where is switzerland? on the chart, this often gets touted as the counterpoint
On this chart Norway would also be listed with 29 guns per person. These are owned by only 10% of the population however, and automatic rifles are banned for civilians. I don’t disagree with the sentiment of this meme, but it’s cherry picking data in exactly the same manner as “the other side” would do just for a cheap gotcha argument.
These are owned by only 10% of the population however
Thats the case in America too, iirc like 30% of households have at least 1 gun, and if you assume 4 people per household, and 1.25 gun per American, that means the average gun-owning household has 16 guns.
It makes a lot of sense to own more than one gun. For self defense you might own one shotgun, one handgun, and a smaller handgun for concealed carry. If you’re a hunter, you likely want two rifles in different calibers, a shotgun, and a hand gun. In addition to that you might have an old gun laying around or grandpa’s old hunting gun, a range toy, some historic gun you like for some reason. Sport target shooters will have a few different guns, depending on what disciplines they shoot. Then there are also more serious collectors who might have dozens or hundreds of different firearms.
Yes. What’s the point of owning a firearm if you can’t have a gun for when you’re sleeping in your bedroom, a gun when you’re on the toilet, a gun when you’re on the couch watching the TV, a gun when you’re at the front door greeting guests, a gun when you’re driving your F150, a gun for that second amendment right, a gun when you go grocery shopping, a gun when you go buying clothes, a gun to go with your Tony Montana cosplay and you know, a gun just for fun. What are you supposed to do? Go outside without a gun? Use one gun for all those things? Don’t you know switching to your sidearm is always faster than reloading?
You don’t need all those guns. You want all those guns.
Don’t you know switching to your sidearm is always faster than reloading?
We call this the New York Reload and strapping down with like six pistols is a legitimate tactic.
Very true. People have all kinds of stuff they don’t actually need, but just like having.
I’m not sure the number of guns someone owns makes a difference regarding public safety and gun crime.
I support stricter gun laws in the US, registered ownership, some kind of license, sales only through licenses dealers, restricted advertising, waiting times, safe storage requirements, etc. A lot of gun regulations in the US are not very effective and more symbolic. Bothering legal owners more doesn’t necessarily help with violent crimes using firearms.
Fundamentally the main reasons for gun crime are social and can improved without changing gun regulations.
Any kind of registration of ANYTHING in the US is a bad idea. Especially at a time where the federal government is openly genocidal towards certain minorities, especially trans people. Having a list of trans people who own guns would be free eats for them if they declared every single one a terrorist or enemy of the state.
A valid concern.
A gun registry wouldn’t list if people are trans or not though. A list of trans people you would get through healthcare and insurance. Changes of a legal name is probably registered somewhere as well. So they would need to cross reference.
If they want to go after trans people individually, they would go for leaders and activists first. They are easily found on social media nowadays. Then go after organized groups.
An individual armed trans person is much less of a concern, than organized groups armed or not.
I agree. The main reasons for crime are social and in America that should definitely be improved upon, but have you questioned why specifically gun related crimes are so high compared to let’s say knife-related crimes? Because in Europe it’s probably the opposite, knife-related crimes are higher than gun-related crimes.
Yes, easy gun availability makes gun crime more likely. If you think your victim might have a gun, you want to use a gun to rob them. Knives are very deadly weapons as well and very hard to regulate.
In many European countries it’s easier to get a gun illegally than legally.
Who are you to tell how many of those someone needs? If someone isn’t a murderous psychopath it does not matter how many guns they have cause exactly none of them will be used on a person.
Let’s me rephrase it then. You can want to have all those guns but it’s not sensible to have all those guns.
The argument here is that it’s sensible to have so many guns. It’s not sensible because even among Americans the median gun owner owns 2 guns. You don’t need a shotgun, a handgun, a concealed carry gun and a whole other set of guns for hunting and whole other set of guns for the shooting range etc. That is not sensible, that is just someone wanting a whole lot of guns.
You don’t need a shotgun, a handgun, a concealed carry gun and a whole other set of guns for hunting and whole other set of guns for the shooting range etc. That is not sensible, that is just someone wanting a whole lot of guns.
What you described in the first sentence is entirely reasonable, you just don’t understand it.
Here’s an evaluation based strictly on cost.
My hunting rifles cost something like $2 per round or more to fire. If I want to go to the range and practice technique firing 50 to 100 times is normal. This is a cost of $100 to $200 dollars.
My plinking, or training, rifles on the other have a cost of about 4 cents per round to fire. So now a practice day at the range is below $5.
However I cannot hunt with a training rifle, it’s caliber is far too small.
It’s the same with shotguns and handguns. The heavier ones are necessary for real activities but they cost a lot to train with. The smaller caliber ones are much less expensive to train with but aren’t useful for real work.
What you are missing, IMO, is that firearms are tools and people who use their tools tend to own more than one of each.
TBH if you’re a hunter you DO need different guns, because a gun for deer is overkill for something like wolves/boars but mostly useless against something like a bear. But aside from that, if I did live in the US I would be a collector, but the only guns I’d seriously plan to buy brand new would be a carry pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. And as long as they’re following the law and no one’s getting hurt, I don’t think it matters how many guns one could have.
Ah yes, the two genders, completely sane “piles of guns” owner and raging psychopath.
Nuance doesn’t exist, accidents don’t happen and a mostly overlooked societal mental health crisis is woke DEI propaganda.
It makes a lot of sense to own more than one gun
It’s hard to tell for me if this is meant as satire.
I think carrying the guns around plays a big role too
Also the social safety net and availability of (mental) healthcare, it’s not like Europe doesn’t have some glaring problems in that regard but holy shit is it better than whatever the US is doing.
On this chart Norway would also be listed with 29 guns per person. These are owned by only 10% of the population however
Wait, so you’re saying the average Norwegian gun owner owns 290 guns? That sounds very implausible.
Yeah, the numbers seem wild to me. I live in Norway. I have family who lives up north among polar bears, so they have gun for bear protection. My in-laws do some hunting, so they have a few hunting rifles. I feel like my family and in-laws are far above the regular citizens when it comes to gun count per person, but it still averages to around 0.5 guns per person among us. I don’t know anyone in Norway who owns a gun to defend against other humans. Who are these 10%?
yeah the type of firearm would be very useful data
next to germanybetween Portugal and Canada. according to small arms survey, which supplied the data, switzerland has about 25 guns per 100 people and .5 deaths per 100k people..5 deaths per 100 people.
You mean per 100,000 people, right?
yeah, fixed
Thank god 😅
Alright, thanks for confirming!
Total homicides, total deaths, firearm homicides, or firearm deaths? Because the graph in the comic is intentionally misleading that way.
violent killings involving firearms, i think it said
So mostly suicides then
don’t think so actually, have a look.
Switzerland distributes a lot of firearms, particularly through their mandatory military service. But Switzerland also very tightly controls the supply of ammunition for all of those firearms they issue.
Uhm not really, I have multiple family members which store quite a bit of ammunition at home and while noone might get them by accident you could easily get the guns and the ammo if you wanted to.
Controlling supplies doesn’t mean they can’t get some, just that they had to jump through quite a few hoops to get it.
What hoops? Being 18? Not having psychological issues, not having been in serious legal trouble before? That’s about it.
The issue the USA has is how they treat weapons, as toys, not as deadly tools we can appreciate and yet should respect and only handle safely.
Can’t shoot your gun if you don’t have ammo.
Which get very stricktly regulated in Switzerland
Czechia and Austria are also worth putting on this chart.
Finally, proof that homicides cause gun ownership
I know you mean this as a joke but does that not make sense with US history?
A lot of killing causes people to own guns, a lot of guns causes a lot of killings, and repeat.
The chicken or the egg
Yes, just a joke.
I’d have a hard time preparing for a school shooting or similar, simply based on the mere lack of guns in my environment. I think I held an actual gun in my hand once in my life and that was in Murica. And it was a civil war times rifle. Not sure I’d even be able to do a shoot without hurting myself.
