fuck guns

[papercup]

It makes me really fucking angsty that family & friends seem to prefer pretending these things aren't happening

[warmjets]

All part of the NRA's plan

[big zorb]

You sound like a paranoid gun owner

Dude I literally work at a place getting death threats from the types of people who go ahead and do these shootings sorry if I am not able to be chill about this

[easy]

fuck guns

[mcwop23]

[mcwop23]

“don’t make it political”

except

[Bob511]

I'm not trying to tell you to be chill. That a place of inclusion and education that gets repeated violent threats is infuriating, terrifying, and a failure in which all of us with any social/political/economic capital are complicit to some extent or another, and one which obviously gets born disproportionately.

But adding more guns, especially on a random personal level, to that situation isn't going to do anything but make that more volatile and dangerous, and doing it to assuage a completely understandable dread is a choice that's only going to put other people in the same situation at greater risk. It's just not an "actual option" of any justifiable effect.

[draw]

also 2/3's of gun deaths are suicide

[big zorb]

As I said to easy, i agree with you in theory bob, and my bad about the post at the top. But i do empathize with people who have concluded otherwise and honestly i wonder if there are actually other options or if we don't want to face the reality of no coming gun legislation and an increasingly mobilized white supremacist violent reality.

[draw]

There are a lot options for solving the social problem of gun violence because the underlying causes are heterogeneous, some combination of drug legalization & increased funding/attention to mental health. The way to personally deal with gun violence is to not buy a gun and otherwise act normal, because in all but a niche set of circumstances the odds of you (anyone reading this) personally actually being a victim of gun violence, let alone white nationalist gun violence, is vanishingly small and warrants no change in your behavior.

[endless dave]

I mean, frustrating or not, the “other option” is to not buy the thing that will, if ever used, much more likely kill someone they know or themselves than any sort of person threatening them

The idea that a gun will ever be of use in protecting yourself against a violent threat is a major part of the reason we’re here in the first place

[big zorb]

i don't think being a victim of white nationalist gun violence is vanishingly small unless you mean like in comparison to 1858 or something. what is the way to personally deal with gun violence?

[big zorb]

I mean, frustrating or not, the “other option” is to not buy the thing that will, if ever used, much more likely kill someone they know or themselves than any sort of person threatening them

The idea that a gun will ever be of use in protecting yourself against a violent threat is a major part of the reason we’re here in the first place

i guess the same question to you as to draw: what is the personal response, then, to white supremacist-motivated mass murder?

[naturemorte]

mass shootings are state-sanctioned violence at this point

Yup
These killings are really more like extreme manifestations of the same logic that drives law enforcement in this country. The actions of this killer are explicitly conceived as a form of deterrence, just as good separation and mass detention are. Trump's refusal to name these killings terrorism, or his administration's refusal to investigate them as such, is not just about playing to his base--it's a tacit acknowledgment that these actions are effectively extrajudicial actions on the part of the state, a la the mass murder taking place in the Philippines under Duterte.
To call it terrorism would be tantamount to calling ICE terrorists--which they 100% are

[draw]

i don't think being a victim of white nationalist gun violence is vanishingly small unless you mean like in comparison to 1858 or something. what is the way to personally deal with gun violence?

There are under 100 extremist-related killings every year. Note I am not at all trying to diminish these tragedies and think we ought to take political measures to reduce their likelihood, but in a country with 320 million people, it's not something almost anyone should worry about personally happening to them. Similar risk assessment is what leads right wingers in the US to get whipped up into a frenzy about being blown up by ISIS or MS13 whatever.

[big zorb]

i don't think being a victim of white nationalist gun violence is vanishingly small unless you mean like in comparison to 1858 or something. what is the way to personally deal with gun violence?

