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wiredog's avatar

Also. Over on Mastodon I’m seeing a whole lot of trans and lgbtq people talking about buying firearms and learning how to use them.

Going to be interesting when Trump and Fox call for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment when they realize it isn’t just white nationalist christians who own firearms.

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JC Brotherhood's avatar

The Second amendment has become a lethal fantasy and here's why: When it was written, everything was smooth bore musket or cannon or mortar, pretty simple pretty basic and there was at the time a chance that we could achieve force parity with a Tyrannical Government.

Asymmetrical warfare was pretty much invented at that time, here and in conflicts in Europe and Asia and later in Africa during the Boer wars. That being said, It doesn't really matter how many assault style rifles you have, when someone shows up at the party with a Reaper drone or an M134 Vulcan on a gunship or a Bradley, all platforms you cannot go out and buy or make on a 3d printer its going to be game over.

The other point we should always be aware of as we head down this dystopian rabbit hole is the essential query; " who you going to shoot?" That 18 yr old Guardsman, or the Cop or Sheriff who shows up with a search warrant?

The answer we learn from WACO, and the Bundys is yes, you will shoot the kid and or the LEO.

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Travis's avatar

The tactical firearms classes I occasionally attend here in Colorado have had a strong uptick in LGBTQ+ participants since at least the Trump administration. I'm not talking about pistol classes either, I'm talking about low-light tactical carbine courses and the like.

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JB's avatar

Far left, gay, trans, POC gun groups are a big thing. Libs are the only ones arguing against guns and even some of them are pro 2A.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

And yet a recent poll from the state of Missouri (where they're about to pass a bunch of bills lowering the age, not requiring a license or registration, open carry without a permit, etc), 66% of Missourians support stronger gun laws such as background checks, red flag laws to protect victims of domestic violence, requiring permits and no assault rifles until you're 21.

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knowltok's avatar

The problem is the unasked poll question: Do you care enough about this issue to change the way you vote?

The answer for too many, in too many of these red states, is "no".

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Hortense's avatar

DeSantis wants to turn the rest of the US into Florida, where the state is deciding what the public gets. So, per his approach, this poll is meaningless. Missourians will be told what they get to have.

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Mar 7, 2023
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Sko Hayes's avatar

I don't think they were asked.

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Hortense's avatar

The Second Amendment does not discriminate. The right wing might want to think about that.

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howard's avatar

I'm pro a well-regulated militia: is that what you mean?

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JMFK's avatar

"I said I never had much use for one. I never said I didn't know how to use one." - Mathew Quigley.

Mark Bowden, the author of "Blackhawk Down" said the most appropriate line he ever read about Mogadishu was that "everything that guns can accomplish has been accomplished in Mogadishu."

Having every American armed to the teeth to the point of 10 year-olds owning automatic rifles as we descend into Somalia would be the arms industry's wet dream. Let us do all we can to preserve civil society so that we are not forced to defend ourselves to that degree.

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DeeDee D's avatar

pretty sure the gun industry gives Bulk discounts to our congresspeople... Y'know... for the children!

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R Mercer's avatar

Quigley Down Under was an enjoyable movie.. especially the ending.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

Oldie, but a goodie- "The dingo ate my baby!"

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Travis's avatar

The more militias proliferate, the weaker a central government gets, usually to the point where the antigovernment militias and the government itself start acting off of the same sheet of music. It's not just about guns being plentiful, it's about antigovernmental militias being plentiful and normalized. Name me a country with a plethora of normalized/armed antigovernment militias involved in politics that has a stable central government outside of the US. I'll wait. "Democratic" Iraq has a score of 29/100 on Freedom House's index for exactly this reason.

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R Mercer's avatar

The reality is that your safety is, in the vast majority of cases, inversely proportion to the availability and number of weapons.

They don't make you safer--and more people die through the combination of accidents and suicides than from actual gun violence.

There are VERY good reasons why effective, functional states have a monopoly or near monopoly on violence... so you don't end up with Somalia, or Afghanistan.. or any of a number of other 3rd-world shithole type of countries.

These militias need to be shut down. They are UNREGULATED. The purpose of the militias was not to oppose the federal or state government, but to support it in the lack of a standing army (an idea which never actually took much hold, in the face of reality). Militias were BIG in the south because they were intended to be used against slave insurrections--and that racist lineage lives on in most of the ones that exist today.

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Maggie's avatar

The Quigley Down Under quote reminds me of the scene from To Kill a Mockingbird where Atticus shoots the rabid dog.

There are an awful lot of people out there who don't like guns, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be adept at using them.

