Are you considering purchasing a gun?

tbh, one can be against the country's fetishization of guns and also simultaneously feel so fearful of the armed contingent in this country that they feel safer having one in their house. i know one of you will probably cite 70 studies showing how it's "not actually safer", but it's kinda counterproductive to do the "demonize poster who says he has a gun" every time it crops up itt

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Monday, November 9, 2020 6:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

people who have handguns suck imo

no offense

i don't have a gun so that's for someone else

bump

jfc not now

.

Halfway there meself tbh

Don’t bother, you won’t be able to buy ammo for the next 12 months.

leave the guns to the people with death wishes

no ammo allowed across the non-existent sea border

with every passing day these times make me more & more picture myself owning a 12 gauge shotgun

there is a lot of ~atonement~ needed

Today I decided that I am going to. I am going to wait until things are a bit safer after COVID, and then do some safety trainings and practice at a range, and then I will purchase one. I'm going to keep it fully locked up and not readily accessible -- I'm not going to sleep waiting for an ordinary burglar I can blow away. But if shit gets really bad, I will have it.

Ok dude have fun having a gun in the same house as your children let us know how that plays out

Freak

I’ll look for you on the news

Are you going to tell your children’s friends’ parents there’s a gun in the house so they can make an informed decision about whether their children are allowed over?

Guess you’re betting your kids won’t ever be depressed

Just move to the West Bank already

You ok?

Are you?

silby, projecting your concerns about guns onto others is confusing

guns' ability to kill people is concern-neutral

I struggle with understanding other people have different brains than I do

But also what are you going to do with your stupid gun other than hope your eventual teenage children don’t impulsively kill themselves with it?

A number of years back one of my friends saw a groupon for gun classes that included shooting range time and thought it would be a fun thing for a handful of us to do together. So about five of us took this gun class. We learned about safety and cleaning and how to take apart the gun, and how to load it, and how to troubleshoot stuff, and of course this class was taught by a guy who used to be a cop and is now a security consultant. Anyway, this guy told us, don't own a gun unless you are okay with killing a person, because you shoot to kill. And I thought about that, and I left, because I really was not okay with that. ... If I lived with other people (esp. if I were a parent), I would be super super reticent to have a gun* because that responsibility would also be on everyone else. Are they okay with killing a person?

* asterisk would be, an old ass hunting rifle if I lived out in the middle of nowhere and had to deal with vermin/disease-carrying predatory wild animals, and that gun would not be in the house

I'm not able to have children but I appreciate your concern for their non-existence xp

I’m addressing man alive, who does have children

xp man alive -- I would take the class(es) and then make up your mind whether you indeed want to be a gun owner. Seriously.

also think about the fact that you are a white dude

Anyway, this guy told us, don't own a gun unless you are okay with killing a person, because you shoot to kill.

This is still a bizarre sentiment to me and utterly divorced from my experience of living in a gun-friendly regional culture. Even as deranged as the country has gotten, people regularly buy guns completely divorced from any idea of defense or murder.

Well what are they for then?

i don't mean to downplay anyone's fear in these trying times but not sure what "if shit gets really bad" means in this whether to buy a gun context. your anonymous suburban family being targeted by a mob? because you're not going to bring it anywhere, right? idk, is one handgun going to help in a way that outweighs the danger of having it in your house every single day? maybe get like better doors or something instead. or one of those bunker rooms.

Well what are they for then?

Hunting, target shooting, competition - mostly for the hell of it IME.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ZgEtgxxg0

I think I'm a bit more sensitive to posters' coping fantasies than earlier in the thread but I have to say my answer hasnt changed, getting a gun is good for participating in armed insurrection, accidentally killing a family member or committing suicide - for anything else demonstrably bad

xp milo z -- this was handgun training, maybe I should've specified

Anyway, this guy told us, don't own a gun unless you are okay with killing a person, because you shoot to kill.
-
This is still a bizarre sentiment to me and utterly divorced from my experience of living in a gun-friendly regional culture. Even as deranged as the country has gotten, people regularly buy guns completely divorced from any idea of defense or murder.

see, this is a large part of the problem: guns means something very different for people in cities vs people in rural areas, but we all have to live in the same world and follow the same state/federal laws.

people in cities generally buy guns because they're afraid of other people and believe that they might be able to successfully shoot someone in a chaotic situation, and because they don't believe that the people close to them would ever accidentally or intentionally shoot someone else or themselves.

