Are you considering purchasing a gun?

Man alive, does your webmail work?

I feel the same way about guns as I do about nukes - I'd rather no one have any but if they must exist I don't only want (cops/the USA) to have 'em. but I don't have any dependents and don't care THAT much if I live or die so I'll probably never buy one.

― stylish but illegal (Simon H.), Saturday, January 9, 2021 4:05 PM (four hours ago)

lmao hell yeah we are gonna equality our way outta this pickle

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.

― sarahell, Saturday, January 9, 2021 2:51 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In seriousness, this is more likely the path I would take, if I start down that road at all. Obivously seeing people storm the capitol in 6MWE and "Camp Auschwitz" tees is a bit shaking, and my post was a reaction to that.

Man alive, does your webmail work?

― Pere Legume (the table is the table), Saturday, January 9, 2021 6:37 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh shit, I haven't checked it in like a year, have to see if I remember the pw

answer: yes, it works

pertinent
https://thenib.com/mlk-vs-rfw/

https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/03/11/gun-owners-welcome-a-new-addition-to-the-club-liberals/

20 minutes later: conservative gun owners kick out new addition to club liberals

a sign with weapons spelling out “Love.”

Could have at least gone for Live Laugh Love, maybe with a different kind of gun for each word.

you'll have my love when you pry it from my cold dead hands

If you can't beat 'em, shoot 'em.

lol

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/05/us-gun-ownership-black-americans-surge

I am hopeful that this current surge in gun ownership will defy all prior experience and actually lead to a reduction in gun deaths

surely this etc

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/04/08/npr-as-asian-americans-seek-safety-from-a-rise-in-attacks-some-look-to-guns

has there ever been a thread to share your experiences of having guns pulled on you? i'm always surprised how many ppl have a experience with this

I had a guy flash a chrome semi-auto at me in traffic once, the woman in the car with him proceeded to hit him with her purse (for being a dumbass, presumably).

damn, hope that Biden zinger was worth it

saw a dude in front of me in line at Burger King adjust his sweatpants and he had pistol jammed in the back of his waistband. my main thought was how the hell does he keep it from falling into his pants?

the power of the purse trumps most things xxp

Not pulled on me, but on two different occasions I've been sitting on the CTA train and had a guy walk slowly up and down the train car, pulling up his t-shirt to reveal the handle of a gun in his waistband, clearly trying to make sure everyone saw it.

the second time I did acid it was with a roommate and his buddy and they argued ALL THE TIME. The friend had a handgun he kept taking out and fondling and I was like “I’m out of here”

That sounds terrifying.

I should clarify that by ALL THE TIME I just meant whenever they were together, I dipped out of that situation soon after I started coming up and called some friends who were more than delighted to hang around me while I was tripping lol

I jumped into a fight one time in high school (i was a dumbass) and some dude on the sidelines pulled one and everyone scrambled

I haven't bought a gun FYI. Moving out here has been very good for my blood pressure, as has the change in administration.

Well, I finally have actually fired a gun. I went skeet shooting, and thus I loaded and fired a double barrel shotgun and a semi-auto shotgun a bunch of times. I enjoyed the experience of skeet shooting on a nice fall day. It was sort of like playing a video game except more visceral, outdoors in pleasant surroundings, and with friends. Or a bit like shooting pool -- combo of hand-eye coordination and connecting projected object with other object. The instructor compared it to golf (which I don't do, but w/e).

I feel sort of good that I can check that off my list. Firing a gun is no longer some weird taboo in my life, it's just another thing I have tried. I feel reassured that it wasn't that hard to handle one safely, the rules were pretty simple. Loading and operating was simple, making sure it was empty was simple. I was nervous the entire first station, but by the second I felt comfortable. Another thing that loomed in the back of my mind no longer looms.

I would do it again sometime. I'm not eager to purchase a shotgun though.

It's been three years after the shootout, and I still can't handle being in the same room as a popping champagne cork, much less a gunshot.

This didn't go over well.

Quelle surprise.

At least you didn't get shot.

And I have no reason whatsoever to buy a gun, and no plans to do so.

I don't even play golf anymore.

Never purchased one, but ended up with a single-shot .22 rifle (remington) and a .22 revolver (ruger) so I'm ready when the civil war comes, dont tread on me y'all

my gun brother (late of the second amendment thread) is now the proud owner of a fucking semi automatic rifle, on top of all the other ones

this fucking guy

(oh and he got this cute little hanging door organizer to go inside one of his massive gun safes, you know those ones with all the pockets for your shoes or whatever? except the pockets are gun-shaped and there is, hilariously, a special “quick draw” holster on this thing that is supposed to hang *inside* your gun safe. like excuse me mr. intruder sir, lemme just step out to the garage, input the numerical code on my gun locker, swing open the door and then -FWIP- BANG! GOTCHA BITCH)

my brother’s not evil but buying weapons like that for fun is evil

he hasn’t got a damn thing to protect himself from, either. he’s a well-off middle-aged straight cis white guy in a quiet neighborhood of a boring city. when the jackbooted thugs come pounding on his door it’ll be to invite him along to round up the freaks.

