RE: https://cyberplace.social/@WiteWulf/115962212168435175
There is something particularly obscene about watching Americans literally fighting and dying in the streets of Minneapolis to protect their immigrant neighbors from a fascist pogrom and choosing to focus on “gun violence” as an abstract issue to solve by disarming those same Americans.
Logically, then, fewer people owning guns should result in fewer deaths.
Is that what you think will happen in the US under Trump? People being gunned down in the streets, people being disappeared into concentration camps—would fewer guns fix that?
@HeavenlyPossum no, not immediately, but if levels of gun ownership had not been allowed to escalate to where they are now, as a consequence of the long held second amendment, there would not be a need for armed law enforcement and mentality of enforcing right through fire power.
If guns are the way, though, why are the 30% of gun owning Americans not rising up against Trump? Why are the people against ICE not gunning them down? Are they just more libs, as you call them?
"if levels of gun ownership had not been allowed to escalate to where they are now, as a consequence of the long held second amendment, there would not be a need for armed law enforcement and mentality of enforcing right through fire power."
If policing were actually implemented as a result of crime, your statement might be true. Unfortunately, that is not how policing came to be in the United States. Police have always had firearms in the US and were formed to catch slaves. Slaves who didn't usually have firearms.
The law enforcement has ALWAYS been armed here, and designed to be deployed against people who aren't assumed to be armed. The whole "he had a gun so I feared for my life" rhetoric is a post hoc to deflect criticism of cops shooting black people with no consequences.
I would really appreciate it if non-americans could understand that we can't copy/paste solutions from smaller countries that don't have the racial history the United States has.
I would love to be able to just remove the history and guns from the United States, but we can't.
@CorvidCrone @HeavenlyPossum oh, thanks, that’s another really interesting and well-explained angle on the problem I wasn’t aware of. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I’m learning a lot of the History They Don’t Teach today 😬
It's also important to remember that the Nazis specifically disarmed Jewish Germans when starting their pogrom. Which is uncomfortably similar to how black folks were unofficially restricted from owning firearms (or guard dogs) in southern states following Reconstruction (era immediately post civil war).
So, when we have federal agents shooting us in the streets because the state politics don't please the president, and you put blame on American gun ownership rather than a literal American version of the gestapo, it feels like you're saying that ICE is justified in shooting us.
I hope that's not what you're saying, but that's how it came off. I choose to believe that's not what you meant to convey.
@CorvidCrone @HeavenlyPossum okay, I take your point, but my argument with Possum earlier was not that gun ownership is to blame. My point was that increased gun ownership would increase the problem, not make it better.
ICE, Border Patrol, the Proud Boys, Trump and all his enablers are the problem right here, right now, today. They're what's killing and oppressing citizens.
At this point, adding or subtracting firearms among the populace will not increase or decrease firearm related violence. That horse already left the barn.
The majority of gun violence is from the state to the populace. I am curious how, without going back in time to change the circumstances, Americans are supposed to fight fascism when the state has such a monopoly on violence. I would like alternatives that do not require anyone to have to make themselves a killer.
@CorvidCrone @HeavenlyPossum honestly? I don’t think there is another way for you now. Civil war is quickly becoming the only way to solve the Trump problem. And I think that’s going to require organisation and leadership of your armed populace, not individual citizens going out and buying guns “for protection”. It’s escalated so far that you’re going to have to fight fire with fire, I think.
That scares the hell out of me, and I’m 4,000 miles away.
Exactly. And [redacted so the feds don't come a knocking yet]
Like, I do actually have a reasoned response that I literally cannot not put here that counters your statement regarding organization.
@WiteWulf @CorvidCrone @HeavenlyPossum
"And I think that’s going to require organisation and leadership of your armed populace, not individual citizens going out and buying guns “for protection”."
It sounds like you're saying organization and leadership of the armed populace is distinct from or negates individual citizens buying guns for protection. I would say that they are interconnected and not at odds (although some already own guns).
@johnbrowntypeface @CorvidCrone @HeavenlyPossum I wouldn’t say they were at odds with each other, but different in intent. An organised armed insurrection/coup to overthrow a government is very different to one person buying a gun because they fear for their personal safety. The individual in question stated no intention to join or organise an armed uprising.
When discussing the organised element the conversation had moved on to a distinctly different context.
@WiteWulf @CorvidCrone @HeavenlyPossum
i don't see the owning of and training with firearms to be only connected to potential civil war/insurrection/etc. historically in the US it is situated there but also in community defense. not to mention that guns have to be owned and understood in the first place to have any secondary use.
HeavenlyPossum
Gary 
Corvid Crone
john.brown_typeface