As a European, I fucking fear to go to the USA (the country of school shootings). You just don’t know how safe we feel here.
Here, you can only get guns after a training, psychology test, you cannot show it in public, etc… Or you can get a weak gas something that cannot kill people, but can shoot birds.
It’s so crazy. Literally anyone can go to a store and buy one. I no joke saw a store the other day called “Dave’s guns” and the logo was the American flag on a cross. Reminds me of a certain quote regarding facism.
It’s scary knowing everyone else has guns, however the good news is, everyone on the correct side of history can also buy them…
Honestly working class people should all be educated in basic gun safety. Its pretty fucking simple Things like operating a safety, Checking to see if there is any live ammunition in the chamber, Racking the slide to clear the chamber after removing the magazine, Emptying the magazine. Even field stripping and cleaning/ lubrication of a firearm.(if that’s too much for you just stick to revolvers and bolt action long guns)
But since nixon and reagan(who was the first American politician to push for gun ownership restrictions with support from the NRA via the mulford act after the black panther party was making strides advocating for civil rights by participating in protests open carrying long arms and side arms) Killed American education standards to prevent a highly educated proletariat now a majority of Americans cant even handle basic diy car maintenance let alone know how to use a firearm.
And today neo liberal centrists are the primary definition of what right wing maga morons consider leftists to bewhen in reality true leftists want guns to prevent the fascist takeover of our society we have slowly witnessed and were attempting to warn all of our fellow Americans about despite those warnings going ignored due to ignorant or intentional downplaying.
Or you could try living in a first world country that doesn’t live in denial of its gun problem.
There’s unfortunately no possible way for the government to solve this issue. They can’t go door to door and take people guns. And people won’t willingly give them up because then they are vulnerable to attack. It’s sadly unsolvable. Higher regulations for new purchases would help but thathat doesn’t stop all the existing weapons.
Our gun problem in the usa is a symptom of our problem with deteriorating conditions caused by the deregulation of capitalism. The school Shooting phenomena is not new, it first manifested as the “going postal” phenomenon but now with both parents having to work and kids having shitty support structures because they are being bullied by other kids starved of proper parental guidance/nurturing these kids are getting to their parents guns and taking out their frustrations mostly on people that have bullied them and anyone standing in their way or who did nothing to stop the bullies. It doesnt take a genius to see the reality here. There was a very good documentary i saw in the last decade or so pertaining to the phenomenon.
Asking the government to be a paternalistic nanny state and protect us from Ourselves a short sighted naive way to deal with the issues.
Also most of the guns have concentrated into the hands of fascist sympathizers because democrats have been brainwashed by centrism/ neo liberalism And think its a leftist ideal to want to disarm the nation and let police continue to murder people with impunity and give citizens even less recourse to protect ourselves. And also the economic environment we are in has punished true leftists with abhorrent economic conditions snd most of su struggle to survive and afford housing nevermind be able to afford a $1500+ rifle and ammunition and we just rely on grocers and the industrialized murder industry of livestock to provide our packaged dead animal for nutrition so many are so far removed from reality and if things fell to shit in a revolution most neo liberal’s would not last a month on their own probably even less than that if they have renounced gun ownership and taken up pacifism as their answer for the deteriorating state of western neo liberal Democracy (which lacking economic democracy and blatantly opposed to it is actually an undemocratic class dictatorship)
But keep telling yourself everything will be ok and bow down to accept the bloodless right wing coup the heritage foundation project 2025 authors have planned and has obviously been in the works for the last 4 decades at least.
How about educating people on the dangers of guns AND just prohibit all guns so that gun related violence can finally go down?
How about we dont let the concentration of power skew even more towards the hands of fascists than it already is? I mean it must be nice to live in delulu lala land where we can eliminate guns from society but so long as inteligent people exist and 3d printers are consumer goods (not to mention a thriving black market) there will always be ways around laws. I think the world would be a much better place if the mulford act never passed and if the wild west OK panhandle mentality of everyone has a gun persisted. Disarmjng the working class so that police and bureaucrats more than willing to enrich themselves with bribes from capitalists can be the final arbiters of who should and should not posses the means for self defense is just such idealistic nonsense. The world would be a better place if wall street military and prison industry profiteers were scared of the workers instead of the other way around as we have today.
