I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.
I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you live in the US - well, I sure hope you do.
In the US I believe that guns are like pick-up trucks: far more people own them to plug gaps in their personality than the number of people who own them because they need their utility.
My personal view - and a generally held one - is that guns are a tool and to fetishise a tool is… weird; and suggests to me a troubled mind.
God made man. Samuel Colt made him equal.
Any tool used incorrectly is a significant danger.
I already found the ideas and the people who hold those ideas that you’re referencing are a minority who are scared fanatic and unreasonable and those are the type of people that should not have guns or tools of any capacity.
However, someone like you who wants one for protection and the ability to protect those around you regardless of circumstance are why it’s important to protect gun rights in my opinion.
The thing is, using the gun for killing is exactly the correct one. That’s the intended purpose. Then you may threat to use it correctly as a means of protection.
But there are other ways. Gun rights are almost universally revoked throughout Europe, for example, and barely anyone fears for their close ones, because of a working police and professional army, as well as, exactly, less access to guns that could be used to perpetrate violence.
As the result, banning guns normally leads to a decrease in the number of homicides and assaults.
I would have considered this the popular opinion, but it seems I’m the odd one out. The comments here defending it are hard to read.
Like, Farmers and Hunters: You know you are like 8% of the population at most, right? Killing animals should have maybe been mentioned as an alternative use for guns, sure, but come on: most gun nuts, as most people in general, are city folk. They buy a gun to shoot or threaten to shoot people exclusively.
Couple things.
First, firearms are used for sporting and competition of marksmanship by millions of Americans, and Europeans.
IPSC / USPSA are massively popular and all you ever do is put holes in paper or hit steel targets. The gear is purpose designed explicitly for this. So is the ammunition. Even down to the holsters and mag pouches. It’s ALL for the game of the sport.
The civilian marksmanship program is again, millions of Americans across many cities nation wide. A rifle designed to shoot a Palma match, or an F-class match, or benchrest rifles are specific to those disciplines. Nothing about a 37 lb sled riding benchrest rifle is designed to harm a person. It’s a purpose built tool for competition where mostly old people drive them with dials on a sled and put small groups on paper far away. They often don’t even get shouldered.
Sporting clays, variations of this are Olympic sports. There is no possible way to say an over under shotgun has been designed from the ground up for harming people. It’s a tool built around the rules of the sport. 2 shotgun shells. That’s all it can hold and is long as hell with a massive choke on it to control spread of small pellets precisely, pellets that are very bad at killing. Birdshot is almost never lethal past extremely short ranges and they are engaging clays at 40-80 yards.
PRS competitions are bolt action rifles with physical exercise and difficult physical stages under time pressure to shoot steel. Most have transitioned away from high energy calibers, like military chosen caliber that are for imparting energy into a target, and to small bullets you can watch trace in the scope for… you guess it, the specifics of the sport.
.22 long rifle is extremely popular in sports speaking of small cartridges. It’s what we use in Olympic competitions and bi-athalons that ski and shoot bolt action rifles. We use it in small bore pistol and rifle matches the world over. It’s terrible at killing a person, but is great for target use at 10 meters. Which is what the Olympics world over do.
I could go on and on with more examples. Firearms are just not used for killing things. They have in many countries beyond the US, a strong and friendly competition community for sport that only sees paper hole punching. The UK had a thriving and popular rifle community. France, Sweden, Finland, and Italy have thriving sporting gun competition cultures as well.
I live in a city of 2.5 million people in it and he surrounding area. I shoot every weekend for sport, as I have done since I was on a shooting team in high school, run by my high school. I won a junior olympic medal in that team. I love the engineering and competition elements of the sports and would highly encourage you to try one to see if your view might be expanded to see how kind and friendly the sports are to anyone new coming to try them.
That’s not an impopular opinion, that’s the opinion of normal people, firearms are not toys, unless you are in murica of course; then it’s like a Barbie, you buy the Barbie itself and then collect all the accessories
No, only some are and even then it’s not broadly accurate, it’s closer to Anthropomorphism.
