Since Trump’s election, gun groups catering to progressives and people of color report a surge in interest as they look to defend themselves in a country that, to them, feels increasingly unstable.
America’s relationship with guns is darkly fascinating for those of us in other ‘western’ countries. The cliche of the right-wing gun-nut is seemingly way off the mark. You guys have absolutely normalised gun ownership. It’s deeply entrenched in your culture and is married to civil liberty in a way that is alien to most other developed nations.
It seems that the state tempering gun ownership is widely viewed as an intrusive and sinister overreach, whereas for us allowing everyday people to own assault rifles etc would be viewed as a dangerous dereliction of duty by the government.
I totally get the appeal of firearms. We go “clay pigeon shooting” where I lived in the UK. It’s fun. But the idea that the average citizen could legally own a gun is wild to us.
wing everyday people to own assault rifles etc would be viewed as a dangerous dereliction of duty by the government.
The US doesn’t do that either. Very few people own assault rifles, you need a very expensive and difficult to obtain license and have since 1986. You’re falling for gun grabber propaganda.
This isn’t entirely true. Our gun laws are weird as fuck, and half of them seem designed to get around some sort of loophole or another.
To any reasonable person, a 10.5" AR-15 that looks like this:
is an assault rifle. Per US gun laws, it’s a perfectly legal “pistol.”In dozens of states including my own, you can freely purchase and own one without any sort of permit whatsoever, you just buy it.
The ar-15 is not an assault rifle. Regardless of how much cosmetic crap you throw on it, it’s semi auto. Not burst fire or full auto. It’s no more deadly than any number of wood stock semi auto hunting rifles.
The ar-15 is not an assault rifle. Regardless of how much cosmetic crap you throw on it, it’s semi auto. Not burst fire or full auto. It’s no more deadly than any number of wood stock semi auto hunting rifles.
It does most of what an assault rifle does and the part it doesn’t do is rarely used in combat because it burns through ammo too fast. So an ar-15 is for all practical purposes pretty much the same thing that soldiers use in combat and whether or not it can do full-auto is nearly irrelevant. A wood stock semi auto hunting rifle typically won’t be as efficient as an ar-15 in either handling or ammo capacity for a shooter to very easily kill lots of people.
I say this in a neutral manner, not claiming that these weapons should be banned or not, which is a philosophical question. Yes, “assault rifle” is used loosely by anti-gun people to scare but it’s also a term used narrowly by pro-gun people to defend their right to own weapons that are clearly capable of military combat and killing large numbers of people fast.
The ar-15 isn’t a military rifle. The m-16 is. The m-16 supports burst fire and full auto, the ar-15 does not. That’s what makes it an assault rifle. You’re probably confusing “assault rifle” with “assault weapon”, which was defined as a semi auto rifle that looks scary. This was on purpose so the Democrats could say “see? We’re doing something”
The m-16 supports burst fire and full auto, the ar-15 does not.
This is apparently the only significant difference between the two, and at least full auto is rarely used by regular soldiers from what I found from multiple sources. I’m not sure about burst fire, but I imagine that it’s also used in a minority of cases. I looked all of this up except burst fire before making my previous reply. I’m not confusing them, I’m making the specific point that ar-15 are for the most part the same as m-16.
Burst fire/full auto is what makes it an assault rifle. Whether we should ban the ar-15 is a separate conversation. My point is if you have strong opinions about something you should know what you’re talking about about and use proper terminology. You’re wrong when you call the ar-15 an assault rifle. That’s not good for your argument. It makes you easy to ignore.
Gun owner and former military. One can purchase a rifle or pistol, but if you are not constantly training, muscle memory, with live rounds and maintaining your physical and mental fitness, you will fuck it up. The things I could do in my past, I can no longer replicate them with the speed and efficiency I once had.
One does not necessarily need the level of capability you’re referring to. The Jews fighting in the Warsaw ghetto did just fine for several weeks without that capability. The same lesson is also being demonstrated in Ukraine.
Yes, the more training, the better. But get a grip. You’re spreading FUD, bootlicker.
Not at all, because you will be the moron that will forget about the safety selector, end up shooting yourself in the foot or the friendly next to you.
Hilarious, the fantasies you tell yourself just to avoid realizing you’re the problem.
Like MAGA voting for Krasnov, go ahead and FAFO with a gun. I guarantee you will not be laughing.
Liberals, LGBTQ, whoever else was mentioned in this headline should have been training with guns for years at this point. The writing has been on the wall for a while.
I was anti-gun until I was 37. That’s when I realized it doesn’t matter about my political viewpoint regarding guns, the right has been using it as leverage for my entire life.
I’m 42 now. I got my first rifle when I was 38. I got my first shotgun when I was 39. I got my first pistol when I was 40. I go bi-weekly to the range.
The writer of the article should try harder to not confuse “interest” with preparation. This shit is an unwelcome use of my free time, but I’m probably a better shot than 90% of MAGA at this point.
The writing has been on the wall for a while
I saw this coming when the tea party appeared. Moved my wife and daughters out of the US in 2015 for precisely this reason. When I lived there I owned a rifle and a shotgun, not because I thought I’d need to defend myself against criminals or immigrants, but because I thought there was a pretty good chance I’d have to defend myself against right wingers.
Concur, I saw it back then too. I wanted to leave but didn’t have the financial resources to do so at the time. Now that I have the resources, I’m too old for most places. The way I see it now is that I’m pretty much just hanging around so that my parents don’t have to outlive their children. I bought my rifle and shotgun for the same reason you had yours. I’ve been hearing threats from the right AT LEAST since the 1990s. It’s always been threats…
We are lucky. I’m Australian and lived in the US from 2005 to 2015, so it was easy for us to move. I think what really tipped my wife over the edge was going to watch our daughter’s kindergarten class Christmas concert on the day of the Sandy Hook shooting. That was the most surreal experience of my life, just typing it now still chokes me up a bit. It’s fucking sad, because there was a lot that I loved about the states.
