Anonymous og_beer 3w

Mass violence will always happen when we fail to create systems that actually resolve these issues. Mass violence will always be a part of our lives until we invest time, money, and energy into social change, judicial change, our child protection and foster services changes, school policy changes, and mental health treatment. In so many cases, changes people propose would not have prevented the crime. It would have just made it harder for law abiding citizens to engage in their 2A rights

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

i agree, however it's a little confusing considering the party that is against gun control is also against public funding for any of the programs that would address poverty, mental health ex (aka programs that would fight the root issue)

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Anonymous OP 3w

That’s my thing. I actually support the introduction of state sponsored mental health campuses, and think they are a vital step in multiple reform processes (especially corrections and judicial reform). But I’m not a Republican, and certainly not maga. Conservative financial beliefs are just government spending money must always be bad, ignoring how much money the gov spends on foreign interests bc they don’t talk about it, and screaming at what they do talk about: reinvesting into Americans.

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

also, while i understand and obviously support citizens rights protected by the constitution, it seems to me that all the 2A people just want the guns just to have them... most people don't actually realistically need them for protection... therefore limits on the amount of guns people can have and what kind seems smart

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

🤝 spoke nothing but facts

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Anonymous OP 3w

People who want guns just to have them aren’t the people committing violent acts though. This would just be limiting people’s rights to make someone else feel safe. I don’t care if someone has a military arsenal inside their homes, as long as they respect the weapons, keep them safely stored, are licensed to own them, trained on safe use, and have access to support systems that would insure continued healthy practices

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

i understand and agree with that, it's more so that i just don't understand why civilians need military grade weapons. i'll be totally honest this is coming from someone who did not grow up around guns or that culture

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Anonymous OP 3w

The goal of the amendment is to allow the average person to rally their community and protect themselves from a tyrannical government. If the tyrannical government’s military will have access to it, so should myself and my community. If military comes on my doorstep, I can’t defeat them alone. Duh. No one ever believes that (but weird egomaniacs). But if they come to my town, I know my community will be able to come together and do so. That’s always been the point.

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Anonymous OP 3w

Our culture focusing on the individual and the erasure of the feeling of community is a huge cultural issue we need to address, and it’s also what led to this line of thinking of “you can’t defeat a military”. Well of course I can’t. My community could, though. Together. We’ve lost social togetherness and it’s a huge pitfall of our country rn. Everyone only cares about me me me me me me

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

once again i 100% agree lol. i think that's really what i was trying to address in this post, the hypocrisy of the party of 2A, small gov is currently lying down to the dismantling of our constitution

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Anonymous OP 3w

Pitfalls of two party system. People feel threatened by “the others” and think the only way to combat “the evil other people” is to strengthen the government, but for their own side. Forgetting that allowing that overstep in their favor will allow for the overstep against them too. So now we have the authoritative rise of the government funded by those who aimed to stop it

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

it's all of us vs them, until everyone figures that out we are gonna continue to get fucked

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Anonymous OP 3w

Precisely. That’s why the erasure of community was so important to them 😉

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

man i love intelligent people who can create intelligent discussions

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

that's what i was thinking, i barely got to read their comment

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Anonymous OP 3w

Basically one of your points, they felt there was no need for automatic weapons but most people (especially women) should carry a small firearm. Which, I was going to add some statistics for education purposes around handguns being the most used weapon in mass shootings (73-78% depending which year you begin your data with) so it’s the guns you feel the most safe with are the ones used to hurt people most

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

ah gotcha, that's interesting... i wonder if that's because they are more inconspicuous so would be a more likely choice?? obviously you can just as easily kill someone with tiny gun as a big one. only thing is that automatic guns definitely do more damage faster which is probably so i do understand their perspective if that was the concern

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Anonymous OP 3w

ignore the "which is probably" lol

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Anonymous OP 3w

It’s mostly media exposure bias. They’re capable of more harm, but typically aren’t. Only 12 mass shootings since 1983 have used rifles, and of those they were semi-automatic. The biggest death masa shootings used multiple shooters with semi auto rifles, but it was mostly the fact there were multiple shooters that led to the larger death count (sandy hook, Las Vegas, Miami, etc)

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

I agree with a lot of what you’ve said here but I think it’s absolutely insane to look at the only first world country with a shooting death epidemic and say that focusing on guns is a bandaid fix. There are mentally ill people everywhere; nowhere are they as easily armed in their worst moments as they are here. I agree that we need to focus on mental health like all governments do, but let’s not ignore the elephant in the room

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

no i get that i was just trying to understand what that commenter might have been trying to get at

