We’ve turned into a nation of cowards. Just completely craven people who shoot first and ask questions later because the news has made them terrified that they’ll be murdered in their beds, despite violent crime being historically low, comparatively speaking.
Having mingled with the gun community for some time, there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners but there are also a worrying amount of terminally fearful people with violent ideation. Many are likely one bad life event, one half-cocked response to an uncertain situation from being a mugshot on a news story like this prick.
Having mingled with the gun community for some time, there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners
This is why US has so much gun violence. Like rabid dog owners assuring you theyre safe. You just havent seen them when theyre not level headed, we’re all emotional apes.
Yep. Even the “responsible” gun owners I know radiate the “I want you to know I’m dangerous” energy when they tell you how prepared they are, “just in case something happens that requires a gun”
There are other quieter owners you never really hear about though. My brother never really talks about it, doesn’t chime in to water cooler “what are you shooting” kinds of talks, and basically just keeps them in the gun safe except for his ~2x a year gun range trips to make sure he stays competent.
He treats them like his garage full of dangerous power tools. Not a toy, but good to have in your back pocket should there be a need for that particular tool some day.
He treats them like his garage full of dangerous power tools. Not a toy, but good to have in your back pocket should there be a need for that particular tool some day.
A significantly unfortunate number of gun owners treat them like fashion accessories. To be displayed, accessorized, collected, and carelessly treated.
Yeah. I have friends that won’t even let their kids walk a quarter mile to school, in one of the safest communities in the entire state. It’s insane. The media has put the fear of “but what if…” into so many people.
You’ve got better odds winning the lottery than what these people are afraid of. Be smart, be savvy, be aware of your surroundings and watch out for the oblivions as you go about your business. But there’s no need to be afraid of everything around you.
In that situation I’m concerned about other drivers, and also the child not paying attention while staring at their phone. I have seen sooo many teens just step off the curb and walk across the street without even looking up from their phone.
Stranger Danger would have nothing to do with it.
There needs to be a better balance between the latch key kid independence/responsibility and the absolute lack of trust in your kids and your community to just not be child kidnapping murderers???
Fixing transport infrastructure would have the most impact. Narrower roads with fewer lanes and more complexity, 20mph/30kmph speed limits, better designed pedestrian crossings, and separated bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And requiring the vehicles themselves to be designed such that they are not just safe for the occupants, but safe for other vehicles and people too (which means lower hood heights and lower weight).
And in general, providing viable alternatives to driving so there are less vehicles on the road, making it safer to walk and bike.
but safe for other vehicles and people too (which means lower hood heights and lower weight).
Small note on this, but better crash compatibility and an upper weight limit might also increase the relative safety of bicycles, motorcycles, and even potentially some larger local wildlife, on top of just increasing safety for pedestrians and people driving relatively smaller cars, like sedans.
The whole way our society is built is not around pedestrian safety or teaching it to children.
My daughter is growing up in a subdivision with low traffic and no sidewalks and I have to regularly remind her to look both ways when crossing the streets when we’re elsewhere because it’s just not something she has to do all the time.
There’s room for sidewalks, they just didn’t build them. If there were sidewalks, it would be far easier for her to remember to do it every time.
You’ve got better odds winning the lottery than what these people are afraid of. Be smart, be savvy, be aware of your surroundings and watch out for the oblivions as you go about your business. But there’s no need to be afraid of everything around you.
Awareness prevents the vast majority of dangerous situations. Carrying is actually more likely to escalate situations into being dangerous than not. even a basic situational awareness will keep you far safer than a fire arm ever will.
I agree that people shouldn’t be afraid of this stuff, but I think you underestimate the odds of winning the lottery and your chances of being murdered.
Around 32,000 homicides/year in the US. 333,000,000 people, so about 1 in 100,000.
the distribution is different though, if you buy a powerball ticket you have the same odds as everyone else who bought one assuming the numbers are equally distributed and truly random
the difference between living in Biden’s suburban neighborhood in Delaware vs west Philly or Baltimore is huge
Sure, but nowhere is the chance of winning the lottery greater than the chance of getting murdered. Even Singapore, which has the lowest homicide rate, is around 1 in 1,000,000.
I suppose if you classified getting a playback prize on a scratch off as a lottery win, but I doubt most people count that.
Everything is a threat. Thank you Faux News and the rest.
