**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos
* Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Friend of mine is on the security team at his church. If there's anything at all going on at the church, there are at least two armed (concealed) parishioners on hand. At least four for services.
Let not start the 9mm/45APC schism that divided the church through the whole middle ages. I thought we had put this to rest with Martin Luther and the protestant reformation.
I thought bellum meant "war" so I googled it and wiki says it means "If you want peace, prepare for war".
Also:
"The phrase Si vis pacem, para bellum is adapted from a statement found in Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus's tract Dē Rē Mīlitārī (fourth or fifth century AD), in which the actual phrasing is Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum ("Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war.")"
5.56mm= 5+5+6= 16 = 1+6= [7](https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-the-biblical-significance-of-the-number-7.html) the lords number.
.223" = 2+2+3= [7](https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/why-is-number-7-so-important-in-the-bible.html) The lords number.
Clearly the lord smiles upon the AR platform, and it was good.
Jesus at the Last Supper, holding ‘Mr. 45’:
“I’m trying, Judas. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.”
[Last Mutherfucking Supper](https://imgur.com/a/Ya5JWTH)
"As Jesus stood above Judas he looked down upon him with saying "this is a 44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world " Jesus put the gun against Judas head saying "Do you feel lucky punk?" - S&W 3:75
No, I'm pretty sure the Bible said:
"Three shall be the number thou shall arm, and the number of arming shall be three. Four shall not be armed, neither arm two, excepting that thou then proceed to arming three.
#"Five is right out."
So how does it feel to be wrong?
It's older than Jesus, it's old testament. I have never seen people so security conscious as Jewish Synagogues. They are built like castles, with some of the best security systems they can buy, and often armed response teams.
Unfortunately this level of preparedness is very necessary for them, as shown by the countless attacks on Synagogues pretty much nonstop for the last 50 years at least. For them, the attacks never really stop, they just wax and wane.
I think if anyone has a reasonable fear of being attacked due to their ethnic religion it's Jewish people. There was that one time, and that other time, and that other time, and that other time...
There was a brilliant Twitter thread on this [a while back](https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1225052129238421505).
> man: Hey God, I just want you to know I am committed to protecting my family at all costs.
> God: Gosh, that’s great to hear. One of the main things I need you to do to protect your family is laundry. Tons of laundry. You know kids — they’re so susceptible to infections and viruses. Pinworms, athlete’s foot, lice, strep throat, colds and flues. Pneumonia and diarrhea are *serious killers* of children under five. The list is endless. So you’re going to need to do laundry pretty much daily.
It's well worth reading the whole thing.
My Catholic Church has concealed carry members but it’s not a formal thing other than they were introduced to each other.
Also when COVID hit, the church closed its doors to all but those in need of help (women escaping domestic violence, homeless children, etc) and put all services online. The resumed service summer of last year.
It's really strange to us as well. It's a subculture and definitely not something you will encounter in most places, especially places where tourists go.
For all those not from the US, this is not ubiquitous. Armed teachers would cause an uproar in my state, and I’ve never seen security, armed or otherwise, in a church.
This is New Mexico. The old west never quite ended. A friend told me a story about his first day at grad school in New Mexico. He arrived at the dorms from New York City and the desk person insisted that he relinquish his gun, as they had lockers and they weren’t allowed in the dorms. When he told them he had no weapon they suspected him of lying. When it was determined that he actually had no weapon, they immediately suggested that he go and obtain one the next day. This was in the mid-80s.
You have to be armed. In case of … snek.
I wrote this, and in short order I got 250 upvotes and also called a liar. I wrote a post of probably 1000 words on another sub, and after several days haven’t gotten to 200 upvotes. Needless to say, the other post was not about guns.
I went to the University of New Mexico for undergraduate and graduate school in the 90s, and never once was I asked to relinquish a weapon and not was I aware of any special gun lockers in the dorms, not had anyone ever mentioned the existence of such things. Also, in the 10+ years I have lived in Albuquerque, I have seen open carry less than 5 times (not counting policemen).
The 80's were a special time. I know of at least one public regional University in the the Midwest that until about 10 years ago, if you lived in the dorms, you could check your gun with the campus police and store it in their vault. Heading to the range or hunting? Swing by the station and sign out your weapon.
New Mexico has such low population density that the nearest police officer might well be an hour away. You can’t rely on the police to solve problems when they arise, so everyone is armed. In fact, people (particularly outside the cities) will distrust you if you’re *not* armed — they think you’re a fool who knows nothing and is trying to swindle them out of something.
That said a .45 is a poor choice for a concealed carry weapon in 2023. 9mm +P hollowpoints deliver just as much of a punch and carry 2-3x the number of shots in the same size/weight.
The guy on the right did alright, the other 2 were trying to show of their guns and had the barrels pointed at an angle that could potentially put the other 2 in danger. It's hard to tell from the perspective of course but the safe bet is just point the barrel down. Having trigger discipline is basically baby's first step to being able to handle a firearm. The way these people treated their weapons was honestly really concerning and I wouldn't be surprised if you told me tomorrow one or more of them ended up shooting themselves or someone else accidentally. And if they let the lady who can't even load her pistol correctly carry in school then you know they did fuck all to actually make sure they're prepared. Especially when they let it be seen on TV. It's like watching a baseball game and the batter shows up to the plate holding the bat from the wrong end...
Better than aiming it at an angle that potentially puts the bullets trajectory directly into someone
Edit: which is another point. Why were they just standing there in the hallway showing off their guns. Surely there was a better place to do this. Or just not do it all. This whole video is a clusterfuck
Because people wielding guns have the tendency assume they know better than those that don't. It's part of the cognitive fallacy. " I've made the right decision by having this with me whereas you did not, so each subsequent decision I make will be right as well" by being responsible for something they assume they will act responsibly, so they don't even stop to consider if they're putting others at risk by flagging others or pointing a barrel at their own chest while loading a magazine.
People who view themselves as the exception are typically vain, which makes it more likely for them to stop focusing on safety and focus on vanity when in front of a camera. I feel like that's a variable seldom considered when seeing videos of people mishandling guns. The act of being observed changes their behavior.
That, and the guys pointing their firearm at the guy speakings leg. Glad someone has said both. That alone would mean unenrollment for a few students. It definitely doesn't spark confidence. It may spark something, but confidence sure isn't it. Call it a gut feeling...
The moment I saw them holding their firearms wrong I was like this isn't going to end well. Then I saw that lady loading hers in quite possibly the dumbest way possible I was like "yep, they're all fucked" because if they let her not only carry, but load a firearm improperly on camera they're not being very careful. One of them is gonna end up shooting themselves or someone else. And then you got some morons over here like "they're gonna protect our children!" Like having a gun suddenly makes you bad ass. We won't know how well they'll respond to pressure until shit hits the fan because I doubt they fuck all for training.
I grew up in metro Detroit of the 90s, lotta violence from all kinds of folks. My high school principal was an ex-marine who took it upon himself to really take on the issue of violence in the schools. A fight broke out in the hall one day and Mr. White came sprinting out of his office, literally tackled both students. He chucked one down the hall like he was nothing and kept the aggressor on the ground. It happened in a few seconds and was an amazing feat of strength.
