We’ve turned into a nation of cowards. Just completely craven people who shoot first and ask questions later because the news has made them terrified that they’ll be murdered in their beds, despite violent crime being historically low, comparatively speaking.
Having mingled with the gun community for some time, there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners but there are also a worrying amount of terminally fearful people with violent ideation. Many are likely one bad life event, one half-cocked response to an uncertain situation from being a mugshot on a news story like this prick.
Having mingled with the gun community for some time, there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners
This is why US has so much gun violence. Like rabid dog owners assuring you theyre safe. You just havent seen them when theyre not level headed, we’re all emotional apes.
Yep. Even the “responsible” gun owners I know radiate the “I want you to know I’m dangerous” energy when they tell you how prepared they are, “just in case something happens that requires a gun”
There are other quieter owners you never really hear about though. My brother never really talks about it, doesn’t chime in to water cooler “what are you shooting” kinds of talks, and basically just keeps them in the gun safe except for his ~2x a year gun range trips to make sure he stays competent.
He treats them like his garage full of dangerous power tools. Not a toy, but good to have in your back pocket should there be a need for that particular tool some day.
there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners but there are also a worrying amount of terminally fearful people with violent ideation.
The problem is that both groups have the same ease of access to weapons.
Until there are a lot more reliable ways to tell the 2 groups apart, weapons need to be a lot more difficult to get your hands on.
Yeah. I have friends that won’t even let their kids walk a quarter mile to school, in one of the safest communities in the entire state. It’s insane. The media has put the fear of “but what if…” into so many people.
You’ve got better odds winning the lottery than what these people are afraid of. Be smart, be savvy, be aware of your surroundings and watch out for the oblivions as you go about your business. But there’s no need to be afraid of everything around you.
In that situation I’m concerned about other drivers, and also the child not paying attention while staring at their phone. I have seen sooo many teens just step off the curb and walk across the street without even looking up from their phone. Stranger Danger would have nothing to do with it.
There needs to be a better balance between the latch key kid independence/responsibility and the absolute lack of trust in your kids and your community to just not be child kidnapping murderers???
Fixing transport infrastructure would have the most impact. Narrower roads with fewer lanes and more complexity, 20mph/30kmph speed limits, better designed pedestrian crossings, and separated bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And requiring the vehicles themselves to be designed such that they are not just safe for the occupants, but safe for other vehicles and people too (which means lower hood heights and lower weight).
And in general, providing viable alternatives to driving so there are less vehicles on the road, making it safer to walk and bike.
The whole way our society is built is not around pedestrian safety or teaching it to children.
My daughter is growing up in a subdivision with low traffic and no sidewalks and I have to regularly remind her to look both ways when crossing the streets when we’re elsewhere because it’s just not something she has to do all the time.
There’s room for sidewalks, they just didn’t build them. If there were sidewalks, it would be far easier for her to remember to do it every time.
You’ve got better odds winning the lottery than what these people are afraid of. Be smart, be savvy, be aware of your surroundings and watch out for the oblivions as you go about your business. But there’s no need to be afraid of everything around you.
Awareness prevents the vast majority of dangerous situations. Carrying is actually more likely to escalate situations into being dangerous than not. even a basic situational awareness will keep you far safer than a fire arm ever will.
I agree that people shouldn’t be afraid of this stuff, but I think you underestimate the odds of winning the lottery and your chances of being murdered.
Around 32,000 homicides/year in the US. 333,000,000 people, so about 1 in 100,000.
Powerball odds are 1 in 292,000,000.
the distribution is different though, if you buy a powerball ticket you have the same odds as everyone else who bought one assuming the numbers are equally distributed and truly random
the difference between living in Biden’s suburban neighborhood in Delaware vs west Philly or Baltimore is huge
Everything is a threat. Thank you Faux News and the rest.
Different color skin - threat
Gay - threat
Trans - threat
Environmental rules - threat
Immigration - thread
Vegetarian - threat
Equality - threat
Atheism - threat
Non-western religion - threat
Woke - threat
Electric cars - threat
The list is endless. Everything is a threat to them. Their pocketbooks, their marriage, their jobs, their theism, their TV, their guns…
An endless barrage of threats that they are constantly reminded of.
What can they do against all these threats? Elect a Strong Man that will crack skulls, He Has All The Answers. But those pesky libs keep getting in the way, so you gotta take matters into your own hands. Thank god and the good ol’ USA you can have a personal arsenal at arm’s reach to instantly panic-fire at that dark-skinned person pulling into your driveway who wants to steal your TV.
The “I feared for my life” rhetoric is just an excuse to shoot people, borrowed from police when they wanted to shoot people. You don’t have to politely believe them just because they said it.
I’ve talked about in in several other posts regarding gun control.
The rampant media sowing fear is poison. It’s the culture that’s being fostered that’s more dangerous than the guns. “Fuck around and find out” and “come try and take them” keeps reinforcing that guns are a totally normal thing to use to solve problems.
The NRA fear paranoia narrative has permeated our society. Add to that those who feel inferior so they carry a gun to feel powerful. Now add the hate farming by Russian trolls and right wing media, (the two are the same, with different names)
How often I witness roadrage/aggressive drivers makes the mass gunownership in this country kind of terrifying. I’ve seen a truck try to push another car off the road for getting off a left hand exit. I can only assume the truck driver was mad at the car for “being in the way.” The power tripping and entitlement to being aggressive towards others combined with your list of problematic cultural phenomenon and guns is horrifying.
“So there I was, watching Fox News on one TV, NewsMax on another, dick in hand of course - I’m an alpha you see. And I see this dude trying to steal my freedoms. I ran after him, and I heard him say something woke. It was either “Sorry - wrong house” or “I want to rape your wife and abort the baby”. I couldn’t tell which. Of course I had my blue steel beauty in the hand I wasnt using to rub one out - so I started blasting…”
It’s amazing he managed to wank, hold the gun, and drink a gallon of Pabst Blue Ribbon with only two hands.
