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.
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.
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.
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.
They went from telling everyone they should “just comply” and hero-worshipping the police to beating and crushing cops on Jan 6. I don’t put anything past the hopefully small number of freaks that will actually show up.
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.
I’m medium left and have a handful of firearms. No assault rifle here, but my gas operated shotgun is pretty cool. All my rifles are bolt action.
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.
42% of households have at least 1 gun. Actually looked this up recently.
And that’s nationwide. Texas is slightly less than that.
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.
I mean, some Americans have RPGs and historical cannons and swords and bows instead of guns
Yup, Pew Research says that only 32% of Americans own a gun.
(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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_4473
A Firearms Transaction Record, or ATF Form 4473, is a seven-page form prescribed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) required to be completed when a person proposes to purchase a firearm from a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder, such as a gun dealer.[1]
Form 4473 contains the purchaser’s name, address, date of birth, government-issued photo ID, National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background check transaction number, and a short affidavit stating that the purchaser is eligible to purchase firearms under federal law.
The firearm dealer is required to record some information from the Form 4473 into a “bound-book”, called an "Acquisition and Disposition Log”.[6] The dealer must keep the Form 4473 on file for the lifetime of the FFL, and is required to surrender the log book to the ATF upon retirement from the firearms business.
The ATF is allowed to inspect, as well as request a copy of, the Form 4473 from the dealer during the course of a criminal investigation. In addition, the sale of two or more handguns to a person in a five-day period must be reported to the ATF on Form 3310.4.
ATF form 4473 is de-facto registration of every legally owned gun in the United States of America
While I agree that, that form is supposed to be destroyed after running it. It’s not a registery…even if the ATF is trying to use it like one.
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.
I left guns behind along with my childhood.
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.
Rural means guns to deal with vermin or wildlife.
Urban poor means illegal guns in bulk.
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?
Liberal gun owner here not from Texas . Howdily Doodily ho neighbor
Socialist gun owner checking in. Nice to meet you, stupid sexy Flanders.
Ah yes, because every single gun owner in the United States wants Texas to secede and is willing to die fighting for that cause.
That’s not even true of most of the ones in Texas.
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
If Texas secedes from the Union, the Republicans will never win another presidential election.
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Unfortunately they couldn’t get there in time because their mobility scooters ran out of battery.
They’re in need of some mechanical bootstraps I see.
Hah!
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.
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…
Wait, so you don’t buy whipped cream and take instagram photos with your pistol?
Obviously we do.
We just don’t post it.
That’s for private use.
Nope! The only photos I have of my guns are either records of the serial numbers and attachments for insurance value purposes, or of me and my friends together on range days once in a while.
Not even just a little whipped cream?
Nooe, sorry to disappoint. It’s bad for the mechanisms. Stickyyyy 🤮🤮
Sad uwu
It’s good to look back on those memories fondly, after that unfortunate accident on the boat where every single gun fell overboard. Lost forever. The shame! :(
Lol
“What will your response be to an AGM-114 Hellfire missile?”
“Well I’ll shoot it of course.”
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.
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).
I know someone whose son killed himself with a gun he found in Daddys night stand.
Daddy was a broken man afterwards and had to force himself raising his daughter until she had a job, a fiance and left the house. The next day Daddy shot himself with the same gun as his son.
Such a sad story. Dad wanted to be at the ready for a home invader which never came. Kid was too young to understand and/or a curious small human learning about the world. What’s worse is that stories like this get written off as “anti-gun / anti-2nd amendment propaganda”. The reason the person I was arguing with wanted to live in a world “where a kid can find a gun in the bush” was, as they explained: because any argument or statement that can be construed as for gun control is a threat to our right to bear arms - they would rather live in a world where we have so many guns that they are showing up in bushes where children can find them, than live in the only other option, which is a world in which no guns do not exist in any sense of the word.
It’s wild, really. Protecting yourself makes sense, but a world where guns are accessible to literal children is not a world most folks want to live in. And it’s the world americans live in.
