188 points
*

The twitter user is making so many assumptions. It’s a great look into the delusional mind of alt right people.

For example, they assume all of the gun owners are conservatives and that they are all willing to fight and die for texas, and have the means or money to get there. In actuality, plenty of gun owners aren’t extremists or even right wing, and many of those who are probably won’t even show up if this shit happens.

Also, if this shit happens, once those who did show up end up in prison, on the run, or dead, you can bet your ass that the same account will be calling it a false flag operation or something [not sure if it was this account or one of the other major right wing twitter accounts that encouraged January 6th and then went on to claim it was a false flag afterwards]

To sum up the right wing lunatic mind: everybody who owns guns agrees with me and would die for those opinions, but also, if we lose, it was a false flag anyway, and most people actually agree with us but are too scared to show it, etc.

It’s just a bunch of hypocrisy and assumptions that go against all facts.

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74 points
*

Not American, but isn’t it also a misconception that most Americans have guns? I thought some Americans have a lot of guns, but most don’t have a gun at all.

I assume Texas is Texas, but I doubt it’s that different.

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71 points

This is true. There are a lot of guns, but a good chunk of gun owners own more than one firearm so the “average” is skewed. Look at the ones that have massive collections or the preppers for instance. Some owner collections have dozens or even hundreds of firearms.

There’s also the clear assumption the OP photo makes that all of those owners are conservative and willing to fight for Texas. I have quite a few friends with firearms, on both sides of the aisle. In fact, most of the gun owners I know personally are Democrats. None of them would ever do anything to help Texas.

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35 points
*

I am pretty hard left. Come from a family that leans to the left. I own probably 30 ish guns. Never bought a single one. Comes from parents, grandparents, great grandparents. Father in law. Everytime a family member passes away I have to buy a bigger gun safe. My side of the family was hunters, wife’s dad was a collector. They were like logos for him, he was always cleaning or fixing up a project gun. That being said, Texas can suck my balls. Just hoping my retarded, conservative, Mexico bordering state doesn’t get involved.

Either way, all these gravy seals can pretend to be tough, but no American is going to shoot another American (on a large scale) over this bs. It’s all politics and bull shit. They talk all tough, but are they willing to shoot at the military people they love so much wearing Kevlar and all the other latest technology with their AR they just got out of pawn over some brown people coming from Mexico? Do they think Joe Biden himself will be on the battle field? No, it will be a bunch of 20 year old American kids they are shooting at.

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13 points

I’m far left and my SO and I own 8 guns of various types, including an assault rifle and a short barel tactical shotgun.

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26 points

You are basically spot on.

I am a gun owner with more than 5 guns locked away in my basement safe. One of those “these people need protection when escorted to the health clinic because the right wing nut jobs are trying to block access and the pigs won’t do anything about it because some of them joined” kind of people, who will happily use every ounce of legal force I can bear to ensure they aren’t stopped by mouth breathers who don’t understand that they don’t have any rights over a woman’s body.

Of the people I know well enough to know their gun owning status, I’d say less than half own guns. But the half that do almost all own more than one. Mostly in .22LR (small caliber) for “plinking” (shooting small objects/targets for fun at a range or range-like area of your property) but most of the ones that aren’t are for hunting. Maybe 5 or 6 people have an ar-15, and the ones I’ve seen are set up for medium range target shooting.

Now I am certainly biased in who I know, because I do not willingly associate with “peppers” (it’s always guns and cans of beans in a basement, never anything else) or right wing assholes. None of the people I associate with would even strike you as gun owners, because they don’t look the part, don’t drive lifted pickups, don’t wear oakleys/aviators backwards with a punisher skill thin blue line shirt and camo cargo shorts on. (generalization but you know the type)

They’re very much the “those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent revolution inevitable” kind of people.

Now from my younger years, being hauled in to church every week, I’d say it still holds true for that area at that time, under 50% but they own multiples.

So it’s less “everyone owns tons of guns” and more “the under half that own guns own more than 2” I guess.

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13 points
*

42% of households have at least 1 gun. Actually looked this up recently.

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10 points

And that’s nationwide. Texas is slightly less than that.

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11 points
*

Yep, it’s much more common than other countries, but gun owners are still in the minority of people, and of the gun owners, many of them only own a pistol (for self defense) or a hunting rifle for hunting, with owning just one pistol being by far the most common.

And like you said, some Americans own a LOT of guns. Those people tend to view guns as something to collect, or as a status symbol, some even have dozens of different guns they never even use or maintain, but just hoard. They tend to skew the average number to be higher.

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7 points

I mean, some Americans have RPGs and historical cannons and swords and bows instead of guns

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2 points

(Also not American) The numbers in this tweet, if correct, would imply that ~80% of Americans don’t own a firearm. If memory serves there’s a slightly over 1:1 ratio between registered firearms and American citizens so that would suggest an average of 5 guns per owner.

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5 points

Only HI requires firearms to be registered in the USA.

