Quite possibly the most astute thing I’ve seen on 4chan.
It's just a thousand monkeys at typewriters in there.
Occasionally you get a work of Shakespeare in all the gibberish.
Green texts that reach the outside are usually pretty astute, political comment, alternative humor or sharp social commentary. See [email protected]
Also Republicans: "this violence is the result of us not beiing Christian enough as a nation"
Also also Republicans: saying the above while being from a state in the union that's both one of the most Christian and most violent in the nation.
American terrorists are Christians. No matter what evangelicals and other say. They'll tell you about the terrorist, "he wasn't a REAL Christian" but he was. Instead of fixing the cancer in their religion, Christians will brush away every bad person as "not real" so they can keep ignoring the problem.
The shooters are commiting the same sins that their church leaders commit. Pride, greed, wrath.
I've heard "good Christians" hand wave their responsibility for bad behavior by saying things like "we're all sinners" or "I'll have to confess later!"
I guess that latter one is Catholic, but it's all the same.
Religion was a necessary framework for transmitting moral knowledge in a time when people didn't have a stable foundation. Centuries ago. It's absurdly flawed and grows communities that are extremely vulnerable to corruption and radicalization.
It's time to move past religion.
It's quite the coincidence, many other highly religious countries tend to be extremely violent.
Ah but you see, statisticians are part of the conspiracy. Anyone with an education who can actually read and interpret trends is just in on it! I haven't personally experienced a mass shooting, therefore my state is the safest in the nation!
Either that or we simply aren't Christian enough to ban all other religions yet and God tests his most faithful, yadda yadda
God bless America everyone!
statisticians are part of the conspiracy
I get what you're saying, but also don't forget to never trust a statistic you didn't doctor yourself
In Germany we have on average more privately owned guns than most US states. Still... we had just TWO mass shooting in 20 years.
Why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08GbT5ZEs08
In short: You have to qualify to own a gun. Assholes don't get guns. And by fullfilling the laws to own a gun you actually earn respect in your community.
I am member of a German gun club where the local population, the regional police and a couple of NATO soldiers train. It took me nearly one year before I even was allowed to touch a loaded gun, all through my 14th year I was basically just taught how to clean and repair my rifle, how to handle it, how to NOT use it, only then how to use it. And after ten months I was finally given a single bullet.
I am now 30. Nowadays my family owns and shares a Sig Sauer 200, locked inside the gun club. Everyone except my Mum shots around 25 bullets per month, once a year the whole gun club repeats basic training which includes mental health checks.
And after basic training we have special events. For example six years ago a local NATO garrison was massively downsized and so they offered us to use up their overaged surplus ammunition. I got to shot pretty much anything from 9mm to 7,62mm for basically free - we collected money for the victims of a local house fire so I put €50 into the collection.
Did I ever shot a gun outside the gun club?
Actually: Yes. When I was in the US I joined my Uncle on duck hunt. He was like "ok, hold the big rifle while I show you how to shot a duck using 12gd bird shot." - he misses, I aim and shot the duck mid-air with a .308. I didn't know ducks could explode, but yes, they can. I paid with a badly aching shoulder, I wasn't used to those powerful cadridges any more. He looked angry at me and grumbled the plan was to eat the duck not turn them into fine mist. The other three ducks he left for me to shot and wondered where I had learned to operate a gun like that.
When I told him a US lieutenant taught me to operate exaclty the same rifle in my gun club he was like "WTF?". I might mention the lieutenant immediatelly settled down in my town after his duty was over because he liked Bavaria so much and wanted his kids to grow up in a less crazy nation.
I appreciate your perspective on this. What you describe is about more than just 'assholes don't get guns', although that is a crucial aspect. The way your family owns just 'a' gun, trained for a long while before shooting, respect for following gun laws. This is the opposite of the usual experience around guns in the US. We as a culture in the US are careless and wanton with guns in general from what I've seen.
I was shown how to use a gun when I was 6 years old, my parents were responsible though so it was only an air pistol, but heavy duty, not airsoft. We had a shotgun, 9mm pistol and a .22 rifle in the house never locked up, didn't even have a safe to lock them if my dad wanted to, and the shotgun was often stored loaded. When people here get together to shoot, it's not odd to hand a loaded gun to someone that has never been to a range or even seen one fired before. Plenty of people are much safer than this, but I would guess my experience is the more common from what I've seen.