Weapons are designed from the ground up to kill animals. From birdshot 10g shotgun to bolt action plastic tip single shot rifle.
Assault rifles are a category designed primarily to kill humans
Most people don’t seem to realize the perfect deer rifle is the perfect human rifle.
Hahaha
Killing animals is pretty shitty as well though
I’m about as left as they come but weirdly enough I’m also a hunter, and I have to disagree, the guns I own are tools designed for specific purposes that aren’t killing humans. Hunting turkey, hunting deer, hunting duck, I even have a muzzleloader for that season, and a gun for back packing and hunting out of a saddle in a tree.
Hunting IMO is way more sustainable and ethical than buying store bought meat and it connects me with nature and let’s me first hand observe, appreciate, value, and want to protect ecology of my area.
How is hunting sustainable? It’s currently sustainable because a small number of people do it. I can’t see how it would be more sustainable than farmed, storebought meat.
Indeed. “Hunting is more sustainable than farming” is an idiotic assertion.
Killing animals isn’t ethical. Inevitably the false dilemma gets painted between killing them or overpopulation, but the overpopulation is also a human-created problem, both through overdevelopment and killing off natural predators - the actual antidote is to scale back our development and reintroduce predators. Plant-based/vegan diet is far more ethical (nonsense about “plants feel pain”, “mice killed by plows”, “I can’t eat vegan because of my blood type” and other vegan bingo card BS aside).
Hunting IMO is way more sustainable
Right whales would like a word.
sustainable and ethical than buying store bought meat
- it doesn’t scale
- it’s inconsistent
- zombie deer
Hunting […] [lets] me […] want to protect ecology of my area
Sorry, which part of killing animals fixes a landscape or its residents? What are you protecting by killing something? Does Fonzie need to give Ritchie another speech about Two Wrongs and a Right?
You pushed the predators out of the area you live by living there. Not just your ancestors are guilty, you participate in disrupting the ecosystem by simply living. Without predators, prey animals overpopulate and destroy the ecosystem themselves.
Either give up your living space for the predators to balance out the ecosystem you live in, or do the balancing yourself. Don’t sit here being a self-righteous prat and bitch about people hunting when you’re fucking up the local habitat yourself.
WTF, whales have NOTHING to do with anything they said.
Derailing with strawman fallacy and red herrings undermines anything you say coming across as broken AI chatbot
I am anti gun in almost every way, but I know where I live, deer populations get out of control. I’ve never hunted, nor do I have any desire to, but the fact is that if we didn’t cull the deer population periodically, they would breed themselves into starvation and cause who knows what kinds of damage to themselves and their ecosystem.
As unfortunate as it is, it’s a thing that has to be done for their own good and for the good of this area. I’m sure it’s like that in lots of places with lots of different species.
Agreed; and want to add it’s probably because people killed off the predators that kept the deer population in check.
Either that or they were brought to places where they didn’t have predators. Either way, it’s definitely our fault. We love fucking up natural habits.
I mean… Technically they were engineered from the ground up to send a small projectile as far as possible using a chemical reaction.
It just so happens that humans are really sensitive to projectiles hitting them at high speed being made out of mostly water and mush.
Also there are many far north towns all around the world where it’s almost mandatory to carry a high powered rifle with you at all times because polar bears will rip your arms off just for the hell of it.
You don’t know the first thing about requirements engineering. Technically, these assault rifles are primarily designed to kill/injure people, it’s 100% part of the stakeholder/requirements analysis in their systems engineering workflow.
An airliner is not designed to fly through the air. It’s designed to transport people and charge from A to B within a given amount of time. Flying is just a means to achieve it.
*Technically* they were engineered from the ground up to send a small projectile as far as possible using a chemical reaction.
I’m referring to this bit: they are not technically engineered to simply shoot a projectile. They are engineered for a specific purpose, which is to kill people. Your comment sounds like you want to downplay the role of requirements in the engineering process, like a lot of people here do.
