- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmings.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmings.world
Several niche, left-leaning gun advocacy groups said that since the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, they can hardly keep up with the surging demand for firearms training.
With Donald Trump sending armed federal agents into communities around the country, even more once gun-shy liberals and leftists are considering getting armed.
And while Americans tend to think of gun owners as leaning more Republican and male, already more women, gay people and people of color have taken up arms in recent years, particularly after 2020.
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i got my gun license. told some of my friends about it and now they are suspicous that i’m secretly right wing.
you can’t win with this shit.
Allowing the enemy to be the only group who is armed and trained is not very bright position your friends are taking. A lot of leftist are armed because we know that all these threats that the right keeps making towards us are serious
i never said they were smart people. but where i live it’s a super common attitude and I am the weirdo.
To me guns are just tools. I think tool nuts are just as weird as gun nuts.
I know one guy who just collects expensive tools to oogle them and doesn’t even use them. He buys like $200 hammers.
Allowing the enemy to be the only group who is armed and trained is not very bright position your friends are taking. A lot of leftist are armed because we know that all these threats that the right keeps making towards us are serious
Been a liberal gun owner for a decade. Once in a while, I go to a range and these numbnuts want to talk politics thinking I’m “on their side”. Like no dude, I’m here to practice to protect myself from people like you!
Something that may help is explaining that gun control policy originated as a means of disarming minorities, specifically black people.
Black Panthers in Oakland, CA would open carry and follow cops around whenever they came into black neighborhoods, in an attempt to curtail the rampant police brutality black people regularly endured. Naturally, a bunch of old white 2A-loving Republicans (including the fucking NRA) didn’t like that, and altogether signed off on the Mulford Act, the first major gun control legislation in the country, supported by “2A advocates” (read, in this instance: racists) for the sole purpose of better allowing police to terrorize black citizens.
I was once pretty strongly anti-gun too (less for political reasons and more because I saw a guy get his chest blown out at work when I was in my early 20s), but the knowledge that the true intention underpinning gun control and anti-gun legislation has always been to disarm and weaken marginalized communities changed my mind.
Not sure it will help with your friends, but idk. Worth a try maybe.
they don’t care about history, facts, or reality. just crude stereotypes that anyone who has a gun must be a trump supporter and how their anti-gun ignorance makes them morally superior. they have imaginary bullshit lines in their head. like if i bought a truck it would be the same ‘betrayal’ to them.
They don’t sound much like friends tbh. Sorry bud.
That’s okay. I live in a state where the main sponsor of banning assault weapons has gone out shooting the very same weapons after they got their nonsense bill passed.
Keep in mind it bans firearms with threaded barrels in other words we have to be deaf to train and use our firearms but she doesn’t.
you can’t win with this shit.
The dirty truth of gun ownership is that the person you’re most likely to shoot is yourself. The second most likely person you’re going to shoot is someone who lives in the house with you. The odds of you firing a gun in self-defense, much less actually harming anyone, much less harming a federal official intent on arresting you, is vanishingly small.
People with bull horns and rape whistles are doing more to shut down ICE than anyone packing heat. The campaign to blast ICE agents with noise in their hotels has had an enormous impact on where these agents can operate and how enthusiastic they are to position themselves in a given metro area. People simply crowding out ICE in their cars has gone a long way to diminish their presence in Minneapolis, LA, and Portland.
Like, if you’re worried about your safety and you want to organize in community self-defense, you can do it. You can join mobilized groups ready to take the fight to ICE in a way that’s effective. But just shoving a .22 in your pocket and having fantasies of Rambo: First Blood isn’t going to cut it. Indulging in these fantasies does absolutely raise some red flags about your political persuasion.
So is driving a car. Is driving a car stupid and pointless then?
I got a gun because I want a gun. Just like I have a car because I want a car. I barely use my car, but it’s sure awesome to have one when I need it and a lot better to have it and not need it than to not have one at all.
I’m not campaigning against ICE. I am not under any delusions of grandeur here that my .22 pistol is going to stop what is going on. It’s for target shooting and being halfway decent when i go shoot guns with my family on the holidays.
Is driving a car stupid and pointless then?
If you can’t tell the difference between driving a car and firing a gun, you should be allowed to own neither.
they are both tools for a job.
you seem to think the only point of owning a gun is to commit violence against other people. you’re wrong.
you seem to think the only point of owning a gun is to commit violence
You talk about a gun like you plan to open your beer with it.
what is so mystical and magical about guns to you? that you think they are a special thing?