From what I can tell, most gun safety training in the US is a single sentence: Always treat it like it's loaded, and keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
What is the penalty if you are caught with a gun you are not qualified to have?
Edit: "Not Qualified" is not the right wording. Because Qualification only plays a secondary role. It is all about the licence.
In Germany carrying a gun without the right licence would be illegal possesion of a firearm.
But wait, even if you have a licence you can get fined for illegal transport and handling of a firearm.
Carrying a conceiled small sidearm without a special permit is big trouble. Transporting a firearm without a locked enclosure and not seperated from the ammunition is also a serious offence. At home you need a locked container. All in all it got so complicated that my Dad stopped storing guns at home. He sold one and put the other into the gun club. The club is really helpful, we can lend legal transport containers and for guns which we are not allowed to move in public they offer transport services for a small fee, usually that means a police officer moves the gun in his free time using legal transport containers in exchange for a beer.
Classic case: Someone dies and you find a loaded pistol in his inheritance. You bring it to the police. You did three offences: Carrying a conceiled firearm in public, carrying a firearm without proper container, carrying a loaded firearm. The legal way would have been: Calling the police to retrieve the firearm. To be honest, the state attourney usually closes those cases rather quick as "minor incident without criminal intent" but you still get a serious talk.
There are some exceptions for old historic muzzleloaders which are often fired at historic events without bullets. We don't have those so I don't know barely anything about those rules.
Absolute bullshit, nobody is shooting a duck mid-air with a rifle. Your story is fake and lame.
I’d be surprised if it could even happen legally, there’s no reason to have a rifle with you to duck hunt. If DNR caught you you’d get a ticket for poaching ( you have a permit for ducks but you are out with gear to hunt deer ) and they’d keep the guns. Yes, even on private land.
“I am now 30” thats where I tapped out. You lasted way longer than I did.
It's not that hard of a shot...ducks typically move in a straight line. It's a dumb shot to take for sure, but it's not an impossible one. If OP really has the training he says he has, I'd buy it.
Thanks for the interesting read. Really goes to show how mad we are in the US for handing out guns like candy
You shot a 308 round into the air? Isn't that unsafe? If you missed the bullet could go anywhere.
Even if he hit, the bullet is still going anywhere. Who even takes a rifle?
Reichsbürger Waffenlager und so? Gibt ja trotzdem genug schwarze Schafe.
If you'd actually received as much safety training as you claim, you never would have taken a shot at an elevated target with a center-fire rifle.
The target wasn't elevated. We were elevated. I tried to explain that the duck was just taking speed to take off but honestly I don't know the right English word for that maneuver. And as I hinted, I had fired the exact same rifle two years earlier at our gun club several times. Also, I paid with an aching shoulder for my recklessness.
Wow, it's like the third recent green text where anon is talking about real world stuff in a grown-up way.
So anon turned out all right in the end?!
no
While we should have better access to mental (and physical) health care, that's probably not going to fix the too frequent "Someone knocked on my door so i shot them" murders that happen too often.
It also won't solve the "and then the police shot him" murders.
There are a lot of things wrong with the US and its dominant culture. I'd say most of the blame and the blood is on conservatives. Which makes a kind of sense - if you have a shitty system and you are fighting to keep it as is, you're probably a shitty person with shitty takes making the world worse.
If someone just thanos snapped away the conservatives, or at least the authoritarian subset of them, many problems would vanish overnight.
Healthcare is unobtainable for most, housing is now a pipe dream for most, prosperity falling apart, working until you die. "We need to incarcerate all the drug addicts and kill the crazy people".
If only the mass shooters would just target the rich instead of the general public, but I agree with you. A Thanos snap on a good chunk of the conservatives would fix a ton of shit.
The "funny" thing about the police shooting people for having guns is that it essentially means Americans don't actually have the right to own/carry guns. They only have the right to buy them.
Even if you don't have a gun it's a problem, if you are are stopped by police for a random check^1. You are asked for your license and registration papers. You move your hand 1 cm to get it, cop suddenly realizes you could theoretically have a gun, then decides to shoot you first because self defense.
