The culture of having them everywhere seems insane and its negative social consequences seem manifestly obvious.
I am sympathetic to the stuff around the capacity for violence not being monopolized by the state, though pursuing that seems fraught at best. If anything I see a stronger case for anti-tank weapons being available but blocking shit like handguns that seem dogshit in war but great for roadrage and murder-suicides; unfortunately the ideal case of a gun that only works on fascists isn't available.
guns are a useful tool, but a bunch of people being strapped 24/7 is unhinged
it's nice living in a place where if i get into an argument with someone there is basically zero chance they draw a 44 and end meThe village (in Mexico) I mostly grew up in had a cabinet very old military rifles on our common land to protect it with. They shot .22 bullet and I think had been very crudely changed to this because it did not suit them well. They had a handle that would pull to the back and forward again to reload after shooting and it was very hard to pull. The back of the bullet casings would get stuck on each other a lot. Only some trusted elders had keys to the cabinet. There is a lot of crime and rabid animals there so it was important to have them available.
I think having some basic guns like that in communal ownership is very good for safety and is not as dangerous as personal gun ownership.
I think having some basic guns like that in communal ownership is very good for safety and is not as dangerous as personal gun ownership.
You know as a commie American who has always been kinda agnostic on the gun control issue, I had never even thought about the difference between communal vs personal gun ownership but this seems like a v meaningful distinction that people rarely explicitly bring up.
Not a fan, freaks me out a little when I see one in the wild (on a cop, usually)
They freak me out as well, depending on the context. Hunters with shotguns are fine, cops and soldiers with guns are not.
gun is ok but the obsession of gun as a middle class consumption statement is cringe
Probably fine for hunters and marksmen as long as they store them safely. Probably more harmful than good as personal protection for the general public.
Organised workers with guns would be awesome and under no pretenses etc. but until we have enough organised workers to make that happen I'm kind of happy to live in a place where nazis can't just waltz into a gun store and buy an AK-47.
There's a lot of reasons people hunt. Idk if I'd say a big blanket statement like that.
Like for the rare exceptions with indigenous people who are entitled to it, hunting is wrong in every other circumstance.
Not to start a struggle session, but literally every culture in the world hunts. If hunting is bad then it's bad for everyone.
:downbear: Responsible hunting replaces the predators that our ancestors destroyed or adds a predator to invasive species. Ideally we'd have the wolves back, but some places like the everglades would be even worse off if it weren't for game management.
Also wtf kind of predator do we have to introduce to keep giant hogs from just going around wrecking what little we haven't?
Even mountain lions rarely go after adult boar.
we must engineer a super-wolf, or a great-big lion to compensate in the ecological arms race
I mean we could import tigers, but then they'd probably compete with mountain lions.
That doesn't mean every opinion is equally valid. "Guns are good because people can use them to murder innocents" simply does not follow
"I'm vegan and murdering animals for sport but pretending it's conservation is actually good!"
It is possible to be opposed to two different things simultaneously that are both bad, despite the fact that one is worse than the other. Never thought I'd have to explain that very simple concept here. Also, while I am concerned about the suffering of animals being hunted, I am likewise concerned about the harm that perpetuating the systemic myth of "hunting is 'good for conservation'" does to actual conservation.
Insisting that the entire science of ecological conservation was made up to provide an excuse for sport hunting is a hell of a move
Insisting that the entirety of the science of economics was made up to justify capital accumulation is a hell of a move. Yet here we are.
Also, I never claimed that the entirety of conservation is based on the false premise that human intervention by killing wildlife is somehow good ecologically. But it is in fact a part of it.
This thread reminds me of the gymnastics that pundits perform to make it seem like coal mining is akshually good for curbing the effects of climate change.
Correct, capitalist 'economics' is a motivated construct. You can do anything you need to with money, because it isn't real. You can lend it, transfer it, or even borrow it from the future. It is incredibly malleable because it's only constraints are social.
Ecological functions exist with or without us. The demands of a biosphere are concrete and fundamental. You can't lend species diversity, transfer a food web or borrow a soil microboime from the future. If an imbalance exists in nature, no amount of creative accounting will erase it's effects.
A human-made approach towards a human-made problem occurring within a human-made system is not comparable to a human-made approach towards a thermodynamics problem as old as life.
It's kind of necessary where I live with violent crimes going beyond something like petty car theft. The American obsession with having multiple guns in a closet and having it ready for any "suspicious looking person" is pretty insane to me. Most of the people doing that live in very safe suburbs and the worst they deal with is petty theft.
I think that the :kkkanada: system with some tweaks would actually be pretty decent if you still wanted to have civilian gun ownership but also not want to have constant mass shootings. There's a training/testing process you need to go through, a lengthy waiting period where they do a background check and contact references and to make sure you're in a good state of mind, and then you get a license which allows you to purchase certain kinds of guns. The most common are the standard PAL and RPAL, the PAL is basically long guns only, while the RPAL includes handguns (before the ban) and scary black rifles and shorter rifles.
I'd like to see it be more stringent on storage and transport rules though because while the biggest source of guns used in crime are smuggled from the US, a fair number of them are stolen from Canadian legal gun owners.
Also, they'll ban shit based on how scary it looks rather than actual capability, so you'll have the AK platform banned but until recently you could easily get a vz58 or M14. But now after that one guy domed a bunch of cops Trudeau wants to ban almost every semi auto, which tbh isn't that big a deal but like everyone in Canada has an SKS so idk how that's gonna work.
I've only ever fired shotguns and hunting rifles but they're neat because they go bang and stuff comes out real fast
I feel very iffy about handguns. Even assuming nothing but the best intent from everyone who owns them, they are small enough that they will go unnoticed until they are pulled, at which point they will more often than not escalate a situation way beyond the point where it was and make people panic and do stupid stuff. I'm much more fine with rifles. You can tell when someone is carrying a rifle and act knowing that that you are in a situation with a gun involved.
This is what is so absurd about the anti-gun people to me here in the US. Banning handguns would save so many more lives than rifles or "assault weapons" because they're cheaper, easier to conceal, carry, and much easier to commit suicide or accidentally shoot someone with. In 99% of cases they're just as deadly if not more so. Only the most serious antis want to get rid of handguns though.
Yeah should be illegal for sure. The idea that everyone should always be able to have every gun for the abstract reason that they should be able to fight the state if it comes to it is kind of crazy to me. Like that might make sense if sedition was legal lol but it isn't so might as well make guns illegal too and keep people safe.
If your goal is to violently overthrow the state well guess what getting illegal guns is going to be the least serious law you're going to have to break.
I think gun ownership rates should track linearly with rates of public funding of mental health support programs.
I started target shooting with my dad at 12 and fucking loved it, but quit at about 17-18 because I discovered drugs, and then went on to fuck up my life.
So for me personally, I'd rather guns than drugs.