Different color skin - threat
Gay - threat
Trans - threat
Environmental rules - threat
Immigration - thread
Vegetarian - threat
Equality - threat
Atheism - threat
Non-western religion - threat
Woke - threat
Electric cars - threat
The list is endless. Everything is a threat to them. Their pocketbooks, their marriage, their jobs, their theism, their TV, their guns…
An endless barrage of threats that they are constantly reminded of.
What can they do against all these threats? Elect a Strong Man that will crack skulls, He Has All The Answers. But those pesky libs keep getting in the way, so you gotta take matters into your own hands. Thank god and the good ol’ USA you can have a personal arsenal at arm’s reach to instantly panic-fire at that dark-skinned person pulling into your driveway who wants to steal your TV.
The “I feared for my life” rhetoric is just an excuse to shoot people, borrowed from police when they wanted to shoot people. You don’t have to politely believe them just because they said it.
I’ve talked about in in several other posts regarding gun control.
The rampant media sowing fear is poison. It’s the culture that’s being fostered that’s more dangerous than the guns. “Fuck around and find out” and “come try and take them” keeps reinforcing that guns are a totally normal thing to use to solve problems.
The NRA fear paranoia narrative has permeated our society. Add to that those who feel inferior so they carry a gun to feel powerful. Now add the hate farming by Russian trolls and right wing media, (the two are the same, with different names)
How often I witness roadrage/aggressive drivers makes the mass gunownership in this country kind of terrifying. I’ve seen a truck try to push another car off the road for getting off a left hand exit. I can only assume the truck driver was mad at the car for “being in the way.”
The power tripping and entitlement to being aggressive towards others combined with your list of problematic cultural phenomenon and guns is horrifying.
You’re right that the vast majority are cowards, but you also have psychos who jerk off to a fantasy of shooting someone. There are all kinds of crazies out there just looking for a reason, and they’re getting crazier in their psycho echo chambers.
We’ve turned into a nation of cowards. Just completely craven people who shoot first and ask questions later because the news has made them terrified that they’ll be murdered in their beds, despite violent crime being historically low, comparatively speaking.
Having mingled with the gun community for some time, there are a lot of level-headed people among gun owners but there are also a worrying amount of terminally fearful people with violent ideation. Many are likely one bad life event, one half-cocked response to an uncertain situation from being a mugshot on a news story like this prick.
The problem is that it’s easier to buy a gun than it is to go to a doctor.
And if you don’t have insurance, likely cheaper too.
Are you kidding? Even with insurance a gun is cheaper.
Cheaper too.
And significantly easier to not accidentally kill someone as a gun owner. I get your gist but that’s a terrible comparison.
This is why US has so much gun violence. Like rabid dog owners assuring you theyre safe. You just havent seen them when theyre not level headed, we’re all emotional apes.
Yep. Even the “responsible” gun owners I know radiate the “I want you to know I’m dangerous” energy when they tell you how prepared they are, “just in case something happens that requires a gun”
There are other quieter owners you never really hear about though. My brother never really talks about it, doesn’t chime in to water cooler “what are you shooting” kinds of talks, and basically just keeps them in the gun safe except for his ~2x a year gun range trips to make sure he stays competent.
He treats them like his garage full of dangerous power tools. Not a toy, but good to have in your back pocket should there be a need for that particular tool some day.
I know most gun owners go their entire lives never shooting someone.
But i dont trust anyones judgment on who will or wont. Its not just the loud and proud gun enthusiasts that end up on the homicide news.
Even the cops who aren’t bastards could make the wrong assessment here, too.
It’s safer to go unarmed so when the pros show up you don’t become a concern for them for an instant.
Cops who… aren’t bastards?
I don’t follow.
A significantly unfortunate number of gun owners treat them like fashion accessories. To be displayed, accessorized, collected, and carelessly treated.
Every gun owner is a responsible gun owner until they aren’t.
For the same reason, it makes spur of the moment suicide attempts more likely, and more deadly.
The problem is that both groups have the same ease of access to weapons.
Until there are a lot more reliable ways to tell the 2 groups apart, weapons need to be a lot more difficult to get your hands on.
Yeah. I have friends that won’t even let their kids walk a quarter mile to school, in one of the safest communities in the entire state. It’s insane. The media has put the fear of “but what if…” into so many people.
You’ve got better odds winning the lottery than what these people are afraid of. Be smart, be savvy, be aware of your surroundings and watch out for the oblivions as you go about your business. But there’s no need to be afraid of everything around you.
In that situation I’m concerned about other drivers, and also the child not paying attention while staring at their phone. I have seen sooo many teens just step off the curb and walk across the street without even looking up from their phone. Stranger Danger would have nothing to do with it.
