• Moggy@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    In my experience, overly fearful people that get terrified over nothing are the primary audience for gun ownership. The mindset it takes to responsibly own and carry a gun is RARE.

    I have 60+ year old relatives that suddenly all decided they wanted a gun, just because one of them bought one and won’t shut up about the confidence it gives her. She literally bought it just to walk to and from her car, which is parked directly in front of the business SHE owns, despite there being absolutely zero crime happening in her parking lot, and not bothering to set up security cameras. She literally bought a gun because she was afraid of a non-existent problem, and made no non-violent effort to correct the issue. I’m waiting for her to shoot some poor homeless person asking for change…

    If owning a gun makes you confident, then you’re a scared little baby. Especially the guys with big trucks that drive like they’re trying to provoke people. I KNOW you have a gun. You bought the little dick pride set, so there’s no way you don’t have a gun. Quit trying to make excuses to pull it out. Pussies. FYI, I’m driving slow in front of you BECAUSE you’re driving like an ass hole and riding my bumper. Wave your gun at me again. I do not care.

    • Shialac@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      In my experience most people that get a gun because they are “terrified” are just waiting for an excuse to finally kill another person

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yeah. I want a gun. Specifically I’d love to have a bolt action rifle I can use as a long range hole punch on some papers and cans. And I can definitely afford it. I don’t have it because I don’t have the free disposable income for it, a secure and sturdy gun safe, and the space for it.

      If I thought for a second that I needed a pistol to walk around town I shouldn’t have one. The only times I even consider owning a gun for conflict is when the proud boys occupy a nearby city that I do stuff in regularly. They’re holding semi automatic rifles and it may be valuable for a counter fascist militia to march against them. But I’m not a good shot and that’s expensive and I can’t go to prison.

      Guns are not therapy. They aren’t Xanax or Wellbutrin or buspirone or anything else that will actually fix irrational fear. They are a device that exists solely to put a hole in something far away, and often they’re designed for that thing to be a living animal or person.

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Unfortunately, as you get older and closer to death, fear becomes a big factor in your life. This is the reaction you see from boomers. They can’t verbalize or even comprehend the fear of death, so it manifests in these bizarre behavioral patterns.

      Source: Myself

    • CaptainProton@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      You hang out with the wrong crowd. I’ve belonged to several gun clubs over the years, of the many hundreds of people I’ve gotten to know, I’ve met probably a dozen who fit the profile you describe. IMO the difference is socialization: if guns are a right but at the same time you make guns a taboo and actively discourage organized events and interest shooting sports, the people who do not go into it with a healthy mind and diverse social life end up dwelling on whatever someone feeds them for clicks and ad revenue (Fox News and similar shit, not even partisan just scary news gets clicks and trains fear into people). Shooting is fun if you do it right.

      • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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        8 months ago

        With appropriate legislation and social norms, I’d agree with you.

        So I don’t agree with you.

        We really need responsible gun owners to form a bloc, and shun the gun nuts and work with the left for gun legislation.

        • CaptainProton@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Answer this: how do you work on legislation to ensure responsible gun ownership with someone who detests any form of civilian gun ownership and absolutely refuses to learn the intricacies? How do you collaborate with someone who thinks themselves to be above understanding what they’re working on? Sensible things HAVE been proposed by people with a deep understanding of guns, but they get spit on because they’re something other than another ban on an inconsequential feature or function or type of something.

          Edit to add: I cannot count the number of times I’ve given someone a chance and nearly every time the answer to “are you open to the possibility of your side being wrong about anything at all” is along the lines of me being the one who needs to be schooled by someone with zero firearms experience about why banning some specific things will solve mass shootings. On the other hand, I’ve taken many anti gun people shooting, and taught them some basics, and that changed a lot about how they viewed what they’d previously been told. Internet scholars will say this invalidates their ability to be objective and so their opinion no longer counts.

          The evidence, that is total intolerance to the actual ideas and proposals by gun owners, and pushing for more of the same that didn’t work the first few times, shows that legislators actual objectives are total disarmament, not the safety and lives of good people.

      • Moggy@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Hanging out with the wrong crowd? It’s my family. And about half of them aren’t even Republicans. If anything, THEY hang out with the wrong crowd. And considering that you make guns such a large part of your identity, even making it a regular social interaction, I have a hard time believing that you’ll look at it from anyone else’s perspective. I especially doubt your ability to judge who should and shouldn’t have a gun, because you literally go to clubs full of people and judge their ability to responsibly own a gun off of their social skills, which for many people is a facade they create to seem normal. I doubt that the guy who’s excited to kill people is talking about it like that at club time. And my problem isn’t just intent. My problem with my family, specifically, is that they’re all a bunch of scared little bitches who are going to shoot at the first thing that scares their precious little baby asses. And I’ve met a shitload of fearful gun owners. I grew up in the South. Saying you’ve only met a dozen, means that you don’t pay attention, you excuse more than you should, or you’re just lying.

        • CaptainProton@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Sorry about your family.

          What makes you think it’s so central to my identity? (Granted I’ve got way more hobbies than most people, I’m sure it’s an innocent assumption.)

          We might have different ways of judging people. I learned to judge character long before I ever touched my first gun (as an adult), and do not defer or equate a person’s identity to their character.

          Yeah people lie, but in the orgs I belong to everyone has the keys and full access to nice facilities, and is treated like an adult - consider that a litmus test, or a baseline level of trust which is exceedingly rare to have someone break. You think fearful people just sign up to be on a “cold” range (unarmed) where someone else is running around with a loaded gun (e.g. USPSA), and submit fully to whoever’s running the range that day? Or join the club at the police or military range? There’s way more fear at the universities (and I live at one of the biggest right now).

          Yeah I’m not in the south, only ever lived in big cities that are as blue as it gets.

          • set_secret@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            At least 18 apparently.

            It’s such a shame Americans brains are completely dysfunctional when it comes to guns. Despite literally overwhelming evidence that guns are a errible, terrible idea to be so easily accessible. Somehow what you you’d usually call a socially progressive person becomes more like a raving lunatic to most others outside of the USA when it comes to guns…

            It’s honestly a fascinating phenomenon, it’s just really, really tragic.

            • CaptainProton@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Ah yes, the true test of what’s right: how many people’s preconceptions your words appeal to. Perhaps we should have have an AI stroke our egos instead of communicating with other humans.