No I was being purposely pedantic as a joke you nerd.
Another one of those Schrödinger’s jokes.
Not just for the hell of it. It just so happens that people are made of meat, and meat is delicious.
I… Are you trying to imply that cannibalism was a driving force behind the invention of the gun? Lol
no
Guns make it possible for anyone to kill anyone. Without them, the capacity to inflict death is far less egalitarian.
Hate them all you want; I trust you with guns far more than I trust some angry meathead who doesn’t understand the concept of “No.”
Guns create violence.
Crossbows have a similar ideology.
They turned a woman into a killer, a child. The frail the weak. Anyone could unclip a bolt to the face and kill.
But crossbows are obvious. You can’t sneak them into schools.
If you want guns. Why ?
To kill pests ? Then rifles not handguns. Rifles are harder to sneak
But crossbows are obvious.
Correct.
They are so obvious that even the angry meathead who doesn’t understand the concept of “No” is capable of comprehending the danger of using his muscles against the woman wielding a crossbow: he’s going to take a bolt to the face.
And he’s capable of recognizing when another woman is not wielding a crossbow. And he’s capable of recognizing he faces no danger from that second woman. He’s not going to take a bolt to the face.
When that angry meathead learns that a lot of women are “sneaking” handguns, he doesn’t know whether he is going to take a bullet to the face. He is sufficiently motivated to learn the meaning of “No”.
This seems like a very urban viewpoint. There are still places in the world and in the US in particular where a firearm is tool for safety that has nothing to do with other humans.
That seems like a very I have nothing to fear from other people viewpoint. Lots of places in urban areas where a firearm is a tool for safety that has everything to do with other humans.
Not to mention hunting is a thing.
Bows and crossbows exist.
But are comparatively wildly inefficient and cause more pain before the death of the animal.
Not disagreeing with that, but the topic at hand were alternatives to hunting with guns. I think bolt action rifles should be the only allowable gun for hunting.
Just out of curiosity, would you please point out your approximate location on this map of invasive feral swine distribution:
My thumb isn’t big enough to point it all out.
I will do the people reading along the favor of not posting images from an article titled “Penetrating Anorectal Injury Caused by a Wild Boar Attack: A Case Report”.
Suffice it to say, hunters in the marked areas have a distinct need for semi automatic rifles.
Yer not gonna get a tasty bird with a bolt-action rifle or a bow!
You’ve obviously never had a grouse, or are just a bad shot. lol
I hit my bag limit with a 22lr all the time.
Okay but I’m talking about sky birds.
No, it’s just that rural people expect their opinions to count more, as though their lifestyles are more authentic or honorable.
And where exactly is it that a firearm is necessary to protect from wildlife? Kodiak Island?
As far as the safety argument goes, let’s examine Police. The number one cause of “in the line of duty” fatalities is auto accidents, the second is heart disease, with COVID jockeying for position. If guns were a prophylactic, you’d expect them to shoot cheeseburgers and their cruisers. But as Richard Pryor observed: “Cops don’t kill cars…”
A firearm is necessary literally anywhere that has predators, unless you want to have all your livestock killed.
Also necessary if a tweaker decides on a midnight visit, as the police are half an hour or more away.
Counterpoint: cities shouldn’t exist
There should be a commission that caps the local human population at sustainable levels
Cities are a way better way of sustainably housing our population than suburban or rural sprawl. We get to be a lot more space efficient by living in multistory housing, having public transportation, etc.
Counterpoint: we don’t need to be that space efficient, and are better off in smaller communities
With the amount of people existing, yes we do. Otherwise there will be no nature left.
Your both Right there are too many people also look what influencers have done to nature. But bro walkable cities with safe reliable affordable public transportation is something everyone should experience.
It’s a very American viewpoint. Many countries in Europe have high gun ownership and manage to do so without murdering eachother.
