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Mass Murder Is a Choice. The Gun Industry Made It
(www.rollingstone.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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politics
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I can't actually tell if that's meant to be satire, but I doubt the people upvoting you can either. So just to be safe..
Congratulations, you've fallen for the same idiot hero fantasies as the right-wing gun cultists have. The gun lobby wrote a version of them just for you and you swallowed it without a single critical thought.
Do you know who is going to win when you and the MAGA morons face off with your cool guns?
Whoever is the biggest piece of shit, just like always.
You're right, the multiple white supremacist militia groups that have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their attempt to overthrow the government at the behest of the previous president trying to desperately cling to power is just a boogeyman created by the gun lobby
If you think it's the gun lobbyists who're making the right wing extremists look like violent, dangerous fascists, you really really have not been paying attention
I really enjoyed this comment. Not because it was in any way insightful or entertaining, but because you couldn't actually create a logical link from my comment to your own, but you were so desperate to push exactly the propaganda I was talking about that you went ahead and posted it anyway.
Yet here you are, leaping to the defense of the companies (and laws they've written) that sell those groups all the semi-automatic weapons their black little hearts desire.
I wonder who is the most grateful for your service?
The violent, dangerous far-right extremists that are responsible for the majority of mass shootings and actively target minorities with them?
The gun lobby members banking record profits even as mass shootings, domestic homicides and impulse murders surge?
The Republicans who have been enjoying $16 million a year in open bribes ever since Sandy Hook doubled them, plus a small army of single-issue voters who will tolerate any amount of bigotry, stupidity, oppression and exploitation as long as gun safety remains optional?
Or the minorities who are told "If you don't want to be murdered then buy more guns and carry them with you everywhere and be ready to kill another person at any moment", like that's an existence aspired to by anybody except bloodthirsty gun-owners (and one that isn't a requirement in any other wealthy, progressive country with functional gun laws)?
Nobody outside of a deeply stupid, easily manipulated and heavily astroturfed pocket of social media believes you're helping anybody besides extremists, greedy psychopaths and yourself.
You won't go down in history with the likes of climate change deniers, you'll go down in history with the people who claimed that "I only want what's best for black people and that's actually being enslaved by white men".
I wrote a bit of a response to this, but I honestly can't really be bothered, I'm sure your waxing poetic will save you from the wall if they take power though
But you're going to shoot them all with your cool guns if they try right?
You're just waiting for the perfect moment that for some reason -- despite you openly acknowledging the danger of them -- isn't now nor when there were high profile state executions of unarmed minorities nor any other time in the last decade.
Or is the idea that they're supposed to be intimidated? Because with America far closer to the brink of fascism than comparable countries with gun control, it looks like it was nothing more than yet another slice of unfit-shifting pro-gun bullshit.
That's the idea, and hopefully anyone else who believes in things like democracy and civil rights.
At the end of the day, ideals will only look good on our epitaph (if we're even allowed one in this scenario), might makes right, and if you also care about those sorts of things, you better damn well make sure your side's got more of it.
Because (despite the Republican's best efforts) we still nominally live in a democracy governed by the rule of law, and our institutions, while definitely damaged as of late, are still intact
A democracy will naturally have some turbulent periods, but as long as it's still actually a democracy, things are always recoverable non-violently through one of the first three boxes (soap box, ballot box, jury box). It's only once it's clear that we live in a democracy no longer that the fourth box comes out (the ammo box), and even then, the last stopgap before all out civil war would be the civilian leadership of the military and the top officers + soldiers who serve choosing a side.
Honestly who in their right mind would be intimidated by the Democrats? Fascists don't care about peaceful protests and Rolling Stone articles, they only know violence, and we can't make the mistake of not being ready and willing to speak their language. America is clearly very politically sick, I honestly think it's incredibly silly to some how blame that solely on gun lobbying of all things.
🤣
Ultimately if you're not prepared to kill and die for your (and other's) rights, you don't have rights, you have privileges granted to you by those who are
You can laugh it up while those privileges are stripped away should your side lose the fight, but if you're willing to risk that (and in fact, seemingly push to actively weaken your side), then more power to you, I guess
You've done nothing and you'll do nothing. You're living in the exact hero fantasy you were so offended by. Meanwhile, actual people die at the hands of the actual fascists you've enabled.
But even if we take your pinkie promise seriously, what exactly are you going to offer in return for all these deaths? "Have gun"?
You promote gun laws that don't even require gun owners to observe basic gun safety, let alone competency. How many of them would even understand orders, let alone follow them? How many of them know how to fly a drone, despite it clearly being far more useful? How many know how to give medical care in a field?
If you wanted to help people, you'd already be doing it. Instead you sit on the internet while minorities are killed and fascists gain power and tell people "Don't worry, if it gets too bad I'll shoot it".
I can't tell if this is a troll account or some sort of bad attempt by a right wing plant, because surely nobody could argue this in good faith
Off you go then, time to shoot the government. The state is executing civilians in the street, imprisoning minorities to use as slaves, funnelling billions of dollars into an oppressive war that mostly kills children and there's a fascist running for office.
I'm sure once you've been gunned down and your crush has finished sobbing over your body and your boss has given a speech about how they never truly appreciated you, America's fascists will surrender the power they have and America will become a democracy to rival... All the other democracies that don't casually arm criminals, wife beaters and suicidal children.
Until then, you're a grown man telling people your hero fantasies with all the credibility of a child saying they're in the Avengers. Being pro-democracy isn't a requirement for buying a gun and you've killed exactly zero fascists.
It'd get more done than you just perpetually bitching about it on the internet, I suppose
Just openly stating your double standard isn't likely to be a winning strategy.
You're adamant that your guns are the solution to problems that are happening right now, but I know for a fact that all you've done is talk about them on the internet, because if you followed through on any of it you'd be on the news (and also dead).
But apparently, you're a hero anyway.
I'm adamant that gun control is the solution to problems that are happening right now. You're guessing that all I've done is talk about them on the internet, because you don't have any of the information you'd need to know for sure.
But apparently, all I'm doing is bitching.
I guess when you live in a fantasy world, you can pretend the good guys are the ones that insist they have the solution, do nothing to enact it yet still work tirelessly to block any alternatives.
Back in reality though, those people are dogshit.
Is anyone who becomes law enforcement falling for hero fantasies?
Or fantasies of being judge, jury, and executioner.
But I don’t want to be Judge Judy and executioner!
Which differs from "I bought a gun to kill anyone who tries to break into my suburban home and steal my iPad" how exactly?
Pretty sure nowadays they are power and domination fantasies.
Do all gun owners in America work in law enforcement?
No thankfully, since CCW holders are statistically more accurate, fire less shots in encounters, and commit less crime than the US police (by convictions), who barely even get convicted due to qualified immunity which CCW holders don't have.
Probably because CCW often requires getting a permit that demands actual knowledge of safe handling, storage, de-escalation and demonstrated ability to hit a target, in some kind of half-assed approximation of functional gun laws (which I guess is why the pro-gun community opposes CCW permits).
Of course, that doesn't stop them from routinely executing their partners or any nearby cashiers when they lose control of their emotions, leaving their guns in public toilets or arming criminals by leaving handguns in sock drawers and gloveboxes.
And unlike police reforms, they also have zero positive, measurable impact on crime rates, so they're really asking a lot from society in return for intervening in 3% of mass shootings (and always after people have been killed already).
The ones who last do, yeah. All the good ones I’ve met are ex-police.
But they became police in the first place, meaning they fell for the hero fantasies.
So then who can defend you from an attack?
Of course, so maybe you should be able to defend yourself?