people in rural areas do the same, but in addition they very much enjoy shooting soda cans on their land, as well as killing animals. they are so obsessed with shooting objects and killing animals, and so myopic and selfish, that they want to impose lenient/non-existent gun regulations on everyone else, including city people.

so yeah, of course, people buy guns completely divorced form the idea of defense and murder. a nuclear bomb could also be used as a nice coffee table, if you use it correctly. a nuclear bomb doesn't have to be destructive. (*starts up the equivalent of NRA for nuclear weapons, arguing that because they can be used as nice coffee tables they shouldn't be banned anywhere on earth, ever, and lobbies hard for this for decades*). it's all so silly, but gun hobbyists are no different imo, when they continue to advocate for only their OWN, personal, "gun-friendly" region bullshit, knowing full well that every win for gun-ownership leads to violent deaths for other people. gross

i mention this every year on this thread, so i'll go ahead and put the notch on the board for 2021:

HOW ABOUT BAN PERSONAL GUN OWNERSHIP AND JUST LET PEOPLE "RENT" GUNS AT REGULATED FIREARM AREAS. OR MAYBE EVEN LET THEM OWN THEIR DAMN FUCKING GUNS, BUT THEY HAVE TO BE HELD AT THE SAFE LOCATION/SHOOTING RANGE, AND ARE NOT ALLOWED AT HOME. THAT WAY THE PEOPLE HAVING SO MUCH FUCKING FUN WITH THEIR GUNS CAN CONTINUE TO HAVE FUCKING FUN WHILE OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN DON'T SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FACE

no one ever has anything to say about that idea, anywhere, which i take to be a tacit admission that even for the rural "fun" gun people, the primary motivation is still wanting to retain their opportunity to try to kill someone in a violent chaotic situation

one of my best pals killed himself with his dad's gun when i was in HS, and i'm sure many people reading this have a similar story.

there is SO much gun violence in this country, that any time you talk about guns in a public forum, you should assume that multiple people have lost loved ones to guns.

anyway, that's why the "but they're fun!" argument is so, so, SO fucking insulting and dumb to me

like, i fucking LOVE coffee, and i would give it up today and suffer terrible headaches and fatigue and crankiness for months on end if i knew that coffee was very bad for everyone else, and that coffee was only available because me and my whiny coffee-loving friends paid dues to a lobbying organization to corruptly keep it available for me, just me, for me me me, because they loved coffee so fucking much that they didn't care what it did to other people

LET THEM OWN THEIR DAMN FUCKING GUNS, BUT THEY HAVE TO BE HELD AT THE SAFE LOCATION/SHOOTING RANGE, AND ARE NOT ALLOWED AT HOME.

actually, when I was writing my post upthread about the context in which I might own a gun, that was kinda what I thought about ... like, a neighborhood gun safe or something. OTM

Shooting at the range or having access through a neighborhood safe that is NOT IN YOUR HOUSE takes away most people's supposed justification for having guns IN THEIR HOUSE, which is, someday the zombies/people I look down on will come for my family and I will be Liam Neeson when the fact is no one is coming for them and they and their entire family are way less safe with a gun in the house.

Noobs.

"like, i fucking LOVE coffee, "

I said this same argument wrt playing basketball and milo replied with some bullshit about how Chinese workers died making basketballs or something

like, i fucking LOVE coffee, and i would give it up today and suffer terrible headaches and fatigue and crankiness for months on end if i knew that coffee was very bad for everyone else, and that coffee was only available because me and my whiny coffee-loving friends paid dues to a lobbying organization to corruptly keep it available for me, just me, for me me me, because they loved coffee so fucking much that they didn't care what it did to other people

― Karl Malone, Saturday, 9 January 2021 20:32 (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well i mean start listing

Drugs
Alcohol
Animal fats or whatever

Shooting at the range or having access through a neighborhood safe that is NOT IN YOUR HOUSE takes away most people's supposed justification for having guns IN THEIR HOUSE, which is, someday the zombies/people I look down on will come for my family and I will be Liam Neeson when the fact is no one is coming for them and they and their entire family are way less safe with a gun in the house.

exactly! the reason the "rent-a-gun" idea doesn't fly is because that's not the primary reason to have a gun. it's an excuse

NB im not making an argument for guns im just not sure about that argument against them but obv feel free to disregard

no, i gotcha - it's not the most solid argument. but please, see some of my earlier, better arguments. i am more of a tracks poster than an album poster

Lol <3

Lmao Karl