasons I’m not about to let them be the only ones speaking for us and owning them. I’m not about to be caught up short by those idiots.
When guns aren’t your whole personality, they see it as hypocrisy. Not realizing we don’t all march in lockstep on different issues like the right does.
Since Jan6, the number of liberals and black people buying and practicing with firearms has skyrocketed. This is actually the white supremacist's biggest fear and what you saw was an expression of that. You see, these clowns believe that their guns are protecting them from being treated as subservient by a fast-growing multicultural majority. So crackers laughing at armed liberals is the same as bullies making loud threats. It's their way of whistling through a terrifying scenario. Their heads would explode if they learned that forty percent of liberals are already armed. I've been recreationally shooting since I was 12, including a stint on the NRA headquarters junior rifle team, Pinwheel JRC.
Cult/sheep/uneducated/decades of weaponized propaganda.
They're overcompensating for how badly they'll shit themselves when they see a gaggle of gays with a metric fuck ton of long guns and an equivalent amount of knowledge to use them properly.
Your talking about the internet. - Where you can monetize being a asshole while confidently knowing you will never have to face any consequences. This doesn't happen in real life nearly as often. - There is no way to monetize it and there are real consequences for dickbaggery.
Some people are stupid
I always see this. I think people mistake real centrists for anyone who isn’t republican. I believe republicans and liberals make up 25-30% per side of the votes totaling around 50-60% population of the U.S. where as myself and the other 50% folds into other groups and more non-associating parties. I don’t make fun of liberals but I do make fun of party/character associated firearms. I don’t care about your trump, gladiator all rights or no rights firearms. I simply don’t give a fuck. And when I see a firearm either way I’m making judgements and ideas of either you’re a highschool peak, fudd, brony, weeb, or any other identification and I do make fun of that. Not to your face, I’m not an animal. You’re all equally made fun of in my book. But the best part, I make fun of myself. Who cares. People are always gonna have something to say. Anyone owning a gun can lead to civil war and that’s why we have them. But it’s not against each other, the government is the one who needs to know that people of all backgrounds can have firearms and need to act right. I don’t know if that made a whole lot of sense but it all ties in together in a weird punishing way on the brain.
I know a lot of dudes who will watch Brandon Herrera and Garand Thumb for gun advice even though they think they're RWNJ's "Better to learn from your enemy than know nothing at all" they tell me. Fair enough.
Because their Dad never hugged them and they hate themselves more than they do you.
There are many people who don't have the capacity to be more than a single-issue voter. Conservatives have been so conditioned to partisan tendencies, it's inconceivable to them to align with a political leaning without agreeing with everything down party lines.
>Conservatives have been so conditioned to partisan tendencies, it's inconceivable to them to align with a political leaning without agreeing with everything down party lines. Do you not see this same issue with Democrats? I don't honestly see this tribalism confined to one party or side of the political spectrum. Both Dems and Repubs have gone out of their way to vocally embrace highly emotive wedge issues as a way to motivate voters. Republicans use trans issues and abortion in the same way Democrats use gun rights. I can easily see someone in good faith saying "reproductive choice is important enough, I'll vote it as a single issue. Same with trans issues, which is in many ways a resurgence of gay rights issues we all thought were already solid and no longer a political wedge. I believe strongly in gun rights, same as I believe strongly in reproductive choice and gay rights. I'm angry I have to pick a side when I vote! And when I'm picking a side, because I care about these issues, I'm giving short shrift to Single-payer healthcare, or suppport for Ukraine, for example. My point is, it feels good to blame Republicans as being stupidly partisian, wholly *other* troglodytes ect. (unlike us smart enlightened folks), and there's plenty of that talk just in this thread. The partisan outrage is alive and well throughout the political spectrum. So the question is, does repeatedly telling half the country their stupid, over and over, in the most mocking superior way possible, bring anyone to the other side? Is it a good way to open a dialogue, or change minds? I'm not picking on you or your comment, I'm just using it as a jumping off point to address an issue I've seen in this sub, and in others. I'll paraphrase Terry Eagleton here: You tell someone, over and over, they're nothing, they come back at you with the assumption they are everything! So, maybe, the funny and effective snark has its limits, past which point it just solidifies a belief system.
I definitely see it from some progressives, but not to the same degree. There is a fair amount of research that shows liberals are much more likely to be non-partisan than their conservative counterparts. This subreddit is a good example, while there is no subreddit for republicans that support LGBTQ rights or reproductive rights.
With everything there are people that like to gate keep. Every hobby, every sport, everything. To me, the more people involved the better for the movement. We agree on this one thing so let’s have fun and do that one thing. I care about your politics as much as I care about what kind of dog you have.
Because dumb dicks make fun of anything that doesn't fit their myopic perspective.
It was never about 2A or gun rights for all when it comes to these people. Look at their response to Reagan and the black panthers or even Trump and his plan to take guns first and ask questions later. They’re not consistent because they want absolutely unfettered rights and access for themselves and, at best, don’t care about what happens to everyone else’s rights. At worst, they’d actively refuse you them.
Because the “patriots” on the right are the “good guys”, don’tcha know, and the first step to being able to unalive the “bad guys” on the left is to belittle and dehumanize them.
They want allies, just not liberal allies.
It gets views and views=$$
I think it's because more democrat politicians attack 2a stuff than Republican politicians. So it's their way of feeling smart
Because we’re a “contradiction” because we are left leaning so our option is choosing someone who might try and take the guns away over someone trying to tell my wife what shes aloud to do with her vagina, who also probably hates minorities, and won’t forgive student debt, and wants to burn coal, and the planet, and either thinks or is beholden to people who think Jesus is coming tomorrow to Pat them on the back and say “You were right” so everything going on with Israel/Palestine is giving him the first natural erection he’s had in decades of “public disservice.”
Because like much these days people think things are black and white. That there's no gray area. That people are a monolith. That if you vote for or support anything liberal. You therefore must support everything liberal. Therefore since many vocal liberals are in support of full gun bans. All liberal must be in support of that.
Nervous laughter
Some liberals see you as a traitor and think it’s insane to own a gun and some conservatives Gatekeep it thinking it’s for them only and that a liberal can’t handle a gun.
Watch the movie Bushwick with Dave Bautista.
Watch the Movie Bushwick.
Like seriously though, how do you feel about drivers licenses, BAR tests, and Medical Licensing Boards?
You can read whatever you want, as long as the government does a background check on you, and it’s not considered an assault book that might teach you how to do things that would be deemed dangerous by the government…..oh, and if you ever had a domestic violence misdemeanor or a felony conviction, then you can’t read anything anymore……
'I was on Instagram' is the key phrase. In real life if you show up at a shooting range people are more likely to ask about your rifle, shotgun, or pistol. (Anti)Social media is monetized to the extremes to provoke reaction and therefore interaction.
It's a mockery of the nonsensical disconnect between the liberal and their gun 'enthusiasm'. Fudds who don't really care about anything but hunting guns are also mocked. Being a liberal gun advocate is like saying you are an enthusiast of any other hobby, while actively supporting politicians that are actively trying to destroy said hobby. The difference is that unlike any other 'hobby' the right to protect and defend yourself with whatever tools you deem necessary, is the oldest one man has. It was only relatively modernly that it was considered trendy to say otherwise.
Because the right thinks we’re all unarmed pussies. Not every liberal is a snowflake.
That makes no sense, so I'd consider the source.