While the data might be cherry picked, one thing that can’t be displayed here is motivation. In Canada, a decent number of people have guns, but you can’t carry firearms with you, you have to take highly specific routes while transporting any restricted hand guns. The role of guns is sport shooting and hunting and it’s highly regulated for those.
In the USA, guns are intended to be used to kill other civilians. Owning a gun for self-defense purposes is buying with the intention that you may one day use it to kill another human. Not an enemy combatant in war, but a fellow citizen with a gun.
It’s only a feeling, but I feel like that might be the biggest distinction between the USA and other (omitted) high-gun-per-capita countries. Guns in the USA aren’t for mitary drafting or protection against a national invasion.
There’s also the matter of training and licensing. A buddy in the USA was staunchly opposed to gun licensing. When I said that in Canada, it just helps ensure that people know how to maintain their gun and use it safely, he said, “Well the people who don’t take the time to learn how to maintain it and use it safely just shouldn’t get it in the first place”, which I’m sure is a popular enough sentiment, but it’s also the argument for licensing. The zero barrier for entry approach is also a problem.
I’d love to see more nuanced stats than this 4-panel comic is presenting.
Guns in America, to me, are a perfect representation of the fallacy of personal responsibility.
Let’s take a scenario that, while tragic, has happened in the USA; a small boy of less than 6 finds a gun, plays with it, and shoots their baby sibling. The common refrain from responsible gun owners is: “You should’ve kept it locked and trained your family to use it responsibly!”
But who’s “you”? The shooter? The victim? One was killed and one was traumatized. The parent? They didn’t suffer nearly as much as the others.
So it’s not even the only issue where I hear “We need parents to be more responsible!” but simply saying that won’t change the number of drunk deadbeat parents putting zero effort into their children; and potentially leading other real human beings to suffer for it.
In terms of assigning responsibility, this is an easy one.
“You” refers to the firearm’s owner. Firearm ownership comes with a high degree of responsibility. It means knowing and following the four rules, at least two of which must be broken at the same time for someone to get hurt. It means maintaining a reasonable degree of control over that firearm at all times, whether it’s on your person or being stored.
If anyone is “finding” a firearm, reasonable precautions were not taken to secure that firearm.
These cases all boil down to gross negligence on the owner’s part. Legally and logically, the owner should be the one to suffer the consequences.
Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, the incident gets treated as a “tragedy” and legal consequences do not get applied.
So yeah, haul the parent to court, and then sit the traumatized child down and tell them “Good news! The law has correctly identified the negligent party in this incident. You may be eligible for up to $1mil in damages!”
while he’s sitting there crying over his dead sibling. Better, you want to extend this case to a school shooting? Go announce to 30 parents that “We worked out who is negligent!” You discover common, repeating human ignorance after the fact, and nobody is saved.
The fact that some people in our society are negligent is an expected outcome. That’s why your friend will yell at you one night when you take his car keys away, and then thank you the next day when he’s sober. The point is that society can plan better for that negligence, rather than just pat themselves on the back for spotting it.
I think there is a distinction between responsibility and blame. I don’t think blame is easy to assign here, but responsibility is, the parents are responsible. Doesn’t really change anything after the fact, but I also wouldn’t say that the idea of personal responsibility is a fallacy. But just saying that people should be more responsible doesn’t actually change the situation, you’re right.
You should’ve kept it locked and trained your family to use it responsibly
I don’t get it. Why not just have it locked away in some kind of safe? Why the need for training?
I live in Jersey and based on what you’ve written we have similar laws regarding guns, and you’re not going to believe this, but we consistently end up as one of the states with the least gun-related crimes. It must just be some crazy coincidence.
Seeing that reminds me, as atrocious as that is… the numbers are miniscule compared to the biggest killer. Pharma.
It should be noted that this chart compares gun homicides to gun ownership, which… of course those will correlate
If we plotted kangaroo injuries vs kangaroos per capita, we’d see a similar outlier in Australia
It would be more useful to see gun ownership compared to total homicides, to see if an overabundance of guns correlates with more murders. Even then, though, a correlation between the two might not be casual in that direction. It may instead be that in areas with a high homicide rate, people are more likely to own a firearm for defense.
What you would need to prove is that places with high gun ownership have significantly higher homicide rates, but places with high homicide rates don’t have significantly higher rates of gun ownership
That’s exactly the point! The whole, “it’s the owner, not the gun” argument is dumb. If you have more guns, you have more gun-related homicides – as simple as that.
When the populace don’t have easy access to guns, then that’s one weapon less they can use to hurt others.
Well for most of the named countries using all homicides versus gun homicides makes little difference.
australia 0.8 belgium 1.08 canada 1.8 france 1.3 portugal 0.72 spain 0.69 usa 5.76
What you should look up is homicides/non-homicide crimes against gun ownership. You will find that the US does not in general have more crime except for homicides.
You also are not going to find a country with anywhere near the gun ownership that the US has, so I suppose your are safe there.
My problem with this dataset is, it combines US in one dot, while all other countries crowd at the corner. I failed to see a trend saying “more guns = more gun homicide”.
If there is a chart showing that state by state, presumably regresses to a line, that I can get behind.
Another interesting tidbit is that homicides (among all violent crime) have fallen steadily since 1993 in the US, while firearms ownership has increased.
Don’t think everyone needs or should own a gun. But of course if you compare gun ownership to gun related deaths it’s generally going to be higher when more guns per capita are present. You can do the same thing with cars, lawn mowers, dogs and even vending machines. The more of a thing there is, of course there is going to be more deaths and injuries related to it.
Amazing how this topic/narrative surges whenever the chances of leftists and minorities arming themselves and/or actually doing something peak.
So what happened this time? Recent Performative Resistance/“No-Kings Protest” turn-out lower than expected? Higher? Someone show up armed and people talked to them instead of assuming they were a counter-protestor? Police and other local morons particularly brutal in a way the press couldn’t gloss?
Hey, look, it’s divisive rhetoric!
Crimes and violence are caused by unjustified heirarchies, in particular, the ruling class ruling over the working class.
You know what would reduce school shootings? Publicly funded mental health services for young people.
This kind of post is aimed at dividing the working class into two groups, pro-gun, and anti-gun. Refuse to give in to their messaging. Solidarity across the WHOLE working class!
notice how in the graph on wikipedia, excluding USA, the correlation is really not that strong.
dont get me wrong, i agree with the general sentiment, but bad data weakens even the best of cases.
I get the point the comic is trying to make, but saying that more guns means more people die from guns isn’t really a “gotcha”… In places with fewer guns, fewer people are using guns to do their murderings.
I’d be more interested in a graph that shows total murders per capita compared to gun ownership per capita.
Before I get dog-piled, I’d like to add that I know that there are too many guns in the US, and the process to buy a firearm is surprisingly lax. I do think there is a relationship between gun ownership and the murder rates, and the fact that most school shootings don’t even make the news anymore (and if they do, it’s for less than a day) indicates that the frogs have been completely boiled at this point.
I get the point the comic is trying to make, but saying that more guns means more people die from guns isn’t really a “gotcha”… In places with fewer guns, fewer people are using guns to do their murderings.
Fair point but see below…
I’d be more interested in a graph that shows total murders per capita compared to gun ownership per capita.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
The United States has over 4 times more murders per capita than France, for instance.
And you really shouldn’t discount just how easy it is to kill someone with a gun. I don’t have the stats at hand right now but knife related killings (as an example) are way less likely to happen because victims have a comparatively good chance to survive a knife attack.
There are solid reasons for keeping weapons that are designed to kill human beings out of the hands of most of us.
The United States has over 4 times more murders per capita than France, for instance.
One thing a lot of people seem to forget is that the US has significantly more income inequality and significantly less social safety nets than France. Poverty drives crime.
What the US needs most is nationalized healthcare, deregulation of marijuana to cut down on mass incarceration (which breaks up families and drives poverty), actually taxing the rich, and better regulations and workers rights to prevent corporations from exploiting everyone
Yes, but also an easy access to guns enables crimes by itself, and makes existing crimes deadly. That happens on top of other social problems.
