Its easier to paint all gun owners as reckless at best, criminals at worst, when you have dumbasses like this walking around. Truth is, the vast majority of american gun owners I’ve met have been strict followers of the 4 rules. If I ever meet someone who isn’t, they immediately become strangers after I leave the situation. Ill try to correct behavior, but not everyone is receptive. Thats where common sense gun laws would be great to have, like proving competency with a firearm and the safety rules especially, every year if you want a ccw. Unfortunately, the ccw in my state is an online course with 10 questions at the end, and fees and a waiting list to get your physical card. I could (and did, but did not carry until confident with my setup) get this ccw without ever having fired the gun I intend to carry, much less handled it safely.
Also, for people less familiar, if you are ever handed a firearm, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CLEAR IT YOURSELF. Just because someone clears it in front of you, does not make it clear. I dont care if the person field strips it in front of me, the first thing im doing after they hand it to me is clearing it myself.
Gun owners reading maybe? Please be more reponsible/safe with your firearms. Be as safe as you think you should, then be a little safer. There’s countless little things to work on, like not breaching the fire line or responsible clearing before leave line. We all take a huge responsibility when we decide to carry concealed. You have to delete your ego, you can’t be short fused. There’s no room for prejudice, or stupidity. You alone are responsible for what comes out of your weapon, and if the responsibility is shrugged off, tragic things happen that you have to live with. Don’t mess around, stay sharp.
Treat EVERY GUN as if its loaded (imagine that rounds can magically appear if you set it down or take eyes off, because they sometimes do!)
Keep your finger off the trigger until ready and safe to fire. (Keep your booger hook off the bang switch!)
Do not point your firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy (whether youre firing or not, whether its loaded or not)
Fully know your target and all things behind it(bullets have a tendency to keep going)
I dont care if the person field strips it in front of me, the first thing im doing after they hand it to me is clearing it myself.
This kind of attitude is the exact right way to do it when safety is involved. You make it automatic, not a decision. It’s like wearing your seatbelt. It saves you time and energy while producing the best results.
Put another way: Crazy shit happens every day. You make it automatic not because you distrust the person unloading it in front of you. You do it because you shouldn’t trust yourself to be perfectly flawless in life and death situations. You do it 100% of the times that you rationally know for certain that it’s empty, so that you skip the check 0.00000% of the time that some crazy sequence of events quietly creates a dangerous situation.
I’m honestly very anti-firearms, I live in the USA and while I have met young veterans who take good care of their firearms and exhibit excellent discipline, I have met enough dangerous folk waltzing around toting firearms to flex power at best or to carry out violence at worst, (many different walks of life), that I do not want fire arms in the hands of anyone.
The state already has a monopoly on violence, thigh high sock wearing lesbians on lemmy, or people who served and choose to own and carry aren’t really necessary. We’d be better off without them as a whole. And violence isn’t the absolute solution some of my peers would make it out to be.
Having observed the state, I do not trust it with a monopoly on violence. Yes, we would be better off without them. When we can guarantee that nazism will never, ever rise again, then we may feel free to disarm ourselves. Until then, that seems unwise. After all, ICE is doing most of their work in cities and states with harsh gun restrictions, where it’s safe for them to oppress.
You can’t really kill most ideas (it seems especially not the bad ones), they just lay dormant for a while, maybe change shape a little, maybe change location, but they come back. Many things in life are cyclical, just like fashion trends coming back in style so do ideas, and unfortunately those are usually not limited by nostalgia.
Unfortunately, even if it did “never come back” we can’t verify that “never” until the sun explodes (assuming that kills all the humans, if we get off planet before that all bets are off) as “never” can only truly be known retroactively.
And tbh, if we did have that utopian world devoid of fascism (all authoritarianism, really) and crime for eternity, guns wouldn’t be an issue anymore anyway to necessitate a ban, at that point fuck it, have fun!
