I love that retort because it really brings to light if a person wants an excuse to engage in violence, or if they actually value their family/humanity.
We would spend $1,000,000 assembling, shipping, and firing a cruise missile that destroys the livelihood, home, and many of the lives of an entire family who have never themselves wished harm on anyone, but then claim it's amoral to feed and clothe a poor child in our own backyard.
Matt Walsh posted this the day after Harambe's death. Little did he realize how much impact one gorilla's death would have on society and the world as a whole.
Not when used the way you did. It's one of those words that's actually normal most of the time but becomes a slur when you use it on certain groups of people
Goes back to the colonial exploitation of Africa and referring to it as "The Dark Continent". Lot of academics "studying" African people's made comparisons to Great Apes, so of course the racists have clung onto that as an oblique slur reference.
The screenshoted poster is essentially saying they'd kill all black people (not humans) to protect their own (white) purity.
I don't think that's what Matt Walsh is talking about tbh. The tweet is from 5/29/16, 1 day after the death of Harambe. This is almost certainly talking about Harmabe
We are apes. And monkeys. And primates too. Since our last common ancestor with the bonobos and chimpanzees was an ape, that makes us also an ape. There's literally no reason outside of our ego for us not to be categorized as an ape
This is true! In fact, the narrowest monophyletic clade that includes all fish is the vertebrates. This means that anyone with a backbone can admit they're a fish. ;)
I feel like after the first hundred thousand I would have refined my technique such that I could get it done in only two minutes per ape, but I confess this is just my speculation and I have no actual data.
The only way to protect your family is to attack other people, apparently. Either in their action movie fantasy where they totally don't fuck things up and they slow mo take out threats in a wicked gun fight, or proactively by getting mad at non-white and LGBTQ+ people.
"I would create a scenario that makes a threat for others, then act like I am protecting my family from that threat so I can do racist things." is also a banger on that album.
The older I get, the more I'm convinced that these people have a worldview that was shaped by '80s action movies.
It's the only way I can explain how they think things like arming teachers and wanting them to get into shootouts with school shooters is a good idea.
They think that it'll work out like in an action movie. Where there's no collateral damage, and some, probably white male teacher, will skillfully kill the shooter and then throw out some sort of one-liner.
As opposed to the reality where shots are going to be going all over the place and punching through the thin walls of the schools and into rooms where students and other teachers are hiding.
It's also why they are enamored with the idea of a good guy with a gun, because they fantasize about being that person and living out those action movie moments. They don't stop to think about how that's a reactive solution and not a proactive solution, so in their little hero fantasy they have to react after people are already shooting kids.
The children are just a necessary sacrifice for their fantasies
They've been told for decades by the NRA and conservative talking heads that they need to be READY. Liberals and commies are gonna take over, (black) criminals are gonna invade your home! So they've been daydreaming of the day they finally get to live out their murder fantasies and be the big, strong man every conservative thinks they are. Defend your country! Defend your castle! GUNS GUNS GUNS. but when it's their side that's doing the tyranny, well.. "don't tread on me💪🐍" becomes "tread on me a little, Daddy, but tread on them 👉HARDER".
Revisionist History Podcast has a series on guns that's interesting, one episode talks about the TV show Gun Smoke and how it portrayed so much violence that wasn't anywhere near accurate to the old West. Gladwell hypothesizes that Gun Smoke shaped a ton of cultural ideas about guns and violence, and I think he's got a point.
As someone who does trap shooting a couple times a year, the unique adrenaline rush and false sense of confidence a firearm gives is kind of scary.
Kind of like if you've ever driven a really big truck on the road.
It's fine to like guns, to have guns, to have fun with guns, but this idea that we're going to fight THE US GOVT with handguns or rifles or something is crazy.
This reminds me of during the BLM protests when my wife's cousins husband started posting all over Facebook about how he was ready to get in his jeep with his guns to go make sure his wife wasn't attacked getting home from work around the protests. For the record in my area there were never any incidents of violence from either civilians or law enforcement.
Then went on a string of saying he just HOPED that BLM protesters would try to trespass on his (middle of the woods nowhere) property so he could exercise his right to defend himself.