I can also murder people with kitchen knives, btw. plenty of domestic and non-domestic violence involves knives.
i have a non-chalant attitude towards guns because I’m familiar with them. i also have a dog. some people who don’t have dogs freak out around my dog because they are afraid of dogs.
what is so mystical and magical about guns to you?
Small tubes full of explosive shrapnel aren’t magic. They’re just hazardous when improperly owned and operated.
Multi-ton gas powered rolling steel boxes are also hazardous when improperly owned and operated. That’s why we have all these standards for licensure, ownership, and use.
I can also murder people with kitchen knives, btw.
Sure. People are fragile. You can crush someone’s windpipe with your bare hands.
I don’t think your ability to do this manually should encourage anyone to stock up on machines that do it rapidly at long range.
If you suggested everyone should show up at an ICE detention center wearing hockey masks and waving meat clevers, I would tell you this is a bad idea. If you suggested everyone should sleep with a kitchen knife under their pillows, because it would keep them safe from a SWAT raid, I would strongly disagree.
You’re pitching individualist solutions to a broad social problem. There is nothing you can purchase retail that will remove ICE from your neighborhood. And there are hazards that come with gun ownership that you seem deeply invested in ignoring.
some people who don’t have dogs freak out around my dog because they are afraid of dogs.
If your response your sense of insecurity is to go out and buy a Bully XL on impulse, you are making a mistake.
I think this is an argument to have a gun and not have bullets.
I have some friends who have used guns in violent situations, to successfully avoid violence. I have zero friends who have fired a shot in such situations.
Guns can also just… be a hobby.
I have bicycles. I don’t ride them as some political statement. I ride them because it’s fun.
The dirty truth of gun ownership is that the person you’re most likely to shoot is yourself.
Yes, and another dirty truth is that most guns are owned by Republican braindead buffoons. I just encountered a thread last night where every person was saying keeping a magazine loaded and a bullet chambered in your home is the obvious best practice. So color me unsurprised most of those braintrusts shoot themselves in the face.
I think I’m going to ask my grandpa to teach me about guns and how to shoot. He’s on a farm and has a gun for protecting his chickens.
Lucky for me, my grandpa hates Trump. He’s always been democratic. So I think he will understand why I’m asking.
I’ll probably get a rifle. Maybe if grandpa has an extra I’ll just borrow it. Practice at a local range.
I feel like this is a skill I need now. Never thought I would unless I got my own farm and chickens.
Owning a gun isn’t good enough on its own tho. I need to know how to use it. And how to be accurate with it. How to maintenance it.
But part of me is like. … If I ask grandpa to teach me. I’m admitting something about this country and myself that I don’t want to admit.
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That I need to protect myself/others because bad armed people are coming for us. -Thats terrifying
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That I am preparing to kill someone if need be. -equally terrifying.
There is a responsibility here that I’m not sure I’m ready to take on. But it’s better to be prepared than not to be prepared.
They are terrifying things to admit to yourself. Hold on to that feeling, but train anyways. Because those thoughts will keep you from becoming like those republicans who gleefully wave their guns around and talk about shooting all the people they don’t like. And the training means you can protect yourself and others.
Guns are a tool that kills things, and so you never pick one up unless you intend to kill. But sometimes, regrettably, you have to.
and so you never pick one up unless you intend to kill.
This is a bit overdramatic as many gun owners have only ever shot at targets on ranges
I’m admitting something about this country and myself that I don’t want to admit.
Don’t feel bad, a lot of us have been down this road. I’ve done it several times.
We never stop learning difficult truths about the world around us.
I think the day you stop having these shifts in your attitude is the day you’ve finally stopped caring enough to actually self-examine, so it means you’re still alive and conscious if nothing else.
I hope if nothing else, you and your grandfather make memories together. We don’t always get to choose how and what kind of bonding memories we make with family, but take what you can when you can. It will be over soon enough.
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If nothing else, target shooting is a lot of fun and you get a new hobby out of it.
Using a gun to protect chickens is about as dumb as using a gun on peaceful protestors.
Sure, I’ll just let the foxes eat them. Any other hot tips from the guy who definitely owns chickens!?
We have chickens in other country around the globe and you are the only ones who need a weapon to protect them and also the only ones who protest armed vs armed bad people (I aggree your authorities are actually some of the worst in the globe but you have been doing it for decades).
So, no, you dont let foxes eat them, you just build a shelter and let them out for a few hours meanwhile you hang around and just keep them inside the shelter at night.
That simple 👍🏽
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Your grandpa is a murderer.
