Are you considering purchasing a gun?

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

I would, literally, rather be deported to the gas chambers than ever own a gun.

I, on the other hand, would not.

yeah I'm not going willingly

voted never but yeah i could imagine some universe in which i owned a hunting rifle

Has anyone ITT considered emigrating as much as if not more than buying a gun?

yes

how i would make a living elsewhere is the Q

I get the increased desire for personal safety, but this is comparable to deciding not to take planes anymore and just drive everywhere john madden style in the name of safety. and I guess john madden is getting some emotional comfort from riding around the country in a bus, it's not like that comfort is worth nothing to him, it's clearly worth a lot. but it is still ultimately not a rational decision and you're putting your own life and your family's life in marginally increased danger to get that comfort.

guns are good and fun just don't shoot your neighbors or whatever

I am 95% sure that I'm eligible to receive German nationality because my paternal grandfather was deprived of his in 1941 by the Third Reich. Once I get that figured out and have a German passport that's basically my Plan.

In ascending order of likelihood, I have considered buying a gun, leaving the country, moving somewhere very remote and isolated, and staying put and trying to figure out how to interface positively with my immediate community while the country at large voids its bowels in a protracted death spasm.

i'm too poor to buy a gun, let alone leave the country

Honestly I feel like if the USA, aka the most powerful nation on earth by far, becomes so bad that I need to emigrate, it's hard to imagine where I'd feel confident in my safety.

and i'd be more likely to kill myself than "protect" myself or whatever
i'm white and male btw

I have to say I've also thought a lot about leaving New York City and moving somewhere much less densely populated (but still liberal).

I'd leave the country if it was an option, but that's generally been true regardless of President. I have no particular allegiance to the US as an institution.

Another thing that gives me pause about the gun thing is that it seems like it takes a lot of practice to really be able to use it effectively, like it's a big commitment. I suppose there's the deterrent effect and maybe that's more important. OTOH I also have a feeling I'd be a decent shot based on my sharp eyesight, icewater blood and skill at laser tag and virtuacop, lol.

Decided a while back I would rather be killed for my beliefs than kill for them. No.

I will never leave California

When I consider a gun as a functional tool, I do not foresee having any use for its functionality. It would be like me buying an arc welder, even though I have no need for it and no training in using it.

Don't live in the USA, therefore no need of a gun.

... not sure how you would go about it here anyway.

I am not buying a gun but I thought about it.

more specifically i don't think the calculus of "owning a gun is a risk to your family" v. "owning a gun to protect your family" has come down on the side of owning a gun yet. and i'm not worried that they're going to close down the gun stores any time soon so i can afford to wait and see.

Do you guys who are considering getting guns already have other weapons? Or a scary dog?

childless friends were pushing me to get a gun in light of trump america they were like "you need to get guns and then teach your children how to use them and respect them" i'm just like "my kids are 5 and 3 i am not getting guns and teaching them how to use them until society breaks down and we're wandering the wasteland trying to avoid cannibal scavengers"

havent considered getting a gun but wouldnt mind living and working abroad it broadens the mind doesnt it

childless friends' parenting advice = the most worthless advice ever

xp at that it'll be too late though won't it?

Honestly I feel like if the USA, aka the most powerful nation on earth by far, becomes so bad that I need to emigrate, it's hard to imagine where I'd feel confident in my safety.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:20 (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean congrats on that power thing but yknow it is not really the only line on the spectrum of life is shit/good nahmsayin

don't live in the u.s. therefore no need for a gun. when i lived in a ground floor apartment by home defence was a claw-hammer next to the bed.

also literally most first world countries are safer than the u.s. lol

I had a brief moment of "maybe a gun isn't an incredibly stupid idea" immediately post-election

not for my own protection, but to spread out the demographic. right now, gun ownership as a percentage of the populace is actually relatively low, but the number of people with a shitload of guns is high. so any effort to get gun owners to push for accountability is hijacked by wackjobs -- and gun marketing and ownership orgs don't care because they're working off the same money pool and more guns sold is success. if a bunch of responsible people who were for regulation were the bulk of gun owners, it might have a chance.

but none of that shit is happening, it's a blue sky argument, and demographically I look a lot more like the guy who flipped his shit and shot two cops along what is basically my route to work... and I'm not owning a gun

i didnt want to say it that baldly but yes lol xp

thread needed for tough love to panicking americans whom we nevertheless adore

havent considered getting a gun but wouldnt mind living and working abroad it broadens the mind doesnt it

otm

taking sides: getting a gun so that in the event of neo-nazis arriving at your door you can threaten them with your gun and/or try to kill enough of them to make your escape before the rest of them show up,
vs
living abroad

a couple years ago, I took a gun class with some friends -- it was one of those groupon things -- and I thought it'd be cool, but it freaked me the fuck out, so, no.

thread needed for tough love to panicking americans whom we nevertheless adore

there's a lot of hysteria going around atm. you should see how much the jews are freaking the fuck out. if i didn't know better looking at my timeline i'd think it's 1936.

