4 ms·

The panic over trump is starting to get comical. Aren't you americans proud of your guns to protect you from power abuses? Dont you have probably the worlds bes

by return0 10y ago

The panic over trump is starting to get comical. Aren't you americans proud of your guns to protect you from power abuses? Dont you have probably the worlds best democracy that many would be jealous of?

hga 10y ago
Ah ha ha, the people panicking pretty much by definition haven't taken advantage of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA), in fact loathe the very concept and have been campaigning for decades to take them away from the people who do have guns, which I'm sure massively overlapped with those who voted for Trump. Many even live in cities or states where it's impossible to own guns (NYC unless well connected, D.C.), or hard/decided by whim (e.g. Massachusetts), or where the types of arms that can be legally bought and owned are severely limited in a way that makes them less useful for this sort of thing (e.g. California, much of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic). Me, when Obama was elected, I finally broke down and bought an Evil Black Rifle and ammo for it, but that was more a FU to someone I'd correctly pegged as a "gun grabber" than anything I was planning on making "serious social use" of (well, I'd bought those earlier). And I have a lot of company, for years, most every month, sales of guns through licenced dealers are greater than the same month in the previous year.
- vacri 10y ago
  I'm not sure what you're talking about - there's been plenty of carving away at the bill of rights, and it's started well, well before Obama took office. And what have those passionate gun-owners done? Absolutely nothing but protect the second amendment. Where were the gun-toting constitutional defenders when the 'free speech zones' went up, for example? The idea of a popular uprising against government overreach is a fiction. You even have the police shooting citizens dead in the street to the fury of their community, and the gun owners do...? Well, the ones you're describing, the Trump-loving RKBAing lot, decide not to fight against the government, but instead find excuses for the police's actions. The gulf between their 'talk' and their 'walk' is better described as a chasm.
  - hga 10y ago
    Evidently this is a strange idea, but using lethal force as a first resort is not a part of America's gun culture. And therefore whatever we're doing about those other issues is effectively anonymized, aside from things like supporting the NRA's fight against McCain-Feingold's censorship of core political speech. As for "police shooting citizens dead in the street to the fury of their community", if the dead earned it, and we're much more able to analyze deadly force encounters than those who've never shot a gun, we only care when that "community" decides to rape and pillage innocents in return. And some of us are known to take action in such situations: http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2014/11/25/armed-business-owners-thwart-mobs-ferguson-riots/ http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2014/11/25/armed-business-owner... The vast majority of BLM protests are of this nature (in fact, while I think I'm forgetting 1 or 2 cases, this is true of all the ones I can think of), whereas true victims like Eric Garner ... well, yeah, you're right, all we've done about his murder at the hands of NYC's finest is talk about it, quite a bit. And buy more guns and ammo, and practice with them....
    - vacri 10y ago
      Nice. You don't care about the people being shot dead by the police, but you do care about when they get so angry they start to spread the shit around a bit. As long as they meekly take police abuse, you're just dandy with it. You know how you all fantasize about rising up against an oppressive government? Well, those BLM riots are going to be what that looks like. You guys rabbit on about keeping an oppressive government in check, but do nothing to help your neighbours. And if you're not going to do anything for your neighbours, what hope in hell do you have when you finally rise up solo to defend your own stuff by yourself? And seriously, the 'vast majority' (your emphasis) of BLM protests are not town-destroying rampages. You've painted a very bizarre and self-serving view of the world around you. Do you guys ever step back and wonder why there's no other first-world country where shop owners aren't expected to keep firearms to keep their stuff safe?
      - hga 10y ago
        You don't care about the people being shot dead by the police Yes, I don't care about them one tiny bit if their actions warranted a reply of lethal force. As the Alt Right puts it, "We Don't Care." But getting back to your points, that's because we don't score these events as police abuse. We score others, like Eric Garner's murder, as such. If you desire any proof, I can point you at some of the popular RKBA blogs I read that cover these, plus of course see Radley Balko. You know how you all fantasize about rising up against an oppressive government? [...] You don't understand us in the least, not surprising from someone who expects us to use lethal force as a first resort to non-immediate stuff, so that and the rest of your paragraph are simply not to the point. As for "vast majority", sorry for my lack of clarity, I'm referring to the people who they choose to protest about, not the intensity of any particular protest. The people who, as I said above, as we see it legitimately earned a lethal force response. Do you guys ever step back and wonder why there's no other first-world country where shop owners aren't expected to keep firearms to keep their stuff safe? Oh, we "wonder" about this, and have our own set of answers, but they aren't germane to this discussion.

