If you don’t believe that there will be death squads (I’m not trying to convince you there will be), you are not the target of my question. Many people around Lemmy today are saying things like “you’ve just killed all trans people” or “I’m going to be hunted for sport now,” very much believing that they are part of an “isolated minority sect or fantasy guild or some wack shit like that.” These people do believe that there will be death squads.
Your community in this case doesn’t mean your neighborhood. Your community means the people who you identify with and/or care about. If you truly believe that your neighbors are on the cusp of becoming death squads who are ready to gun down all the [insert your people] in town, it might be a good idea to have your friends know that the plan is to meet up at someone’s place that is more defensible. Or to get to the least mobile person. Or to get in a car with a particular destination in mind. Whatever your plan is, if the enemy is armed, it might be a good idea to also be armed.
While I personally do like Stein, I agree that others would be better. Stein didn’t even want to run, but the Green Party loses all the electoral benefits I mentioned if they DON’T run. Stein basically recruited Cornell West to run for the Green Party nomination, and there was a time when it looked like he would be the nominee. However, he dropped out because he didn’t want to do the campaigning work within the party to become the nominee. If he had actually been serious about running, he could have clinched it and I think would have gotten a ton more traction. From what I’ve heard, it seemed like he was scared to gain too much traction and potentially be a real spoiler. When he left the Green Party, someone had to run to preserve their electoral benefits, so Stein stepped in.
When you say wait for the enemy to attack, how will you defend your community in that eventuality if you haven’t trained to do so?
Depends on what you consider expensive. For general purpose training, 9mm rounds (pistol) are easily found at about 25c each and 5.56 (rifle) are found at about 40c each.
It’s exactly what I did the last time orange man was in office, so yes, me first. Now you. Let’s hit the range together.
Many believe they are saving the country by voting for Trump. Everyone sees that America is going downhill. Everything is more expensive, more uncertain, more precarious. Leftists blame corporations and corporate capture of government agencies. Right wingers think that more corporate power is good and if left unchecked, the “free market” (aka government rules that favor unchecked corporate malfeasance) will be better for America.
People vote for their economic interests, as best as they can understand them. Most on the right think that their economic interests are served by corporate deregulation and scapegoating of immigrants. However, within that context, this is also why removing social security is not realistic. That’s a direct attack on people’s benefits, which they are not in favor of. Right wing corporate types want to cut social security so they don’t have to pay taxes, or there will be more money in the government coffers to give back to the corporations. But the majority of right wing people that the corporate types rely on for votes will never vote to repeal social security.
To everyone in here saying that this is the end of democracy and this is the end times, what is stopping you from buying a gun and training with other liberals/leftists? Or are you just going to keel over and die?
Unfortunately I would think very few would care. For example, the Green party is very progressive, and comes with a TON of advantages electorally. They’re on the ballot in almost every state, run in local and national elections, and have a system all set up for nominating people, etc. When you look at the Green party’s platform, it’s very close to what the progressives claim to actually want. Yet most democrats just shit on them at every opportunity instead of voting for the platform they ostensibly believe in.
Another headache is that everything dems do is means tested, so you’ve got to jump through a bunch of hoops to figure out if you’re even eligible for any new program. Even if the programs do give relief to people, it’s much harder to message on a complicated program with layers of bureaucracy rather than “everyone gets 3k per child no matter what.”
Bernie purposefully did not do that because he did not want to be seen as another Ralph Nader. He believed working inside the system would do more good than doing a dirty break. I also wish he went in the direction of a break from the democratic party, but that’s just not who he is.
If you actually think you will get hunted down…buy a goddamn gun. Take classes, carry every day. Arm yourself and your friends.
That’s about the time the worm ate through his brain and stopped any further thinking.
Wouldn’t your comment equally apply to being a small business owner (let’s say blacksmith) under feudalism? As a good blacksmith, you will earn more clients and prestige, while poor blacksmiths won’t get repeat business. You might be able to expand your forge and hire more people to do the tedious work of making chainmail or whatever.
I don’t know that anyone can ever provide an “objective” source on capitalism. Anyone who writes on the topic has inherent biases. Here are a few: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471
https://www.amazon.com/Slow-Down-Manifesto-KOHEI-SAITO/dp/1662602723
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/doughnut-economics-paperback/
https://www.amazon.com/What-Wrong-Capitalism-Ruchir-Sharma/dp/1668008262
https://www.amazon.com/There-Are-No-Accidents-Disaster_Who/dp/1982129689
https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despair-Future-Capitalism-Anne/dp/0691217076
If Chevron were to start drilling in Brazil without any sort of permits or company representative, you might say that Brazil is within its rights to seize that mining equipment. Would that also be censorship?
My American brain can only understand lbs, but converting it, 5.6kg = more than 12lbs, which is on the high end even for DA guns. I believe both the Sig 226 and CZ 75 are around 9-10lbs in DA. For comparison, Glocks have about a 6lb trigger pull, which would be barely heavier than your P8’s SA trigger weight.
Two points: 1. most guns don’t have safeties, and 2. safeties are pretty easy to toggle
First, many guns don’t have any sort of safety like you see in the movies - “toggle this button to make the gun able to fire.” Most safety features in current guns are to prevent the gun from going of accidentally - i.e. other than someone pulling the trigger. Therefore, the most common safeties are a trigger dongle and a firing pin block, which makes the gun drop-safe. In other words, if you drop the gun, it won’t go off, but if you pull the trigger, it will go bang. A Glock is a prototypical example of a gun with no safeties - most police departments in the US issue Glocks to their officers, and if used correctly (i.e. keeping your finger off the trigger), they are thought to be very safe (as far as guns go).
That said, for guns that do have safeties, safeties are generally very easy to toggle on and off. A 1911 style pistol is fairly common and has several safeties. 1911s have both a grip safety and a safety on the frame. If the gun is on safe, the safety is “up”, and when you grab it, you release the grip safety, and your thumb should sweep down and release the frame safety. Many people “ride” the frame safety, which means they just keep their thumb on the safety since it’s a comfortable ledge. Once you’re done firing, you should sweep your thumb up to put the gun back on safe. Both safeties are intended for the same purpose as Glocks - to prevent the gun from firing when you don’t intend it to (like, into your leg when carried in a holster). They are not intended to make the gun an inert object.
Many new gun owners want a safety because they think it’s an added layer of protection against you doing something dumb. And it is, to an extent, but once you become more familiar with safe gun handling, a safety is basically extraneous - it generally won’t help from anything catastrophic (like what happened in this article), and is a potential point of failure (for example, there are stories about marines with berettas having them go from safe to unsafe because of plane vibrations). Once an owner trains to become proficient with their pistol, having a safety or not is basically a wash - doesn’t matter either way, as long as you’re handling the gun properly.
With all that said, that means any pistol that is not secured by a lock or case is 100% unsafe to be left around children, safety or not. There are plenty of “quick access” safes that people can install in their cars that will allow a pistol to be secured, but also retrieved quickly. Having a totally unsecured firearm is simply negligence.
I’m on a 5800x3d, pretty set right now, but that’s a good point…