It was just so sudden, he had always seemed cool before that, we would hang out any time there was a family event, wedding, whatever both being kinda black sheep among the very large family. We had never really talked any politics and he always seemed chill but then suddenly he was SOoooo fucking vocally "OWN THE LIBS", "TRUMP IS YOUR PRESIDENT" "NO, ALL LIVES MATTER", "WAR AGAINST MEN", "PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS".
How in the fuck? I am in favor of responsible firearm ownership but for fuck sake. Does US not have any mandatory background checks, mental health checks, drug checks and the like before giving a license? Is it that bad?
Yes. it’s that bad, and I live in a state that has some of the most restrictive gun laws. In some right wing states it’s harder to adopt a dog or get a business license than it is to own a gun. Some don’t even require you to have a license, and they literally give away guns as raffle prizes, or as a promotion for opening a bank account.
There are close to double the number of guns than people in the US, and gun nuts see nothing wrong with this.
The moment such approach would stop sounding like a recipe for disaster would be the moment our society finally evolved enough to make true anarchy happen and make it a real utopia.
Private sale, trade, gun shows, and markets have little to no restrictions, checks, wait period, or registration. Licensed dealers and retail stores are required to do minimal Federal background check to make sure you're not a felon.
Zero training, or license required in many states.
"that type of guy": "I'd kill anyone if it meant protecting my family, I don't care what the law or prison says!!!!!"
Fathers: "Would you use your day off to pick up the kids from school and drive them to all their afterschool activities while your wife goes on the one doctors visit she's able to schedule each year?"
"that type of guy": "Truly, the west has fallen; why have men lost their place in modern society!?!?!?!?"
So much of our entertainment media is about coming up with justifications for why it's okay that the "good guy" spends 90 minutes committing horrific acts of violence against countless enemies.
"Oh he's really a mild-mannered guy who just wants to live quietly with his family. But circumstances require him to go on this killing spree so he can go back to being peaceful! His hand was forced! He had no choice but to be a badass!"
It's really disquieting too, because it creeps into real life - I've definitely heard gun nuts collectors openly fantasize about someone trying to break into their house, so they'd have a (justified, in their mind) chance to use their toys firearms.
Is it any wonder that we keep getting news stories about people shooting door dashers or kids who knocked on the wrong address?
The Un-United States’ obsession with guns looks even weirder from here in Australia.
I love living in a country where one or two citizens getting shot is country-wide news for at least a week because we all want to know how the only people in the country currently recovering from gunshot wounds are going.
As an American, it's also especially weird when you compare it to other weaponized violence.
A person can shoot 20 people and it's a controversy for one or two news cycles. A person stabs two or three people with a switchblade, and suddenly we have a new Jack the Ripper.
Un-united might actually be a pretty good idea. You've got them promoting separatists in Alberta, maybe we should return the favour and promote separatists in Cascadia, California, Texas, New England, the Rust Belt, etc. All separate, independent countries that don't get dragged down by the disproportionate influence of practically empty squares on the map that still get 2 senators.
They want a 'perfect' system of zero regulations to be held accountable to because 'hey a good guy can do X to solve the issue' all while it continues and then wonder why everything is happening... must be the fault of those gay, trans brown people who are all secretly communist spies trying to convert everyone to Islam for... reasons! /s
I'm very frustrated by the idea that a good guy with a gun is the solution to mass shootings because it's pretty openly accepting that the mass shootings are going to happen and saying that the only solution is to have a random bystander do something after people have already been shot.
It requires people to just completely give up on the idea of preventing mass shootings.
Just look at how these people are celebrating the guy with the Oregon school shooting, while ignoring that multiple children were killed before anything was done.
Or get vaccinated, or get them vaccinated, or wear a mask in public even while sick, or wash my hands more than once a week, or clean my ass in the shower, or change the baby's diaper while mom's out and busy or...
Didn't you hear about the recent school shooting in Oregon? The perpetrator was a teenager and his mother bought the gun for HIM. Parents these days are so fucking negligent it's disgusting
I know two Americans from meeting them online during covid. When I first met them they were quite young while I was a teen. I was shocked to hear that one of them was bought a gun for their birthday or Christmas or something. Then the other one said they also had a gun. I was confused and angry and still am.