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Cosmic Debris's avatar

In any discussion about the 2A with a fellow Democrat I always recommend that they learn to shoot before taking a hard stance against the ownership of and/all firearms. I have a family member that's a member of the trans community and while they don't participate in any kind of activism they do have a fairly extensive collection of long guns and pistols.

I have my own modest firearms collection. None of them has been fired since they closed down the really decent indoor range nearby a decade ago. Some have never been fired.

Originally I was planning to sell them but there are two things that keep me from doing so. First is that I could not live with myself if someone bought my AR-15 (never fired, btw) and decided to seek retribution at a school, mall or other public place. And secondly I'm just paranoid enough to keep them "just in case."

However, I have had my will changed so that -- with the exception of the Kentucky long rifle inherited from great, great, great family members on my father's side -- all of my weapons are to be destroyed.

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Sonja Letourneau's avatar

I started life in Northern Maine. At the ripe old age of 9 I took my first firearms safety course so I could get my first hunting license. I'm not a republican 😑 but guess who knows how to handle firearms? 😏 and also doesn't need one to go get pizza.

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Mar 7, 2023
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Jeff S.'s avatar

Charlie, my advice to you is either a pump action or lever action shotgun. You don't need to have super good aim, but point it in the direction you want the blast to go. I am not here blowing a the pro-gun horn, but, if you feel the need for protection from creeps from the Grand Ole A-Wipe Party (and at this point, the base is running that show, and most of the base are a-wipes), and you don't know if you are good at aiming, then go the shotgun route. As Reese said in Legally Blonde 2--"Don't fight the fabric...change it".

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Hortense's avatar

I think that there is a gun owners group of black people, as well. The 2A movement is really emboldening gun ownership across all demographics. Agreed that there may be some surprises at who might be shooting back at whom if the right thinks they have the might.

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Katie Harris's avatar

Hilarious!

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GlenD's avatar

Bingo!! Or is that, Bango!!!!!

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Maggie's avatar

I grew up across from a wildlife refuge, and most of my neighbors had at least a shotgun, because there were multiple animals within a mile that could kill and/or eat you. For a while in college, I'd go recreational skeet shooting, and was decent. Never really cared for gun ranges.

Lately, I've found myself oddly offended by the alt-right notion that I'm a sitting duck in their desired "civil war". I don't own a gun right now, and don't want to. But I could buy one off Amazon! I could drive 10 minutes in any direction from my house and buy a gun! Just because I listen to folk music and grow a pollinator garden doesn't mean I wouldn't shoot back! These army cosplayers honestly think that "the left" is so group-thinkish and sheeplike, that they would roll over and die in the face of an assault. I find that idea tragically comical.

Adam Kinzinger said it best about the "civil war" scenario, "Casually thrown around by those who never experienced war. Heart medicine won’t be available at Walgreens and half the “play army” folks will be dead in weeks."

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Robert Mullennix's avatar

Think what you want about fighting back, but I suggest you review Chile, 1973, when Pinochet’s right wing authoritarians seized power and rounded up and killed hundreds of thousands of leftists. The military used to delight in pushing them out of helicopters over the ocean.

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Kim M Murphy's avatar

Our side has the tanks. Biden isn’t Pinochet. The insurrectionists are stupid and weak. Bandying about “civil war” shows that they have no understanding of the history of this nation that they claim they love so much.

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R Mercer's avatar

A lot of the guys driving the tanks are far more Rightist than is probably good for the country... as are a surprising number of the brass.

Don't count on them too much, especially if the Media does their usual fine job and SCotUS decides to back a soft coup, because it is "legal."

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Maggie's avatar

Now we've pivoted from Pinochet to Tiananmen square. Is 12:30 too early for a beer?

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GlenD's avatar

I've been in more than one bar and home rec room/man cave with a clock on the wall where all 12 of the hour spaces are "5."

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R Mercer's avatar

It's always happy hour somewhere.

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Liberal Cynic's avatar

Most of them voted Biden.

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R Mercer's avatar

A vote is one thing, what people will do when the shit really goes down is something else--especially in a confused and uncertain situation.

I am a military veteran, I know what type of people tend to serve (or did when I was in) and I am fairly sure they probably haven't changed that much.

If the situation is clear-cut, there probably isn't any real danger--but if you have a contested "fraudulent" election, that is backed by a GoP controlled House and given a whitewash by SCotUS, I tend to think all bets are off. It will depend upon much much of the leadership decides which side is the "legitimate" government... and it won't be just the generals deciding.. or if they even take sides at all, given the reluctance to get involved in domestic politics.

Don't count on the military to save our asses, save our own asses before the military has to get involved by making sure these people don't have a chance to pull that stuff.