And the last research on it, it’s around 1/3 of the population.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/

That’s from 2017, before COVID and trump really amping shit to the max. That 33% thinking about getting a firearm, many of them have. I’d say we’re probably around %45 at this point. Many on the left have armed themselves since trump and COVID.

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3 points

I really like the guitar analogy. Most people don’t own a guitar, most people who do own a guitar only own one, and most people who own more than one own a lot of guitars.

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1 point

I left guns behind along with my childhood.

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-5 points

Depends on the area.
Rural means guns to deal with vermin or wildlife.
Urban poor means illegal guns in bulk.
Urban middle-class, if there still is one, means self-defense as desired.
Urban high class means private security, personal gun optional.

Then you have your gangs, cartels, cults, communes, independent secessionists, hobby hunters, gun lovers and political party zealots - in no particular order or affiliation.

Mix in some mass media fear mongering and everyone is suddenly armed to the teeth, willingly or not.

So to answer your question, I have no idea.

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9 points
*

Rural means guns to deal with vermin or wildlife.

Urban poor means illegal guns in bulk.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/map-gun-death-rates-lower-cities-than-rural-counties-rcna81462

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7 points

I’m pretty confident there’s not many Americans willing to sacrifice themselves for their respective political party lol. Who’s chomping at the bit to take a bullet for Cruz or Menendez?

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5 points

Liberal gun owner here not from Texas . Howdily Doodily ho neighbor

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3 points

Socialist gun owner checking in. Nice to meet you, stupid sexy Flanders.

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97 points

Ah yes, because every single gun owner in the United States wants Texas to secede and is willing to die fighting for that cause.

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46 points

That’s not even true of most of the ones in Texas.

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14 points

Gun owner here.

yes

no

Fuck Texas. Let them break away and rot. Their entire society would collapse of they didn’t have the federal government to blame for every problem in their shithole state

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6 points

If Texas secedes from the Union, the Republicans will never win another presidential election.

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92 points

So this dumbass thinks the entire population of American gun owners are coming to their rescue?

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41 points

Unfortunately they couldn’t get there in time because their mobility scooters ran out of battery.

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5 points

They’re in need of some mechanical bootstraps I see.

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2 points

Hah!

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22 points
*

Every gun owner I’ve talked to on the internet claims they do this to protect themselves from the US government. Every gun owner I’ve talked with on the internet doesn’t have an answer for when I discuss the massive firepower the US has in comparison to their pew pew sticks.

edit: I should qualify this a little. There are responsible gun owners, and I have talked with some on the internet. There sure are a lot of vocal irresponsible gun owners as well, and those are the ones I have spent far more time arguing with online. You know the ones - they buy the gun and expect it to do all the work for them.

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23 points

The other 95% of us gun owners, such as myself, who DON’T broadcast it to the world and make it our entire personality, have guns as a hobby or as tools to use on the farm. And give zero fucks about whatever the hell the feds or Texas is up to…

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6 points

Wait, so you don’t buy whipped cream and take instagram photos with your pistol?

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17 points

“What will your response be to an AGM-114 Hellfire missile?”

“Well I’ll shoot it of course.”

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10 points

Gun owner here: that’s a stupid mentality. Putting aside the fact that I rather like the federal government, the best you could hope for in a war against the feds is an indefinite insurgency. You’ll suffer an abismal casualty rate, and you’ll really only be able to “win” if you saturate the government with sympathizers. If that happens, well, “you” won’t be doing the winning, it’ll be the people who got themselves into established positions of power.

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9 points

It’s a very stupid mentality born out of fear. I had a conversation with someone on reddit once in the comment section for a news article about a child (5 year old) finding a gun in the bushes. Her reply as a gun owner was “I’d rather live in a world where 5 year olds can find guns in bushes than live in a world where they cannot”.

It blows my mind. These folks are going to end up killing their children in a case of mistaken idenity if they’re not careful (and they aren’t careful).

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9 points

Well it kind of already happened. The Confederacy lost but their ideology somewhat retained and now a sizeable chunk of the elected government officials are sympathetic to it.

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5 points

And Republicans have been demonstrating for decades now that saturating the government with sympathizers works just fine without an armed rebellion.

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8 points

As a gun owner, guns are for hunting and defending against these drooling idiot, neo-nazi seditionists who are trying to forment civil war.

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5 points

Here’s your answer.

All the bombs, missiles, planes, and tanks are how the US got a decisive victory in Vietnam.

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13 points

Were the Vietnamese fighters morbidly obese, middle-aged men with no training who wouldn’t even tolerate a paper mask to save their families?

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8 points

I think the people of Vietnam had a lot less fucks to give than your average Texan. I don’t see Texans building and living in an underground tunnel system that they themselves dug out. I dont even know how those idiots survive without a chick fil a within driving distance. Guerilla warfare involves some terrible living conditions for the guerilla fighters, and Yall Qaeda is not strong enough to live that way.

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4 points

And Afghanistan.