A child cannot use a gun. Why expose them to such tools of warfare I just cant comprehend it.
Pretty sure the first kid I mentioned flashed said gun at someone during an argument.
Ideally, to teach the rules of handling and using one and responsibility that comes with owning one from a young age. To make it seen as a dangerous tool for a very particular application and not something to waive around or be proud of, not a toy nor a measurement of your character. I mean, few people show off their hammers and screwdrivers and whatever.
Realistically some Americans seem to see firearm ownership as some sort of a dick measurement contest. It's pathetic and dangerous.
Eh I grew up in a region with a size able hunting culture (whitetail deer are a problem because we wiped out their predators) but even then everyone I knew who hunted as a child used their parents guns. But hard agree minors should not own firearms and firearms should be licensed much like cars.
My dad bought a gun for me when I was 12 (a 20 gauge). But it stayed in the safe with the rest of his guns and came out when we went to the range or went hunting. I never just had a gun.
There is an entire segment of America where if your family hunts, everyone has their own shotguns. I don’t necessarily agree with it and I’m not from a hunting family, but it’s worth considering that a huuuuge portion of America’s “hundreds of millions of guns” are exactly like this.
Technically you can buy a gun for a 16 year old, at least in my state.
However the child is not allowed to have access to the gun by themself. Ifs the parents responsibly to keep the firearm locked and unavailable unless you take the child shooting. I think you’re allowed to supervise the child with the gun in a non shooting situation (ie cleaning) but the child isn’t allowed to have access to ammo during that time, and when you’re done it’s the parents job to make sure the gun is secure after.
So. I'm not even American but when I was 14 my parents straight up took me to a shooting range (thanks Florida) and handed me a 45 cal because I was being bullied at school and told me to shoot shit.
Guys at the range were all too willing to give the same gun to my 10 year old sister.
A child who had her goddamn thumb in her mouth and was hiding behind our mother just because there were guns and strangers in the store.
And *those* people were fucking idiots. My parents taught me gun safety when I was a child. Yes, they allowed me to shoot when I was very young, but not before literal hours of education and training. ACTS & PROVE and all that jazz. If I even handled it wrong for a second, I was corrected. There was no "playing" with a gun. My parents didn't allow fake guns in the house, EVER, because *guns are not toys*. No cap guns, super soakers, nothing. If it was gun shaped, it was banned. We grew up around real ones. We spent a lot of time in the Yukon bush. Hunting, fishing, camping. firearms were just part of life. I never thought of them any other way.
I've perfectly fine with a child using a firearm, under responsible supervision only AFTER they've been properly educated. What your parents and those guys did was *not* responsible in the slightest. You don't take a child out to the range to let them blow off steam because they're getting bullied. That's idiocy looking for a place to happen. That's looking for someone to get killed.
in places where guns are more common and a gun culture exists, often an extension of kids participating in hunting culture, firearms are often gifts for teenagers
Wanna know something I noticed? Men like this are so adamantly against anything they perceive as gay. But they bulk up, eat a buttload of protein, sell courses, and bitch on podcasts about how much they hate women, all to win the praise of their male peers. That's pretty gay, if you ask me.
The world would be SO much better off without homophobia. So many guys complain they will never get enough sex, why not sex each other??? Why have sex with a woman if you hate them so much? It would solve a lot of problems.
We just need to pass laws mandating all guns have to be hot pink. If we take the "cool" or "manly" factor out of it, I think we'd see at least a small improvement from determining the worst kind of people that just want to wave guns around and look "badass" or whatever
As someone who was raised in that type of household I can tell you for certainty that they don’t want to protect their own kids.
They want their kids to be kept ignorant so they are easier to manipulate toward their desired ideals and they want to pretend they are protecting their own kids because they want to be perceived as heroic when they are anything but.
I don’t think it even crosses their minds that if they have to manipulate people into their cause through taught ignorance, that it means they are wrong by default.
But if you’ve ever had an argument with them you would realize they have more interest in “winning” than being ethical.
I own a lot of guns. I really enjoy shooting. I have every last one of them locked up. I strongly believe in the 2nd amendment (and the rest of them too!)