The possibility that literally everyone can have a firearm makes living there so much more dangerous compared to not having the option of shooting back whenever it would be needed for actual self defense.
^1 probability for random police checks has an inverse proportionality to the whiteness of one's skin color.
Mental health is a scapegoat for discrediting people via appeal to authority fallacy.
It is not only the authoritarian conservatives that want gun rights
We all know if that happened the democrats would fuck it up. They’d stop everything they were working on and set up conservation efforts for conservatives. They’d have musicians raise awareness of the unprecedented threat the conservatives are under and tell everyone where they can donate to those left griftless. The real shitty thing is that without the Republicans around to fuck it up it’ll probably actually work.
Oh I long for the day we can tour a historical conservative town reenactment.
"Over here, notice the giant American flag, and even more prominent Trump 2024 flag. On the other side, a comically large truck requiring a ladder to enter, believe it or not, these were often chosen for low fuel efficiency and modified for extra pollution. Up ahead we see a teenager who has just been kicked out of their parent's house for being gay, a house containing a meth lab, six churches, and a neighbor wielding an AR-15 'just in case'."
We're not going to stop them. They are an emergent phenomenon of American society. So many things would have to change that this country would be unrecognizable. Which might be awesome... but it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway all had a culture of gun ownership, went through a mass shooting, put severe restrictions on gun ownership, and had dramatic drops in gun violence. All those other countries have similar mental illness rates and other things people blame mass shootings on.
Yeah man. I'm not saying that guns aren't the main issue. We have more guns than people here. It isn't gonna change though-- especially not right now. Gun purchasing seems to be accelerating if anything. Yes, if you or I could snap our fingers and have all guns disappear, that would do it. Actually getting from where we are now to where those other countries are does not seem like a very clear or likely path. I simply cannot imagine the US as we know it becoming that other place.
The issue is that attempting gun restrictions will cause an extremely violent backlash. The reality is that the United States is going to face ever more violence before enough people suffer enough to change.
Genocide is part of our culture
Yup, sure is. The USA wouldn't exist without it.
On the bright side, at thanks to trans people, people finally give a shit about women's sports. For incredibly bigoted and superficial reasons but hey the wnbc will take it.
They care for exactly long enough to write bans then they go back to mocking women's sports. There's no actual improvement.
Republicans don’t deserve the lives they live.
We're actually averaging almost 2 per day this year so far.
Its strange you only hear about the big ones every month then.
The public indiscriminate kind, gang violence kind, or the 3 kids shot a gun once goofing off in their school parking lot kind?
public indiscriminate kind
What does that even mean? Indiscriminately killing people in public? Like a mass shooting? Lol
gang violence kind
"Person opens fire into church killing 5 and injuring 12"
"that's a mass shooter"
"the gunman was wearing red and those killed wore blue"
"that's gang violence"
Do you see how stupid that take is?
3 kids shot a gun once goofing off in their school parking lot kind
Oh my bad I thought you were being genuine, this is obviously bait, please carry on
Republicans know multiple causes and contributions that lead to mass shootings, but none of them will support doing anything to address those causes because muh socialism.
"i LiTerAlLy cAn'T TelL tHem ApArt!"
Sure you can.
Check if the gun has replica written on it.
Simple way to stop mass shootings is to ban guns like anywhere else on the world.
No no no MUH AMANDMENTHHH!!!
Nobody need guns besides the cops. If you need guns than there is a problem with your country.
Cops don't need guns because cops shouldn't exist.
The gun laws in US are joke, why even allow people to have guns? what is police for?
You obviously haven't met our cops.
yes..... 😅
wE need to BAN TASERS
Well according to the Supreme Court, police have no duty to protect nor serve the public. Literally, they can watch you get murdered, watch the murderer get away, and still be 100% fine.
Police protect the govt. Period. Nothing else.
Police is for robbing people and slapping labels on them to artificially reduce their market value. They're not gonna do anything about mass shootings because they won't be there when they happen and don't really care so long as their own friends and family are fed. They're also not going to support disarming the population because they will lose that fight by numbers.
When seconds count, police are minutes away.
Be careful treading that line. For gun loving muricans, they love their 2nd amendment more than their actual constitution.