by return0 10y ago

hga 10y ago

Ah ha ha, the people panicking pretty much by definition haven't taken advantage of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA), in fact loathe the very concept and have been campaigning for decades to take them away from the people who do have guns, which I'm sure massively overlapped with those who voted for Trump. Many even live in cities or states where it's impossible to own guns (NYC unless well connected, D.C.), or hard/decided by whim (e.g. Massachusetts), or where the types of arms that can be legally bought and owned are severely limited in a way that makes them less useful for this sort of thing (e.g. California, much of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic). Me, when Obama was elected, I finally broke down and bought an Evil Black Rifle and ammo for it, but that was more a FU to someone I'd correctly pegged as a "gun grabber" than anything I was planning on making "serious social use" of (well, I'd bought those earlier). And I have a lot of company, for years, most every month, sales of guns through licenced dealers are greater than the same month in the previous year.

vacri 10y ago
I'm not sure what you're talking about - there's been plenty of carving away at the bill of rights, and it's started well, well before Obama took office. And what have those passionate gun-owners done? Absolutely nothing but protect the second amendment. Where were the gun-toting constitutional defenders when the 'free speech zones' went up, for example? The idea of a popular uprising against government overreach is a fiction. You even have the police shooting citizens dead in the street to the fury of their community, and the gun owners do...? Well, the ones you're describing, the Trump-loving RKBAing lot, decide not to fight against the government, but instead find excuses for the police's actions. The gulf between their 'talk' and their 'walk' is better described as a chasm.
- hga 10y ago
  Evidently this is a strange idea, but using lethal force as a first resort is not a part of America's gun culture. And therefore whatever we're doing about those other issues is effectively anonymized, aside from things like supporting the NRA's fight against McCain-Feingold's censorship of core political speech. As for "police shooting citizens dead in the street to the fury of their community", if the dead earned it, and we're much more able to analyze deadly force encounters than those who've never shot a gun, we only care when that "community" decides to rape and pillage innocents in return. And some of us are known to take action in such situations: http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2014/11/25/armed-business-owners-thwart-mobs-ferguson-riots/ http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2014/11/25/armed-business-owner... The vast majority of BLM protests are of this nature (in fact, while I think I'm forgetting 1 or 2 cases, this is true of all the ones I can think of), whereas true victims like Eric Garner ... well, yeah, you're right, all we've done about his murder at the hands of NYC's finest is talk about it, quite a bit. And buy more guns and ammo, and practice with them....
  - vacri 10y ago
    Nice. You don't care about the people being shot dead by the police, but you do care about when they get so angry they start to spread the shit around a bit. As long as they meekly take police abuse, you're just dandy with it. You know how you all fantasize about rising up against an oppressive government? Well, those BLM riots are going to be what that looks like. You guys rabbit on about keeping an oppressive government in check, but do nothing to help your neighbours. And if you're not going to do anything for your neighbours, what hope in hell do you have when you finally rise up solo to defend your own stuff by yourself? And seriously, the 'vast majority' (your emphasis) of BLM protests are not town-destroying rampages. You've painted a very bizarre and self-serving view of the world around you. Do you guys ever step back and wonder why there's no other first-world country where shop owners aren't expected to keep firearms to keep their stuff safe?
    - hga 10y ago
      You don't care about the people being shot dead by the police Yes, I don't care about them one tiny bit if their actions warranted a reply of lethal force. As the Alt Right puts it, "We Don't Care." But getting back to your points, that's because we don't score these events as police abuse. We score others, like Eric Garner's murder, as such. If you desire any proof, I can point you at some of the popular RKBA blogs I read that cover these, plus of course see Radley Balko. You know how you all fantasize about rising up against an oppressive government? [...] You don't understand us in the least, not surprising from someone who expects us to use lethal force as a first resort to non-immediate stuff, so that and the rest of your paragraph are simply not to the point. As for "vast majority", sorry for my lack of clarity, I'm referring to the people who they choose to protest about, not the intensity of any particular protest. The people who, as I said above, as we see it legitimately earned a lethal force response. Do you guys ever step back and wonder why there's no other first-world country where shop owners aren't expected to keep firearms to keep their stuff safe? Oh, we "wonder" about this, and have our own set of answers, but they aren't germane to this discussion.