As a late night cab driver, if you’re ever wondering why I’m on the street rather than the driveway in your sketchy, pickup truck filled suburban neighborhood, this is why.
Give me a shady looking industrial district or run down residential neighborhood over semi-rural suburbia any day of the week. I feel much safer.
Yikes.
I’m like the exact opposite, but it’s mostly because I’ve had bad experiences with gangbangers.
I was lily white guy living in ground zero of MS13 gangland in Los Angeles in the early 2000s for four years. I know it’s crazy, but best neighbors I ever had. We all bbq’d together, watched each other’s kids, and got along well.
One morning I was taking a bus to work. Two guys robbed me while I was standing at the bus stop. I had fifteen dollars, which I happily gave to them.
I went over to my neighbor that evening and told him what happened.
The next day, there was fifteen dollars in my mailbox.
I moved from there to high end HOA in Texas and holy hell it was miserable. I hated them all. They were the nosiest, most judgemental assholes imaginable. One lady would go walking down the alleys checking how many beer cans people had in their recycling and called the police on one house charging them with child neglect because of beer cans in their recycling bin. Fuck that neighborhood forever.
(There’s a funny coda to the robbery. I smoked a lot back then. When they were done shoving the gun in my ribs and walking away, I blurted out, “guys, I’m stressed. Do one of you have a light?” and I swear on a stack of books of your choice that one of them turned around and lit my cigarette)
There’s a certain weird honor in lighting the cigarette of the guy you just robbed. It’s kinda respectable.
This is real. I’ve had folks in my cab that clearly were trying to probe my boundaries to see if I’m an easy target who immediately switched gears the moment I showed my personality. Just because someone is desperate doesn’t mean they want to fuck over someone who’s cool with them and is real. The way you carry yourself makes a difference.
It’s pretty obvious if you meet me in person that I’m a broke artist who cares about real people and detests fake corporate bullshit. That’s not really an appealing target and I have fuck all to give them anyway.
But if some fuck shoots me for being on their street while being trans, or literally just someone they don’t recognize, I don’t get the chance to show how I carry myself.
Oh boy, I can’t even imagine… just parking in the street and suddenly: surprise gangbang on your hood
If you’re serious, there are two different uses of the term.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gangbanger
(US, slang) A member of a violent gang; a violent person.
(vulgar, sex) Someone who takes part in a gangbang.
It’s really sad watching you people make light of a serious topic.
I guess it’s because you can’t tolerate any criticism of cities, even if they house most of the people who own guns illegally and use them on other humans.
But it’s not front-page news on these websites whenever someone dies due to gang violence, because it happens every day.
It also depends where. Suburban or exurban driveways in the South can be deadly with all the 2nd amendment hardliners. Especially in small or midsize cities. In northern or western urban or suburban areas, not as bad.
In my experience, it’s drunk drivers and gangbangers in cities that have killed my friends.
Huffing Right-Wing media all day turning people extremely paranoid for no actual reason.
Sortof the defining characteristic of regressives is that they are easily brainwashed by media. An enlarged amygdala makes them fear and rage-addicted.
That doesn’t explain the city/rural divide though. It could well be that listening to reactionary right wing rhetoric leads to an enlarged amygdala.
It could be that the kinds of life experienced which lead to large amygdalas also lead to conservative political views.
But sure, let’s pretend it’s not trauma that enlarges the amygdala, but rather the act of listening to long-form interviews.
That’s exactly the reason. When push comes to shove, these are the people that will be willingly used for fodder on the front lines.
Knowledge Fight takes a critical look at Alex Jones(I put this in every post I make about him because I can’t stand to listen to AJ direct, and I don’t want people thinking I do). Anyway, he goes out to break quite often shouting stuff like THEYRE COMING FOR YOU, THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU, THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU!!! after having discussed the “demonic antifa/BLM/democrats coming to your houses.”
Obviously not everyone is as sensationalist as Alex Jones, but he’s been bragging about how other places have started sounding like him. Including Joe Rogan (probably more on Vax and stuff like that, but still)
Alex thinks he is fighting the literal christian devil. Like there is no way to deal with that other than violence.
Also hello fellow wonk
What the fuck are these people so scared of that they start blasting folk for pulling into their driveway? This seems to keep happening and nobody ever thinks to check up on the mf who almost blasted a delivery driver who got the wrong address? Forget just charging the dude with attempted murder, can we search the house and take away firearms from somebody so clearly irresponsible that they can’t distinguish a genuine threat from an imagined one?
If the second amendment won’t allow that to happen, then the amendment needs to be re-written.
The second amendment absolutely would allow that to happen. To people purposefully misrepresenting what it says won’t.
First, it says what it says because we need a militia to protect the nation, which was once true when an professional standing army wasn’t expected but no longer is.
Second, the goal is for a well regulated militia. Even if we assume it still applies (it doesn’t, but let’s pretend), nothing about this is well regulated. Make sure people have training if you’re going to let people own firearms so freely.
It wasn’t that a professional standing army “wasn’t expected” - in fact they were quite common at the time. Standing armies don’t tend to go unused, they make it easy for asshole politicians to pick stupid fights with other countries. Not having one was a deliberate choice we made to avoid such things, and for the most part it worked, for a little while at least.
I wouldn’t say the were quite common. They weren’t unheard of, but only the major powers in the world could afford them. The US would be a nation of mostly farmers isolated from most of the developed world. There’s no reason they would have expected to become a world power. A militia, at the time, would seem to be the reasonable expectation for such a nation for the foreseeable future.