A random poor teen with nothing to lose might think about robing a store, but be too scared of being confronted and never actually do it, unless he gets a gun which gives him courage. If a random night robbers get confronted with surprised home owner, they might punch him, scream, and run away, unless they have a gun in which case they’re in a shootout and everyone is dead.That becomes moot if they aren’t motivated to commit crimes in the first place.
Even if removing guns from the US reduced crime rates, it wouldn’t be as much as doing what I described. Plus, there’s an opportunity cost, in that you only have so much political capital to spend on legislation.
How about we focus on improving the lives of 99% of the population instead of wasting political capital on trying to reclassify 50% of the population as criminals for owning guns.
Well done. No notes.
Also, if everyone’s out there getting shot, then of course I need a gun to protect myself.
A gun doesn’t stop you from getting shot, it just gives you a chance to shoot back.
Yes, I know you were being sarcastic.
Having a gun probably also gives you a better chance of being shot either by suicide, accident, or making yourself seem like more of a threat.
And giving you false confidence making you do more stupid choices that lead you to danger that you otherwise would never get yourself into
That largely depends on if you’re their intended target.
But anyone fetishizing being the “good guy with a gun” would just piss their pants.
If I was carrying and there was an active shooter, I sure as hell would run or hide before fighting.
You don’t know who the active shooter actually is. Maybe the guy you saw with a gun is a plainclothes or off duty cop who is responding to the actual active shooter. Maybe there is more than one shooter, and confronting the one you see makes you a target for the one you don’t. Maybe the cops find you after shooting the active shooter, and assume you are the perpetrator.
For clarification, I don’t carry a gun, I just used myself as an example to simplify the text.
If anyone has an darned good self defense training, especially with firearms, they should be doing what you say exactly. You hide or GTFO dodge if there’s an active shooter. You’re not going to be a hero and just as likely to end up shot. Especially if they’re using a long arm over your compact carry.
You nail the second part as well, the fog of war situation. I’ve had this argument in real life and it took a bit for the person to understand you can’t ID the shooter if everyone with a gun tries to converge on them.
Gun ownership isn’t a right, it’s a privilege that carries heavy responsibilities. It’s a cultural view of firearms that differs heavily. I’m more likely to trust a leftist who trains, doesn’t exclaim everywhere they own a firearm, and locks up what needs to be locked up. The entire home invasion thing is a myth, majority that end up in a home with someone there bail. Few try to fight because they don’t know what you might have.
And the gun manufacturers are literally making a killing.
another way these facts get skewed: most gun deaths are suicides, not homicides
in the US, states with the strictest gun laws do also have the lowest suicide rates, maybe because when there isn’t an easy way to quickly exit, fewer people do - and the same reasoning probably applies to homicides
either way, there are also accidental gun deaths (kids accidentally shooting themselves or others because they’re playing with daddy’s gun, etc.) - so gun policies absolutely do save or cost lives
maybe because when there isn’t an easy way to quickly exit
Intentional heroin overdose
Most suicides are spur of the moment things in execution. So the more steps it takes to complete suicide the more chances for reflection and regret and the less likely it gets carried out.
Compare the steps required from gun and overdose.
Gun: decide on firearm, retrieve from storage, load, shoot.
Drugs- decide on the drug of choice, find a source of the drug, purchase enough to complete suicide (tricky to judge with many drugs and expensive with things like heroin), often purchase alcohol as well, prepare drugs (if tablets pop them out of the packets or prepare the heroin), take drugs (if taking tablets probably going to be swallowing tablets for a good while).
In the UK we limit the amount of drugs you can buy at one time (like paracetamol, a common overdose choice) as the extra step of having to visit multiple shops or come back repeatedly reduces suicide rates.
Particularly when a family member already owns a gun, or you personally already own a gun.
I had guns for personal safety reasons, so suicide was always a single step away for me. (Which was quite dangerous because I incidentally owned guns when I was very suicidal, lol.)
Also, for whatever reason, men have a much higher suicide rate and are much more likely to use a gun - they care a lot less about the mess they leave behind. Women on the other hand are much more likely to not end up killing themselves, and much more likely to use a method with less trauma and cleanup, like poisoning themselves.
These might also be contributing factors for why the stats show far more people kill themselves with guns than by poisoning.
Also, poisoning is a very risky form of suicide, high chance it will fail - you either don’t take enough and then survive the poisoning (maybe you vomit up the drugs while you’re unconscious, maybe a family member finds you and rushes you to the ER where they pump your stomach, etc.) - and often surviving a poisoning can leave you disabled, etc. You can survive a suicide attempt with a gun, I just think it’s less common if executed correctly.
Gets even more interesting when looking at kills by police.
Like Lee Camp did recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxoOAArudgI
Because it’s not a gradual response curve. It doesn’t really matter is it 10 guns per 100 people, or 15, if there is a strict gun control policy, and you can’t easily get a gun at the age of 18 in a fishing shop. The problem is ubiquity that comes when the society is saturated and there is very little regulations.
yeah I think the real world is more complicated. Like, its not just about numbers, but also how control is implemented and even culture.
But it’s also about numbers, it’s just not a curve more of a ladder. You can’t saturate the society with guns and expect that they will not be a problem because your culture is good and control is implemented. Switzerland just about did it, but there is so many caveats it doesn’t even count, and let’s admit it, nobody else is Switzerland, so that’s an enormous outlier.
I mean, yeah, having good control and a sane culture around it, you couldn’t reach USA’s sheer number if you tried.
You know it’s illegal to study gun violence in America, correct?
That is absolutely fucked up, but whats the relevance?
The data are inaccurate
oh, well, luckily its not illegal for researchers in the rest of the world to study gun violence in America.
True enough, but good luck getting the data.
Hmm, why did you exclude Switzerland, Mike?
Hold up. The US has over 100 guns per 100 people? 😳 So on average, everyone owns at least one gun? Tell me I’m reading that wrong!
Close, but the best estimates are there are 470 million guns in US civilian hands. With a population of 338 million, you’re looking at approximately 1.4 guns per person in this crazy land of free-dumb. 😂
Jesus Christ.
If it makes you feel better, most gun owners own many guns, so there isn’t actually a gun in everyone’s hands.
Just a lot of them in a few hands… Much better…
Some people are collectors, but a lot of people just have some old guns around.
Also if guns are a hobby or interest of yours, you are likely to own several. Just like people who are into headphones, mechanical keyboards, vintage gaming consoles, bicycles, etc.
I was about to compare it to telescopes. Most people don’t have one, most people who have one only have one, but a few of us have upwards of five
Just like people who are into sarin, questionably stored viral samples, bombs, gillotines, etc.
You can call these things “collectables” but their nature doesn’t change because you put a friendly term to it. It is psychologically fucked up to stockpile lethal weapons that can only be used for taking life without even having a practical application in mind.
I’m going to push back a little bit. For one thing, have you ever gone hunting? Some would say that taking life (specifically deers and rabbits and stuff) is a practical application. For two, sport shooting is a thing. Being good at using a weapon can be rewarding in and of itself, whether you’re talking about guns, bows, slingshots, or throwing knives.
Most gun owners have more than one. If you’re a hunter, you might want to shoot different rounds for different game or seasons.
My state bans the use of rifles for deer hunting in most circumstances. In that example, you’d want 12ga for deer hunting, 20ga for duck, and 5.56 would be used for coyotes, boar, or groundhogs. And if you go boar hunting you’ll want a sidearm (9mm or .45) because they’ll gore you if they get the chance.
So that totals 4 guns for a single person with decent reasoning. Plus, if you had kids and took them hunting, you’d want at least 1 more of each type.
And for people who live in non-rural areas, you might decide to concealed carry a 9mm for protection. But handguns aren’t as ideal for home defense, so you might want a shotgun or 9mm carbine for that task, so that’d be 2 guns for 1 person.
My jaw figuratively dropped when you suggested putting rifles and side arms in the hands of kids.
Gotta have an age limit on those things.