Handle doesn’t check out lol. Your points are very well-reasoned. The saddest part for me is that education goes a LONG way with these things, but the issue is now so heavily politicized it’s hard to make any headway with anyone.
In school districts you’re often up against zero-tolerance hoplophobes and panic parents who are just plain terrified that guns exist (understandably), and would rather just pretend they didn’t instead of educating themselves and their kids. (Irrationally)
Then sometimes you have the ones wanting to teach these classes having some ulterior gun-worship political motive…
But for real:
We teach kids not to play around moving cars or trains or downed power lines, but having “If you find a gun…” safety talks with children doesn’t happen as often as it should, and they’re way smarter than we give them credit for.
I stash mine securely, and if my nephews saw me cleaning one they’d be curious and staring. I’d always kindly tell them like it was:
“This is a dangerous tool. This is a tool to defend from someone attempting to kill you. It can seriously hurt or kill people. This is not to be played with. What do you do if you EVER find something that looks like this?”
“Don’t touch it. Go tell an adult.”
“Good boys.”
They need to know they can trust the grownups in their lives to teach them instead of punish them for curiosity. Then these things stop being taboo and fascinating.
Finally you have owners who, as the tragic story said, just keep it in a nightstand. No lock or anything. Wow. Proper home security and an emergency preparedness plan with your family should buy you more than enough time to safely retrieve a securely stowed weapon to protect yourself from a very determined attacker.
The people who think they’ll just wake up one night and suddenly find themselves having to mag dump into a ninja make me sad.
Lol sorry for the rant.
Kids are way smarter than we give them credit for, absolutely! I’m the kind of guy who would rather not live in a world with guns, or violence for that matter. I’d be willing to ban lots of weapons for this purpose. I’m that guy who gun advocates hate to deal with in that respect. The only reason I’ve carved a small niche for “responsible gun ownership” is because my dad was very open about getting one. He told us he got it, he explained why, he took a firearms class, got a concealed carry permit, would clean maintain it regularly even though I’ve never seen him fire it. He told me stories about how gun owners would be too quick to react when hearing a home intruder and accedently shot a family member who was coming home late. He showed me how to hold the weapon, but that was about it. That small bit went a long way.
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.
And Republicans have been demonstrating for decades now that saturating the government with sympathizers works just fine without an armed rebellion.
As a gun owner, guns are for hunting and defending against these drooling idiot, neo-nazi seditionists who are trying to forment civil war.
Here’s your answer.
All the bombs, missiles, planes, and tanks are how the US got a decisive victory in Vietnam.
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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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.
I’d like to see them attempt the CNN-monkey-bars thing to posture though. Just for laughs.
And Afghanistan.
4 presidents, 20 years, and trillions of dollars, and we successfully replaced the Taliban with…the Taliban.
A perfectly bipartisan effort, too! A true symbol of what we can do if Republicans and Democrats work together
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”.
I reconsidered because I thought someone would misrepresent/ misconstrue my meaning. Congrats.
If the shooting starts, it won’t be the old scooter patrol on the front lines on the Texas border. It will be a guerilla war and the targets won’t be pregnant women. People who lack critical thinking skills or haven’t studied history think bombs and tanks matter in that sort of war. Hurr durr, no one can stand up to the military. Lol
Leaving the union: All social security, Medicare, Medicaid disappear immediately. Who is fighting the U.S. Navy for the oil wells? All imports stopped. All exports stopped. The companies who drill the oil and lobby the politicians are going to choose to sell to the U.S. instead of a single entity that won’t be able to pay. Now there is no fuel for vehicles… workers aren’t at the power plants, electricity failing more often than already overloaded grid they failed to maintain. It’s 100+ degrees in Texas how often?
People dying, starving, traveling back in time… Do they still think they are better than the immigrants coming over to offer work and pay sales taxes?