A gun class. Shouldn't snigger but..

you learn about safety best practices, different types of guns, the mechanics of the gun, how to clean and maintain them, how to use them, and how the real and only purpose for guns is killing things.

you should see how much the jews are freaking the fuck out. if i didn't know better looking at my timeline i'd think it's 1936.

yeah I'm getting a bit irritated at this point. I think this may be the first time my wife has felt her family is specifically under threat because of anti-semitism, whereas I'm a little more sanguine about things, and it's weird seeing her freak out and post ADL "Never is NOW" memes

xp

xxp well they make you take a class to drive a car and those things aren't even meant to kill people

oh aren't they

, whereas I'm a little more sanguine about things,

literally got accused yesterday of being "sanguine" by a normally level-headed friend

i just disarmed u with this cup of coffee. and a gun. and a car.

sarah, was it an NRA class, or something else? Just wondering about your experience. Last time I looked into classes, everything local to me was NRA-affiliated, which is another reason I've held off.

the more sanguine they are

*sunglasses*

the easier they bleed YYYAAAAAAOOOOWWW

No but a friend is taking us to a shooting range next week to learn how. This is mostly because my wife wants to and I know she's much more interested in owning a gun than I am.

youre gonna end up with a gun then def Jordan the same happened me with a fireside poker/brush set and we dont even have a fire! you just cant argue with the little woman!

xp - not NRA sponsored. I think the guy was a home security consultant?

my workplace is a lot further from the city center than my home and it's a few miles away from a national guard training facility, which also does a lot of training for law enforcement officers. it's also just off an interstate highway exit two stops down from the state patrol hq.

so basically if i go out to lunch in the immediate area there's a high likelihood i'll see people in fatigues, if not a handful of officers carrying guns sitting around eating lunch. and it still freaks me out! there's a shooting range on the edge of that suburb, probably because they get traffic from people wanting to go shooting off-hours when they're in town, and it's right behind a pediatrician's office. this shit never ceases to freak me out when i think about it

would never consider having a gun esp with a child in the house. a big fuck no to that.

I do have a .22 ruger revolver but it would take me about 15 minutes to get it ready to shoot the intruder so I'll probably just use the ironwood stick behind the door

I stayed with some of my gf’s family in the california sticks last night, and they had a rifle (in a case) just lying on the living room floor. other than when I lived in vermont a decade ago, I can’t remember the last time I was in the same room as a gun, and I couldn’t imagine having young kids and being around it like that

I'm not considering purchasing a gun, but in my darker moments I wonder if there will be a tipping point where all the gun owning people around me become organized and start kiling off their perceived enemies, and will I regret not also being armed at that point.

yes I believe that is on the NRA brochure

I still have the .22 single shot that I got when I was 12, more recently this revolver

Part of why I keep them is some weird 'end-times' apocalypse fears, but without YouTube I wouldn't be able to clean a rabbit anyway

We own a gun despite my pacifist nature because in early 2017 I got “martial law” vibes and we lived in the sticks. A biracial gay couple. We have neither cleaned nor taken a look at the thing in years at this point, because we moved to a good city.

The gun store in my town is next door to the herbalist. That's not a euphemism for a pot dispensary — there are at least three of those in town that I know of, but they're all on the highway; this is an actual herbalist, a lady who moved here from Humboldt County in California.

For a while, my town had a gun store that was next door to a military recruitment center. I remember thinking it was just a little too on point, but I guess one could argue that it was best to keep the violence compartmentalized.

That particular gun store keeps moving because my townspeople generally hate its existence and are not quiet about it. But perhaps the proprietors feel like they're owning the libs in some important way.

If there were practical reasons perhaps my attitude would be different but I suspect it's yet more culture-war bullshit. Weird how a piece of technology becomes a cultural signifier / way of life thing.

Like, I don't have bumper stickers and t-shirts declaring my affection for my blender. And it's a very good blender!

YMP— the funny thing is that gun store caused a huge uproar in the surrounding neighborhood the first time it opened, but then it moved to a new location and there didn’t seem to be a peep of protest at the new site. I’m sure the owners were disappointed at the lack of response; you’re right that they seemed like “own the libs” types.

This weekend was the first time since moving to rural Montana that I have seen anybody carrying. The first time was at a diner where I went to pick up my lunch to go; there was a guy in front of me in line at the cash register who had a pistol in a holster. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers and looked sort of like a high school teacher on his day off. The second time was this morning at the grocery store; the guy in front of me in line at the bakery counter (the donuts at this grocery store are incredible, to the point that they're a local attraction) was an old man with a chest-length beard, baggy jeans held up by suspenders, and a revolver on his hip.

My immediate thought in the diner was a) why do you need a gun to come to the diner for lunch? and b) if you're worried enough to need to wear your gun to the diner, you should be exhibiting more situational awareness, because I could easily walk up behind you and stab you in the neck with this knife I have on my belt, just because you're not reading me, a fellow middle-aged white man, as a threat. Again, these dudes seem to want to be conveying the message that they're ready for whatever, but they're really not. A sudden attack from an unexpected quarter would find them totally unprepared. Shit, I probably could have slid past diner guy, said "Excuse me" like I'd bumped into him by accident, and taken his gun.

Yeah, but then he might shoot you with his other gun.

checkmate

my other gun is a ferrari

nah shit's performative, you know? i got rainbows all over everything, he got a gun. it's a _lifestyle accessory_.

I passed a guy at the grocery store in civilian clothes who had a Glock on his hip and extra magazines on the back of his belt, the first time I've seen someone out of uniform carrying that I can recall - maybe a civilian but he also looked like a 5'9" thumb so maybe a cop?

A sudden attack from an unexpected quarter would find them totally unprepared.

nah shit's performative

both absolutely otm

I'd see people open carrying a lot when I lived near Idaho and my first thought was always how easy it would be for me to take their gun away when they weren't paying attention.

I wonder if they got kind of a rush the first time they went outside with a holstered weapon, even though it's pretty well-accepted in their communities.

Once while living in Arizona, I saw some guy ride up to a 7-11 on a bike and he had what looked like a .357 sticking out of his pants waistband. I couldn't believe it didn't fall out while he was riding.

I'll bet the cashier at the 7-11 really loved seeing that guy walk through the door.