I’m saying to hand rifles to toddlers, nor that the kids get unrestricted access to the guns. JFC it’s like you’re deliberately trying to misunderstand.
Where I live it’s normal for teens to go hunting alongside there parents, and when the guns aren’t in use they are stored in the family gun safe that only the parents can get into.
These parents also teach their kids gun safety, and with exposure the kids know that the guns aren’t toys to be played with. This shares similarities to how many European countries’ drinking age of 16 removes the novelty and rebellion of drinking, generally preventing them from drinking to excess
I understood what you meant. No misunderstanding there. I do not think teens under 18 should be handling a lethal weapon. Matter fact it should be over 21. My opinion. 🤷♂️
I do not think teens under 18 should be handling a lethal weapon. Matter fact it should be over 21.
Cars are a lethal weapon, but they’re allowed to drive on public roads under supervision before they’re 16, and can drive without on private property. Kids under 18 are allowed access to cooking knives at whatever age, and should be taught how to cook before they’re adults. Teaching kids safe firearm operation under supervision is useful. Not only that, sharing hobbies with parents help with communication and bonding, giving the kids a better support structure while growing up.
Your black-and-white mindset of infantilizing teens like they’re completely incapable of handling anything before they’re 18 is demeaning and ultimately damaging to society as a whole. It leads to adults who’ve never learned skills they need to survive on their own.
That dude would have been shot so damn quickly in Texas.
Close, but the best estimates are there are 470 million guns in US civilian hands.
That’s the the lower boundary. The real number is probably closer to a billion.
You have to remember that untold millions of firearms were sold before anyone really started keeping track, no federal authority was keeping track before 1968ish, and that firearms will easily last a century if they are not fired too often and given even a minimum amount of care.
I myself inherited several pre-'68 firearms that would never have been counted. My 90 year old father in law has a dozen or more that he inherited or bought (western ranching family) that are still functional despite being manufactured over a century ago!
To put a fine point on the issue; into the 1970’s you could buy firearms off the shelf at hardware stores or even CoD via mail order. 470 million is a low number.
It’s that the people who own guns tend to own gunnnsssss. Like an entire arsenal. Most people don’t own any.
Around 40% in the USA own at least one firearm. It’s probably higher now since trump is back in power.
That is higher than I thought, but still not most.
Do remember that we have no registry, which means that number is self reported and it’s just a educated guess. Myself and many others buy private sales. I’ve never purchased from a FFL or online. Everything I own is purchased from private owners in my state. I don’t fall into that 40%. With trump in power, many new owners are buying locally as well and many on the left are now armed.
Some of us put ownership around 50% at this point.
Still an insane amount 😐
Think of it this way. The majority of our gun deaths are from suicides, then the next largest amount is from gang/drug violence, after that it’s police (on average 1k a year) then it’s the rest. Meaning that around 4k deaths a year are from literally everything else (domestic/robberies/random acts). We don’t really have a gun problem, we have an issue with our society. 99.99999999% of all firearms in civ hands have never been used to harm another person.
Poverty creates the violence, lack of education, lack of social support, lack of opportunities, lack of healthcare. If we fixed those things, our guns violence would plummet overnight. But the owners of this country would rather have us fighting each other than them.
With this logic, saying poverty is what creates the violence, and that the existence of the guns have nothing to do with it, should mean that if you removed all the guns, you’d still have the same proportion of homicide with knives instead, or some other weapon.
And I don’t think that would be the case.
Poverty necessitates the violence, I agree. But the availability of guns makes the violence accessible.
Both are problems.
Brazil and Mexico both have some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Basically civs are banned from owning firearms, but their homicide rates are 10 fold ours. A lot of countries in Africa are the same way.
The guns are just the tool used. You solve the why and overall violence will plummet.
Good news: you can read a chart correctly!
Bad news: It seems that there are approximately 120 civilian owned firearms per 100 persons in the USA: 2017 survey. See particularly the “Estimating Global Civilian-held Firearms Numbers” briefing paper and its annex. That seems to be the survey that most reports are based on. I don’t imagine the number has dropped over the interveneing years.
Knowing the people I know, I bet that’s much higher now!
you can read a chart correctly!
🎉😭
On average yes actually
The truth of it tends to be more that gun nuts own a dozen or more guns which skews things, but legitimately iirc over 40% of US households have at least one.
Still an insane figure 😦
Unironically, the average person doesn’t actually own a gun, but the average gun owner owns several
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
This is from 2017, almost 10 years old. I’d be interested to see how much it’s changed, if at all, especially since there’s that 30% who could see owning one in the future.
There are plenty of reasons not to visit the US and this is just one of them.
Any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated
Let’s discuss how the number of arms per capita correlates with workers’ rights?
The problem is that every single gun law made in modern day is explicitly made to empower the police and protect the bourgeoisie.
Do you have an example of this?
Tax stamps (recently repealed)
For the longest time, if you wanted certain types of weapons, you had to pay a $200 tax to own that weapon. These include surpressors, full auto guns, short barrel rifles, and short barrel shotguns
The point wasn’t to ban these things it was to make them prohibitively expensive because “its the poor’s who vomit violence”. And this tax was implemented in the 1940’s where $200 was off 2 or 4 times the cost of the gun itself.
A different example is gun registries and concealed carry license databases. I don’t trust the police to act calm when interacting with me when they know I have a gun. There are special classes that CCL holders take often so that they know how to read a cop and keep them calm during a traffic stop or a welfare check because cops are trained to shoot first and are very scared of the masses.
Think of Paretti here. Shot dead for having a gun. People blamed it on the ICE agent being a violent fascist thug trained like that. I don’t see it that way. I think he operated like a cop who was told no consequences.
We have videos of cops approaching black men, committing the crime of being in white people spaces, who ask them if they have a gun, the man says yes, the cop tells them at gun point to pull it out and drop it, and then shoost the man when he touches the gun.
I don’t trust police to use surveillance state information like who owns what guns in a way that won’t get me killed. Its why I’m still hesitant to get any tax stamp items. I’d love an SBR, but then I am legally required to let the ATF “inspect” my home if they ask me to. I have to tell the ATF when and where I’m moving to if I change states.
Make your own SBR and keep it on the hush. It’s only illegal if you get caught.
Have you looked at every gun law drafted in the last 20 years? Every single one banning certain classes of guns only targets “assault weapons”, and every time, they have exemptions for cops or ex-cops. Handguns kill significantly more people, but “assault weapons” are scary and make liberal suburbans feel mortal for once so they irrationally hate them.
Handguns kill significantly more people, but “assault weapons” are scary and make liberal suburbans feel mortal for once so they irrationally hate them.
Because assault weapon are, like you said, being banned left and right, so handgun are more accessible than assault weapon.
that’s a load of crap… australia had a mass shooting, we banned guns, now we have no more gun problem… the police have literally nothing to do with it
Ask an aboriginal what they think of the police.
ah yes of course and that’s a simple problem rather than a complex web of interconnected issues
Anyway here’s the full meme for those ignorant. Guns on the hands of workers are an important part of worker’s rights.
Okay, but where are these American arm-bearing workers? What are they waiting for?
They don’t shoot first.
We really need to work on that. But, irresponsibility and violence is not a them vs us problem. Stockpile guns and there’s still the potential that no matter how just your cause, when you use them innocents will get caught in the crossfire. So, what’s your angle? Do you want American workers to disarm or do you want American workers to take up arms against fascism?
So they just sit on the gun for no purpose? Last i checked the worker is extra fucked right now, while ICE is often defeated not with gun, but continuously harassment from the public. Last i checked Charlie Kirk aren’t killed by some frustrated worker.
There’s something that most resistance groups know about that is called “winning the narrative”. If you open fire first, it’s easier for the government to justify cracking down on you as a “violent terrorist”.
Yeah the narrative NRA wrote.
I’m sure you’ll be able to win against full-blown fascism with strongly worded letters. Ask Neville Chamberlain to know how that went.
In the mean time the fact remain that people with gun took no action against their facist government who cause suffering within the country and globally, while people without gun able to drive off ICE without violence. Maybe the narrative here is to wait till the current facist government turn nazi then they claim to be hero idk.