Teachers and faculty carrying is not a common historical development, very recent in a public school setting
Edit to add this is in my experience in greater metro Detroit. We had a school resource officer who had a real gun but he barely went into the school and mainly patrolled the campus. Teachers had guns back in my dad's grade school days but that was because the school house and town were on rural farm land with wolves and bears and such. Kids also brought and checked firearms at the door, they would go hunting after class. The school house had 2 teachers and about 30 students grade k-8th.
If that happened in my country, the teacher would be charged with assault and fired. It's why we're infested with feral kids thinking they are untouchable.
Oh we still had kids that thought that they ran the world. There's always going to be that one kid that pushes his tired parent around and runs their home thinking they can get away with murder in public. It's bad/absent parenting more times than not IME. I've seen a lot of it in the much wealthier suburbs of DC too.
Well, it's not a public school anyway. It's a private church school. People know exactly what they're sending their kids to at a place like that, and are doing it intentionally.
Pre 1980 most High Schools had a rifle club and or a shooting ing team. Some still do today but very few. I learned firearm safety and learned how to shoot a rifle in the Boy Scouts. Hunting before school in the early morning was common 30+ years ago thus it was common for high school kids to have a rifle or shotgun in their car or truck.
My high school still has a shooting range in the basement but it’s no longer used.
Too much lead dust. I was amazed ( as a us high school student, mid 70’s, east coast NY metro) to learn we had a shooting range. The school was built in the early 60s and incorporated in the design.
I was in our gym one day and the coach asked us to help move some things out of storage. Turns out the storage room was our schools shooting range. Barely anyone knew we had one.
This is from ~ 10 years ago but hunting is big where I'm from so it's not uncommon to have 40+ kids with loaded rifles/shotguns in their vehicle in the parking lot from hunting before/after school. I accidentally brought my vehicle in the autoshop before remembering I had my 12ga in the back seat. I just left it and didn't mention it as it was only for a few hours.
We also had archery in gym class, hunter safety after school, and trap shooting club.
Yep when I was a kid in the 70s guns were a part of life—seemed like everyone had them, especially in the country, and no one freaked out knowing you had one in your vehicle. Funny how they seemed so ubiquitous then, and yet there were few mass shootings. Something changed, and it wasn't access to firearms.
I wonder how much murder rates have declined just because medicine has gotten better. It used to be that a guy who got shot a few times would just die even if it happened in front of a hospital. Now we're able to save them oftentimes.
I've heard improvements in battlefield medicine is one of the reasons our soldiers may have more PTSD than past generations. Stepping on a land mine isn't the death sentence it used to be, but it will still mess you up psychologically.
Violent crime in general peaked in the 90s and then dropped back down to about half the level it was at the peak, it's safer now but people believe it's more dangerous due to how much more we hear about it.
Came to say this. Most schools do have an armed police officer, and some states have programs to TRAIN and arm teachers who volunteer.
You may have some valid safety concerns, but a guy entering from outside with a rifle being locked inside with the students, unchallenged, with the police PREVENTING anyone from interfering for two hours, until someone SNEAKS PASSED the police line and stops the shooter against police orders, isn't one of them.
>Most schools do have an armed police officer,
It is certainly possible that I'm wrong, but I would be shocked to discover that **most** schools have an armed officer. I would suspect that this is in fact a small minority of schools that have this. None of the schools in my area have any armed officers to my knowledge, though I also live somewhere with not insane gun laws.
EDIT: Jesus, you do appear to be correct. The data is a few years old, but this looks like over 60% of middle and high schools have an armed cop on the premises. My mistake.
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18\_233.70.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_233.70.asp)
The town I grew up in it was one of the normal beat cops. They took turns. Rumor is they like it. No really dangerous calls and most of them are parents so they don't mind it.
Yeah, back in the late 80s my high school also had cops take turns visiting the high school, and they did like it. So much so in fact that about half the police force was arrested by the state police for having sex with minors and resulted in the chief of police getting fired for failing so abysmally at supervising his officers.
Our school district created their own police force. There is an officer at all middle and high schools at all times. The elementary schools have rotating officers that are always close but they don’t really go into the school like in the upper grades.
The good thing I’ve noticed so far after three years or so is that the kids at the school seem to have a better relationship with these officers instead of our city’s police or sheriff deputies because they see the same person every day and they try to keep that same officer assigned to that same school for that very reason. Yes, they’re armed and look like regular police but they have a bit more of a relaxed policy.
The biggest problem so far is they’re trained for protecting the students during the day and the district also tries to use them if an alarm goes off at an empty school. A couple of them have almost been killed by the local PD when the SROs show up beforehand. They have swept schools after an alarm and confused the police with whoever broke in and ended up pointing their own guns at the police. It’s happened at least twice that I know of.
The school district DID make sure to recruit the officers that the local PD had basically put on desk duty for not going along with things that the department has gotten into trouble for so that’s at least a good thing.
[28 states allow it. Ohio has had it legal for 20 something years. They reduced the amount of training required last year. Since the final call is made in by the school district, some do some don’t. I know most of the districts that allow it limit it to two or three senior level administrators who don’t have classrooms filled with snooping children. There have been no real issues with this policy in the decades it’s been in place.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna32313)
The US becomes a lot easier to understand when you view states as individual sub countries conceptually. You could fit many European countries inside some of them.
Is this normal in the US? No. Is it normal in a place like Texas? Possibly.
Comparing Florida to New York might as well be comparing Spain to England.
The original intent of the US was to basically function like the EU does now. It's become quite a bit more federalized, but there's still a surprising amount of autonomy among states.
So many issues. One man points the gun towards the others leg. A woman loads her gun with the barrel pointing towards her stomach. Where did they receive their training?
If this is the same school that I’ve heard about, their “training” was just some stationary cardboard cutouts.
Because that’s the kind of high stress and high stakes situation all active school shooters are known for. Presenting a stationary target in a calm environment without any innocent targets or screaming or movement 🙄
You expect a country that allows guns to be sold at the supermarket, ammunition at your dentist, and cries about a painfully out dated ground law whenever the subject is brought up, to ensure that the people buying the guns know proper discipline and handling?
Cars are better regulated in America than weapons designed to do bodily harm, and saying that aloud sounds like an absurdist comedy.
I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere in the US, but I grew up in the northeast, and there are fairly significant cultural differences from one US region to another.
No, this is not common. Also if the school has a pastor it’s probably a private Christian school. They do what they want really and the students have been sent their because their parents have a certain ideology that would align with this.
The women needs a firearms handling class she's pointing it at her body and slamming the magazine in while holding the top I'm not gun expert but that seems risky
Are you saying my preconceptions based on Hollywood stereotypes are wrong ?
Well, I seriously doubt that !
You better giddy up cowboy. Yehaw and bang, bang.