Maybe brokering a deal to figure out immigration policies where they are processed cheaper, documented and turned into workers paid for by the the entire U.S. won’t sound so bad then… Maybe they will even think assisting other countries so the people don’t leave will be so bad either.
Leaving the union: All social security, Medicare, Medicaid disappear immediately.
To be fair if we’re talking Texas this part is kindof a moot point and might not be felt.
They’re one of like 11 states (don’t quote me haha) that rejected free money for Medicaid expansion, so you need to be making like $1,900 a YEAR to be eligible for any kind of aid…unless you’re an individual and not a family, in which case, they want you to either suddenly get lots of money or die in a ditch.
Edit - there’s a source so I wasn’t being intellectually lazy lol. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/medicaid-expansion-benefits-legislature/
And to add to all the rest of your very good points:
With their power grid, if they actively became hostile we’d just have to wait til the extreme weather crumbles their utilities infrastructure again.
Agreed, it would be a fucking mess, particularly if some of the states that are supporting Texas join in secession. But if there isn’t a border, there isn’t a country. And 2 million a year is beyond sustainable, and with zero vetting is beyond stupid and beyond dangerous. Who is coming in? MS13, Hamas/ ISIS? Trafficked children? Or is every single one just looking for a better life.
We have immigration laws, and the Biden administration isn’t following them. They are in fact, actively ignoring/breaking them.
Why?
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.
Crazy. Almost like it’s just hollow self-aggrandizing so they can pretend they’re a hero.
Every gun owner on the internet seems to be 100% on board with using their guns to install a fascist US government.
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. =\
Look, I wouldn’t mind having a gun personally, I get that they’re fun, but societally speaking, I am very fucking happy basically nobody has them here. Theoretically.
If that works for your locale and you personally, that’s great. No argument. It’s a complicated topic for sure.
From a perspective here, unfortunately here in the U.S, they’re many times necessary for personal protection, especially out in the boonies, because the territory is just so dang BIG you simply can’t rely on a police service to protect you from skullduggery at all times. (And then, yeah, police are a contentious topic too lol…I digress)
My only nudge with your comment was “Every gun owner on the Internet seems…”
The vast majority of us are on the Internet, quiet, responsible, and really hope we’re never forced to sling lead at another human being, and we’re just as embarrassed as you are about the ones you’re talking about.
If anything, those types’ out of control posturing and dangerous toddler antics will end in screwing us all over once they’ve “othered” every single potential ally the responsible folks could have had.
I hope maybe in some way it can help you feel like the world is a little less crazy when people on “the other side of the issue” are all too happy to agree with you on how out of hand it’s all gotten.
I think a huge core of it is that arms companies need to stay in business by putting more product in exponentially more hands every quarter, and they’ll use every astroturfing, lobbying, culture-warping trick in the book to create a never-ending “gun fandom.”
That can’t be good for anybody.
Thanks for putting in the effort for a good reply.
I think the way I see it is this:
https://www.iflscience.com/an-artist-placed-goldfish-in-blenders-and-asked-visitors-to-turn-them-on-they-did-63638Briefly, artist put a live goldfish in a blender as an art exhibition, connects blender to a big red button for any attendee to press. If they want. They did.
The thought being, sooner or later, it doesn’t matter, given time, some bumfuck is going to press it. And they did. Plenty of people did (I think all the goldfish died, there were ten blenders like this, I think the artist even knew that 1 wouldn’t be enough and that 10 might perhaps drive the point home even more).
If you give people the option to select between life and death for someone else, people are going to die, a lot. It doesn’t matter that it was perhaps one in five hundred who pressed the button for whatever reason, the fish still got massacred.
You get what I’m saying?
I’m willing to believe that large enough chunk of gun enthusiastics comes from Texas or Texas-like states.
“Everything’s bigger in texas” including the fear of gubmint
Remember Jade Helm, when the army held a training exercise in Texas and a bunch of yokels thought it was an invasion?
That was a fantastic one yeah. I really can’t imagine what it’s like being one of those people yelling about these crazy things and being wrong every single time
So… Every gun in the US is owned in Texas?