Well the state of New York claims they have one in prison, but I think they’re wrong.
Thousands of children may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
Cops (aka class traitors) have killed 33x more people than mass shootings since 1982. But sure, we’re the ones sacrificing children.
A. This is obvious whataboutism. Yes, you are literally the ones sacrificing children. The fact that you are sacrificing less children doesn’t let you off the hook.
B. Cops in the UK don’t kill nearly so many children because most of the cops are unarmed. They are unarmed because mostly everyone is unarmed. Cops killing more children (not to mention everyone else) is literally a consequence of everyone having guns.
Come on my dude, if you think the dead kids are an acceptable cost, then just admit it. Even the right wing talking heads can do that.
Cops in America don’t need guns for 90% of the stuff they do, no matter how armed the population is. They’re the actual nutjobs with guns. They’re the ones killing people over getting talked smack back or over a fucking wallet. And even if cops started getting killed from not having guns, so what? THEIR JOB is to sacrifice themselves for the public good. They can just have SWAT at the ready and have unarmed cops do almost everything. You don’t need a fucking gun to radar cars in the highway, write tickets, go to someone’s burgled house to take a note they’ll eventually lose, or bother someone over the position of their stereo knob.
What’s your point exactly? Why the fuck are you talking about cops? The simple proposition being discussed is “it would be better if there were fewer guns”. I never said there should be a special exemption for cops. No one mentioned cops until you did.
“it would be better if there were fewer guns”
There are 470 million guns in the US. This conversation is a non-starter. You are not putting that ketchup back in the bottle. Not without causing millions of deaths. It would be exactly what ICE is doing, except everyone’s got guns.
Silence peasant. You lack the necessary qualifications to interpret the old texts, leave that to your betters.
Ew wtf
Comics like this are just preaching to the choir, and only the ones so fervent they’re blinded by their own self righteousness. It’s so obviously cherry picked and slanted if you’ve looked into the issues at play. It shows no respect for the reader at all, and likely only hardens the opinions of those it disagrees with.
You can’t convince anyone of anything with this kind of trollish virtue signal. It only exists to get the author pats on the back from people in their own camp.
This kind of shitty rhetoric harms the cause. You can’t win hearts and minds with blatant disrespect.
I see no disrespect. I see a good and valid point being made that a huge amount of Americans are oblivious to the obvious.
The US seems to be a huge outlier on both axes. You would have to exclude it to make any sense of the data.
Don’t worry, they instead excluded countries like Switzerland that have high gun ownership with nonexistent homicide rates. So is all good. Also, including only gun homicides instead of all homicides, as if it is suprising that people use the weapon available to them. I guess as long as people are stabbed to death instead of shot, is all good.
I’m not a republican, but I don’t think anyone is saying gun crime doesn’t happen.
It’s easy to say that banning guns = no more gun violence. But the devil is in the details. Given the U.S.A’s history with guns, banning them will have consequences. Not can, will.
Let’s not forget that a gun ban will only affect law abiding citizens.
Comics like the one in OP always ignore the primary underlying difference between US and the other developed nations: free, nationalized healthcare vs the Insurance Apocalypse that is the American healthcare system
Yup. If Americans struggling with poor mental health had better access to professional help, crime as a whole would go down. But it’s not the only factor. Things like financial strain and environment also contribute. Crime is a slippery slope. Not a leap.
Agreed, but financial strain is part of what keeps people from getting care in the USA
Free healthcare would alleviate some of that
Agreed, but it’s a vicious cycle.
It does cost money to provide healthcare. Funding doesn’t come from thin air. But healthcare in the U.S is also ridiculously expensive. A lot of people can’t afford it without insurance (if your insurance even covers what you need). The system needs fixing.
It does cost money to provide healthcare. Funding doesn’t come from thin air.
Then tax the rich. There’s no reason for Jeff Bezos to pay less money than someone flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
Unfortunately we’re caught in a Republican scheme to remove government benefits by gutting taxes that was started during Nixon’s adminitration
I don’t disagree with you there
Americans pay 10x per capita for their healthcare, compared to other countries like the Nordics or Germany. Still, the costs of the war on Iran would have funded public healthcare for all for how long? Decades?
Americans subisdize Israelis free healthcare that includes access to abortion care
Exactly this. If the US had proper social safety nets and low income inequality, all violence (which includes gun violence) would drop.
Also note that the arguments like in the OP only ever mention gun violence. It seems dishonest that they need to be that specific to get the narrative they want.
It’s not just heathcare.
It’s social services period. Safety nets. Security.
The US tells people to get fucked then arms them and wonders why this shit happens.
Well it’s a start.
You could also then make sure that America doesn’t have a gun centric industry that is saturating your market with easily accessible guns.
Then also make sure your society is restructured in a way that actually prevents people from mentally breaking down so far that they’ll cause extreme violence.
In the end it will still require banning guns.
True. But the U.S. has more guns than people. And a lot of them aren’t registered, so law enforcement doesn’t know they exist. Plus the people who own them won’t just happily give them up. So if you ban guns, how do you reasonably plan to enforce it? (That wasn’t a rhetorical question, by the way.)
That’s not my main issue with gun control, but the way I see it guns are just a tool used to commit those crimes. You want to put a stop to it, you go to the root of the problem. Banning guns would be treating the symptom instead of the problem.
But the U.S. has more guns than people. And a lot of them aren’t registered, so law enforcement doesn’t know they exist.
This is a saturation issue. It’ll take a while to clean up, but ultimately remove the market for guns, and the perceived social status from owning a gun, would reduce this issue over time.
Crimimals wouldn’t have so many unregistered guns in the first place if there weren’t that many guns available from the beginning.
Escalation has proven to not be the answer. You don’t solve the problem that saturation has caused by creating even more saturation.
Plus the people who own them won’t just happily give them up. So if you ban guns, how do you reasonably plan to enforce it?
Well, Australia managed to disarm a significant portion of its population in the past, so it’s possible.
But when it comes to America I’d reckon it’d be a rather slow process. One that simply starts by removing the availability of new guns on the market. Don’t have to start taking away people’s emotional support collections yet, just make sure nobody can start a new one.
… guns are just a tool used to commit those crimes.
Guns are weapons. Weapons exist to threaten, bring harm, if not outright kill another living being.
In areas where hunting is common, maybe the argument for them being useful tools to have can be made. Outside of this specific niche there is no reason for the public availabity of any weapon.
Banning guns would be treating the symptom instead of the problem.
I consider it a symptom and a problem.
Ah yes, because banning guns means they cease to exist. You realize that even if guns are no longer sold in the U.S., they can still be smuggled in from other countries along with other contraband like drugs and counterfeit cash. That’s how criminals in countries like the UK manage to get their hands on guns despite guns being banned. This is what I mean when I say “violent black market”. Guns can also be 3D printed.
I don’t know why you’re bringing up Australia’s gun control as proof that “it’s possible”. Australia doesn’t have anywhere near the same history that the U.S. has with guns. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
Ah yes, because banning guns means they cease to exist.
It’ll take a while to clean up, but ultimately remove the market for guns, and the perceived social status from owning a gun, would reduce this issue over time.
But when it comes to America I’d reckon it’d be a rather slow process. One that simply starts by removing the availability of new guns on the market.
I helped you by putting some of my words in bold.
That’s how criminals in countries like the UK manage to get their hands on guns despite guns being banned.
Yes, the UK. Infamous for all it’s gun crime.
It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
No, it’s comparing smarter humans to backwards primitives.
You know, for a second you had me thinking you were something more. But you turned out to be a cliché American anyway…
Ah well…
Your comment quite quickly devolved into an ad hominem. If you had a strong argument against anything I said, you would have used it.
It’s not an ad-hominem if people like you are the reason why a problem continues to be a problem. Considering the position you have chosen to take, my argument can no longer be against the subject itself exclusively, but is also directed against you personally.
Weapons also exist to defend, but you only make the arguments that suit you.
You don’t need weapons.