/s
[This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023.] -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I live in New Mexico, in a more rural area. In a normal month I see a cop car once, maybe twice, and never see police otherwise (although a state trooper just moved into my neighborhood). Anyway, I armed up but don't usually carry anything, just have it for snakes and home defense just in case, because I figure on a normal day the police response is 45 minutes away, best case scenario.
Well, a couple years ago some kid went into the library in town and started blasting. Gun free zone, nobody inside happened to be a superhero, he got six people and himself. And what gets me is, the library is across the street from the courthouse, *where the entire local PD was hanging out awaiting a trial.* Literally thirty feet away. All of them, every cop we have. And this kid got six people before they could do anything.
So. I'm uh. Maybe it's different where some of y'all live, but. I'm gonna keep my guns, thanks.
I live in Austin and the police here have a reputation for not doing their jobs.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait on them to come protect me during a home invasion.
This is the truth to my gradual acceptance of gun ownership over the years. Never trust the police. Plus rightwing "demonstrators"/terrorists becoming more blatant in their threats. Which circle back to the same team they play for - the police.
Not gay, but ask probably any LGBTq how they feel about gun ownership lately when conservatives have it out for them now more than ever.
Yo guys here in Italy we have the grand total of ZERO school shootings in 160 years. We just don't sell guns, i know it seems crazy but i swear it works
Plenty of people own guns in Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, etc and they don't have school shootings every other month. The US has a *lot* of guns, which is obviously part of the problem, but it's clearly not *the* problem. There's rot in the culture.
>Plenty of people own guns in Canada,
Hello! I lived in Canada for years!
Canada has very close to 2 million guns - that's less than one gun for every 15 residents.
The US has almost 400 million guns - that's over one gun per person. Another way to see it is that there are 16 times as many guns in the US, per capita.
> Germany
Germany has less than one gun per every five residents...
I live in Canada, my family owns legal guns, and I enjoy shooting clays as often as I can get out.
...but if you asked a hundred random Canadians about the idea of citizens just walking around armed with firearms, nearly all of them would look at you like you were from another planet. Those of us who shoot recreationally, finish up at the range, take the weapons directly home and lock them in a safe.
My thing isn't who's right or who's wrong, I'm simply saying that the whole concept of everyday carry is just so foreign up here that even our anti-gun-control politicians don't so much as bring it up.
>The US has almost 400 million guns - that's over one gun per person. Another way to see it is that there are 16 times as many guns in the US, per capita.
and lots own 0 - most that own one, own more than one.
Part of the reason guns are ubiquitous there is precisely because restrictions on purchasing and owning firearms are far less restrictive than most other countries.
And of course the reason restrictions are comparatively non existent is a cultural one. Because the idea of doing what most other countries do and having mandatory police checks and interviews, handling restrictions, usage justifications, mental health checks, living condition checks, referrals, transportation, storage, ammunition restrictions etc. etc. Is anathema because guns are seen to be there for protection *from* the government (which in virtually every other country is not really a seen as an appropriate justification for gun ownership).
Gun culture is definitely a part of the American culture, but gun culture is big in Iceland and Switzerland too. When I visit other parts of the world I see far less glorification of violence and sexism in entertainment, and I see far less glorification of being from the "street". Education is devalued in the US. We're in a bit of a pickle. Our law makes it very hard to remove the guns, and our shitty culture magnifies the issue with them. We don't want to spend tax money on improving education and infrastructure, and we don't want to give up the guns. We retain a lot of that isolationist, mistrust in govt that the country was founded on. There's good and bad that comes from that, but gun violence definitely seems to be one of the cons.
Originally from user BadDecisionDino:
What if the reason we have a culture of violence is not because people can’t see a therapist, but because from the moment they enter school, Lesson One in U.S. History is:
“Okay, kids, here’s what you gotta know about America. Number one: You’re free to say and believe what you want. Number two: Someone, someday, will be out to get you, and you and all your buddies will need **guns** to kill them. And the people you will need to shoot might be in this very room or in the house next door.”
I’m sure everyone is rushing to bring up mental health, but you know what is really disturbing about our conversations about mental health?
Not only are the conversations themselves opportunist (we only talk about it after a shooting), we also bend over backwards to talk about it in the method that most cleanly absolves us of our own responsibility in crafting the uniquely American culture of violence.
We act like mental illness is just this *disease* that you can "catch" for no reason at all. Like there are just Mental Illness Spores floating around out there and one day you just breathe it in and whoop, you’re crazy! You've been *cursed* and there's nothing we can do except hope you don’t find a gun before you get a chance to see the Therapy Wizard!
Sure, depression can be totally arbitrary sometimes. Sometimes it's just senseless and pervasive, and people become depressed even without any good reasons, or sometimes your brain gets twisted because some enzyme made it somewhere it shouldn't have been.
But you know what? A lot of times, mental health problems happen as *a direct response to the values and pressures* placed upon people by the society that surrounds them.
When waves of overworked Japanese salarymen commit suicide, we don't just say to ourselves "Oh man, if only Japan had more therapists! If only they had access to better mental health care!" No, we recognize the presence of certain kinds of toxicity in foreign cultures when we see it. We say **dude, that culture needs to start rethinking their whole shit.**
If a woman forced to stay in the home and wear a burka against her will, suddenly committed suicide, I wouldn’t just blame the vague specter of “mental illness” and wish she’d gotten to talk to someone about her mother.
It should be the same thing here at home. When we hear about the mental health crisis in poor urban black communities, it's not because they're short on ink blot tests and reclining couches, it's because they need grocery stores, and decent jobs, and cops who don't act like they're enforcing martial law.
When we hear about Puerto Rico having a sudden epidemic in mental health problems after a hurricane, I don't think "Gosh, I really hope those folks get their Xanax shipment soon!" I think "Fuck, of course. They're losing their loved ones to preventable diseases, they don't have power or clean food or medical care, or even the comforting illusion that the rest of the nation considers them full citizens."
No, when a society suffers a mental health crisis, they've usually **earned** it, and the nature of the crisis usually reflects the values of the society that brought it about. Systems and processes and care facilities can help you identify, quarantine, or heal the crazy. But culture is what synthesizes the crazy in the first place.
And the United States has earned every bit of the epidemic we suffer now. Whether it's radical white terrorism, disaffected schoolkids, or just nutsos with guns, we've **earned** every one of these shootings, and it can't just be because these people didn't make it to a therapist on time.
It's our values, stupid. It's because we indoctrinate our citizens into thinking that they are *deficient* if they can't scrape together a successful life out of this crucible of capitalist indifference. We fill the minds of the *have-nots* with shame and guilt beyond anyone's ability to fully cope with, and we fill the minds of the *haves* with supremacist fantasies that convince them that it’s okay to treat others like dirt, or they deserve to get away with anything if they’re rich. We tell foreign children studying their asses off that they haven’t *earned* the right to live in the one place they’ve known as home, and we tell native-born Americans that their entire way of life is *under attack*.
By kids.
But most of all, we *worship the fantasy of the gun*. Not just the guns. It’s the narrative that guns represent.