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Maggie's avatar

I didn't mean to Romanticize the notion of "fighting back". I think invariably it would be horrible. I'm just saying that the idea that people would roll over and accept some sort of nominally-Christian, white-nationalist, might=right rule from the Alt-right is naïve.

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howard's avatar

When the black panthers showed up at the California legislature in the late '60s, a bunch of conservatives suddenly got interested in gun control.

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Sherm's avatar

Reagan, no less.

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Colleen Kochivar-Baker's avatar

I've made a similar point to my deplorable friends for years. It's not the left that's coming after our guns, it will be the right when they realize the left is also armed.

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Sonja Letourneau's avatar

Yeah, they seem to think no "lefty" has a weapon. Uh, no, we just don't snuggle them at Subway ya dummy. I don't need it to go to Starbucks 😑

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James Ackerman's avatar

These fuckwads love to talk about how the Nazis would confiscate personal firearms, and that's true! But first, they armed their co-ideologists out the wazoo AND THEN disarmed them WITH popular support

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Mar 7, 2023
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James Ackerman's avatar

So, there's another one of the great myths of history: The Nazis never gained actual majorities in the Reichstag until after Hitler was already Chancellor. They gained their power there to begin with because the German conservative forces (predominantly their big business and Prussian Junker class, like Hindenburg) wanted to co-opt the Nazis against the left-wing, but especially the Communists. Hindenburg even thought he could control Hitler!

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Mar 7, 2023
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James Ackerman's avatar

Oh, I was thinking of what they did to the Brownshirts. Kept them armed, let them loose....and then turned on them

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R Mercer's avatar

Revolutions ALWAYS eat their own. It is a lesson that few revolutionaries seem to learn... and it is usually the true believers that get eaten.

Just ask the SA... or Robespierre.. or Trotsky.. or any of a LONG list.

Mostly they get eaten because they are too radical--and they get in the way of the power hungry.

Most of the people at CPAC, they are going to be the ones who go to the wall if/when the Rightist revolution comes. Granted they will kill a lot of lefties and trans and gays and blacks first... but they will get the chop, too.

Leaving the actual grifters in charge.

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suzc's avatar

I have long said Mitch and his ilk will be the first to be executed when Putin or Xi or whoever it is walks into the Capitol with the help of the GOP -- because the Putins of the world know better than anyone that the Mitches of the world cannot be trusted -- because anyone who betrays his own country and people will betray you too.

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Mar 7, 2023
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JB's avatar

Yes, like California, but restrictions and access are nothing like say Texas. You can’t just buy anything and you certainly cannot open carry or carry without permit.

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MillennialExistential's avatar

Being from the midwest, it's actually really funny how many Californians are really into guns, but don't open up about it until they know you aren't from there.

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SoCal's avatar

Contrary to what people believe, California is not a homogeneous place. Central California is bright red, hence Nunes, McCarthy, etc.

I myself like to go to a shooting range, but do not own a gun, not because I am against the 2nd amendment. It is because I might shoot my foot by accident. I am for the better regulations or the "well-regulated" regarding guns, though as the second amendment says. I mean, do people really need to have an AK-47?

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Mar 7, 2023
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NLTownie's avatar

What is a far-left gun nut? You mean Marxist/Leninists?

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Mar 8, 2023
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NLTownie's avatar

Capitalism is not just the reason climate change is destroying our planet.it is also the reason we won’t be able to stop global warming. No matter how man times I virtuously clean out a peanut putter jar for recycling, I am not going to affect global warming one little bit. My footprint is too small and recycling is a distraction. Most recycling is too expensive so it quietly ends up in a landfill somewhere. It’s busy work to keep us from panicking.

I hate capitalism, too but I’m not the far left. I don’t know who you mean by the “far left”. Is there any far left public figure or organization or movement you can name?

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NLTownie's avatar

Nuclear waste is a problem that stops the argument in favour of nuclear energy in its tracks. Using a controlled nuclear reaction as a substitute for oil and gas just substitutes the pollution of nuclear waste for carbon pollution. Until there is a secure way to manage nuclear waste with a half life of 125,000 years, we are just leaving the disposal/storage problem for our grandchildren. We can’t secure nuclear waste for 100 years, let alone 125,00.

The nuclear industry was stopped back in the seventies because of the nuclear waste problem. They have bided their time, waiting for the people who convinced the world not to go nuclear to die. Most of them have… so here’s the nuclear industry trying again. It was an insoluble problem then and it is an insoluble problem now. The planet already has an existential threat on its hands. We don’t need to resurrect another.

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