Are you considering purchasing a gun?

I really just don’t understand what problem is solved by buying a gun for your house. How are you going to have time to remove your gun from the safe, disengage the lock, and load it before the militia at your door gets you? You’re going to unload, lock, and lock up your gun right?

A lot of people who buy home defense guns just leave them in a nightstand or something IME but for someone whose brain isn't mush (like djp) there are quick release safes with fingerprint scanners and stuff, it doesn't have to be an Old West bank fault deal.

btw, the true advanced protectors of the home should look into buying one of those DARPA-grade EMTs that can make people temporarily lose their minds. i'd much rather deploy one of those when you hear a bump in the night, rather than grabbing a gun or a barbwire baseball bat or whatever people use these days

That was to Karl, who at this point can fuck off.

btw, the true advanced protectors of the home should look into buying one of those DARPA-grade EMTs that can make people temporarily lose their minds.

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone)

failing to see the benefit of this, at least the way you're phrasing it

had a gun fired off in the air near me last year. friends booked an Airbnb with some land on an island. one of the peripheral friends brought some big firework for some reason, or had it on his person anyway.

we were told by the Airbnb hosts that if we were going to make noise at night we should go down by the firepit, which was on one side of the property, away from the 2 neighbours' houses, which weren't visible from the house, but where somewhat nearby.

anyway, at some stage in the evening, while tripping on LSD, a loud bang went off. it was presumed this was the big firework although in hindsight it didn't sound like a firework - I've heard a shotgun fired a couple of times before, it sounded like that. the next day the guy with the firework informed us all he hadn't let it off as he hadn't thought it advisable. the Airbnb hosts had a complaint from their nearest neighbor a farmer, who was livid about us having been noisy at night.

on the other side of the firing guns in the air thing my beloved grandfather (in Glasgow) once fired a shotgun in the air because kids from a nearby scheme (barlanark) were throwing rocks at his house. the police did charge him and he ended up with a criminal conviction but he had his guns back in few years.

xp

i don't think that's fair, but if i'm pissing you off that badly it must be for a reason.

xp
i was joking about the EMTs. just trying to lighten the mood after talking about the real likelihood of killing myself with a gun, at various times in the past

but what the fuck do i know about guns

it's not like i grew up SURROUNDED BY GUNS

dick

I'm not the one who needs to dial it back here, asshole

You're the one who came parachuting in here belittling me (and the late great) for having the temerity to say "as minorities, the developments in this country are making us nervous enough to think owning a gun would be a possibility". I never said you needed to have a gun, I never said you needed to be around guns, and I never said you need to be comfortable around guns. You, on the other hand, spouted a bunch of bullshit and are now hiding behind past trauma because I said it felt like I was being summarily dismissed for being scared. The only reason I'm bothering to respond to you and not One Eye Open is that most of the time, you aren't acting like an irredeemable jackass.

well, i'm sorry for belittling you. that wasn't my intent but i can see that's how it came across all the same.

i did not spout a bunch of bullshit, though - except the part about DARPA EMTs.

and the reason i mention suicide is not to hide behind it (didn't appreciate that, btw), but to remind you that just like you have a special reason to want a gun, there are people who special reasons to not want guns.

losing your cool on the gun thread c/d

The reason I still don't own a gun is because of the fifteen minutes I spent as a teen holding one to my own head. Don't fucking presume what I do or don't know.

I bet this conversation would be going better if we all had guns

but just for self defense!

You guys are the purest form of asshole

karl and dip to have an old west style quick draw duel but with those guns that the little flag comes out of

xpost

sorry to hear that, really. most people don't have that experience (thank god).

I don’t at all exclude myself from blame here when I say that I’m really bummed that a bunch people who have been talking to each other here for 1 to 2 decades have been going for the jugular at each other for weeks but I guess it’s understandable under the circs that we’d all be short of patience. I wish I had other things to do!

I still want to know what your precise plans for your guns are, especially peace, man’s semiautomatic rifle. What will you achieve with your gun

Do people itt (milo?) who own guns tell all their friends you have a gun in your house before they visit you? Have they decided not to come over? Do they leave their children at home?

i didn't mean to go for anyone's jugular, and i regret saying "dick". i knew that was dumb even as i was doing it (a process that took about 1.2 seconds). i was just mad. sorry DJP.

i really need to just avoid gun threads (and capital punishment). i've said my thing, years ago, i'm just repeating myself. i honestly don't think it's being a good "ally" to entertain the thought of it being a good idea to own a gun. but that doesn't mean i have to come in here and try to prove it.

I'm much less anti-gun than I was in the past. I'd couldn't imagine owning one myself but I don't have an immediate reflexive negative reaction to someone saying they are thinking about it (which I most definitely would have done in the past).

The Swiss seem to do ok with their guns. I don't want to mis-step in making any parallels with cars but with a responsible gun owner I'd be much more worried about the unintentional damage they might cause with a car than with a gun

I am on the record as being in favor of banning both guns and cars.

I don’t own any guns but when I did I rarely had any at home. My dad did have a big fire safe so I kept them there.

It wouldn’t have mattered to anyone, though, anyway? ILX is extremely weird about guns relative to any experience I’ve had IRL.

(xxp) And what's the point of owning a gun in Switzerland exactly?

I don’t believe I know anyone irl who would consider keeping a gun at home. I would not knowingly enter a home with a gun in it.

Leaving aside shooting for sport - which includes hunting - or farmers shooting foxes or whatever it is they do with their guns.

Switzerland has a unique gun culture due to nationalist reasons plus mandatory military service (iirc the idea is you keep the rifle you used after you're done?), lots of shooting clubs and the like, but yeah they have a very low homicide rate

I'm curious what prompted this revive--the anti-lockdown protests? (photos of which were indeed chilling)

Switzerland has a unique gun culture due to nationalist reasons

Those sound like good reasons.