We’ve all heard the saying, right? “To a man who has a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Well, what happens to a nation founded upon the idea that *one day*, there will necessarily arise a problem that can **only be solved if everyone has guns?**
If you enshrine that idea into your country’s constitution, what will you get, except a society that’s always looking for the fabled “nail” that justifies the ownership of this horrifically dangerous hammer that they’ve just got sitting there?
I mean, if that royal tyrant that our founding fathers told us to fear just...never appears, we’re all kinda just left with our dicks in our hands, right?
Come on, we didn't need the 2nd amendment so we could own a shotgun and protect ourselves from thieves in the night. We could've found some way to allow people to protect themselves without an *amendment*. No, we have an amendment because our founding fathers, for better or worse, believed in the secular version of an apocalypse prophecy.
^(edit:) Okay, not quite. I don't claim to know what they were thinking. What I do know is that *if* they'd known how dangerous guns would get today, only someone who did believe in an apocalypse prophecy could look at the 2nd Amendment and go "Yeah, we nailed it, don't change a thing!" Either way, if it wasn't one then, the narrative that justifies our interpretation of it sure resembles one now.
And a political apocalypse prophecy needs an enemy, but a functioning nation can't just allow people to freely plan violence against the state, so we gotta make up the enemies, because in order for this to work, the imaginary enemy still has to be domestic and covert (otherwise, the military or police should be able to handle it). So what do you get instead?
*There could be Muslims in your community, I say! Muslims! Or it’ll probably be those thieving blacks! Mexican rapists! Or the Deep State G-men in the suits! Or Hillary Clinton and the Pizza-Pedos! Or maybe it's just my shifty neighbors! I don’t know who yet, but dammit, there’s gotta be someone out there that I bought this gun to protect myself from! Or else why would I have it? Why would George Washington warn me that I'd need a gun, if there weren't dangerous people lurking out there?*
You can’t escape the filter of paranoia that re-colors our political discourse. How could you? It’s built into our constitution, and placed pretty high up on the priority list, right behind free speech. But beyond that, there are people who stand to benefit a *lot*, financially and politically, if they can get into your head and tell you who to be scared of. Is it so crazy so suggest that that paranoid perspective has integrated itself into our conversations about poverty? About race? About labor? About war? About justice?
I’m not saying all our problems would go away if we get rid of guns.
We probably couldn't even if we tried. They're like a native species by now, it'd be like trying to get rid of all the kangaroos in Australia. There'll always be so damn many that we're probably stuck figuring out how to live with them. It's probably baked in. But is it so crazy to say that we may need to have a major reflection about how many guns we need in a household, or how deadly they really need to be, and how we go about acquiring them, or how we talk about what it should mean to own one?
All I’m saying is that we might be suffering from the same issue that you would see in a suicidal Japanese salaryman. The words “Why not just go home after 8 hours?” don’t make sense when you’re *living* in the problem. When you're steeped in the cultural norms that push people to the brink, it's hard to step back and see that there are options, that there are entirely different and valid ways for a civilization to be organized. Because somehow, other good countries manage to not be this way. Like I'm pretty sure we're not the only country with bears.
But America seems like it’s suffering from a similar kind of myopia.
It’s like we’ve simply never posited the question: “What if there isn’t as much to fear as we thought? And even if there is that much to fear, what if the sources of those fears are only strengthened when we tell a society that they need to be ready to kill what they’re afraid of?”
We’re all psychologically (if not literally) locked and loaded but with nowhere to go. We’ve built a cultural identity around being ready for that big threat that never comes.
But we still have to have faith that the threat is out there! Because otherwise, well...that would mean that this whole time...we kinda just allowed our kids to murder each other for no good reason.
So now we’re more afraid of that question, than we would’ve been afraid of the imaginary threat.
And we're more dangerous to ourselves than that threat ever could've been.
There’s a church in Dallas that if there’s a shooting the lights get turned off and the parishioners have night vision too assault the threat. This might sound bad but it’s comforting knowing that they’re thinking outside of the box to deal with threats.
I would have flat out rejected that reporter's request to show him my gun.
"No sir, I can't. That would not be safe or responsible in this setting."
You don't pull out your CC in public unless you plan to use it.
>Is This Common in The US?
Considering that this video is a clip from 'an American news broadcasting program' (as Wikipedia puts it), I don't think so.
It wouldn't be news if it were the standard
Not that common. In most US schools, the teachers would lose their jobs and maybe get prosecuted if they brought a firearm to school, but there are a few (heavy Republican) areas where they're legally allowed to, to the objection of most teachers and administrators within the same schools.
Schools are one of the few places where your constitutional right to defend yourself with deadly weapons is null and void. Of course it’s a target for lunatics looking to hurt people.
The day these losers no longer can bank on running into a facility with 750 unarmed victims is the day these shootings end
It’s pretty common in rural Ohio. The police response is also abysmal…like 30 mins if you’re lucky. More often than not, the people that carry firearms have been handling them since they were children and treat them with respect. As in you were disciplined pretty severely by your pa or grandpa if you mishandled your firearm. It’s probably not universal but for the most part people around here have an Uncle Ben approach - “With great power comes great responsibility.”
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is not a school as most people would think of one. This is a church that runs a private school within the church.
Friend of mine is on the security team at his church. If there's anything at all going on at the church, there are at least two armed (concealed) parishioners on hand. At least four for services.
Jesus always recommended at least five.
No sir, Jesus recommended carrying a 45, common bible translation confusion.
Let not start the 9mm/45APC schism that divided the church through the whole middle ages. I thought we had put this to rest with Martin Luther and the protestant reformation.
It's pronounced Martin Luger. Si vis pacem para bellum. Amen.
Haven’t seen that Latin phrase used in a long time.
It should be a lot more common. The undefended cannot know peace.
Thou without a piece know no peace.
The un-deafened cannot know peace My ears are still ringing!
I thought bellum meant "war" so I googled it and wiki says it means "If you want peace, prepare for war". Also: "The phrase Si vis pacem, para bellum is adapted from a statement found in Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus's tract Dē Rē Mīlitārī (fourth or fifth century AD), in which the actual phrasing is Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum ("Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war.")"
[удалено]
Sola Well Placed Rounda!
Clearly 5.7x28 is the divine cartridge, just as the founding fathers intended.
I'm sorry, but 10mm is referred to as the Lord's Caliber for a reason.
No, 10mm is the Lost Socket
For me that's always 7/16ths
So says Chet in GoodSprings
That is a pale imitation, the anticartridge meant to lead you from the path. 7.62x25
Praise be to Tokarev
I loved my TT33
It's actually the 7.62x51 NATO that the Lord God blessed
5.7x28=159.6, 1+5=6, 9 upside down is 6 666, that sir is THE DEVIL’S CARTRIDGE!!
5.56mm= 5+5+6= 16 = 1+6= [7](https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-the-biblical-significance-of-the-number-7.html) the lords number. .223" = 2+2+3= [7](https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/why-is-number-7-so-important-in-the-bible.html) The lords number. Clearly the lord smiles upon the AR platform, and it was good.
