Sounds like you have an obsession with guns
Every Republican ever be like
“preferably a minority”
Honestly, I was thinking of this
White Man & Black Man Carry AR-15 Rifles In Open Carry Video Experiment
A recent video posted to YouTube by Willie Upchuck captures the same incident resulting in two distinctively different responses from police. A White gentleman is politely questioned by police, while a Black man is harshly told to get on the ground at gunpoint.
The black man that volunteered for that must have a death wish. He had to have gone into that thinking there was a very good chance the police would shoot him on sight.
Im someone who likes to shoot a gun at targets at the range. I find it SO creepy and unnerving when it becomes clear that someone would like to shoot at a person. They don’t usually outright say it, but some make it clear in other ways.
Right? Like in my ideal world, guns would be a hobby for weird nerds in the same way fencing is today. The one or two times I have felt like there’s even a small chance I may need to use a gun in self defense were terrifying and stressful.
There’s quite a few hobbies where the other people who meet up to participate as a group as a group are a huge turnoff.
Guns are one of those hobbies for me.
I would love to talk about the amazing mechanics and different approaches guns have to firing an exploding charge to move a mass of metal at supersonic speeds just like I love talking about the mechanical parts of trains and cars. But the gun crowd tends to have too high of a proportion of very vocal terrible people.
If you like guns as a technology Open Source Defense is a good newsletter imo. They don’t delve into politics thankfully but look at how laws are implemented, improving safety at scale etc
See if you can find yourself a group with operation blazing sword. Whatever you do, LGS usually have just FUDDs who want to talk how turnip daddy is going to make everything like it was back in the 50s again…most of the sane ass people who are into owning and shooting are online now (there are still a shit ton of magats but just avoid those places). It also helps if you can find a group that has a private range, it’ll make it a lot easier to setup times to go enjoy shooting.
A couple years ago I joined a private shooting club. They have a range with targets from 10-300 yards. It was so cool to shoot there, and all the other members were total marksmanship nerds. Seeing all the great equipment, and ridiculous scopes was always fun, and the other members were nice to talk to. There were no soldier LARPers there. We operated as our own range masters, and everyone took safety very seriously. It was a refreshing change from the public range. Unfortunately I moved a couple hours away from that range, so it didn’t make sense to continue paying the membership anymore. Now I just go to the mountains to shoot.
Ew what a horrible, gross thing to say
Heard it a buncha times without ever really hearing it
They don’t usually outright say it, but some make it clear in other ways.
Like showing up at the range in full combat gear. Dude, simma downa!
I don’t think this is an actual case of that. I have a few friends that get kitted out with plate carriers and night vision for the range and it’s just LARPing. No different than ren faire people showing up to the faire in steel plate when obviously there isn’t some sword fight that’s about to break out at the fairgrounds.
It’s dorky but generally not malicious.
It is very different than ren faire people showing up in military gear obsolete for hundreds of years, you can kill an entire crowd of people with an assault rifle in seconds, a person carrying around a murder weapon of that spontaneous ability to catastrophically induce violence isn’t “LARPing” they are normalizing carrying around a murder weapon and being utterly obsessed with it which even if their motivations are innocent provides a nice big smokescreen of normalcy for the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world to hide behind.
I am not even making an argument against guns here, I am just pointing out how much more lame and uncool this is than ren faire or LARPing stuff .
Sounds like my former coworker showing off his new gun on Facebook a few years back, with the post “I can’t wait to use this to defend my family.”
People like to think that because they own a gun, if they ever got to use it they would be John Wick.
What they don’t realize is that Keanu Reeves does a ton of training, and even occasionally does competitions
Man, I would be pretty upset if I dedicated a bunch of my time to compete, and then a guy who got paid millions of dollars to train with some of the best experts in the field showed up as a competitor. That would be like entering an amateur competition and there’s a fucking Navy Seal in line next to you.
I think nearly everyone in the firearms community realizes how much time and effort Keanu puts into training.
I think the opposite is more true; meaning that people OUTSIDE the firearms community have little to no idea how much time and effort it takes to be anything like what he looks like in the movies. Nor do they realize how far removed the movies they watch are from reality. Suppressors are not silent, shooting things 50 yards away with a pistol is almost always going to result in a miss, your ears are ringing after just one or two shots making conversations after a gun battle impossible, and so on.
As someone seriously considering their first firearm purchase, my main thought is “I hope this is a gigantic waste of time and money”.
Well, good news, a firearm would achieve the exact opposite of protecting you and your loved one from harm.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25910555/
In fact it’s the opposite. A firearm is far more likely to be involved in an accidental injury or death of someone in the household than it is going to be used in any form of self defense.
If you want to effectively protect yourself, invest in actual home security measures.
So rest assured that any firearm you purchase for self defense is always going to be a huge waste of money.
No …no it doesn’t. These studies are stupid levels of flawed. Not all crimes are reported to the police where nothing happened. Most DGUs no shot is fired, but they don’t get counted because they’re not reported.
The studies that try and show that a gun in the home is more dangerous use suicide statistics as well, which is like saying you’re more likely to drown in a pool if you own one…which the answer is “no shit”.
If you want to effectively protect yourself, invest in actual home security measures.
I already have cameras up around my home, and locks on doors and windows (plus CO and Smoke detectors, because that shit probably kills too). I’m more worried about idealogical/theological fanatics in the near future than I am about a potential robber or serial killer.
It doesn’t have to be! It can be fun to go to the range or competitions, you can “get your money’s worth” so to speak that way! You don’t have to “use” it to use it, know what I mean.
(Of course, if need be it’s there for that too, “god” or whatever metaphor you wish willing, yadda yadda you know.)
I don’t really have the space, time and money to make a hobby of it unfortunately.