What do you mean?
having guns is fun. hunting is fun. it's also nice to know I can protect my property should someone try to perform a home invasion. guns are fun as fuck
Centrists: "No but really, trans people playing sports is a massive problem, one that we should devote many resources to solving."
Scratch a centrist a fascist bleeds.
Just dropping in to ask if anyone has that image. I need it to win several arguments I'm currently having on the internet.
Thank you. I will not forget this. I would fight for you.
When is enough going to be enough?
The 2nd Amendment was a mistake. It’s time to repeal it.
It has taken on a life of its own and has been twisted to the breaking point by gun nutters. It is never enough for them and any push back is like pulling teeth. They have become the terrorist at this point and there is no reason to negotiate anymore.
That's not going to happen in the lifetime of anyone who can read this comment.
Because it requires more than a majority of Congress, it also requires 3/4 of the 50 states to vote to ratify it. Only takes 13 states voting NO to prevent it, and there are plenty more red states than that who would never give up our rights so foolishly.
It will never be enough. Look at the responses in this thread and elsewhere. It will never be enough. There is no price too high that it won't happily be paid. There is no regulation small enough that it will be accepted. They have made that exceptionally clear.
There is no negotiation with them. You will never convince them. It doesn't matter if the regulation works or not.
pretend all victims are in a better place while pocketing NRA dues like no tomorrow
You'll even see them all get together and celebrate with a picture of them pushing a bill that will only add more to the fire we are trying to put out...
PSA: about 2/3 mass shootings are domestic violence related. If you want to fix mass shootings, start at fixing the household.
https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0
You can ABSOLUTELY make a good point about mass shootings being the result of mental health disorders or domestic violence, and we should ABSOLUTELY be doing what we can as a society to fix those problems... but we can't ignore the 100% common denominator in literally every mass shooting... which is guns.
I think this is a good problem to solve, however in tandem with other problems enabling access to weapons and subsequent deaths of many innocent people.
I do wonder why mass shootings weren't nearly as common before 1980s/1990s, when the United States had even less gun control than we do now. There is more to it than just access to guns for sure. Don't get me wrong, I still think stricter gun control would most definitely help, but I wonder what other factors are causing the number of mass shootings to go up.
So establishing a watchman force that arrests cops specifically since cops account for the plurality of DV incidents
Sure, but that takes decades. So gun control NOW, and fix the household issues.
Getting rid of guns isn't the solution, we have 3D printers allowing anyone to make a gun at home. Banning guns won't stop crimimals from using them. Criminals don't follow laws.
Seriously…. STFU.
Sincerely, a guy whose been 3d printing almost half his life.
First, people are perfectly able to manufacture their own firearms without additive manufacturing of any stripe. Linking ghost guns to 3d printing is a red herring brought to you by technophobic morons and shit-tier journalism from a slow news day. You can buy the needed stuff at any big box hardware store, tools inlcuded, for less than a printer costs.
Secondly, while it is entirely possible to produce firearms with printers… the people who are able to do so, are completely capable of doing it the other way.
Third, 3d printing has a fully international community. Given that criminals exist in every nation; you’d see ghost guns…. Everywhere.
Finally, the vast majority of ghost guns were in fact legally manufactured, and either purchased through stupid-as-fuck private sale exemptions; using straw buyers; or were originally stolen.
So yes, improving gun control laws would in fact make a difference.
Plus mass shootings aren't even relevant statistically as a cause of death, but heart disease and car accidents are but I don't see anyone up in arms over banning McDonald's or Ford. I will never support any kind of infringement on my gun rights, no red/yellow flag laws, no national background checks, no mag capacities. Democrats just need to stop treating every mass shooting as an excuse to limit our 2nd amendment rights even more.
I mean, gun control is 100% americas biggest problem and ppl shouldn't get guns without proper training
But trans in sport is indeed a valid issue to address and do something against.
I can't decide whether to laugh or roll my eyes so I'll do both
The point is that they need to shift their priorities. Not that they will because it's all bought and paid for, so to distract people from the real issues, we gotta do something about trans people in sports.
People preventably dying on the daily vs muh TV game person has a penis.
Again, it's 100% america's biggest issue and I'm not agreeing with republicans.
Yet, I just noted that it's also a thing that needs to be discussed. In a much less urgent way, but still it's an issue.