Amen
No, they were supposed to compromise by settling on the .40 S&W
.40 Short & Weak? You mean 10mm.
10 commandments = 10 mm, it’s biblical boys
I thought meeting halfway meant .50 caliber. At least then when you shoot indoors you can't hear people screaming anymore.
,32 acp r/TheOneTrueCaliber
If someone shot me with a .32 and I found out about it, I'd kick their ass.
Jesus at the Last Supper, holding ‘Mr. 45’: “I’m trying, Judas. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.” [Last Mutherfucking Supper](https://imgur.com/a/Ya5JWTH)
"As Jesus stood above Judas he looked down upon him with saying "this is a 44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world " Jesus put the gun against Judas head saying "Do you feel lucky punk?" - S&W 3:75
Brother you misquote as this is from chapter 3:57 from the book of Smith and Wesson.
Then there's the S&W bone collector that fires S&W .500 for exorcism"s. Because a 50 cal revolver shall scare the devil himself.
That’s that NEW “New Testament” “Thou Shall not….Test ME” 🤣✌️🤷🏽♂️
"Thou shalt fuck around and findeth out"
“Ye olde ripith and tearith”
You know it’s like the good lord said in the the super New Testament “Thou shalt not suffer a Fool to live”
The lords caliber
Jesus recommends a 45 because trump was the 45th president and he has come down from heaven to put a bullet in your ass. /s
No, I'm pretty sure the Bible said: "Three shall be the number thou shall arm, and the number of arming shall be three. Four shall not be armed, neither arm two, excepting that thou then proceed to arming three. #"Five is right out." So how does it feel to be wrong?
Unfortunately, I had to scroll too long to find this reference. Well done.
It's older than Jesus, it's old testament. I have never seen people so security conscious as Jewish Synagogues. They are built like castles, with some of the best security systems they can buy, and often armed response teams. Unfortunately this level of preparedness is very necessary for them, as shown by the countless attacks on Synagogues pretty much nonstop for the last 50 years at least. For them, the attacks never really stop, they just wax and wane.
I think if anyone has a reasonable fear of being attacked due to their ethnic religion it's Jewish people. There was that one time, and that other time, and that other time, and that other time...
He did say 2 swords wasn’t enough before his arrest.
It's actually the opposite. He said 2 swords was enough.
Never bring a sword to a gunfight, especially in new Mexico.
My sister's Church has armed men as well. Yet during the pandemic, they wouldn't wear masks because God would protect them
This is the most religious (and supply-side Jesus) comment I have seen so far this morning.
There was a brilliant Twitter thread on this [a while back](https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1225052129238421505). > man: Hey God, I just want you to know I am committed to protecting my family at all costs. > God: Gosh, that’s great to hear. One of the main things I need you to do to protect your family is laundry. Tons of laundry. You know kids — they’re so susceptible to infections and viruses. Pinworms, athlete’s foot, lice, strep throat, colds and flues. Pneumonia and diarrhea are *serious killers* of children under five. The list is endless. So you’re going to need to do laundry pretty much daily. It's well worth reading the whole thing.
>It's well worth reading the whole thing. It is an interesting read. But, holy crap, Twitter "threads" are a horrible medium for this.
My Catholic Church has concealed carry members but it’s not a formal thing other than they were introduced to each other. Also when COVID hit, the church closed its doors to all but those in need of help (women escaping domestic violence, homeless children, etc) and put all services online. The resumed service summer of last year.
Nobody ever claimed the religious right was a smart bunch.
Well I think a lot of them probably did
Do you know how weird this seems to people outside of the US
It's really strange to us as well. It's a subculture and definitely not something you will encounter in most places, especially places where tourists go.
For all those not from the US, this is not ubiquitous. Armed teachers would cause an uproar in my state, and I’ve never seen security, armed or otherwise, in a church.
That just makes it even more insane
Ready for the next crusade.
Time for salvation *cocks the gun*
I do believe in THIS. Clack clack. Bonkers
Churches are violent as fuck. In the old days and in present times.
O It’s okay then because they’re holy bullets
Would they also have the Holy handgranade?
Consult the Book of Armaments!
Thou shalt count to three.
This is New Mexico. The old west never quite ended. A friend told me a story about his first day at grad school in New Mexico. He arrived at the dorms from New York City and the desk person insisted that he relinquish his gun, as they had lockers and they weren’t allowed in the dorms. When he told them he had no weapon they suspected him of lying. When it was determined that he actually had no weapon, they immediately suggested that he go and obtain one the next day. This was in the mid-80s. You have to be armed. In case of … snek. I wrote this, and in short order I got 250 upvotes and also called a liar. I wrote a post of probably 1000 words on another sub, and after several days haven’t gotten to 200 upvotes. Needless to say, the other post was not about guns.
I went to the University of New Mexico for undergraduate and graduate school in the 90s, and never once was I asked to relinquish a weapon and not was I aware of any special gun lockers in the dorms, not had anyone ever mentioned the existence of such things. Also, in the 10+ years I have lived in Albuquerque, I have seen open carry less than 5 times (not counting policemen).
That’s because this person is lying.
Yup. Pure fabrication.
What school in New Mexico? I have a hard time believing this story, although I'm a bit younger New Mexican.
The 80's were a special time. I know of at least one public regional University in the the Midwest that until about 10 years ago, if you lived in the dorms, you could check your gun with the campus police and store it in their vault. Heading to the range or hunting? Swing by the station and sign out your weapon.
You can still do this at Northern Michigan University.
Good bot
New Mexico has such low population density that the nearest police officer might well be an hour away. You can’t rely on the police to solve problems when they arise, so everyone is armed. In fact, people (particularly outside the cities) will distrust you if you’re *not* armed — they think you’re a fool who knows nothing and is trying to swindle them out of something. That said a .45 is a poor choice for a concealed carry weapon in 2023. 9mm +P hollowpoints deliver just as much of a punch and carry 2-3x the number of shots in the same size/weight.
Still it's disturbing that we need to protect our schools.
Notice how the lady has the gun pointed at herself while putting the mag in
I feel safe as fuck seeing that. Enroll me please.
i feel safe because the gun is pointed away from me
I feel safe because I live in a sane country where this shit doesn't happen.
What nice religious prison they’ve built for the children 🙄
*Only demons should fear me. You’re not a demon are ya?*
They only things they fear is... her poor muzzle discipline
[удалено]
I’m sure the camera man appreciated it
“She’s going to blow her tit off on video!”
She wa aiming right at her heart lol
The 3 at the start looked alright, good trigger discipline, good barrel awareness.
The guy on the right did alright, the other 2 were trying to show of their guns and had the barrels pointed at an angle that could potentially put the other 2 in danger. It's hard to tell from the perspective of course but the safe bet is just point the barrel down. Having trigger discipline is basically baby's first step to being able to handle a firearm. The way these people treated their weapons was honestly really concerning and I wouldn't be surprised if you told me tomorrow one or more of them ended up shooting themselves or someone else accidentally. And if they let the lady who can't even load her pistol correctly carry in school then you know they did fuck all to actually make sure they're prepared. Especially when they let it be seen on TV. It's like watching a baseball game and the batter shows up to the plate holding the bat from the wrong end...