It’s really easy to get a drivers license, yet there are still idiots on the road killing each other and themselves by driving cars. The ones that think they’re good drivers are usually the worst.
Educating people on gun safety and giving them reason to believe that they’re good with guns… Yes, it’s a recipe for having a lot of idiots with guns.
The only gun safety that actually works is not having guns. Guns are designed to kill and that’s what they’re gonna do when used.
Removing guns from citizens will only allow them to concentrate into the hands of the wealthy, and their militarized forces.
Neo liberalism has failed the working class and parroting the idea that we must restrict peoples freedoms to protect them from themselves is not only dumb its disingenuous and patently false.
If people weren’t educated on using cars they would be EVEN WORSE drivers. Also all the restrictive rules on driving like artificially low speed limits actually make it less safe for good drivers.
We killed education standards in this country to make things more conservative and thwarted leftist populism to allow full devolution into authoritarian fascism.
now remind me, did drug prohibition/ restrictions result in decreased supply and demand or did it instead just increase the black market value of these still in demand products while funneling people a majority of which are marginalized poor and working class, into prisons so correctional corporations could siphon tax dollars into their profits and simultaneously profit off of legalized slave labor? How will restrictions on gun ownership be any different?
More people die from Vehicular manslaughter every year than guns, should we further restrict automobile use?
concentrate into the hands of the wealthy, and their militarized forces.
They already have weapons incomparable to those of civilians and also have resources to produce much more. Try to fight with military of any reasonably strong country with all the millions of guns of US citizens lol. This is such a bogus claim.
Yet why was the US military unable to gain a decisive victory in north korea, Vietnam, or afghanistan? To name just a few instances where the level of military capability didn’t do enough to combat the will and resilience of the indigenous population.
I would rather die fighting against fascists than lay down my rights and submit to class dictatorship in a wage slave hellscape that isnt even worth living and participating for.
If you want to compare guns to drugs, then consider that legal drugs prescribed by a doctor are generally safe and that the prescription in small quantities hinders people from doing stupid stuff with it. You can’t compare drug abuse of illegal drugs to legal firearms. That is better compared to illegal firearms. Of course people do crazy stuff with illegal drugs and guns with or without education.
Maybe Americans need to have a prescription for ammo.
Iinstead of banning guns, which is impossible with all the existing guns, how about limiting ammo, so that people can still get a few rounds if they need to use their legal firearms to shoot rattle snakes or whatever the fuck they realistically need legal guns for.
You don’t know a thing about harm reduction then if that’s the analogy you’re choosing.
Limiting people’s access pushes them to the black market.
We are at the point of full fledged fascist authoritarianism in america and neo liberals still want to take guns away from the workers. Man you all really guzzled down the corpo kool aid.
There are 400 million guns in America.
Exactly 0 of them has been used to take down the fascist regime.
I know of three attempts in less then a year. One success
How many guns were used by African Americans before and after reconstruction? Do you not know the history of the civil rights movment and the black panther party using guns to advance their anti fascist cause?(something that even the NRA detested and so chose to support the disarming of the working class) did you know the two biggest growing demographic of gun owners today are colored women and LGBTQ people?
Also it goes without saying that we haven’t had a leftist uprising since leftism has virtually been erased From the chat since the 1980’s and supressed to the point that most people believe neo liberal right leaning centrists cosplaying as leftists and believing that ballot box socialism/reform is actually a plausible way to remedy a system Entirely corrupted by corporatists. But right now we are definitely at a precipice where we are closer than ever to a class war and i would rather die in the furtherance of that cause than be provided some half ass sense of security through the deprivation of my civil right to own a firearm. I personally am sick of this consumerist capitalist hellscape we’ve had beaten over the head our entire lives as the only way a civilized society should function while we produce disposable useless consumerist garbage, waste 1/3 of all food produced that isnt sold for a profit to make billionaires even richer while enough homes and apartments sit empty to provide ebery homeless person over a dozen homes,
In the words of Marx “any attempt to disarm the workers should be frustrated, by force if necessary”
So, do you think there’s a realistic chance of a violent leftist rebellion now?
