Horseshoe theory goes brrr

If nobody has guns nobody needs guns, pretty simple

If gun rights were actually about that then the black panthers wouldn't have been surpressed and banned

Yeah but why don't you just call the police? They're always so nice and helpful, they should have all the AR15s not the normies. Yes I'm on my way to town hall to explain exactly why we can't put affordable housing in our neighborhood in order to save the town's character, why do you ask?

the appearance of the weapons or the owners?

#not all progressives

I like to think I am a progressive, but I am sure someone left of me thinks I am downright hitlerally literal

This is like survivorship bias, but in reverse. Obviously almost everyone who killed themselves with a gun had access to a gun, but this doesn't mean that they wouldn't have committed suicide by some other means if they didn't have access to a gun.

This is something that is impossible to determine scientifically. If everyone in this study group killed themselves with a gun, how many of them would have not killed themselves if they didn't have a gun? They can't un-kill themselves and let us take away their guns so we can determine the effect.

What this study shows is that a gun is likely the first choice of gun owners who are trying to kill themselves. It cannot determine how much less likely they would have been to kill themselves had they not owned a gun, if at all. Intuitively I do believe that it would be less, because other means are likely more difficult, slower, or less effective. Whether this would result in slightly fewer suicides or much fewer I do not know, but this study doesn't prove either.

Having guns makes us less safe, and ideally we would have similar restrictions to other nations. Unfortunately, it'd take decades to actually get rid of all our guns, even if the second amendment was repealed tomorrow. As a result, us queers need to adapt to the dangerous reality and arm ourselves openly as a threat to the right wingers that worship the 2nd amendment.

So fascists, you want no restrictions? You want more guns then people? Then you have to face transmasc antifa super soldiers with higher T than you and transfem snipers with better aims than you. Don't like it? Sorry, your conservative Supreme Court made it near impossible to place restrictions on guns, and there's so many in circulation that even strict restrictions can't hold anyone back. Oops 🤷‍♀️

The power of armed queers is intimidation; to make the phobes think twice about fucking with us. As the Dutch resistance hero Willem Arondeus defiantly said before his execution, "Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards."

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? I mean, yes, it makes sense that would be the most common form of suicide, quick and painless, but that like saying all gun owners are suicidal. Me owning a gun doesn't increase my likelihood to die, it's just that using a gun is easier than other options when someone does commit suicide, and it makes sense the number of people doing this is so high when you consider anywhere from 10-30% of America's are diagnosed with depression, and close to half of Americans own a gun.

Maybe she has colored contacts in to confuse facial regognition.

They kill over 50,000 dogs a year. Among The 1000+ (up to 5000) people they kill, half of them are unarmed and not resisting.

A long time ago, another country had a similar problem, the Weimar Republic which was patrolled by Freikorps militias who took and killed what they wanted, and it was better to comply than see a massacre in your village. It'd be from these that the Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel would be recruited in the early days of NSDAP.

The second amendment in the US has never been extended to marginalized groups, and when the (successfully ~~anarcho-capitalist~~ anarcho-communist!) Black Panthers rose in the 1960s to protect black neighborhoods and engage in mutual aid, FBI engaged in an assassination campaign to hunt down and murder its leaders and theorists.

Edit: BPP were anarcho-communist, not an-cap. I'm a derp and was typing on mobile. Sorry all.

ETA: Huh. Raccoon doesn't show strikeout text.

While I don’t want there to be a Mexican standoff future, the ability for a minority to protect themselves is insanely valuable. If you look back in American history, being armed was sometimes the reason why minorities were able to continue living.

This is because political power does come from the intent and capabilities of violence. While it’s disgusting to see paramilitary groups like the Klan trying to enforce white supremacy, people are often blind to the state’s use of violence for its own political power. And if the state is enforcing a hierarchical structure that places a minority on the bottom (much less the inherent hierarchy of the state), it’s probably a good idea to arm yourself if you are a minority.

That doesn’t mean we need we need to derive political power from the intent and capability to carry out violence, but as long as there are hierarchies, there will be violence to maintain them. And as long as that violence is aimed at you, being armed is not a bad idea.

my vision for a peaceful future isn’t a perpetual Mexican standoff. Nor do I like the idea of political power and representation being directly proportional to one’s intent and capability to do violence.

The unfortunate reality is that all political power is derived from one's capability to do violence, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. I pay my taxes because if I don't the federal government will forcefully take the money from me, or my other possessions. Yeah, arresting someone is "nonviolent" until that person just says "I'd prefer not to." Forcing someone to pay a fine is nonviolent until they say "I'd prefer not to."

It's the only motivator the government or any body of real power has at the end of the day. It's a bunch of social norms and agreements all backed by the understanding that you will be made to comply by force otherwise.

I am poor and my neighbors are scary AF 😭