That is a very American excuse. The US has 120 guns per 100 people, Europe’s highest, Serbia, which had a literal civil war not 2 decades ago, has 40.
The US has a gun problem.
I actually know a few Serbs personally and the 40 guns per 100 people definitely refers to legally acquired and nationally registered guns. And doesn’t include the Kalashnikovs picked up after the war and kept by people’s grandmother’s.
Honestly I don’t even see guns as a terribly effective method of mass murder. If I were to want to take out a large number of people, I’d use a Timothy McVeigh style truck bomb. Fertiliser and diesel are comparatively cheap in any country. Or you know I could just grab a kitchen knife and probably take out around a fair number of people.
The difference is that Americans have a hard-on for violence. America has a serious mental health problem. You just elected litteral fascists to the Whitehouse to stop trans girls from taking a shit in a public bathroom, so don’t pretend that y’all are mentally healthy.
Many countries in Europe have high gun ownership and manage to do so without murdering [each other].
But can we agree that the not killing is a by-product of not using the gun, instead of using the gun? To re-phrase, the more the gun is used to shoot at something, the higher the chance of something getting hit?
America needs to address the mental health crisis that’s endemic in their country. There’s also a general lack of firearms safety in the country. I was thought to safely use a rifle when I was 8 and never even came close to killing someone. The problem is that your attitude towards firearms is always framed in terms of defense. I was thought to use a gun to procure food or for entertainment in the form of clay pigeon shooting. The idea that I would use it against a human never entered my mind.
If I were to want to get rid of someone, I’d either use something quiet like a kitchen knife or piano wire, or do it remotely with an ied.
Accidents happen, there’s no denying that, but that applies to literally everything that exists. Not setting your house on fire is a byproduct of not using candles, doesn’t mean their purpose is arson.
I personally have zero desire to hurt or kill anyone, human or animal (so much so I deliberately avoided the mandatory military conscription of Finland) but I really like target shooting. Most of the time I do it with air pistols/rifles because I can use them on my back yard, but the bows, crossbows and firearms I own are strictly for that exact same purpose as well.
Agreed. But russians don’t count. If those fuckers come over the border I’m going full John wick.
Gotta resist fascism somehow
You already had a coup and nobody is using guns to stop it.
How’s that working out for ya?
Luigi did more with three bullets than peaceful protest has accomplished in the last 25 years.
I’m curious what you think he’s accomplished. Cause the dead guy was replaced immediately with someone just as evil, and the anesthesia coverage thing you all love to claim was already in the works weeks before Luigi.
Nothing changed. It’s still business as usual for health insurance companies.
You saw damn near the whole country coming out in support of Luigi and gaining more class consciousness seemingly overnight. Imagine that power of mass organization being used to, say, organize a general strike.
Even most Trump supporters voted for him because they were/are going through economic struggle, and Trump (and decades of right wing propaganda) was able to successfully brainwash these people into pointing the finger at immigrants and trans people instead of the obvious culprit (billionaires).
It’s not too difficult to help someone come to the conclusion that billionaores are the problem if they’re struggling financially.
Obviously, you have the Trump supporters who specifically support him (and continue to) because he’s a fascist leader who has Nazi idiology that they agree with, but I think that’s a (very, very vocal) minority of his supporters.
He wiped out 6 months of UHC stock price gains overnight and caused Cigna to commit to expanding their accountability, transparency and customer service departments and tie executive compensation to customer satisfaction metrics.
What did peaceful protest get you in the last two decades? Romneycare is all I can think of and the insurance mandate was a huge step backwards that wipes out any benefit that might be seen from the mandatory coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Just a few nits: he did cause the price to drop, but it’s not as significant as you make it sound. Their price had just spiked up to all time highs, and it dropped down to where it was before the spike.
The drop wasn’t even out of proportion with the fluctuations the price normally has seen over recent history.
Finally, stock price falling doesn’t actually get us anything. If anything, it’ll make them more aggressive about costs to bolster the earnings sheet to get the price back up.