Thats your opinion. I disagree.
It’s a fact. And you’re simply wrong.
Not making a specific argument for or against your argument, but I’d like to object to this like:
Let’s not forget that a gun ban will only affect law abiding citizens.
I’ve seen this argument used a lot, but it’s a broad generalization. You are assuming all criminals are the hardest criminals who will disobey any law, but a lot of law breakers and a lot of gun violence perpetrators are first time offenders, or someone who thinks they can get away with minor things.
A lot of people will do legally ambiguous stuff if there’s a low chance of being caught and punished but wouldn’t put themselves on the line for more heavily enforced things, plus even just the hint of illegality will put a type of social pressure on someone.
Will hardcore criminals still get and use guns? Absolutely. Are all gun deaths perpetrated by hardcore criminals? Absolutely not. Even that annoying brandishing couple at the BLM protests a while back would likely not have had the courage to bring out their weapons were it illegal to do so, since they tended to abuse law and loopholes rather than outright break them. They’re a milder case, but the point works with others who carry for “personal protection” but are a little too trigger happy. Plus stuff like legally owned but carelessly stored etc.
Are you saying that committing a mass shooting is legally ambiguous and people think they are likely to get away with it? Because buying a registered firearm in the U.S. Isn’t illegal. I’m not sure what you’re getting at. You’re also kind of implying that people who do shootings are mostly opportunistic, when in reality there are likely other factors at play.
Nah, I’m mostly saying it isn’t black and white. It will have some effect on all layers, but I agree it wouldn’t stop all violence. To take your note about school shootings; yes, many of them are from legally purchased firearms, often a parent or something. Not all of course, so a gun ban would probably reduce, but not eliminate, school shootings. Plus outright bans aren’t the only form of gun control the US hasn’t tried, there are multiple things that can be done to limit without outright ban guns.
That’s true, and I can’t argue with you there. Banning guns would solve some problems, but you’d also be opening pandora’s box.
Given the US’ history with guns, banning them would almost certainly fuel a violent black market, making it easier than it already is for criminals to illegally obtain unregistered firearms. And with an estimated 400 million guns already in existence in the US, it would be really difficult to enforce, even if you did manage to pass a law. And loopholes exist like gun shows and private sales.
Regulating but not banning outright would be a slightly better solution, but it wouldn’t be a silver bullet (pun not intended).
I’ve always said banning guns doesn’t make violent people incapable violence. Trying it during a time where we can 3D print guns isn’t really realistic. Its a cultural issue.
Well said
Trying it during a time where we can 3D print guns
Firstly, you don’t need a 3D printer to make a gun. Any plumbing store in America can sell you the supplies you need to make a gun.
Secondly, 3D printers make shit guns. Plastic has a low melting point and high elasticity. You’ll get off two shots if you’re lucky, before your bullets are firing sideways.
Thirdly, you don’t just need a gun. You need ammunition. And ammunition is much more difficult/hazardous to produce.
If you’re crazy enough to decide you want to become a revolutionary/reactionary anti-government insurgent, you’d be stupid to try and make your own gun from scratch. Bombs are easier to manufacture, simpler to deploy, and much more effective against the kind of people an anti-government activist has beef with.
I think you’re really underestimating 3d printed guns. There are some alarmingly reliable 3d printed 9mm semi-auto carbines that can be constructed with zero gun parts (source: I built one back when it was still legal in my state, but destroyed the receiver when registration became mandatory)
You’re correct about ammo, but I’m pretty sure making a bomb without reliable, stable explosive compounds is extremely dangerous
There are some alarmingly reliable 3d printed 9mm semi-auto carbines that can be constructed with zero gun parts
I have seen 3D guns in action and they have never failed to disappoint.
Maybe a professional gunsmith can turn cheap extruded plastic into something useful. But then they can just make a real proper gun.
You’re correct about ammo, but I’m pretty sure making a bomb without reliable, stable explosive compounds is extremely dangerous
Sure. Both of these hobbies are of dubious benefit and serious safety issues
There are many different polymers with a much higher thermal resistance and elasticity. You wouldn’t use PLA.
The gun used to take out UHC CEO was 3d printed. Wired did a cool video on it
Was it? I don’t believe they ever actually recovered the murder weapon
The people of Myanmar used 3D printed guns to overthrow their government.
I’m starting to think you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
The people of Myanmar used 3D printed guns to overthrow their government.
No they didn’t. They’re in the midst of a horrifying civil war with no end in sight. The current military junta is massacring people by the score with airstrikes. Over 5M people have been displaced.
I’m starting to think you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
Are you looking into a mirror?
It’d be a good start to just conduct proper tests before handing people firearm permits. People who can barely read or who rage when you honk at them should never be allowed to own, let alone carry firearms.
Arguing that the populace shouldn’t have guns, and pointing to the usa as an example, is arguing that our fascist government should have a monopoly on violence. Every successful “gun control” law has been put in place in response to persecuted minorities and activist groups having guns. For a famous example, see the Black Panthers.
Peaceful protests are impotent unless backed by a genuine threat of violence. See how little the recent “No Kings” protests have accomplished vs the death of that one health insurance ceo.
Now, I am in favor of fewer guns, but the order of operations is important. Let’s start with disarming the police and abolishing ice. So long as my friends/family/neighbors/whatevers are being abducted by masked thugs in broad daylight, it is my right and my duty to defend with lethal force.
Peaceful protests are impotent unless backed by a genuine threat of violence
Eastern europe (exluding Romania) would like to have a word.
Oh yeah, and all yours 1.2 guns per person are doing absolute wonders right now, when you pedo in charge is rounding up people to put in concentration camps and starting wars all over the world. All your guns will start working any time now, liberating you from fascism.
The utility of gun rights as a potential defense against tyranny isn’t proven to be zero by the existence of tyranny, because guns are not a complete solution. I think it’s likely they would be rounding up more people by now, with less expense and difficulty, if Americans didn’t have guns.
This is the same circular reasoning, with the added bonus of “all the countrepoints are actually points in my favour because I would like it to be so”.
The reason they are able to be so aggressive, the reason they’re so militarised, the reason they start interaction with people guns first is because they have an excuse of “well, everyone can be armed, we need to be prepared”. And now they used it to build an army against you, that you can’t do anything about.
You let them do it, thinking you can stop them using guns somehow, when the time comes, not realising that the time came long ago and you were very busy stroking your guns and killing each other to notice.
It would have already crumbled to the ground in the 1900’s if we didn’t have them.
The US government cares only about money. They don’t give a fuck about us, as evidenced by our healthcare system.
We are expendable to them. Had we not have the guns we have now I truly believe it would have all ended for us a lot sooner and be significantly worse than it is now.
I know other countries manage. Other countries aren’t managed by a bunch of rich pedophiles that will let children and people die for the sake of “saving” $50 on an insurance claim.
Tell you what how about this, how about they take the guns from the police and ice and IRS and dea and atf and then we can sure talk about getting rid of our guns. But that will never ever happen.
It would have already crumbled to the ground in the 1900’s if we didn’t have them.
Remind me, what exactly did you do with your guns in the 1900s to prevent tyranny? I don’t remember any armed uprising against a dictator in 1900s.
If you weren’t so busy running around shooting each other with your precious guns, you might be able to see the depths your country fell into and maybe do something about it, but you didn’t, because you were hoping that when “the tyrant” comes you can just shoot him with your trusty remmington, but when tyrant comes, you only cheer him onhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
Granted though, most of them happened during the 1800’s I Will admit that your Whiskey Rebellions and what not.
But had those things not happened before and even the flex of the muscles in '46 I’m telling you we would have been one of the most oppressive shitholes ever around already.
And also the thing is, we straight up wouldn’t even be an independent nation had we not had guns to fight the british so having guns is literally why we exist as an independent nation to begin with.
And see that’s where youre wrong, I do see the depths it has slid into and that is why I am going to have a gun here. Its easy not to when you don’t live near a major metropolitan city that has insane crime around every corner.