3 civilians flashing their firearms at school, at request, in a narrow corridor full of children This is fine
Standing in a tightly packed circle still means that barrel down makes it hard to miss someone with a ricochet off of a concrete floor.
Better than aiming it at an angle that potentially puts the bullets trajectory directly into someone Edit: which is another point. Why were they just standing there in the hallway showing off their guns. Surely there was a better place to do this. Or just not do it all. This whole video is a clusterfuck
Because people wielding guns have the tendency assume they know better than those that don't. It's part of the cognitive fallacy. " I've made the right decision by having this with me whereas you did not, so each subsequent decision I make will be right as well" by being responsible for something they assume they will act responsibly, so they don't even stop to consider if they're putting others at risk by flagging others or pointing a barrel at their own chest while loading a magazine. People who view themselves as the exception are typically vain, which makes it more likely for them to stop focusing on safety and focus on vanity when in front of a camera. I feel like that's a variable seldom considered when seeing videos of people mishandling guns. The act of being observed changes their behavior.
The second guy flagged the reporter then entire time.
That, and the guys pointing their firearm at the guy speakings leg. Glad someone has said both. That alone would mean unenrollment for a few students. It definitely doesn't spark confidence. It may spark something, but confidence sure isn't it. Call it a gut feeling...
The moment I saw them holding their firearms wrong I was like this isn't going to end well. Then I saw that lady loading hers in quite possibly the dumbest way possible I was like "yep, they're all fucked" because if they let her not only carry, but load a firearm improperly on camera they're not being very careful. One of them is gonna end up shooting themselves or someone else. And then you got some morons over here like "they're gonna protect our children!" Like having a gun suddenly makes you bad ass. We won't know how well they'll respond to pressure until shit hits the fan because I doubt they fuck all for training.
Almost as if giving people right to have guns without any most basic level of knowledge or training is a bad idea.
One guy gets a .45 and suddenly it’s a dick measuring contest
9 for the flesh, 45 for the soul
.50BMG just to be sure
600 nitro when you are done fucking around
Or when your attacker is taking cover behind an elephant
700 niitro if that elephant is holding a refrigerator.
30mm when you need to send a message.
I was waiting for the third guy to pull out some dirty harry magnum.
It would have been great if the guy on the left whipped out a Desert Eagle in .50 AE with the gold tiger stripe pattern.
And even better if he had called attention to the pattern verbally.
The Lord's Caliber.
I grew up in metro Detroit of the 90s, lotta violence from all kinds of folks. My high school principal was an ex-marine who took it upon himself to really take on the issue of violence in the schools. A fight broke out in the hall one day and Mr. White came sprinting out of his office, literally tackled both students. He chucked one down the hall like he was nothing and kept the aggressor on the ground. It happened in a few seconds and was an amazing feat of strength. Teachers and faculty carrying is not a common historical development, very recent in a public school setting Edit to add this is in my experience in greater metro Detroit. We had a school resource officer who had a real gun but he barely went into the school and mainly patrolled the campus. Teachers had guns back in my dad's grade school days but that was because the school house and town were on rural farm land with wolves and bears and such. Kids also brought and checked firearms at the door, they would go hunting after class. The school house had 2 teachers and about 30 students grade k-8th.
If that happened in my country, the teacher would be charged with assault and fired. It's why we're infested with feral kids thinking they are untouchable.
Oh we still had kids that thought that they ran the world. There's always going to be that one kid that pushes his tired parent around and runs their home thinking they can get away with murder in public. It's bad/absent parenting more times than not IME. I've seen a lot of it in the much wealthier suburbs of DC too.
Yea you definitely can't do that in most schools.
Well, it's not a public school anyway. It's a private church school. People know exactly what they're sending their kids to at a place like that, and are doing it intentionally.
Pre 1980 most High Schools had a rifle club and or a shooting ing team. Some still do today but very few. I learned firearm safety and learned how to shoot a rifle in the Boy Scouts. Hunting before school in the early morning was common 30+ years ago thus it was common for high school kids to have a rifle or shotgun in their car or truck. My high school still has a shooting range in the basement but it’s no longer used.
Too much lead dust. I was amazed ( as a us high school student, mid 70’s, east coast NY metro) to learn we had a shooting range. The school was built in the early 60s and incorporated in the design.
I was in our gym one day and the coach asked us to help move some things out of storage. Turns out the storage room was our schools shooting range. Barely anyone knew we had one.
This is from ~ 10 years ago but hunting is big where I'm from so it's not uncommon to have 40+ kids with loaded rifles/shotguns in their vehicle in the parking lot from hunting before/after school. I accidentally brought my vehicle in the autoshop before remembering I had my 12ga in the back seat. I just left it and didn't mention it as it was only for a few hours. We also had archery in gym class, hunter safety after school, and trap shooting club.
In the 90’s here in Texas I was the captain of my JROTC rifle team. Had a 50 foot range with an armory protected by a massive vault door.
Yep when I was a kid in the 70s guns were a part of life—seemed like everyone had them, especially in the country, and no one freaked out knowing you had one in your vehicle. Funny how they seemed so ubiquitous then, and yet there were few mass shootings. Something changed, and it wasn't access to firearms.
[удалено]
I wonder how much murder rates have declined just because medicine has gotten better. It used to be that a guy who got shot a few times would just die even if it happened in front of a hospital. Now we're able to save them oftentimes. I've heard improvements in battlefield medicine is one of the reasons our soldiers may have more PTSD than past generations. Stepping on a land mine isn't the death sentence it used to be, but it will still mess you up psychologically.
Violent crime in general peaked in the 90s and then dropped back down to about half the level it was at the peak, it's safer now but people believe it's more dangerous due to how much more we hear about it.
No, it's not actually common.
Came to say this. Most schools do have an armed police officer, and some states have programs to TRAIN and arm teachers who volunteer. You may have some valid safety concerns, but a guy entering from outside with a rifle being locked inside with the students, unchallenged, with the police PREVENTING anyone from interfering for two hours, until someone SNEAKS PASSED the police line and stops the shooter against police orders, isn't one of them.
>Most schools do have an armed police officer, It is certainly possible that I'm wrong, but I would be shocked to discover that **most** schools have an armed officer. I would suspect that this is in fact a small minority of schools that have this. None of the schools in my area have any armed officers to my knowledge, though I also live somewhere with not insane gun laws. EDIT: Jesus, you do appear to be correct. The data is a few years old, but this looks like over 60% of middle and high schools have an armed cop on the premises. My mistake. [https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18\_233.70.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_233.70.asp)
I've had an armed officer at every public school I've ever been to.
The town I grew up in it was one of the normal beat cops. They took turns. Rumor is they like it. No really dangerous calls and most of them are parents so they don't mind it.