Its easier to paint all gun owners as reckless at best, criminals at worst, when you have dumbasses like this walking around. Truth is, the vast majority of american gun owners I’ve met have been strict followers of the 4 rules. If I ever meet someone who isn’t, they immediately become strangers after I leave the situation. Ill try to correct behavior, but not everyone is receptive. Thats where common sense gun laws would be great to have, like proving competency with a firearm and the safety rules especially, every year if you want a ccw. Unfortunately, the ccw in my state is an online course with 10 questions at the end, and fees and a waiting list to get your physical card. I could (and did, but did not carry until confident with my setup) get this ccw without ever having fired the gun I intend to carry, much less handled it safely.
Also, for people less familiar, if you are ever handed a firearm, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CLEAR IT YOURSELF. Just because someone clears it in front of you, does not make it clear. I dont care if the person field strips it in front of me, the first thing im doing after they hand it to me is clearing it myself.
Gun owners reading maybe? Please be more reponsible/safe with your firearms. Be as safe as you think you should, then be a little safer. There’s countless little things to work on, like not breaching the fire line or responsible clearing before leave line. We all take a huge responsibility when we decide to carry concealed. You have to delete your ego, you can’t be short fused. There’s no room for prejudice, or stupidity. You alone are responsible for what comes out of your weapon, and if the responsibility is shrugged off, tragic things happen that you have to live with. Don’t mess around, stay sharp.
Treat EVERY GUN as if its loaded (imagine that rounds can magically appear if you set it down or take eyes off, because they sometimes do!) Keep your finger off the trigger until ready and safe to fire. (Keep your booger hook off the bang switch!) Do not point your firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy (whether youre firing or not, whether its loaded or not) Fully know your target and all things behind it(bullets have a tendency to keep going)
This kind of attitude is the exact right way to do it when safety is involved. You make it automatic, not a decision. It’s like wearing your seatbelt. It saves you time and energy while producing the best results.
Put another way: Crazy shit happens every day. You make it automatic not because you distrust the person unloading it in front of you. You do it because you shouldn’t trust yourself to be perfectly flawless in life and death situations. You do it 100% of the times that you rationally know for certain that it’s empty, so that you skip the check 0.00000% of the time that some crazy sequence of events quietly creates a dangerous situation.
I’m honestly very anti-firearms, I live in the USA and while I have met young veterans who take good care of their firearms and exhibit excellent discipline, I have met enough dangerous folk waltzing around toting firearms to flex power at best or to carry out violence at worst, (many different walks of life), that I do not want fire arms in the hands of anyone. The state already has a monopoly on violence, thigh high sock wearing lesbians on lemmy, or people who served and choose to own and carry aren’t really necessary. We’d be better off without them as a whole. And violence isn’t the absolute solution some of my peers would make it out to be.
Having observed the state, I do not trust it with a monopoly on violence. Yes, we would be better off without them. When we can guarantee that nazism will never, ever rise again, then we may feel free to disarm ourselves. Until then, that seems unwise. After all, ICE is doing most of their work in cities and states with harsh gun restrictions, where it’s safe for them to oppress.
Btw
That’s a “never.” Remember like 8y ago when everyone said “it could never happen here?” Well…
I like to think humanity is capable of evolving beyond such stupid ideas. But in the near term it does seem a bit of a long shot.
You can’t really kill most ideas (it seems especially not the bad ones), they just lay dormant for a while, maybe change shape a little, maybe change location, but they come back. Many things in life are cyclical, just like fashion trends coming back in style so do ideas, and unfortunately those are usually not limited by nostalgia.
Unfortunately, even if it did “never come back” we can’t verify that “never” until the sun explodes (assuming that kills all the humans, if we get off planet before that all bets are off) as “never” can only truly be known retroactively.
And tbh, if we did have that utopian world devoid of fascism (all authoritarianism, really) and crime for eternity, guns wouldn’t be an issue anymore anyway to necessitate a ban, at that point fuck it, have fun!