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Anonymous #2 3w

And people who want guns just to have them are absolutely some of the people who are killing others with said guns. Everyone thinks they’re the most responsible gun owner just like everyone thinks they’re the safest driver on the road. The truth is that your gun can very easily be used by yourself or someone else to commit suicide or shoot an innocent person because you got spooked and had a deadly weapon on you. The guns are the problem

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Anonymous #2 3w

i agree with aspects of this take as well.. i do really wonder how many of the people that own guns know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will be able to make the right decision whether or whether not to shoot someone when they are in a stressful situation. personally i don't know that i would, hence why i don't own one

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Anonymous #2 3w

i also think that this country is fundamentally in a different place than other countries where gun control/bans work, which puts us in a difficult spot because imo bans will never work or happen here

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Anonymous OP 3w

Yeah exactly same here. Thats the issue in a country where everyone is armed, you can’t stop to think about if you should shoot or not because you’re worried about getting shot.

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Anonymous #2 3w

Pro gun people don’t like this argument but I think it’s valid; I don’t want a gun on me if I’m being robbed. If someone is stealing my wallet or car and they have a gun, how would having a gun help me? Best case scenario we each take our odds at shooting the other and one or both of us dies over cash or a car. I don’t think someone should die for stealing my car or wallet. And I certainly don’t want to die over it. Much better if no parties have guns but still better if only one party has one.

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Anonymous #2 3w

In response to that point people love to bring up rape and how women having guns is so important to prevent that, but I don’t think that’s a very strong argument either. Guns almost definitely enable more of those crimes than they prevent and there are plenty of other non fatal weapons that people can carry that do a pretty good job of deterring attackers.

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Anonymous OP 3w

I think bans will never work here because our founding fathers messed up with how they wrote the 2nd amendment and now we’re stuck with it. We have high homicide rates largely because of our gun problem. The trick is that now people see that we live in a dangerous nation and don’t want to be without their own guns. We created the problem and now we’re stuck

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Anonymous #2 3w

I’m 100% against you at the end there. Other weapons can deter an attack but you know what will deter an attack? A gun. That you’ve trained to use and access rapidly in an emergency. I’m sorry but if someone is coming at me with the intent to cause any bodily harm they do not get the benefit of a non-fatal weapon. We shouldn’t encourage women facing potential rape to give their attackers that benefit. Full stop. Women shouldn’t take the high road there and be told to use non fatal means

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Anonymous #2 3w

I’d love to see something like what they do in some pro gun European nations where you can own guns and transport them but you have to keep them unloaded when not at the range or at home. Ammunition needs to be carried outside the gun. That doesn’t interfere with the opposing a tyrannical government argument or the hunting argument. It forces people to wait a second before shooting someone which saves lives

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Anonymous #2 3w

An unloaded weapon is a useless weapon. If you’re transporting it yes, it should be fully unloaded (but always treated like it is) but if you’re conceal (or open) carrying there’s no point if it’s unloaded. We need to increase access to gun safety courses, or even subsidize them so they’re free. Everyone can go to a gun safety course for free whenever it suits their fancy to avoid accident related gun deaths

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

We all have to pass drivers tests to operate a vehicle (potential deadly weapon) and yet people make fatal mistakes every few minutes. Gun owners don’t have to pass any tests and the weapon is much more deadly. I’m not saying would be rapists don’t deserve to die, some definitely do. However when one inevitably makes a mistake and fires on the wrong person we want to be able to fix that mistake

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Anonymous #2 3w

It’s not about a moral high road or about protecting attackers, it’s about realistic risk analysis. If pepper spray or a taser will stop the vast majority of attacks and prevent all needless accidental killings why should we use guns?

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Anonymous #2 3w

Oh I believe they should take classes before being allowed to purchase a weapon. I do not believe licensure and class requirements are a restriction in any sense of the word. As long as those classes are kept free and readily available, ofc.

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

That’s an excellent first step, totally agree. Still I don’t think that the risk analysis I laid out there will ever make sense for the pro gun argument. I’m open to the possibility of being wrong in that but I don’t believe I am

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

What valid use case is prevented in your view because of this carry unloaded policy?

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Anonymous #2 3w

Pepper spray and tasers require close contact. Would you want someone trying to hurt you be allowed to get close enough to cause harm before you can stop them? Tasers have a very inconsistent rate of incapacitation, just bc you hit someone with it doesn’t mean they’ll stop. Pepper spray gets fucked by a gust of wind and has even worse rates than tasers

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Anonymous #2 3w

My point about the cars is that even with universal requirements for training people still make deadly mistakes all the time. Cars are absolutely required for modern life for most Americans so we accept this trade off. Why do we accept this trade off with guns when their benefits are non existent or close to it?