There needs to be a better balance between the latch key kid independence/responsibility and the absolute lack of trust in your kids and your community to just not be child kidnapping murderers???
Fixing transport infrastructure would have the most impact. Narrower roads with fewer lanes and more complexity, 20mph/30kmph speed limits, better designed pedestrian crossings, and separated bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And requiring the vehicles themselves to be designed such that they are not just safe for the occupants, but safe for other vehicles and people too (which means lower hood heights and lower weight).
And in general, providing viable alternatives to driving so there are less vehicles on the road, making it safer to walk and bike.
Small note on this, but better crash compatibility and an upper weight limit might also increase the relative safety of bicycles, motorcycles, and even potentially some larger local wildlife, on top of just increasing safety for pedestrians and people driving relatively smaller cars, like sedans.
The whole way our society is built is not around pedestrian safety or teaching it to children.
My daughter is growing up in a subdivision with low traffic and no sidewalks and I have to regularly remind her to look both ways when crossing the streets when we’re elsewhere because it’s just not something she has to do all the time.
There’s room for sidewalks, they just didn’t build them. If there were sidewalks, it would be far easier for her to remember to do it every time.
Awareness prevents the vast majority of dangerous situations. Carrying is actually more likely to escalate situations into being dangerous than not. even a basic situational awareness will keep you far safer than a fire arm ever will.
I agree that people shouldn’t be afraid of this stuff, but I think you underestimate the odds of winning the lottery and your chances of being murdered.
Around 32,000 homicides/year in the US. 333,000,000 people, so about 1 in 100,000.
Powerball odds are 1 in 292,000,000.
the distribution is different though, if you buy a powerball ticket you have the same odds as everyone else who bought one assuming the numbers are equally distributed and truly random
the difference between living in Biden’s suburban neighborhood in Delaware vs west Philly or Baltimore is huge
Sure, but nowhere is the chance of winning the lottery greater than the chance of getting murdered. Even Singapore, which has the lowest homicide rate, is around 1 in 1,000,000.
I suppose if you classified getting a playback prize on a scratch off as a lottery win, but I doubt most people count that.
Everything is a threat. Thank you Faux News and the rest.
Different color skin - threat
Gay - threat
Trans - threat
Environmental rules - threat
Immigration - thread
Vegetarian - threat
Equality - threat
Atheism - threat
Non-western religion - threat
Woke - threat
Electric cars - threat
The list is endless. Everything is a threat to them. Their pocketbooks, their marriage, their jobs, their theism, their TV, their guns…
An endless barrage of threats that they are constantly reminded of.
What can they do against all these threats? Elect a Strong Man that will crack skulls, He Has All The Answers. But those pesky libs keep getting in the way, so you gotta take matters into your own hands. Thank god and the good ol’ USA you can have a personal arsenal at arm’s reach to instantly panic-fire at that dark-skinned person pulling into your driveway who wants to steal your TV.
The “I feared for my life” rhetoric is just an excuse to shoot people, borrowed from police when they wanted to shoot people. You don’t have to politely believe them just because they said it.
Yeah this was just a car in the driveway right ? No one is fearing for their life over that.
Violent crime being historically low except for idiots who shoot at people for turning around in their driveway, ringing the wrong doorbell, etc…
I’ve talked about in in several other posts regarding gun control.
The rampant media sowing fear is poison. It’s the culture that’s being fostered that’s more dangerous than the guns. “Fuck around and find out” and “come try and take them” keeps reinforcing that guns are a totally normal thing to use to solve problems.
The NRA fear paranoia narrative has permeated our society. Add to that those who feel inferior so they carry a gun to feel powerful. Now add the hate farming by Russian trolls and right wing media, (the two are the same, with different names)
How often I witness roadrage/aggressive drivers makes the mass gunownership in this country kind of terrifying. I’ve seen a truck try to push another car off the road for getting off a left hand exit. I can only assume the truck driver was mad at the car for “being in the way.” The power tripping and entitlement to being aggressive towards others combined with your list of problematic cultural phenomenon and guns is horrifying.
I saw an ad for a news app that literally said “fear watch”
So you can always be on top of what to be afraid of next!
You’re right that the vast majority are cowards, but you also have psychos who jerk off to a fantasy of shooting someone. There are all kinds of crazies out there just looking for a reason, and they’re getting crazier in their psycho echo chambers.
But it’s a great chance to exercise your right to be left alone by shysters.