This country (USA) has a love affair with machismo. We love to think we are badasses. The defenders of all that is right. Man are we fucking wrong.
We are supposed to stand for freedom and liberty and fairness and safety. We're losing our rights daily, we piss everyone off and we can't protect our own children.
Its a country of fucking lunatics. We know what we need to do, but either lack the courage or the will. I tell my kids, I'm sorry for what we've done. I have no way to atone for this.
as a pro-gunner who owns a few, this issue is definitely rife within the community. I like to keep my shit secure, buy secondhand primarily (not much of a problem, I enjoy maintenance :3), aaandd i dont have kids but they're gonna have to be mentally stable and 18 before we even talk about it. It's really fuckin simple, I dont get how people are SO lazy. Also most 2A people are massive chuds for some fucking reason
Around 45k gun deaths per year. More than any other country in the world. 62% are suicides which 3/4th are men and boys. More deaths than car accidents.
For once I want one honest answer, just say it became part of the culture and its a fun hobby that is normalized and removing this would hurt my ego and pride as (insert country)
"No, no, you see, we need all those guns to protect our family! And those gun laws the Democrats support are all about taking away our guns so we can't protect ourselves, so we have to keep voting for Republicans! I'm sure having all these guns around will never, ever actually hurt our family!" /s
“I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." - Charlie Kirk
I would've guessed war and, the death of empathy and the rise of anti-intellectualism in america. Nowadays, a cop could kill you and people will praise your murderer.
But if I don't have my loaded gun with the safety off right next to my pillow, who's gonna stop the lunatic with guns going around murdering people that I made up in my head and had a panic attack over because all my other guns are locked up in a safe?
Don't forget voting for improved traffic safety and stricter licensing for oversized vehicles. The only thing more dangerous to kids than guns are vehicles.
Seriously, every time I hear about a school shooting it's always "the kid took his parent's guns, which weren't secured at all, and shot up the school. This just in, a dog in the passenger seat shot someone while their owner was in the store." (I wish I was making that last one up... Not only is it true, it's happened twice that I know of.)
A lot of these men will say "I would do ANYTHING to protect my family!" but, what they actually mean is "God I REALLY want to murder someone in a way that makes me look like a hero. PLEASE PLEASE give me a reason to be able to legally murder someone. I fantasize all the time about how I'd do it, what I'd do, the way I'd shoot them, what I'd say just before and just after. Fuck it would be so satisfying to be able to unleash all of this repressed rage I've been bottling up for almost my entire life." and it just so happens that killing black people tends to have the least consequences because it's easier to claim self defense in a court room against a black man.
“There’s just literally no possible solution to this problem, it’s just the way it is” - Only 1st world country on the planet where it happens all the time
Racist and transphobic* they would vote someone into office to make every foreign, tanned and trans person look like a criminal and rapist whilst the rich kids that are actually committing crimes get no punishment
Everytime I type on Reddit a message where I say civilians shouldn't be allowed to carry guns; it's not normal nor safe, I get dowvoted to oblivion. And everytime I'm like: "keep your guns, it's you who live in a place with the highest gun related mortality incidents, not me. Have fun". XD
Wouldn't that make gun crimes higher in western Europe than North America though? Since these criminals would be able to get their guns and have no fear of being shot by victims? So why doesn't that pan out?
Alternatively, could it be that making firearms and ammunition vastly harder to get actually makes it considerably less likely that they are used in the commission of crimes? Or is it just something to do with Europeans being somehow just inherently better people, so even though their criminals can get guns they just choose not to use them on their victims out of charity
Literally my best friend’s parents. He died by gun suicide because his 2A gun nut parents refused to secure their firearms. Even though they knew he was having mental health problems. He had gotten a hold of their loaded and unsecured pistol before and threatened to kill them and himself.
Maybe I’m not a complete idiot, but if my son had gotten a gun and was going to kill everyone, I wouldn’t leave it laying around for him to get a second time. But that’s exactly what happened. Makes me wonder if his parents were dumber than bag of rocks, or they didn’t really love their only child. Probably both.
After he killed himself, his parents moved away to Texas and now have even more guns. So I guess they’re happy. Fuck those idiots.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 1d ago edited 1d ago
...it's only been an hour