Is there a Swiss driving stereotype I don't know about?

Would you pack ammunition for it?
Would you keep it loaded?
Would you point it at another person?
Would you shoot them?
Would you shoot them first?

If any of the above answers is no, I'd suggest saving your money.

― El Tomboto, Sunday, November 27, 2016 8:56 PM (three years ago)

Probably should’ve been the last word honestly.

I’ve done virtually a 180 on guns. It wasn’t that many years ago that I sorta but not all that tongue-in-cheek supported a repeal of the 2nd, reason being that it would be a strong, possibly one day even *popular* position for non-lunatics to negotiate common sense gun laws (lol so stupid)

Then I got to thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to get reacquainted with handling a gun, which I haven’t done since I was adolescent (in the presence of responsible well-trained adults).

Now I’m basically at “I should probably be comfortable with a variety of firearms because as much as I hope we can turn a lot of shit around (and this goes way beyond Trump to be clear), it’s probably best for me to be prepared in the even that we do not”.

Just before the lockdown rolled in I was watching a lot of doomsday preppers.

I'm typing from the UK here so the question 'would you get a gun' is totally different from in the US.

One thing is though. Every defensive system the dudes on the show came up with could easily have been overrun by attackers in sufficient numbers. Amazing burglar alarms and tripwires and guns, the lot, really, they're all vulnerable to enough guys showing up.

I think DJP's safety concerns are valid based on what I've been able to gather about the prevalence in the US of armed racists both irregular and uniformed. I wonder though if joining some kind of group rather than owning a thing might be the way?

Considering our history, maybe the shortest route to gun reform is for Black people to arm publicly arm themselves. On the other hand, in our current state of militarization on steroids/white hate resurgence, I don't have much hope that the white response would be anything other than immediate widespread murder of Black people.

On the third hand, I'm not in a position to opine on whether that would be worse than the level of violence POC/Black ppl currently experience anyway.

Is there a 4th hand? This is a terrible conversation.

LOL and to think poor old leftie UK ILXors get castigated for joking about guillotines and gulags.

Side note: something I notice when Americans discuss guns. The phrase 'home invasion' comes up. And that's an interesting phrase, because it's technically accurate, but you know, I have, technically, been the victim of a home invasion, only I wouldn't call it that. It was a kid of about sixteen seeing if there were any laptops to pinch and sell. Like his motivation wasn't to GET INSIDE CARDAMON'S HOME AND VIOLATE HIS BOUNDARIES.

I shouted at him to Fuck off and he did.

The talk of 'home invasions' rather brings to mind Funny Games dudes in animal masks as opposed to real life opportunist robbers and I think this tends to skew the discussion a bit.

"home invasion" was made a new crime in my state a few years ago, another hot topic crime like carjacking that is a combination of already-existing crimes. a suburban fear crime. what people picture is that their home will be invaded by armed strangers. what actually happens 99% of the time is drug dealers coming into other drug dealers homes and doing assaults.

Anyway I don’t think DJP is considering buying a gun bc he is worried about property crime

Sure. And going back to that, I realise I'm out of my depth here, but I don't know if there's any anti racist / community self defense groups available? Joining which could get some security back w/out needing gun in home and the attendant risks.

Home invasion is a more useful term because it’s scaaaaaaaaary instead of “a kid broke into the garage trying to steal a lawnmower to pawn.”

harbl otm

there are probably people who would be safer owning a gun, but those people are criminals

I grew up around guns: dad's a hunter, has a concealed weapons permit. When I still lived at home it was a fact of life that he carried a small bag with his pistol to the car when we out; under the seat it went. After a while I didn't notice. I've fired a gun several times at Big Cypress: loathed it. I hated the ugly deformed metal thing, hated the loudness. Everyone on that side of the family owns rifles, shotguns, pistols f every kind. No one's a member of the NRA, nor is their behavior noticeably swinish because they own guns. Because of the children and grandchildren, they're kept under lock and key and with those trigger locks.

While in my inexpert legal opinion the Second Amendment, like the others, contains the most grievous comma splice in American jurisprudence that has allowed grotesque interpretation, and while I wish every gun to vanish mysteriously from the United States, I've come to recognize that, to DJP's point, it was precisely because black men owned guns, among other obvious reasons, why the KKK and the White League formed in the 1860s. This is why Clarence Thomas believes the Second Amendment protects individual ownership of guns: owning a gun represented a measure of black agency, a way to protect a home (y'all should read Corey Robin's recent intellectual bio of Thomas).

I should, however, mention that during a, uh, fraught moment after Sandy Hook and my dad went on a rare tirade about the importance of guns, I said something like, "Yeah, like your fat ass is gonna waddle to the safe to get the .22 while the burglar's already in the bedroom." This didn't go over well. I was drunk. *shrug*

oh i totally told my dad during one of our fights I was going to take all his guns and give them away and he would only notice way too late.

one of the times i had a loaded gun pointed at me was by a person who had just shot another person and didnt want me to look at their face. I never found out if they were a good or bad guy with a gun, or what sort of ally either one was.

DJP before you went in on me and karl your posts in this revive were flip comments about semiauto rifles being cool and the "interesting" question of pondering the aftermath of killing someone, which screw that. Dont fuck around goofing about guns and shootings and then be shocked SHOCKED when other posters dont 100% defer to your Very Very Important Feeligns About Gun Ownership. Corny.

youre going to do the thing where you, im not going to use the word but the thing that means getting a strong reaction out of people

Who said I was being flip?