Guns

There's quite a few hobbies where the other people who meet up to participate as a group as a group are a huge turnoff.

Guns are one of those hobbies for me.

I would love to talk about the amazing mechanics and different approaches guns have to firing an exploding charge to move a mass of metal at supersonic speeds just like I love talking about the mechanical parts of trains and cars. But the gun crowd tends to have too high of a proportion of very vocal terrible people.

A couple years ago I joined a private shooting club. They have a range with targets from 10-300 yards. It was so cool to shoot there, and all the other members were total marksmanship nerds. Seeing all the great equipment, and ridiculous scopes was always fun, and the other members were nice to talk to. There were no soldier LARPers there. We operated as our own range masters, and everyone took safety very seriously. It was a refreshing change from the public range. Unfortunately I moved a couple hours away from that range, so it didn't make sense to continue paying the membership anymore. Now I just go to the mountains to shoot.

Ew what a horrible, gross thing to say

Heard it a buncha times without ever really hearing it

These days it's FAFO. I used to work with someone and he would shoehorn that into conversations completely unprovoked...like he itching to find any excuse to shoot someone

There's a severe epidemic of "I wish a motherfucker would" going around.

I don’t think this is an actual case of that. I have a few friends that get kitted out with plate carriers and night vision for the range and it’s just LARPing. No different than ren faire people showing up to the faire in steel plate when obviously there isn’t some sword fight that’s about to break out at the fairgrounds.

It’s dorky but generally not malicious.

What they don't realize is that Keanu Reeves does a ton of training, and even occasionally does competitions

It doesn't have to be! It can be fun to go to the range or competitions, you can "get your money's worth" so to speak that way! You don't have to "use" it to use it, know what I mean.

(Of course, if need be it's there for that too, "god" or whatever metaphor you wish willing, yadda yadda you know.)

Well, good news, a firearm would achieve the exact opposite of protecting you and your loved one from harm.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25910555/

In fact it's the opposite. A firearm is far more likely to be involved in an accidental injury or death of someone in the household than it is going to be used in any form of self defense.

If you want to effectively protect yourself, invest in actual home security measures.

So rest assured that any firearm you purchase for self defense is always going to be a huge waste of money.

Aren't shooting clubs and the licensing prohibitively expensive? This is just to disarm the working class. If the poor can't afford equal protection they are slaves.

Cool, if the dumb as shit fascist down the street owns a gun and wants you to die for being different then you need to protect yourself.

Why is arming yourself in self defense escalating it out of proption when leftists do it?

How would you stop a fascist with a gun that wants to put you in a camp?

If you are lgbtq, on any mental health medication, or a immigrant as a result of natrual born citizenships then you need to realistically ask yourself this question, because that's the stated policy of the new president.

Demonstrably false.

“The actual data show that some of these kind of heroic, Hollywood moments of armed citizens taking out active shooters are just extraordinarily rare,” Mr. Lankford said.

In fact, having more than one armed person at the scene who is not a member of law enforcement can create confusion and carry dire risks. An armed bystander who shot and killed an attacker in 2021 in Arvada, Colo., was himself shot and killed by the police, who mistook him for the gunman.

It was twice as common for bystanders to physically subdue the attackers, often by tackling or striking them. At Seattle Pacific University in 2014, a student security guard pepper sprayed and tackled a gunman who was reloading his weapon during an attack that killed one and injured three others. The guard took the attacker’s gun away and held the attacker until law enforcement arrived. When a gunman entered a classroom at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2019, a student tackled him. The student was shot and killed, but the police chief said the attack would have had a far worse death toll had the student not intervened.

https://archive.is/xQqYY

The best way to stop a good guy with a gun is to shoot first (in countries where there's a good chance you might be shot if you're committing a crime)

facts.

Guns are meant to extinguish lives. The others are meant to save them.

Is this a serious question?

Do you believe armed protesters are easier or more difficult to suppress?

The BLM protestors who marched with guns in Georgia didn't get fucked with by the cops at all, because the cops were scared. Look it up.

Other BLM protestors got beat down by cops in riot gear, in countless examples across the country (when the protestors were unarmed).