No, every person who owns a gun is part of a hive mind that thinks exactly like the person who created this. Or so they think.
Not only that, every last one is apparently owned by people ready to die for Greg Abbot’s ego
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.
I own a gun.
Fuck Texas. I won’t be supporting them in anything ever.
Yeah, I’m a gun owner and am pretty “on board” with democracy so I’m not gonna help those hypothetical traitors secede.
Sign me up for the pro gun anti sedition group.
“I support the former things” is such a stupid fucking slogan. It’s not catchy and sounds like someone tried to rephrase “The good old times” five times in a row. How about:
“Back in the day today!”
“It has been better, it will be better!”
“We chug barrels of cum!”
“Craving for Russian cock uWu”
I swear, the right has zero creativity.
Conservatives are not going to be happy when they find out liberals have guns too. Or what happened the last time the south tried seceding.
This kind of counteracts the “AR-15s aren’t assault rifles” argument, no?
The right and contradiction are best of friends.
They don’t care about logic, reason of reality. That’s why they can scream about family values and support a degenerate rapist like Trump.
That’s the appeal of conservativism. If you are a member of the in group, you are good, and anyone who isn’t in the group is bad. That’s all the justification a conservative needs to say or do anything that benefits the conservatives in the group.
It’s not a contradiction at all. When it serves them to argue you need thirty 5.56 rounds, a silencer, and a bump stock to hunt quail or whatever, then that’s the argument they make. When it is best to argue that their assault-themed hunting rifles will help them overthrow the government, that’s the argument.
When it helps them to push moral wedge issues to lather up their small minded constituents, they will promote their credentials as the last bastion of moral authority in a world filled with demons. When one of those demons rises to be the leader of their party, they fall in line and claim he’s the fucking messiah.
Those arguments aren’t contradictory or hypocritical, because when they make them, they are benefitting themselves. Previous statements or positions are like farts in the wind. When they criticized government handouts, it was correct because the criticism helped them get elected, and spending less on social programs let them spend more on benefitting themselves. When they accepted government handouts, it was correct because it benefited themselves.
See how easy this is? Rational people are often confused, and assume there must be some Olympic level mental gymnastics going on inside of the mind of a conservative. It’s not that complicated, and there isn’t hardly anything going on. That’s the appeal. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to remember, and you owe nobody an explanation. You are right because of who you are and therefore anything you want to do or say is righteous. Just don’t go against the in-group.
It’s worth pointing out that there’s almost always some sort of intellectual bulldozer on their side who has to assemble a legal or logical explanation to bamboozle normies, and it’s unfair to think of those folks as stupid per se… but they shouldn’t be assumed to be intellectually honest, either. Your average Scalia or Buckley or Alito is very bright, but uses their intelligence to create post-hoc rationalizations in support of positions that are otherwise unsupportable. Underestimate them at your peril, but never give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to integrity.
It is contradictory, they just don’t care about that. They lack the integrity to care about. It’s still contradictory.
I don’t think you understand. Let’s say you prefer red wine over white wine. But you go to dinner, and maybe you feel like having fish and so you decide to have white wine. Have you contradicted yourself? Maybe tomorrow, you are in the mood for steak, and so you pick a full bodied red to go with it. This is also not a contradiction from the previous day’s order.
This is how the conservative mind views political positions. They might have a loose sense of rules, but what is true on Tuesday is irrelevant on Wednesday. That’s not contradiction, because what you wanted before may or may not be what you want later. For a conservative, hypocrisy isn’t even a possibility, because nothing is set in stone.
They say that because “assault rifle” has a definition which the vast majority of citizen owned AR-15s do not meet.
Every time someone uses this term incorrectly, like now, it reinforces their perception that those opposed to gun ownership have no idea what they’re taking about regarding guns.
To avoid this, we should be willing to at least look up the simplest of definitions.