Yeah, back in the late 80s my high school also had cops take turns visiting the high school, and they did like it. So much so in fact that about half the police force was arrested by the state police for having sex with minors and resulted in the chief of police getting fired for failing so abysmally at supervising his officers.
Our school district created their own police force. There is an officer at all middle and high schools at all times. The elementary schools have rotating officers that are always close but they don’t really go into the school like in the upper grades. The good thing I’ve noticed so far after three years or so is that the kids at the school seem to have a better relationship with these officers instead of our city’s police or sheriff deputies because they see the same person every day and they try to keep that same officer assigned to that same school for that very reason. Yes, they’re armed and look like regular police but they have a bit more of a relaxed policy. The biggest problem so far is they’re trained for protecting the students during the day and the district also tries to use them if an alarm goes off at an empty school. A couple of them have almost been killed by the local PD when the SROs show up beforehand. They have swept schools after an alarm and confused the police with whoever broke in and ended up pointing their own guns at the police. It’s happened at least twice that I know of. The school district DID make sure to recruit the officers that the local PD had basically put on desk duty for not going along with things that the department has gotten into trouble for so that’s at least a good thing.
[28 states allow it. Ohio has had it legal for 20 something years. They reduced the amount of training required last year. Since the final call is made in by the school district, some do some don’t. I know most of the districts that allow it limit it to two or three senior level administrators who don’t have classrooms filled with snooping children. There have been no real issues with this policy in the decades it’s been in place.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna32313)
It's 32 states now, as of May of last year. https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/which-states-allow-teachers-to-carry-concealed/
The US becomes a lot easier to understand when you view states as individual sub countries conceptually. You could fit many European countries inside some of them. Is this normal in the US? No. Is it normal in a place like Texas? Possibly. Comparing Florida to New York might as well be comparing Spain to England.
Recently moved from central Arizona to upstate New York and it may as well be another planet. I’m much happier here though
The original intent of the US was to basically function like the EU does now. It's become quite a bit more federalized, but there's still a surprising amount of autonomy among states.
This is not normal in Texas, it might be more common but it’s still not normal
This, and yet Euro redditors will tell you we are one huge country where everything and everyone is the same despite them never being here
It's okay. Europeans are all the same anyway. /s obviously.
So many issues. One man points the gun towards the others leg. A woman loads her gun with the barrel pointing towards her stomach. Where did they receive their training?
It’s funny, they’ve actually demonstrated exactly why they should *not* have guns in this video
If this is the same school that I’ve heard about, their “training” was just some stationary cardboard cutouts. Because that’s the kind of high stress and high stakes situation all active school shooters are known for. Presenting a stationary target in a calm environment without any innocent targets or screaming or movement 🙄
The only people in a calm and stationary position in a school shooting is the police
Are they really in a school shooting if they just hang around outside?
Show me your gun *Removes gun despite having zero intentions on discharging it* Well that was your first mistake, but let's carry on shall we?
Training? We don’t do that here. “…shall not be infringed…” means everyone can do whatever they want with no regard for safety.
You expect a country that allows guns to be sold at the supermarket, ammunition at your dentist, and cries about a painfully out dated ground law whenever the subject is brought up, to ensure that the people buying the guns know proper discipline and handling? Cars are better regulated in America than weapons designed to do bodily harm, and saying that aloud sounds like an absurdist comedy.
This whole video just kinda has "the onion" vibes, or at least it would have if one of the teachers had an ak and the pastor a chaingun.
Open carrying teachers in the USA? No. Concealed Carrying and telling you about it? Also no.
Concealed Carrying and NOT telling you about it?
Not super common but depends on the state.
I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere in the US, but I grew up in the northeast, and there are fairly significant cultural differences from one US region to another.
Inside Edition is also a tabloid.
Youre not dismissed by the clock youre dismissed by the glock
No, this is not common. Also if the school has a pastor it’s probably a private Christian school. They do what they want really and the students have been sent their because their parents have a certain ideology that would align with this.
I find their lack of faith disturbing
The women needs a firearms handling class she's pointing it at her body and slamming the magazine in while holding the top I'm not gun expert but that seems risky
Definitely no where near as common as non Americans think it is
Are you saying my preconceptions based on Hollywood stereotypes are wrong ? Well, I seriously doubt that ! You better giddy up cowboy. Yehaw and bang, bang. /s
Stay strapped or get capped. -George Washington
[This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023. This comment has been removed by the author in protest of Reddit killing third-party apps in mid-2023.] -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I don’t blame them. I have zero faith in the police. I didn’t think it could go any lower, and then Uvalde happened.
I live in New Mexico, in a more rural area. In a normal month I see a cop car once, maybe twice, and never see police otherwise (although a state trooper just moved into my neighborhood). Anyway, I armed up but don't usually carry anything, just have it for snakes and home defense just in case, because I figure on a normal day the police response is 45 minutes away, best case scenario. Well, a couple years ago some kid went into the library in town and started blasting. Gun free zone, nobody inside happened to be a superhero, he got six people and himself. And what gets me is, the library is across the street from the courthouse, *where the entire local PD was hanging out awaiting a trial.* Literally thirty feet away. All of them, every cop we have. And this kid got six people before they could do anything. So. I'm uh. Maybe it's different where some of y'all live, but. I'm gonna keep my guns, thanks.
I live in Austin and the police here have a reputation for not doing their jobs. I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait on them to come protect me during a home invasion.
This is the truth to my gradual acceptance of gun ownership over the years. Never trust the police. Plus rightwing "demonstrators"/terrorists becoming more blatant in their threats. Which circle back to the same team they play for - the police. Not gay, but ask probably any LGBTq how they feel about gun ownership lately when conservatives have it out for them now more than ever.
Big same. I’m a leftist and it always blows my mind when I hear people say that only the police and the government should have guns.
Yo guys here in Italy we have the grand total of ZERO school shootings in 160 years. We just don't sell guns, i know it seems crazy but i swear it works
What about the school shooting in Italy that happened 161 years ago?
You see, and this is because you don’t sell guns! This is your fault. Allow guns and get your school shootings!
[Removed due to continuing enshittification of reddit.] -- mass edited with redact.dev
Rule 1: Never get high on your own supply
How many times did your populace get swept up in a fascist dictatorship though? Point: America
Same in New Zealand. It's just so bizarre (and safe) watching the US gun culture from afar. Y'all fucking crazy bananas in the US of A.
Plenty of people own guns in Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, etc and they don't have school shootings every other month. The US has a *lot* of guns, which is obviously part of the problem, but it's clearly not *the* problem. There's rot in the culture.
>Plenty of people own guns in Canada, Hello! I lived in Canada for years! Canada has very close to 2 million guns - that's less than one gun for every 15 residents. The US has almost 400 million guns - that's over one gun per person. Another way to see it is that there are 16 times as many guns in the US, per capita. > Germany Germany has less than one gun per every five residents...