I went through the comments, and I’m still lost. What is the punchline here? Is a long string of bad gun safety decisions by multiple people funny, or am I completely missing the joke?
I know how to be safe, suggests unsafe thing.
That’s not safe! Does even worse thing.
Pretty standard joke setup.
PoorlyDrawnLines comics are like that, they’re silly and simple. I’ve seen better ones, this just happened to be recent
What I found slightly funny about this one was that ‘shooting all the bullets out’ is how it works in games if you want to make a weapon useless
Yes. “Stop! That’s a bad idea” followed by an even worse idea. That’s the twist.
Next comic: sprinting with scissors
Wait! Stop! That’s dangerous.
Throw the scissors to your destination first. You don’t want to be running with scissors.
I have a little bit of a story in gun safety.
I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.
When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”
This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.
To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.
But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.
This is why you
A) Don’t have live ammo on set at all,
B) Don’t touch a real gun capable of firing real bullets unless you know how to (or have someone to instruct you on how to) do so safely with that firearm.
C) All guns are always loaded.
D) Never point your muzzle at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
E) Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot
F) Know what is in the foreground and background of your shot.
G) Don’t be the producer of the show letting all this unsafe shit happen
H) Don’t say “I’m just an actor, I can’t be expected to learn” as a piss poor excuse. I taught an 18yo kid (new employee) the safety rules last week and he got it, you telling me some kid is just smarter than any actor other than Keanu Reeves? No, Baldwin didn’t want to learn, and this is what happens. Guns aren’t toys and shouldn’t be treated as such even between shots on a set.
But most importantly, don’t hire scabs. The union armorer staff walked off the set of Rust due to repeated safety violations. Instead of fixing the issues, management hired unqualified scabs and continued.
I had heard that but went looking for a source and was never able to find one, so I didn’t include it, would you happen to have one? (I hope you do, I’m not trying to be a dick I want to save it to my bookmarks.)
The camera crew walked out over gun safety. I’m not seeing anything about the armorer yet, so I may have misremembered.
Still something, thanks!
With today’s video technology, I don’t see a reason to use real guns that can fire real bullets at all on movie sets. A realistic looking replica should be enough. Anything else can be added in post (like sounds or flashes) or acted (like recoil). It could have a mechanism to shoot empty shells out the side or otherwise behave like a real gun for everything other than being able to fire bullets or blanks (which can also be dangerous, though perhaps a blank shooting gun could be designed to mitigate those dangers).
There are reactions to a weapon firing right next to you that are very difficult to fake, they are extremely loud after all.
Movies where everything is done in post just lack a sense of drama.
I agree. And those blank firing guns already exist and would be mostly fine, the dangers are already pretty low especially for semi-autos which require a barrel plug to cycle with blanks, revolvers however do not. The dangers with blanks are often overstated because of a misunderstanding of what happened to Brandon Lee, IRL they could potentially hurt you if the little bits of brass from the crimp hit your eye, which would totally suck but you’d live, or if the barrel is too close the pressure could kill you (but like, we’re talking execution style to the temple here, 3ft+ of distance mitigates the pressure dangers). They’d still be a little dangerous but nowhere near live rounds lol.
(What happened to brandon lee is a bullet got stuck inside the barrel and nobody noticed, and then a blank pushed it out when fired. That’s a whole 'nother thing, and the armorer in that case fucked up a completely different way making props which anyone with a lee press and a flat punch could have done safely, that one was squarely on him.)
Yeah, I was thinking of Brandon Lee, but also In Burgess, though that one was a part of the movie rather than a filming accident. It’s a great movie and that scene is my favourite in the movie.