You see I think about the way things actually work, in practice not just on paper. And I know by using that thought process that when they “take guns” every gang member and drug dealer is still going to have one all that would do is make it to where normal people with children can’t protect themselves against criminals with guns anymore.
That’s the true reason they haven’t gotten rid of them yet. The government here no longer wants you to have them but they know that by banning them only the worst of the worst will have them and frankly even just the cops here having them and not the people make me nervous because they kill us all the time already, with zero remorse or consequences of any kind.
If the DEA can’t stop drugs from entering the ATF isn’t stopping guns from entering and that’s just facts. Only criminals will be able to get them then just like only criminals can get drugs now. People can call you gun nut or whatever but that is just cold hard facts man and I’m sorry that its true.
A “well armed militia” that is completely and willingly surveiled by private corporations that work with the government is fundamentally, critically impaired.
The fact gun nuts harp on about what is, at this point, a fantasy of rising against tyrannical government while being nearly completely blind to operational matters like communication, organisation, surveillance, etc. is frankly ridiculous.
If these people were serious about this, they’d be building infrastructure, communication systems, etc.
I agree communication and organization are key as well and I try to make that point to everyone I can. I try not to be too preachy about it but any chance I get to talk about Meshnetworks and E2E encryption I make sure to let people know it is the way.
Two things can be true at the same time, though. Organization is key but so is an effective way to defend yourself. And if necessary, kill those who are trying to kill you and the people you have organized.
I asked another guy this too but consider that nowhere in the history of humanity has any society ever overthrown an empire/government the size of the United States without many, many deaths and a lot of violence.
So you can call me a gun nut but if you want to talk about fantasy, let’s talk about how peaceful solutions don’t ever fucking work to get rid of oppressive governments. Literally, never. Not one single time in the history of humanity. Maybe like some small island nation or something but talking about your Roman Empires and your French Monarchy’s.
So at the end of the day dude your suggestion isn’t grounded in reality. I’m sorry that its that way, I wish it wasn’t either. But it is what it is.
So where is the well-regulated militia defending the United States with their huge arsenal of guns? We’re not hearing anything about valiant protectors of the constitution taking up arms against the domestic enemies that are ICE, MAGA, etc…it’s almost as if the whole spiel about needing guns to resist a tyrannical government was BS all along. 🤔
You didn’t see the like 3 or 4 multiple attempts at taking the pedophilic orange man out?
They tried. Maybe one of them will eventually succeed.
Also I’d like to point out that I noticed the ICE goons haven’t went to the hood yet. Let’s see how that plays out for them.
Unfortunately this man is not the issue. It’s the culture that allows him to do what he is doing. Everybody knows who he is and what he stands for. But he’s still not dangling from the gallows, so clearly the system has failed to correct itself.
He will die eventually, probably from one hamberder too many but the troubles won’t be over then.
The option going unused doesn’t invalidate the need for the option to be there, moron.
Some people make it pretty clear that the only thing they understand is forced behaviors. Almost like what they’re really after is eradication of individual choices on favor of top-down uniformity.
I’m pretty sure there’s a name for that kind of centrally held power…
Man, I see this sort of thing commented all the time as some sort of “gotcha” and really have to wonder what it is you’re envisioning.
Put yourself in the shoes of a firearm owner for a moment. Evidently, you believe the US has passed a tipping point where violent resistance is necessary.
Where are you going with your gun and who are you shooting at?
And just like that, we went complete route from “without guns we can’t fight fascism” to “guns are actually completely useless in fighting fascism” in two comments.
US - 1765 to 1784
EU - 1939 to 1945
Vietnam - 1955 to 1975
Yes, I’m aware that only one of these cases was literal fascism.
You can see my other comment in this chain, but firearms are the “last stand” tools to fight oppression. We’re in the midst of a particularly sensitive stage and, in my opinion, haven’t crossed the “tipping point” where a violent response would be wise or justified.
Bloody hell, are you for fucking real, WWII, seriously? The global war fought by armies has something to do with public having guns?
Fucking Vietnam? US losing a military campaign on the other side of the world is a testament of how useful it is for Americans to have guns? And then american fucking revolution, that I can’t even imagine how to tie in.
I just hope for the sake of sanity that you’re trolling.I do concede that WWII was not fought and won by armed civilians, I was largely responding to “without guns we can’t fight fascism” and can see that, in the greater context of the thread, that might be less relevant. I do think the French Resistance would have been better equipped if they hadn’t had to rely on smuggled or captured weapons. A full scale invasion is going to pan out differently when most civilians are able to shoot back or organize into militia.
Vietnam is a testament to the fact that multiple military superpowers can still lose to a lesser armed (but still armed) populace.
And then the american fucking revolution, that I can’t even imagine how to tie in
This is where you really have me stumped and should maybe do some reading into US history, fighting this war is the foundational experience that led to the creation of the second amendment. Here’s a good place to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord
Are you saying you’re suffering a dearth of targets?
Again, if this is not the time to exercise your supposed God-given right to bear arms to ward off a tyrannical government then the whole point of the 2nd Amendment is moot.
I’ve said it before: You guys aren’t going to vote your way out of this pickle. I hate to say this (sincerely!) but this is going to end in violence one way or another. 🙁
You didn’t answer the question.
Am I to infer that you think that right now is an appropriate time to actively seek out and shoot ICE agents?
You could try flowers and hugs instead, I guess? Whatever works best.
With how subtle you are you might as well work for the FBI.
no he got a point. If someone started doing that they would just get captured and tortured or killed. What can you meaningfully achieve with random violence, alone? Owning a gun will not help you protect yourself against force that can hunt you down and use your loved ones as leverage. Its just copium so people dont organize thinking they have power to protect themselves if things get bad but they never will use it because they are alone and scared, rightfully so.
I see that as a cop-out to engagement in discourse, an alt account and VPN/privacy technologies would be enough to shield someone from “taking the bait”
My own opinion is that we have not reached a point where that level of response is justifiable, and I think it’s incredibly dangerous and irresponsible to suggest that it is.
The administration’s current rhetoric revolves around the domestic terrorist threat / violent insurrectionist motif that, while some people may buying into, is not being substantiated with strong evidence.
At this time, violent response / uprising by those perceived to be “on the left” will add fuel to validate that propaganda machine, it will firmly entrench the beliefs of those who might otherwise have a chance of moving away from it, and it will likely trigger a heavy-handed response leading to a substantial and catastrophic loss of life and liberty.
Hypothetically, “with how subtle you are, you might as well” be an agitator seeking to be a catalyst to what I just described.
You’re a big tough guy, so I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. One of the premises of that book is that you should attack your enemy where they’re weakest, not where they’re strongest. Makes sense, right? Well where do you think the Trump regime is strongest? Put another way, who do you think would win in a shootout between, say, the U.S. Army and a ragtag bunch of armed leftists?
So if we can’t fight the regime where they’re strongest, where can we fight them? Economically. We can stop giving our hard-earned money to the companies that prop up the regime. We can do work stoppages to halt the engines that power the regime. And we can raise awareness of these issues (yes, sometimes by protests but also with other tactics) so this becomes a mass movement that has the power to actually topple the regime’s pillars of support.
Yeahbwe should just make a campfire and talk to them while we are at it maybe get scoutmaster Dan to play the guitar for us while we all figure our peaceful solutions together.
They murder us in the street at protests, idk if you have seen it on tv. They are singlehandedly crashing the economy on purpose so they can extract as much from it for themselves as they can.
I would love for school shootings to stop and I think if a kid gets a gun there is an adult or likely a few that fucked up and shouldn’t have given the kid a gun.
But taking them away from all of us isnt going to get the north side of Saint Louis or the south side of Chicago to just give them up this is what I don’t get you think when they made meth illegal it just disappeared? Can’t find it anymore right?
This whole take the guns away stance is them brainwashing you into believing that they will do right once you don’t have guns anymore.
They aren’t raking them away from the police. They aren’t taking them away from ice. And the IRS. Until they do that, fuck them I will have guns and I will suggest others do too. Just keep them away from your kids
First, where did I say anything about talking to the fascists? Or say anything about taking away people’s guns? Seriously, I wonder who the hell you’re arguing against, because it sure isn’t me.