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Anonymous #2 3w

I mean your own example of rape is a good one. If a woman (or anyone, honestly) is being raped, why on earth would we expect them to have to pull out their weapon, load it, and then fire? Reloading takes longer than you’d expect (obligatory switching to your secondary is faster than reloading joke)

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Anonymous #2 3w

They do have benefits, but with our current society they just do not outweigh the harm. And banning them, like said above, won’t help as far too many exist here and far too many will remain in circulation, empowering those most dangerous. So we must do every hard piece of work possible to help reduce that harm until the benefits outweighs them

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

I’d argue that handguns in the hands of a civilian require close contact too. Even cops will tell you how hard it is to hit a moving target even across a room. I get your point about those other weapons not being as ideal of a deterrent, I just think the reduced risk of killing the wrong person (which happens far more often than killing the right one) makes the trade off worthwhile

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Anonymous #2 3w

And I appreciate and agree with what you said about the harms outweighing the benefits, thats my central point here. Your point about a woman needing to load a weapon to prevent a rape is a good one but I still think that the benefit to carrying a loaded weapon everywhere doesn’t even come close to all the needless killing that policy enables. We tend to take it as a given in this country but shooting deaths comparable to car crashes or cancer is a huge cost we already live with and accept.

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Anonymous #2 3w

Your odds increase if you take the time to train to learn to use the weapon effectively, which is part of being a responsible gun owner, and is included in nearly every CWP class. Which again every single person should have open access to those classes. In an emergency situation, you want to stop the risk of harm. Not slow down, not threaten, not interrupt, not scare away, STOP. Unfortunately there’s only one way to do that

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Anonymous #2 3w

Which is why I usually push back against the rape defense argument. To my knowledge we have similar rates of sexual assault compared to other first world countries AND are the first world leaders in shooting deaths. If these guns were preventing any rapes wouldn’t we see that?

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Anonymous #2 3w

They’re not bc rape victims aren’t carrying guns. They’re carrying their keys in the fists, pepper spray, and “birdie” alarms. If these things worked wouldn’t we see that? We need to stop making people fearful of guns, and instead educate them on safe and responsible practices. The fear and insecurity around them is what often results in unsafe practices. They were afraid, mishandled it, and the worst happened

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Anonymous #2 3w

Last thing I’ll say on it but I also sort of disagree with the argument that bans will only empower criminals. Criminals get illegal things everywhere, they get guns in any country they want and can get whatever else they want if they’re dedicated. Gun bans work because the vast majority of shooting deaths are accidental or rapid escalations of situations that would otherwise be non fatal confrontations. Not criminals attacking people.Banning guns would prevent the lions share of those killings.

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Anonymous #2 3w

But you know what can be more effective in preventing BOTH kinds of deaths? Education. Free, easily accessible, wide spread, high quality education

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

I don’t think that’s a valid inversion of my point. America is the country where women are far more heavily armed than other first world countries yet we have similar rates of rape and sexual assault. We are the treatment group here. Why did the treatment yield no results?

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Anonymous #2 3w

It’s common sense to be afraid of being killed by a gun, this is America. This is one of few first world countries where that is a valid fear.

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

I’m with you on the education point though, that can absolutely prevent many of these deaths. Same thing with building more parks, getting rid of vacant lots…etc

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Anonymous #2 3w

Not really. Women are two times less likely to carry than men. Only about 25% of women carry, and this is UP from recent years. This is the MAX

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Anonymous #2 3w

And since this is America and youre right that we’ll never convince people to give up their guns, I think things like that are the best things we can focus on.

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Anonymous #2 3w

Exactly. We will never get rid of them. And unless we amend the constitution we will never really be able to restrict access to them further than what we have now. The only thing we can do is educate educate EDUCATE

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

Dude what are you getting at? I’m talking American women vs other first world women. 25% is worlds different than 0-5%

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

A boy can hope for an amendment to the 2nd! 😓 (never happening lmao)

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Anonymous #2 3w

But yeah education and hopefully some states rights restrictions in blue areas. Just like how they had in the westward expansion where frontier towns would have people check weapons with the sheriff when they came into town. I’d hope we can establish gun free zones like that

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Anonymous #2 3w

The thing there is people just appeal cases based off those laws up to the federal level and Supreme Court over turns the laws as they’re deemed too restrictive and unconstitutional. New York State’s concealed carry restriction is a good recent example of that

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Anonymous og_beer 3w

Dawg I hate this mf country sometimes 💀 you can restrict women’s healthcare all you want but try to tell someone they can’t bring their fucking gun into your town and that’s too much

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