(i am not considering buying a gun. {i am lucky [and privileged] enough to feel that i don’t need one}) (i do have pepper spray tho) (and i release a powerful stank when threatened. you’ve been warned!)

Yes

I should just not go outside anymore. I don’t get where there are so many Jan 6 dudes around here

why not where

No and nope and never, but I won't presume to judge the decisions of others

This week a friend had jury dury and was called into selection for a murder trial. During questioning of the 70 potential-jurors there, some 40+ said they owned a gun. In Portland!

Now that I live in Montana I have looked up the local laws re guns and they are about as Deadwood as it's possible to be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Montana

About the only thing restricting me from buying any kind of gun I might want is that I have to have lived here for six months and have a state-issued ID. But I have no desire to. And I haven't seen anybody carrying a gun since I've been here, so it's not like I'm feeling particularly paranoid or like I need to "defend myself".

We hear gunshots all the time in our neighbourhood but someone got an assault rifle (is that a thing? The ones that shoot off 100 rounds in a few seconds) recently and loves to play with it somewhere on my street at 2 am once a week or so.

I'm very anti-gun but lately, I've wondered if that's just my privilege. If I was a minority with every motherfucker trying to kill me, including the police, I'd probably have a very different attitude.

So, maybe I'm no guns for white people, now?

This week a friend had jury dury and was called into selection for a murder trial. During questioning of the 70 potential-jurors there, some 40+ said they owned a gun. In Portland!

― Kim Kimberly

i mean you gotta understand, portland is _west_, historically pdx has had a strong firearms culture

i'm extremely fucking white, but i'm also trans, and i've had to adjust my feelings about firearms over the past few years

i grew up in a liberal, strongly anti-gun family, and it probably saved my life. the single biggest factor in my being alive today is means reduction. i will not own a gun. i will not learn to shoot a gun. (i'm dyspraxic and half fucking blind anyway - based on my memories of shooting bb guns as at boy scout camp, i doubt that arming me would be tactically effective)

but. and.

it's dangerous for us out here and i'm not sure allies necessarily understand how dangerous it is. there are a lot of us and sometimes we congregate in groups and we're always very careful not to announce where those groups are publicly. opsec is really important. it's not like everyone here supports us - there are a lot of proud boys here - and it would be pretty easy for someone to decide it was time for them to make a dent in the local trans population.

having people in the community who are able to put up effective self-defense in those situations makes me feel a lot better about leaving the house and being around other trans people. my dinky little container of pepper spray isn't going to do a lot, in a situation like that.

are we going to start some, i don't know, war on the cis like tucker carlson seems to think we are? uh, no. a lot of us are frustrated that we're in a situation where our basic physical safety is under constant threat and the cis people who have the power to do something about it are responding by shrugging and telling us "haters gonna hate", but no, memes like "trans day of vengeance" are wishful thinking, the same way i don't actually know anybody who owns a guillotine. mostly, you know, mostly we just hurt each other. is the sad truth of it.

Portland is as much a hotbed of white supremacy as the rest of Oregon. I've never encountered more outright fascists in any other state, and I've been in a lot of them.

And I haven't seen anybody carrying a gun since I've been here, so it's not like I'm feeling particularly paranoid or like I need to "defend myself".

That's the crux, right? No one needs to open carry because everyone knows there are people out there packing. Which begs the question, how many of those people are actually carrying? It's like Beware of Dog signs; the presence of a dog is secondary to the implied threat.

Portland is a singularly odd example that I don’t think gets understood by a lot of pundit-y types elsewhere because the local history and geography is different than most cities, including the major American cities where most pundits and media commentators live in/around. This was very apparent during the Uprising when you had media folks based in NY/LA/DC/ATL transposing the racial histories and dynamics from their locations to Portland, which had a slightly different one.

My read is that because Portland never sprawled the way the rest of the US did due to the Urban Growth Boundary instituted in the 70s, you didn’t get white flight the same as other cities. White flight here is like 5 miles away. You can bike it. We had redlining same as everywhere else, but the scale was different. Portland and Oregon has its own particular racist-ass history from its creation that differs from other states.

Stuff is allowed to pop off here in ways it’s not in other places. Also you have the Gods Guns & Gays crowd living effectively on top of the urban cosmopolitan “Progressive” types, so that clashes.