There are under 100 extremist-related killings every year. Note I am not at all trying to diminish these tragedies and think we ought to take political measures to reduce their likelihood, but in a country with 320 million people, it's not something almost anyone should worry about personally happening to them. Similar risk assessment is what leads right wingers in the US to get whipped up into a frenzy about being blown up by ISIS or MS13 whatever.

no it's not the same because isis hasn't really blown up anyone here and ms13 doesn't regularly gun down 10-20 people because of supremacist views

i think you're kind of failing to engage with reality here which is that white supremacists feel increasingly emboldened and this country is doing nothing to stop them

also fuck off, i do have a reason to be personally worried and i also have a reason to be worried about my coworkers

[palmer eldritch]

you are much more likely to be killed by a car. or your own gun.

[big zorb]

also that's a stupid comparison because the right wing response to a perceived isis threat is to establish things like a no-fly list, i am saying i can understand why people feel that their government has failed to protect them from a white supremacist threat. they're literally diametrically opposite responses.

[big zorb]

you are much more likely to be killed by a car. or your own gun.

i don't own either so the threat to kill each one of our staff one by one remains top of the list for me, personally

[endless dave]

I mean, frustrating or not, the “other option” is to not buy the thing that will, if ever used, much more likely kill someone they know or themselves than any sort of person threatening them

The idea that a gun will ever be of use in protecting yourself against a violent threat is a major part of the reason we’re here in the first place

i guess the same question to you as to draw: what is the personal response, then, to white supremacist-motivated mass murder?

Position your time, energy, and money you’d spend on a gun towards an organization or protest or activists that are working towards other root causes of the problem

Or literally anything else other than benefiting the people and companies profiting from the whole thing

[Durham]

Viewed as terrorism and state sanctioned violence on a relatively small scale with the goal of deterrence, the solution presents itself as resistance to change in your behavior while simultaneously addressing the root causes, which is why making it harder to get guns is so important because it further deters what is still statistically minuscule (albeit globally aberrant) chances of white supremacist terror. Arming oneself in retaliation functions much like invading Afghanistan in 2001. It just leads to more violence

[Macgregor]

what is the personal response, then, to white supremacist-motivated mass murder?

[big zorb]

Viewed as terrorism and state sanctioned violence on a relatively small scale with the goal of deterrence, the solution presents itself as resistance to change in your behavior while simultaneously addressing the root causes, which is why making it harder to get guns is so important because it further deters what is still statistically minuscule (albeit globally aberrant) chances of white supremacist terror. Arming oneself in retaliation functions much like invading Afghanistan in 2001. It just leads to more violence

what i am suggesting is that this nation is doomed beyond the point of being able to make it functionally harder to get guns

[draw]

I'll give you that, zorb

[dubs]

There are a lot options for solving the social problem of gun violence because the underlying causes are heterogeneous, some combination of drug legalization & increased funding/attention to mental health.

Genuinely curious to folks opinions on this -

wrt funding/attention to mental health as a valid response, do you think the increase in these types of blatant hate crime inspired mass shootings are a bit different than something like sandy hook or aurora?

[endless dave]

Maybe “mental health” is maybe a bit too reductive of a way to call it but there is absolutely something to be said to explore and treat the issue of these Internet poisoned white 20 year olds finding solace in places like 8chan

As a parallel, you can absolutely see places like incel forums where users are basically spiraling into depression and the people encourage forms of mental and physical self harm and catastrophic thinking

[Durham]

Yeah, there’s an explicit and coherent motivation behind these and it’s part and parcel of the ruling party in this country. Naturemorte is as usual right on the money comparing this to Duterte which I don’t think I’d read anywhere but makes so much sense

[dubs]

Maybe “mental health” is maybe a bit too reductive if a way to call it but there is absolutely something to be said to explore and treat the issue of these Internet poisoned white 20 year olds finding solace in places like 8chan

Yeah that I can agree with. I think we’re clearly dealing with two different beasts between mental health and being poisoned by internet shit holes and the latter seems way more difficult to find a solution to.

[big zorb]

you can't legislate the latter and it's going to get worse

[big zorb]

you could pass some legislation to deal with the very real national mental health crises in our country and theoretically you could pass gun legislation except that will never happen but how exactly are you going to stop the radicalization and increased violence of white supremacists within a government that fails to even fucking half-heartedly condemn it