It was a weasel. It killed many of his chickens.
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And this is why they now want gun control.
They don’t want “gun control”. They want “justification for their use of force”.
Trump would have loved if Alex Pretti had actually pulled his gun and landed a few shots before he was taken down. He’d have loved if Renee Good had actually hit an ICE agent with her car. These events could have served to justify their draconian misconduct, at least within his own conservative base.
Tightening gun laws to the point where all the regulations around private ownership don’t matter is about explaining away why you can pop someone in the head while crossing the street and claim they were breaking the law after the fact. It isn’t about restricting gun ownership. There’s virtually no fear among these federal agencies that any liberal group might organize an effective military deterrence. Nobody is actually afraid of the “liberal gun owner”, because individual lone wolf gun owners aren’t an effective opposition to a well-organized and well-funded Gestapo.
I swear, we see this article every six fucking months as though its news and not an ad to sell more guns.
More liberals buying guns is a good thing. I don’t think universal gun ownership is a good thing, but it’s better than the clear power imbalance we have now
Keeping a glock in your glove box does not change your relationship with the police.
No but going to a protest with a slung rifle absolutely does. In a funny way the talking heads are right about the gun Pretti brought with him. They’re right about the wrong thing, but a concealed sidearm presents no message inherently by being concealed. CCW is for polite people in polite society. What we have now requires the same tactics the Panthers used, visible intimidation. A low ready or slung rifle is just as legal to carry as a pistol, but if there are 20 or 30 protesters carrying, ICE might consider not having a gun battle in the streets. And history shows that they tend to back down.
A low ready or slung rifle is just as legal to carry as a pistol
Depends on where you are. Open carry is illegal in my state.
What we have now requires the same tactics the Panthers used, visible intimidation.
And then Huey Newton, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton lived happily ever after?
And Nicole Good and countless other unarmed people. The point is that we are already at risk of being pointlessly murdered for exercising our first amendment rights, exercising our second amendment rights in the manner I described is not going to make us less safe.
What exactly were you trying to say? Do nothing? You just pointed out what you consider a flaw in my argument and provided no counter. Did you just want to dunk on me? What’s the point in that?
And Nicole Good and countless other unarmed people.
Owning a gun doesn’t make you bulletproof.
What exactly were you trying to say? Do nothing?
I laid out exactly what I think can be done in other posts. Community organizing and direct interference with ICE operations have been successful in saving lives and shutting down deployments across the country.
Stuffing a gun in your pocket and hallucinating self-defense scenarios is the same as doing nothing.
You’re putting words in my mouth. How are you going to shove a rifle in your pants? What hallucination are you talking about, people are being extra judiciously killed in the street. You’re saying to do nothing as far as I can tell.
Activists being assassinated by the government should tell you what the people in power are actually scared of. (It’s armed, organized resistance rather than one-day protests and email campaigns)
The notion that simply parading around with guns made any of these civil rights leaders safer is empirically proven false by their government-sanctioned assassinations. They were not made bulletproof by carrying guns. They were never truly allowed to use these guns, as the stigma against firing on a police officer continues to be far higher than the stigma against a police officer firing on a civilian. And their overt display of gun ownership quickly became a rational that excused their executions, ultimately undermining their mission.
Take this further - to a degree of full militancy - and you end up with Hamas and Hezebollah. Organizations that have failed to rebut imperial militancy and have even become the rationale for imperial expansion.
You want to believe waving a gun in a cop’s face makes you safer because it’s an expedient and accessible solution. Guns are easy to get. Sporting one is an easy thing to do. But the reality is harder to swallow. You’re not Rambo. You’re not in the Vietcong. You’re not part of a well-organized militia movement of able bodied, adequately trained resistance fighters.
You’re not going to deter the entire federal bureaucracy by brandishing a gun.
I didn’t say it made them safer, I said that it made the government scared.
I fucking can’t with you. I deleted a whole paragraph. What’s your fucking solution that’s so much better than exercising our rights?
No, but if shit hits the fan in this country, it would be nice not to be completely helpless.
More liberals buying guns is a good thing.
more guns, more accidents, more violence. Maybe instead of guns, people should do something crazy like vote.
Alex Pretti had a gun. How did that work out?
About the same as Nicole Goode, who did not have a gun. It’s almost like his gun was an excuse they came up with after they executed him.
Probably a positive feedback loop.
Another article, another influx. That makes the next article news worthy
REMEMBER, if you just get a gun you’re just falling into atomising prepper bullshit. it’s useless unless you ORGANIZE.