Semi-automatic-only rifles like the Colt AR-15 are not assault rifles; they do not have select-fire capabilities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
Then, usually, the response is “yeah well now we’re just splitting hairs/arguing about terms which doesn’t matter” to which I would respond “this thread started with arguing about terms”.
You’re right, they have the same outer shell with a completely different firing mechanism. The best anyone can legally get (to my knowledge) is a binary trigger. It fires when pulled, fires when released.
That’s fucking terrifying
Binary triggers are a drop in mod, as are rotary triggers that fire as long as you turn the crank. Forced reset triggers are another loophole that’s become popular, they physically reset the trigger so that as long as you pull with the right amount of force, not too much not too little, the gun will continue to cycle. Its also not hard to adapt an ar-15 to have an autosear. They mostly use the same trigger configuration as a full auto assault rifle, just with the auto-sear and selector switch missing. Its as simple as drilling 2 holes and then adding the 2 parts and a spring.
A few years ago, maybe still, you could buy modified parts literally on Ebay to turn an AR-15 into a full auto, for really cheap. I have a family member who’s a conservative gun nut and bought one, so I can personally confirm it is legit that easy. Probably suuuper illegal, but clearly no one was(is?) keeping an eye on that kind of shit to even catch it.
I always took it as the distinction between a moped and a motorcycle. Different even if a lot of the functionality is close.
I tend to agree. I wouldn’t give a fuck if the weapon I’m currently being shot at with is considered an assault rifle or not. It’s still just as capable of killing me.
I’m just frustrated at people unwilling to update their definitions when provided good evidence that theirs is wrong.
Assault rifle refers to the calibre and application of a rifle.
The smaller 5.56 round is an assault rifle round, this is to distinguish it from the previous larger battle rifle rounds.
The AR-15 was designed with select fire. The ones sold to civilians don’t have this capability because it’s illegal.
The only people that define these in such a way as you have a gun nuts. Trying to hide the fact that people are selling and marketing a weapon of war to civilians in a peaceful country.
Assault rifle refers to the calibre and application of a rifle.
I gave the definition that excludes what the vast majority of civilians own and gave a source.
If you’re claiming the round is the only consideration then please source your claim.
The only people that define these in such a way as you have a gun nuts.
Also the US Army, which seems relevant.
Trying to hide the fact that people are selling and marketing a weapon of war to civilians in a peaceful country.
And there it is. I’ll refer you to the last part of my initial comment. I can’t believe I pre-addressed this and it’s still a thing… lol.
Except that’s not usually how this argument comes up. None of the nuts are saying, “but it’s not an assault rifle” when others claim guns kill people. It’s always a direct response to “AR’15’s are assault rifles”. My simple suggestion is to stop being incorrect about a simple term.
Similarly to the way I, a techy IT guy in the industry for ~15 years, don’t want old farts who know fuck all about the internet to be regulating it or the way that women don’t want old men who know fuck all about reproductive health to regulate their bodies - It’s understandable for those who know what they’re talking about to not want ignorant people regulating their shit.
But it’s not hard to just be aware of simple definitions…
I’m always reminded of this loon when I hear well meaning idiots try to argue about assault rifles and magazine capacity:
Rep. Degette said “I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”
It’s literally a semantics argument while ignoring linguistics which allows the people who use words to change them over time.
It’s also why they decry they aren’t racist, just biased. They don’t have stereotypes for no reason…
Yet when you ask them to use correct language like Mr. Ms. Mx. or not call someone by their dead name, they throw a fit. Even if we legally changed the definition right now through law, they still wouldn’t agree it’s an assault rifle because the military made use of them for war, but now it’s not full auto. Just can be with small modifications. Because everyone at war always dumps their mag on full auto whenever they see anyone, right?
Right: It’s a clip not a mag for a Mosin Ganant! See you don’t know what you’re talking about so you can’t say take away the guns people use to go on terrorist murder sprees or threaten democracy with!
Left: … We just want you to not be able to shoot through body armor, people, and others en masse, please? I don’t really care that it’s called an assault weapon.