Tap for spoiler
A couple set up the MC with a seduce, bring him back to her room where the other guy steps out with a gun to rob him scheme. Only the MC takes the gun from the guy, who is scared for a second until he remembers it was only loaded with blanks and charges the MC, thinking blanks == harmless, but then gets a blank pretty much point blank to the face and gets blinded.
That scene taught me that even blanks shouldn’t be fucked with like toys.
Funny story, I have that on dvd somehow, but have never watched it lol.
Yeah a point blank blank (lol) can definitely cause serious problems, but a few feet back and it’s “safer” (though really you should still have eye protection, and it’s still not something I’d do without a multimillion dollar movie contract, of course. Don’t try that at home lol) but they’re safe enough for movies assuming no live rounds on set and no “brandon lee accidents”, but yeah still not “toys,” it’s like working with power tools, you can hurt yourself or others being dumb so don’t.
What I described is a problem with B. On a set, there are also problems with D, and E.
Even with brief safety lessons, I would not want/require every actor to ever touch a gun to know the insane revolver process described above in which you must pull the trigger to safely unload a gun and make it safe - and to check that the blank rounds are actually blank. If a “gun nut” didn’t know that process, there are liable to be countless other processes an actor won’t know.
Additionally, guns are used on set for dramatic effect. Actors WILL point guns at other actors for the sake of a shot, and WILL have their finger on the trigger to make their character seem real mean. So D and E, while good lessons, must be suspended on TV sets.
All the rest of the lessons are for the arms master of a set to handle. They are the ones that should be ensuring weapons anywhere near a set are loaded with blanks only when needed, and all otherwise follows full safety precautions. Hence why my opinion on blame for that incident was on Baldwin as the producer responsible for negligently hiring a shitty arms handler, not on Baldwin as the person holding the gun that went off.
If they can’t handle learning safety with a real gun, they don’t get no real gun, simple as. They aren’t toys. It doesn’t matter how widely known the operation of X specific gun is, if you’re holding that gun, you need to know how to operate that gun safely, he doesn’t need to know everything about everything, just the one he is operating. Anything less is just unsafe and could lead to things like camera people being shot in between takes.
And with camera magic usually you can point them off to the side a little and still make it look like it’s pointed at the other person, or for this shot (which was actually just him fucking around in between takes), they could have left the camera running, had the op walk away, and then had him walk up and shoot an empty camera seat which through the magic of editing could be cut down to the shot you need since film isn’t even film anymore (digital these days.) Or y’know just not use a real gun capable of firing live rounds.
They’re also lessons for Producer Alec Baldwin, who, whether he is just a stupid actor who can’t be expected to learn something which it sounds like took you a five minute youtube video to learn (you must be a genius if you can handle it but Alec Baldwin Producer cannot), or not, someone died because he was playing with guns, and people only excuse it because he’s famous. You wouldn’t say “well why would he be expected to know about guns, he’s a plumber not an armorer” if your plumber uncle was playing with guns and shot his friend, but Alec “Millionaire Producer” Baldwin is cool because “he’s too dumb to learn anything.”
Like it or not he is at least partially culpable, and he’s going to have to live with that for the rest of his life. He can make all the excuses he wants but deep down he has to know.
Let me test this standpoint a bit.
As I mentioned, I held a gun long ago handed to me by a marine doing a demo on a decommissioned carrier. He did not give me any kind of extensive training in the safety of the 92FS or any cautions about edge case safety concerns. I didn’t check the chamber, or know how to. In holding it horizontally within a metal ship, it’s not impossible that a misfire from the direction I held it could have ricocheted off walls and hurt someone. While I knew not to touch the trigger, he didn’t instruct me as such.
The Marine did, however, know that no live ammo was being brought onto the boat, and that he’d personally checked that the weapon was unloaded before handing it to me - just so I could see how much it weighed.
Was that tiny incident irresponsible on MY part? I would argue no. There are responsibilities carried by gun users and owners, and only some of those pass on depending on the environment the gun’s handler sets.