And yes, the regime is murdering people in the streets and breaking the economy. But only the parts of the economy that aren’t propping up their regime. What do you think would happen if they could no longer find hotels for the ICE agents they send around the country to harass and murder people? If nobody would feed the agents or launder their uniforms? Or rent them cars? Or fly the airplanes needed to send kidnapped people to foreign countries?
Our strength as the masses is in our economic leverage. And it’s about damned time we played to our strengths instead of trying to meet the enemy at theirs.
Can you tell me a single time in written history that an empire the size of the United States was toppled by the people without violence?
The world isn’t a fairytale and I really wish it wasn’t that way either but acting like it isn’t won’t help.
First please list off the characteristics of the United States’ size that makes it immune to the forces that brought about other nonviolent revolutions. I’ll wait.
There are some that gained independence so that’s fair you’re right.
The soviet union singing revolution ones were probably the most comparable I’d guess as far as size goes. But half of the soviet union starving at the time, which makes for an easier revolution when your government is incompetent and already being dissolved slowly inside of itself.
Same with Britain during ghandi, they were in the middle of WW2 and forced the Indian people into it and thats what made the calls for independence even stronger and being in the middle of a world war they were just tired of dealing with it.
So sure, if you’re government is already in the middle of giving up hunger strikes and singing national anthems together can get the job done.
Resisting US government control as it stands right now is more akin to Rome or Myanmar with how it will play out.
Also as far as size goes: more size = more people but also equals more cops, more mitary, more federal agents, etc.
Britain didn’t have an entire portion of the country full of forces who lived there ready to jump when Ghandi was doing hunger strikes. But boy oh boy, the USA sure the fuck does and doesn’t care if it would kill every single last one of us.
On the subject of starving, we’re of course not there yet (at the same scale). But have you seen what’s going on in this country with affordability under this regime? Things on that front aren’t really going in a favorable direction…
But I think your broader point is that there were often “mitigating” factors coincident with any nonviolent revolution in history then helped nudge it along, and with that I would agree. The question for us is whether any such factors (maybe ones specific to our country instead of specific to these past revolutions) are either present here now or about to be present here.
I will pick on your point about more size equaling more cops, etc. The U.S. is one of the biggest countries by area, but it ranks below South Korea, Iran, and Lithuania for police officers per capita. In fact, I’d argue that because of its size, there just aren’t enough police to patrol the entire area of the country.
Now on the subject of military and federal agents, it’s a different story of course. But that’s where we get back to strengths and weaknesses. I’m advocating that we don’t mount an armed revolution in part because the U.S. government is so incredibly armed to the teeth. That’s their strength. But when people are boycotting businesses or refusing to work or engaging in work slowdowns or any number of other non-violent tactics… How does a giant military do anything against that—without losing any scraps of support it still has? We are taking their strength, and making it useless against us.
Wow. How’s that gun ownership working against the fascist takeover of the US?
It isn’t?
Gun ownership has, in fact, been usurped by fascists and their supporters in furtherance of the takeover?
Next argument, please.
See how little the recent “No Kings” protests have accomplished vs the death of that one health insurance ceo.
What did the murder of this CEO accomplish?
Lots of people got insurance claims approved, enabling them to get life saving care that otherwise would have been denied. It’s just a shame that it was a one-off and not a recurring thing.
I didn’t know about that. Do you have a reliable source?
it was in the news when it happened
and also discussed a lot here
And how does that gun protect you against the masked thugs? They are cops and hence, I assume, you cannot legally shoot them when they enter your home. So resistance is useless? As a non-US - american, correct me if I’m wrong here.
My gun doesn’t protect me. My gun protects you. Your gun protects me.
That sounds like a great bumper sticker for an NRA-meeting, but how does that actually apply?
I, also, cannot shoot your home-intruder, which is also a cop. So my gun does shit against ICE too. Just like yours.
Though I admit, I’d love to have a gun at home for actual intruders. We must not, the robbers don’t care (but probably aren’t armed either)
If I’m not willing to stick my neck out to help you when they come to take you away, who the hell will be left to do the same for me when it’s my turn?
Sure, you’re absolutely right. Be the change you want to see in the world and all…
But you fail to tell me HOW i am supposed to help your ass not being taken by ICE? Shoot the whole bunch that came to get you? (i assume those fuckers never come alone). And then other cops will take me for doing that after you are already gone? Threaten them with a gun will probably get ME killed. So what good does a gun do to anyone in that scenario?
The problem is that the 1/3 of americans who are actually opposed to this country being a fascist dictatorship are disorganized and scattered. You’re right, one or two or three guys with guns won’t accomplish much. Others in this thread have commented “where’s your militia?” or something like that, and it’s about time we make one.
I cannot blame you for wanting to keep your head down and waiting for all this to blow over. If I’m super lucky, maybe I can do that too. I’m rather pessimistic about the future though. To be honest, I talk a big game but I’m not doing shit until/unless I know I can make a difference.
It is my opinion that even if I had a perfect plan and was able to describe it perfectly, it wouldn’t work because it requires people to work together, and to make sacrifices for others. So things will slowly continue to get worse until I get put in a work camp over not being able to keep my mouth shut.
To loop this back to the original point, no having guns is not the solution. However, it is a critical part of the larger and more nuanced solution.
The problem is that the 1/3 of americans who are actually opposed to this country being a fascist dictatorship are disorganized and scattered. You’re right, one or two or three guys with guns won’t accomplish much. Others in this thread have commented “where’s your militia?” or something like that, and it’s about time we make one.
Another problem on top of the organisation itself, it the organisation itself. How? Whatsapp? Facebook? Or any other communication you guys mostly use, which is totally in control of those you want to organize against. You’d be eliminated as a thread before it even would become one. And not even knowing why…
I cannot blame you for wanting to keep your head down and waiting for all this to blow over. If I’m super lucky, maybe I can do that too. I’m rather pessimistic about the future though. To be honest, I talk a big game but I’m not doing shit until/unless I know I can make a difference.
I don’t want to keep my head down, I’m not in a country that is already there where you guys are. But we’re on the way though. Pessimistic? Nah, I’m more realistic, which sadly always sounds pessimistic. The future isn’t bright as those with power won’t give it away, and those without power mostly don’t even realise where the problem is until it takes them doggystyle. raw.
And, what else are your options beside “talking big game”. The resistance you can show is literally limited to that. The USA is the land of the free. Totally and absolutely! But it was meant like in “free corpos”, not “free individuals”. And it would not be wise to “act big game” when all you achieve is your own ending (See mr. mangione). If not even that stirs shit up ENOUGH, what would? another 9/11 initiated by your own people? Even that would do nothing except harden the system AGAINST oppression even more. IMHO capitalism already won, and it’s our own fault.
It is my opinion that even if I had a perfect plan and was able to describe it perfectly, it wouldn’t work because it requires people to work together, and to make sacrifices for others. So things will slowly continue to get worse until I get put in a work camp over not being able to keep my mouth shut.
For your own sake you should just STFU. Unless you’re totally unmonitored and big-tech-free. Sadly i have to second that. The only real way to counter the system is by throwing even MORE money at it than the opposition does. Which is already a fortune vast beyond anything even “rich” people could ever achieve or even dream of. If you can, pack your shit and piss off. You’re speaking english perfectly, which is already a foot in the door in almost all european countries. And you sound like a nice addition. A year later you wonder why you ever went to that cesspool of a country.
To loop this back to the original point, no having guns is not the solution. However, it is a critical part of the larger and more nuanced solution.
I have no personal feeling towards guns or no-guns, i just see the figures speaking for themselves. Countries with outlawed guns are doing better. Or even countries with highly regulated guns (switzerland afaik). We had ONE school-shooter so far. gun-incidents with cops are rare, homicide with guns is rare. And overall we don’t help put even more money to those that see us as cattle. I do see the value in being armed though. Unless everyone is armed, then it’s basically the same as when everyone just has a knife or a stone.