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3 points

Aww, did you delete your reply? That’s not very big, brave gun owner of you. Thankfully, it still arrived in my inbox.

Washington DC area, 2002. Did two guys with a rifle paralyze a major metropolitan area?

While I’m all for people changing their deeply stupid beliefs, it’s still surreal that for at least a few minutes, you thought that a good argument was “Our guns will be all we need against an actual military because we can use them for domestic terrorism targeting pregnant white women”.

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1 point

Oh, so let me get this straight, tens of thousands of lardass Texas militiamen are somehow magically going to be willing to live in tunnels with the most primitive amenities and horrible conditions? Why the fuck would you think that for a moment? These aren’t third world peasants who are used to living in extreme privation and are willing to die for their cause no matter what. They’re a bunch of out of shape untrained fat body crybabies who wouldn’t last a week without easy access to the rest of North America’s logistics, financial and power infrastructure.

The US wouldn’t have to fire a single shot, they’d just bomb the Texas power stations, shut down all border crossings into and out of the state, shut down all banking so that only a barter economy existed, and within a week or so the entire state would be on its knees begging for relief.

You can’t do that in places like Vietnam or Afghanistan where the enemy is totally self-sufficient and is quite happy to wait you out. You really think Texans are going to be able to do that? In what universe? What a joke. You obviously haven’t thought this through.

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2 points

Crazy. Almost like it’s just hollow self-aggrandizing so they can pretend they’re a hero.

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2 points

I always bring up resources management. They probably won’t go full hog in an armed uprising on US soil. Every bridge bombed is a bridge needed to rebuild. A carpet bombing of Texas will hit non-combatant citizens. A preemptive point against this would be the first civil war. Sherman’s march ( the goat ) was different because the largest militaries decided to be neutral during the conflict. A crippling of an armed uprising will also cripple defense against China or Russia if they get froggy. Or if the damages could be justified. Like say a critical bridge was one of the MANY bridges that are on the verge of collapsing. Bomb it now and make Texas pay for it call it Biden’s bridge etc. Or a track of land being used by rebels is prime railroad land/oil/etc.

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1 point

Every gun owner on the internet seems to be 100% on board with using their guns to install a fascist US government.

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1 point

A simple scroll on this thread alone seems to indicate against this statement. Plenty of good non-fashy-non-tankies who understand the problems with disarmament of the people.

They’re just also not loud and obnoxious. =\

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5 points

I’m willing to believe that large enough chunk of gun enthusiastics comes from Texas or Texas-like states.

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“Everything’s bigger in texas” including the fear of gubmint

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5 points

Remember Jade Helm, when the army held a training exercise in Texas and a bunch of yokels thought it was an invasion?

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63 points

I own a gun.

Fuck Texas. I won’t be supporting them in anything ever.

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37 points

Yeah, I’m a gun owner and am pretty “on board” with democracy so I’m not gonna help those hypothetical traitors secede.

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9 points

Sign me up for the pro gun anti sedition group.

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62 points

Everyone seems to have this romantic idea of a US Civil War would be like. It’s either “76 million gun owners becoming patriots” or the US military will crush the secessionists with some airstrikes and drone strikes, all in time for dinner.

The first stage would be political chaos. Some US governors will see this an attempt to seize even more power and side with the Secessionists (looking at you, DeSantis, you shit head). Some US governors will wait to see if a political solution can be sought before picking sides, and other governors will side the US government. Congress will have to figure out what do with US Representatives from Secessionist States. Some members of the military will start to defect or desert for various reasons.

If a political comprise can’t be sought, we move to the second stage. Secessionist States start seizing US military bases and their assets and more members of the US military and Secessionist States start to desert/defect. Russia, China, Iran, and other countries sensing an opportunity, start to exploit the ongoing chaos. This includes massive disinformation campaigns, funding violent organizations, and isolating US allies.

A small amount of far-right militias sensing an opportunity with the US government dealing with the beginnings of a civil act, start to act. Small bombings and assassinations to further their political goals. Conservatives in Northern California start terror campaigns in Southern California. Progressive groups start being targeted and band together for safety. Foreign interference becomes more involved. Refugees start fleeing.

Third stage is full out war. Battles between Secessionist forces and the US Military start happening. Every state has either decided to join one side or goes their own way. Political crises pop up in US territories. Local insurgencies break out amongst groups fighting for power as central governments are pre-occupied with fighting a civil war. Foreign inference is at a maximum with direct financial, military, or logistical support to whatever group aligns with foreign powers.

We saw this with happen with the Iraq War with it’s multitude of Shiite and Sunni militias fighting each other and the US. Same thing happened in Syria, with groups supporting the government against those fighting against the government and the Kurds. We saw what can happen with a dedicated low tech insurgency can do in Afghanistan and Vietnam against a far more advanced military.

At best, the US is 11 different countries trying to be one country.. At worst, the US is 50 different countries trying to be one country.

Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards wrote an article about the beginnings of a civil war.

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