As I mentioned, I held a gun long ago handed to me by a marine doing a demo on a decommissioned carrier. He did not give me any kind of extensive training in the safety of the 92FS or any cautions about edge case safety concerns. I didn’t check the chamber, or know how to. In holding it horizontally within a metal ship, it’s not impossible that a misfire from the direction I held it could have ricocheted off walls and hurt someone. While I knew not to touch the trigger, he didn’t instruct me as such.
Just because you and some guy who eats crayons didn’t observe gun safety properly on a boat one time doesn’t mean gun safety isn’t important, accidents happen when people get complacent like that and can happen at any “skill” level or whatever you want to call it. He was wrong not to show you and insist on safety, and frankly you should always ask “how do I clear this” when touching a gun you don’t know how to use.
I’m literally shitting in a gun store as I write this and when I walked by the FFL desks otw to the shitters they had something out I wanted to check out, so I walked up to the guy holding it, said “ooh lemme see,” he made sure it was clear in front of me, passed it to me, I double checked, and then proceeded to check out this weird ass gun, handed it back and said “alright shittin’ time.” That is proper procedure, any less can 100% get you fired from here and we literally had a meeting where we told everyone this about 6mo ago, anyone who doesn’t know how to use them has two options,
A) Don’t.
B) Get with the FFL manager for a lesson and he’ll test you on it after.
The Marine did, however, know that no live ammo was being brought onto the boat, and that he’d personally checked that the weapon was unloaded before handing it to me - just so I could see how much it weighed.
Yes yes and the Bubba in my shop with a loaded rifle last week said the same thing, but we racked the charging handle because we always check, popped a live round out, gave him a tsk tsk, and handed him back his round. No live ammo allowed when bringing shit in to get work done.
Was that tiny incident irresponsible on MY part?
A little, yeah. I don’t know shit about chainsaws but I know enough to know I shouldn’t be fucking with them. If I’m gonna touch one I’m damn sure asking someone who does know “how do I use this thing safely” first, even if it’s a demo with the chain removed.
The marine definitely bears more responsibility, but also to his slight credit there was supposed to be no live ammo “on set” (the boat) as opposed to Producer Alec Baldwin’s set where they were plinking at cans on set in between takes which requires live ammo on set, yet still he should have insisted, or used a chamber flag that indicates an unloaded firearm and takes up the space of the chamber (many guns ship this way, I can check our Baretta 92s if you want to see if they do, but we also sell a 5 pack for $3), and you should always insist yourself so that you don’t accidentally shoot someone while holding a gun even if whoever handed it to you said “it’s totally empty bro trust me,” never trust those people, they’re the gun equivalent of “don’t worry, you don’t need a condom,” you doubly so do whenever someone says that.
On a movie set. A should have been obvious as in any professional setting (except the ones that use guns obviously).
If the crew wanted to go plinking at cans they should have just gone to the friendly neighbourhood gun range.
Remember kids, video games love to teach you about how cool guns are but never teach you how to safely handle them.
On a serious note, if you find a gun and you don’t know how to handle it safely, don’t even pick it up.
It’s wild to me that there’s a place on earth with a chance of just randomly finding a gun lying around
To take this a bit further: don’t touch it at all. You don’t know where that gun has been or what it’s done. If you touch it, you become a suspect in whatever crime was committed.
I don’t typically advocate for this, but in this case, call your local LEO and move away from the weapon. But make sure nobody else (kids especially) don’t come grabbing it up after you.
If necessary, shoot anyone trying to approach the gun. /s
That’s silly, you shoot them BEFORE they approach the gun as a deterrent for maximum safety.
I’m learning so much about gun safety!
I learned this from nearly every episode of Perry Mason
Matlock for me.
If you find a gun, Chekov’s Law says you need to use it.
You could also not do it, and prevent the world from ever reaching the third act
Too late for that, I suspect.
Not the worst idea
That’s a pretty low bar, but you’re technically correct.
Unless it hits a rock and ricochets and hits you or your friend.
Still, shooting directly at your friend would be a worse idea
I thought that was a koala.