I’d focus on the “spotlight on the dark situation” side of things, and how making the insurance companies aware that we’re mad enough to kill them and laugh at their death means we might actually be getting close to mad enough to institute a program that saves us money and pays for more treatment of higher quality for more people.
Cigna was already doing all of that.
Source: used to work there, have friends that still do, including execs
Hopefully, he encouraged other people to carry on his work.
Oh, by all means, give that a try, see how it goes. I’d say “and then report back”, but… you know, that wouldn’t be much use.
I have a feeling that the “punch the nazies” people who are the loudest online are the ones nowhere to be found when the shit actually hits the fan. The ones who actually would aren’t talking about it on social media and especially not on Lemmy.
“Bum bum pif paf” is a childish, almost cartoonish way of resistance. If you’re a serious person, you understand that while certain actions may sometimes be necessary, celebrating or eagerly anticipating them is disturbing. Additionally, such actions are rarely the real solution to a problem.
People who fantasize about violence write things like this not because they want to solve anything, but because they’re looking for an excuse to act out and release their anger.
Wow you really project a lot onto one short sentence. Ignoring any reference to historical resistance in order to feel superior about your views.
Gun defenders are always like this. Historical this, historical that but in truth they just want a license to kill.
I know that on Lemmy there are many bloodthirsty motherfuckers who just go to sleep imagining saving the world with a smoking 92fs. Not because it would help anyone but because they are kinky like that
Well that’s an awfully specific gun reference for someone who hates them so much.
word salad
FWIW I don’t believe you are wrong. Most people advocating for/ fantasizing about violence have never experienced prolonged conflict. Sure, you’re hot shit the first day or two but even if the fighting stays a few hundred miles away, it becomes exhausting and sickening. Especially if you have a family to worry about.
All of this said, it is not the only reason to own a gun. Many own weapons for the purpose of self defense — whether that be from other people or wildlife. We own guns because we are afraid — justifiably or not.
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That’s not an unpopular opinion IMO.
it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
This isn’t true. I live in a country with sensible gun control laws and live on a rural property with 10 acres of forest. We have a small rifle to protect the wildlife against rabies or to put down an injured animal.
The US conversation around guns is toxic.
If I can get excited for a cordless Bosch track saw, I can get excited for a nice gun. Guns have served two purposes in my life - target shooting with friends and the meat I get from hunting. I don’t need to take on someone elses trauma and stop enjoying something to respect what they are.
I live in Australia and I theoretically love guns. I love them from an engineering and design point of view. Going shooting inanimate objects and making a skill based sport out of it looks like enormous fun. But my country has very strict gun control laws so owning one isnt worth the headaches.
But then I’m at the 24hr supermarket near the sketchy neighbourhood and the junkie is screaming at the cashier about something and I am so fucking happy that the likelihood of that guy having a gun is next to zero that I think “Yep, I’ll take that trade”
I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion, although I’d detach the violence from people.
Guns are weapons specifically designed as tools of violence. Some are for designed with animal hunting in mind, some for hurting people, and some for target sports, which are ultimately derived from the other two.
Like any tool, how people intend to use it matters, as well as how they expect to use it and how they prepare to use it.
I will easily judge people based on those factors.
Separating the tool from the use also lets us be a little more objective in our discussions about how we want to regulate the tool. “This type of weapon poses an undue risk to surrounding people in this context, so you can’t have it in this context”.I think just about every gun owner I’ve met agrees with the sentiment if you get rid of the “against people” part.
Some are for designed with animal hunting in mind, some for hurting people, and some for target sports
The same was once said about dogs; but then we learned.
I can honestly say that I have no idea what you mean by this. Are you pro gun, or anti dog? Do you think that guns aren’t designed with a purpose, or that there’s some other purpose beyond shooting at people, shooting at animals, or shooting for fun? Companion firearms?
I’m trying to guess but I honestly don’t know.