Right: 2ND AMENDMENT.
Left: We already put restrictions on that and most of the right agrees with stuff like red flag laws and not letting violent criminals have them.
Right: SORRY EVERYONE SHOULD OWN A GUN EVEN IF THEY’RE AN ABUSER. 2ND AMENDMENT. ORIGINALIST. I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MURDER ANYONE WHO STEPS FOOT ON MY PROPERTY.
Left: Doesn’t the bank own your property, lifted truck, and a company own half your farm equipment and big rig?
You dismiss it as just semantics.
Semantics matter, especially in politics.
Sure, if you ignore any sense of context and appeal only to extreme nonsensical arguments made by WORMs (white old rich men) reinterpreting what other WORMs said 300 years ago.
This is a new one. I’ve never seen anyone but the least educated claim that ARs aren’t assault rifles. Automatic, sure, but there’s no definition of assault rifle that doesn’t include an AR.
Assault rifles, by definition, have select fire capabilities. Commercially available civilian AR-15 is semi-auto single fire only. People are often confused by the AR designation, but that stands for Armalite, the original manufacturer of the rifles. They are officially called “assault-style” rifles, although that term isn’t very popular because it seems like a minor quibble. In all other measures (shorter rifle, intermediate cartridge, detachable box magazine, range of 300 meters) the AR-15 meets the criteria to be called an “assault rifle,” except for the select-fire.
It’s worth mentioning that many popular models can be easily modified by a competent gunsmith to add burst and/or full auto firing. It’s illegal, but that doesn’t stop a terrorist who thinks they are going to need their rifle to join the insurrection. At that point it would be an assault rifle.
Internet comments are crazy. AR15s are semi auto. The first 3 definitions I found would not include an AR15.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
https://www.britannica.com/technology/assault-rifle
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assault rifle - this second definition includes semi auto rifles however
The AR-15 defined assault rifles in a way. Outside of experimental weapons. Most countries that use assault rifles are based on the AR-15, the cheaper to licence AR-18 or the Soviet response to the American AR-15/M16.
They’re both assault rifles and weapons of war. So what’s your point? Since the Revolution Americans have owned military-grade, and usually better grade, rifles.
They aren’t the largest army.
They are the largest infantry.
Big difference.
They’re definitely the largest by BMI.
Sick burn, bro.
They are the largest infantry.
I’ve seen infantry. I’ve been infantry. These are NOT infantry.
♫ My bombs go jingle jangle jingle as they fly right merrily along ♫
“EndWokeness”?
Do these people even listen to themselves?
I nearly spit out my coffee when I walked past a bookstore and saw Ted Cruz’s “Unwoke” on display.
This is just as golden as them being against antifa. Y’all ever stop to think that maybe that leaves you standing with the “fa”?
Many gun owners are democrats, so their moronic stance against the U.S. fucking military is not off to a great start planning wise
What makes them think all those gun owners would be on their side?
How little the average redneck understands this joke… I’ll explain it like to a five year old:
72 bazillion guns are USELESS against one single B52 carpet bombing the shit out of you.
Modern Warfare makes a gun fight look like a cave men throwing stones.
Yes, but also you’re ignoring the reality of the resilience of insurgent forces to air power. You cannot win the war only from the air.
The Texas Gravy Seals are going to have to leave their bunkers for burgers and beer eventually…and insulin.
Good thing the most well funded military in the world, greater than the next 9 nations combined, is also at their beck and call. This isn’t the NVA, this is a bunch of 280 pound guys who practice shooting from benches, going against drones, artillery, bombers, tanks, missiles, etc.
One of the fattest countries in the world aren’t hardened fighters after years of various occupations. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. is not comparable to the US and Texas
Bruh I’m a gun owner for sport, don’t lump me in with the stupid crowd. I don’t care if I couldn’t own guns anymore, I’d just find a different hobby. I’m sure as shit not coming to the rescue of Texas