More protesters would have been shot. The movement would have been demonized even more than it was.

The protests were already overwhelming peaceful. To re-envision history saying "moars guns" would have helped is pretty bizarre gun nutters nonsense.

I'm sure this sounded convincing in your head.

I would trust an officer over Ultragagginggunnut any day of the week.

False dichotomy. Those aren't the only choices.

In your entire comment, you failed to realize that "Doomsider" is a perfectly viable option.

With "Doomsider" being an option for you, "officer" should be considered a distant second.

You must be white passing and at least middle class to trust bringing the police into any situation.

I know you got downvoted, but in other countries and anywhere other than lemmy, the US and truth social, this is actually normal

It's crazy that extremist groups like the NRA have managed to brainwash so many Americans

All of your responses are being downvoted and for good reason. Maybe you need to rethink some things

With the premise the OP presented, I expected something worse than what was actually there. It was still horrible, but the impact was lessened for the reasons you listed.

Interesting how someone can manufacture consent like that by shifting your initial view.

They weren't, they went over this in the trial.

He became the aggressor when he removed barriers to entry and laid in wait which is a negative defense for self defense.

It's been a long time since I've heard about this case, but my recollection was that he left his garage door open and parked away from his house so it would appear open and unoccupied. I didn't see anything on the Wikipedia page that refutes that.

The kids weren't blameless. But they didn't deserve to die.

'Omosexuals, and 'eterosexuals? Yeah I think that place is England and they just talk like that. Its their language they're allowed to speak it horribly

.........what?

The black man that volunteered for that must have a death wish. He had to have gone into that thinking there was a very good chance the police would shoot him on sight.

The reality is that most of the imagined scenarios which cause a person to want a gun for self defense are rooted in some form of these same delusions. They really are just not as useful in as many situations as people think they are, and these people almost never take far simpler measures to deal with their real threat profile.

It’s both.

Our systems have taught them that criminals are worthless disgusting inhuman animals who deserve death, and they’ve never considered the trauma associated with killing someone.

Plenty of veterans lives are ruined by shit like that, and they signed up for it. A little basement dwelling incel couldn’t even comprehend the trauma.

And let’s not forget the statistics of the people who break into your house. It’s likely someone you know. Are you prepared to shoot your friend?

Oh same. I've talked with friends about conceal carry. We all agree it would be the scariest thing possible to actually need to use it. We'll pretty much want to exhaust all other options including running the fuck away first.

We couldn't imagine the idea of actually living with having murdered someone. I know I'd pretty much immediately end up in therapy to help process it.

I think it's the marketing. Everything has to me monetized or giggified and it's hard for us to just do stuff for no good reason (like collect and/or shoot guns). We've got to justify by protecting ou family from the zombie apocalypse or crime waves or something.

I think a lot of it is whistling in the dark as well. Our powerlessness coupled with hyper individualism and lack of social support makes for some pretty uncomfortable truths.

Plus the grab bag of racism and misdirected class fear.

I do get what you are saying, and may offer some pov. I do not perceive anyone who breaks into my house as human, simply because I am aware of how weak I am. Not a gun owner, but if I am in kitchen, trust me I am grabbing a knife - anything to level the playing field - and setting myself on fight rather than flight.

But it's mostly fear and adrenaline. If something happened, I have no doubt I would go for it to secure mine and my partner security. How much of a wreck I'd be later remains to be seen, though for sure it would hit me hard.

Honestly, not much difference between that and chihuahua. Fight to kill out of fear.

I wouldn't mind having to kill anyone. It would definitely give me joy and excitement although I don't actively hope I'll get to use my gun.

Will it help my wife's best friend who was shot in the stomach six times by her husband when she got up in the middle of the night to eat something in the kitchen?

Let me introduce you to a revolutionary view about gun violence.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10209983/

It is called reality with gems like, "96% of murder-suicide victims are female."

Tons of jobs with joke-ass 401ks they wear in their sleeve that they don't match or give any incentive whatsoever for, and hope you'll forget about when you leave.

When my company told us they didn't match, I asked why bother, then found out $25 was mandatory. Hell.