We gotta do something about trans people playing sports =/= we want children to show us their junk
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
Something something projection.
What do these two issues have to do with each other? I support gun control as well as fair sex-based separation in sports.
They're related thanks to party politics. The party that talks about trans people in sports also rails against gun control.
Also, no one automatically knows what you mean when you say fair. Because of the nature of the debate, you don't deserve the benefit of the doubt where people assume that when you say "fair" you only mean "trans women who have experienced male puberty need to undergo hormone therapy before being allowed to compete in women's sports." And even the people who politically advocate for that invariably wind up also supporting a ban on puberty blockers, or trans men in men's sports, or never allowing trans women to compete no matter how thoroughly physically transitioned they are, or whatever other nonsense.
Bans are just not something that needs to be legislated. Sports organizations can self police in that regard. If anything, we need legislation to ensure trans people CAN compete in the gender category they identify as, with the sole exception of trans women who haven't yet been able to medically transition.
Take chess, for example. FIDE just passed an insane set of rules around when trans women can compete in women's tournaments, and how trans men have to give up any titles they earned while they were still presenting as female, but the gender divisions in chess are completely unrelated to inherent ability. The lack of women in chess is a cultural issue, like in STEM fields, not related to physical ability at all, and the women's division ostensibly exists as an attempt to draw women to the game. What FIDE is doing is purely anti-trans, and there should be legislation keeping them from implementing that. I've no idea how that would work internationally, but the point is trans people need protection, not bans.
They're related thanks to party politics. The party that talks about trans people in sports also rails against gun control.
And? Are you not allowed to support certain policies of one party and certain policies of another party? Especially if you live in a different country, so you're not voting for either of them anyway?
In most sports, there is no such thing as “men's” sports. You are allowed to participate no matter what you were born as and what you identify as. So why not just go there and leave women's sports, which are explicitly created to make it possible to compete well without having been born with a male body, alone?
That said, I agree with you regaiding chess (which should not be considered a sport at all). There is no inherent advantage of having a male body in chess other than the general tendency of men to have a higher variance in most abilities.
The issues are not opposing stances, no.
However the point of the post is that while children are being gunned down Republicans will go silent on solutions. However those same Republicans will gladly call on many other non-life threatening issues as a dog whistle or as a distraction tactic. They will ban every book, fire every openly gay person, ridicule every trans child - all because they are afraid of change. But they won't even humor discussions on how to stop a child from catching a bullet.
Just because a political party does many bad things doesn't automatically mean that everything they support is automatically wrong. Or do you also oppose animal rights because Hitler's party supported them?
Stop that. Stop trying to have a reasonable stance in the middle.
Really though, I was under the impression that this was the somewhat reasonable stance that even progressive politicians have? I know that there's scaremongering that DeMoCrAtS want big muscular men taking over women's sports, tackling and hurting your daughters but I thought the actual stance was more along the lines of allowing the LGBTQ+ community to play sports while still allowing sports to be fair?
It definitely doesn't seem like some super easy issue with a clear line in the sand that everyone will be ok with. And some of the scaremongering is certainly bigots being afraid of their children even interacting with someone that is LGBTQ+..
So, I'm legitimately curious, what are the actual stances of those on Lemmy?
Edit: keep down voting me while absolutely none of you are willing to engage and help educate me. I'm legitimately reaching out, asking, and trying to understand and all people can do is hit a down arrow. Fuck me for being an ally trying to trying to further my knowledge eh?
According to the downvotes, you're not allowed to hold both of those opinions at the same time.
Biden: "I like ice cream"
Trump: "I did everything right, and they indicted MEeeeee"
The perfect phone call
We need better options.
It only happens every day if you include gang shootings. But that goes against your narrative.
Nobody tell this guy what per capita means. He might blown his own mind.
Please, a) give me a source for that, and b) tell me why that changes the point.
You seriously think mass shootings happen every single day of the week? Why the hell would I need a source contradict such a and insane statement? The problem these days is that a "mass shooting" is not some unprovoked crime by a nut job shooting up a school. It's two or more people. That also includes gangland shootings between gangs. Current gun laws already completely restrict them from owning guns as criminals so I see no point in even discussing that.
Ah well, just a lot of whining libs then ey?
