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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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politics
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i got my gun license. told some of my friends about it and now they are suspicous that i'm secretly right wing.
you can't win with this shit.
Allowing the enemy to be the only group who is armed and trained is not very bright position your friends are taking. A lot of leftist are armed because we know that all these threats that the right keeps making towards us are serious
i never said they were smart people. but where i live it's a super common attitude and I am the weirdo.
To me guns are just tools. I think tool nuts are just as weird as gun nuts.
I know one guy who just collects expensive tools to oogle them and doesn't even use them. He buys like $200 hammers.
Been a liberal gun owner for a decade. Once in a while, I go to a range and these numbnuts want to talk politics thinking I'm "on their side". Like no dude, I'm here to practice to protect myself from people like you!
Something that may help is explaining that gun control policy originated as a means of disarming minorities, specifically black people.
Black Panthers in Oakland, CA would open carry and follow cops around whenever they came into black neighborhoods, in an attempt to curtail the rampant police brutality black people regularly endured. Naturally, a bunch of old white 2A-loving Republicans (including the fucking NRA) didn't like that, and altogether signed off on the Mulford Act, the first major gun control legislation in the country, supported by "2A advocates" (read, in this instance: racists) for the sole purpose of better allowing police to terrorize black citizens.
I was once pretty strongly anti-gun too (less for political reasons and more because I saw a guy get his chest blown out at work when I was in my early 20s), but the knowledge that the true intention underpinning gun control and anti-gun legislation has always been to disarm and weaken marginalized communities changed my mind.
Not sure it will help with your friends, but idk. Worth a try maybe.
they don't care about history, facts, or reality. just crude stereotypes that anyone who has a gun must be a trump supporter and how their anti-gun ignorance makes them morally superior. they have imaginary bullshit lines in their head. like if i bought a truck it would be the same 'betrayal' to them.
They don't sound much like friends tbh. Sorry bud.
That's okay. I live in a state where the main sponsor of banning assault weapons has gone out shooting the very same weapons after they got their nonsense bill passed.
Keep in mind it bans firearms with threaded barrels in other words we have to be deaf to train and use our firearms but she doesn't.
The dirty truth of gun ownership is that the person you're most likely to shoot is yourself. The second most likely person you're going to shoot is someone who lives in the house with you. The odds of you firing a gun in self-defense, much less actually harming anyone, much less harming a federal official intent on arresting you, is vanishingly small.
People with bull horns and rape whistles are doing more to shut down ICE than anyone packing heat. The campaign to blast ICE agents with noise in their hotels has had an enormous impact on where these agents can operate and how enthusiastic they are to position themselves in a given metro area. People simply crowding out ICE in their cars has gone a long way to diminish their presence in Minneapolis, LA, and Portland.
Like, if you're worried about your safety and you want to organize in community self-defense, you can do it. You can join mobilized groups ready to take the fight to ICE in a way that's effective. But just shoving a .22 in your pocket and having fantasies of Rambo: First Blood isn't going to cut it. Indulging in these fantasies does absolutely raise some red flags about your political persuasion.
So is driving a car. Is driving a car stupid and pointless then?
I got a gun because I want a gun. Just like I have a car because I want a car. I barely use my car, but it's sure awesome to have one when I need it and a lot better to have it and not need it than to not have one at all.
I'm not campaigning against ICE. I am not under any delusions of grandeur here that my .22 pistol is going to stop what is going on. It's for target shooting and being halfway decent when i go shoot guns with my family on the holidays.
If you can't tell the difference between driving a car and firing a gun, you should be allowed to own neither.
they are both tools for a job.
you seem to think the only point of owning a gun is to commit violence against other people. you're wrong.
You talk about a gun like you plan to open your beer with it.
what is so mystical and magical about guns to you? that you think they are a special thing?
I can also murder people with kitchen knives, btw. plenty of domestic and non-domestic violence involves knives.
i have a non-chalant attitude towards guns because I'm familiar with them. i also have a dog. some people who don't have dogs freak out around my dog because they are afraid of dogs.
Small tubes full of explosive shrapnel aren't magic. They're just hazardous when improperly owned and operated.
Multi-ton gas powered rolling steel boxes are also hazardous when improperly owned and operated. That's why we have all these standards for licensure, ownership, and use.
Sure. People are fragile. You can crush someone's windpipe with your bare hands.
I don't think your ability to do this manually should encourage anyone to stock up on machines that do it rapidly at long range.
If you suggested everyone should show up at an ICE detention center wearing hockey masks and waving meat clevers, I would tell you this is a bad idea. If you suggested everyone should sleep with a kitchen knife under their pillows, because it would keep them safe from a SWAT raid, I would strongly disagree.
You're pitching individualist solutions to a broad social problem. There is nothing you can purchase retail that will remove ICE from your neighborhood. And there are hazards that come with gun ownership that you seem deeply invested in ignoring.
If your response your sense of insecurity is to go out and buy a Bully XL on impulse, you are making a mistake.
I think this is an argument to have a gun and not have bullets.
I have some friends who have used guns in violent situations, to successfully avoid violence. I have zero friends who have fired a shot in such situations.
Guns can also just... be a hobby.
I have bicycles. I don't ride them as some political statement. I ride them because it's fun.
Yes, and another dirty truth is that most guns are owned by Republican braindead buffoons. I just encountered a thread last night where every person was saying keeping a magazine loaded and a bullet chambered in your home is the obvious best practice. So color me unsurprised most of those braintrusts shoot themselves in the face.