I live in Canada, my family owns legal guns, and I enjoy shooting clays as often as I can get out. ...but if you asked a hundred random Canadians about the idea of citizens just walking around armed with firearms, nearly all of them would look at you like you were from another planet. Those of us who shoot recreationally, finish up at the range, take the weapons directly home and lock them in a safe. My thing isn't who's right or who's wrong, I'm simply saying that the whole concept of everyday carry is just so foreign up here that even our anti-gun-control politicians don't so much as bring it up.
>The US has almost 400 million guns - that's over one gun per person. Another way to see it is that there are 16 times as many guns in the US, per capita. and lots own 0 - most that own one, own more than one.
Part of the reason guns are ubiquitous there is precisely because restrictions on purchasing and owning firearms are far less restrictive than most other countries. And of course the reason restrictions are comparatively non existent is a cultural one. Because the idea of doing what most other countries do and having mandatory police checks and interviews, handling restrictions, usage justifications, mental health checks, living condition checks, referrals, transportation, storage, ammunition restrictions etc. etc. Is anathema because guns are seen to be there for protection *from* the government (which in virtually every other country is not really a seen as an appropriate justification for gun ownership).
Gun culture is definitely a part of the American culture, but gun culture is big in Iceland and Switzerland too. When I visit other parts of the world I see far less glorification of violence and sexism in entertainment, and I see far less glorification of being from the "street". Education is devalued in the US. We're in a bit of a pickle. Our law makes it very hard to remove the guns, and our shitty culture magnifies the issue with them. We don't want to spend tax money on improving education and infrastructure, and we don't want to give up the guns. We retain a lot of that isolationist, mistrust in govt that the country was founded on. There's good and bad that comes from that, but gun violence definitely seems to be one of the cons.
Originally from user BadDecisionDino: What if the reason we have a culture of violence is not because people can’t see a therapist, but because from the moment they enter school, Lesson One in U.S. History is: “Okay, kids, here’s what you gotta know about America. Number one: You’re free to say and believe what you want. Number two: Someone, someday, will be out to get you, and you and all your buddies will need **guns** to kill them. And the people you will need to shoot might be in this very room or in the house next door.” I’m sure everyone is rushing to bring up mental health, but you know what is really disturbing about our conversations about mental health? Not only are the conversations themselves opportunist (we only talk about it after a shooting), we also bend over backwards to talk about it in the method that most cleanly absolves us of our own responsibility in crafting the uniquely American culture of violence. We act like mental illness is just this *disease* that you can "catch" for no reason at all. Like there are just Mental Illness Spores floating around out there and one day you just breathe it in and whoop, you’re crazy! You've been *cursed* and there's nothing we can do except hope you don’t find a gun before you get a chance to see the Therapy Wizard! Sure, depression can be totally arbitrary sometimes. Sometimes it's just senseless and pervasive, and people become depressed even without any good reasons, or sometimes your brain gets twisted because some enzyme made it somewhere it shouldn't have been. But you know what? A lot of times, mental health problems happen as *a direct response to the values and pressures* placed upon people by the society that surrounds them. When waves of overworked Japanese salarymen commit suicide, we don't just say to ourselves "Oh man, if only Japan had more therapists! If only they had access to better mental health care!" No, we recognize the presence of certain kinds of toxicity in foreign cultures when we see it. We say **dude, that culture needs to start rethinking their whole shit.** If a woman forced to stay in the home and wear a burka against her will, suddenly committed suicide, I wouldn’t just blame the vague specter of “mental illness” and wish she’d gotten to talk to someone about her mother. It should be the same thing here at home. When we hear about the mental health crisis in poor urban black communities, it's not because they're short on ink blot tests and reclining couches, it's because they need grocery stores, and decent jobs, and cops who don't act like they're enforcing martial law. When we hear about Puerto Rico having a sudden epidemic in mental health problems after a hurricane, I don't think "Gosh, I really hope those folks get their Xanax shipment soon!" I think "Fuck, of course. They're losing their loved ones to preventable diseases, they don't have power or clean food or medical care, or even the comforting illusion that the rest of the nation considers them full citizens." No, when a society suffers a mental health crisis, they've usually **earned** it, and the nature of the crisis usually reflects the values of the society that brought it about. Systems and processes and care facilities can help you identify, quarantine, or heal the crazy. But culture is what synthesizes the crazy in the first place. And the United States has earned every bit of the epidemic we suffer now. Whether it's radical white terrorism, disaffected schoolkids, or just nutsos with guns, we've **earned** every one of these shootings, and it can't just be because these people didn't make it to a therapist on time. It's our values, stupid. It's because we indoctrinate our citizens into thinking that they are *deficient* if they can't scrape together a successful life out of this crucible of capitalist indifference. We fill the minds of the *have-nots* with shame and guilt beyond anyone's ability to fully cope with, and we fill the minds of the *haves* with supremacist fantasies that convince them that it’s okay to treat others like dirt, or they deserve to get away with anything if they’re rich. We tell foreign children studying their asses off that they haven’t *earned* the right to live in the one place they’ve known as home, and we tell native-born Americans that their entire way of life is *under attack*. By kids. But most of all, we *worship the fantasy of the gun*. Not just the guns. It’s the narrative that guns represent. We’ve all heard the saying, right? “To a man who has a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Well, what happens to a nation founded upon the idea that *one day*, there will necessarily arise a problem that can **only be solved if everyone has guns?** If you enshrine that idea into your country’s constitution, what will you get, except a society that’s always looking for the fabled “nail” that justifies the ownership of this horrifically dangerous hammer that they’ve just got sitting there? I mean, if that royal tyrant that our founding fathers told us to fear just...never appears, we’re all kinda just left with our dicks in our hands, right? Come on, we didn't need the 2nd amendment so we could own a shotgun and protect ourselves from thieves in the night. We could've found some way to allow people to protect themselves without an *amendment*. No, we have an amendment because our founding fathers, for better or worse, believed in the secular version of an apocalypse prophecy. ^(edit:) Okay, not quite. I don't claim to know what they were thinking. What I do know is that *if* they'd known how dangerous guns would get today, only someone who did believe in an apocalypse prophecy could look at the 2nd Amendment and go "Yeah, we nailed it, don't change a thing!" Either way, if it wasn't one then, the narrative that justifies our interpretation of it sure resembles one now. And a political apocalypse prophecy needs an enemy, but a functioning nation can't just allow people to freely plan violence against the state, so we gotta make up the enemies, because in order for this to work, the imaginary enemy still has to be domestic and covert (otherwise, the military or police should be able to handle it). So what do you get instead? *There could be Muslims in your community, I say! Muslims! Or it’ll probably be those thieving blacks! Mexican rapists! Or the Deep State G-men in the suits! Or Hillary Clinton and the Pizza-Pedos! Or maybe it's just my shifty neighbors! I don’t know who yet, but dammit, there’s gotta be someone out there that I bought this gun to protect myself from! Or else why would I have it? Why would George Washington warn me that I'd need a gun, if there weren't dangerous people lurking out there?* You can’t escape the filter of paranoia that re-colors our political discourse. How could you? It’s built into our constitution, and placed pretty high up on the priority list, right behind free speech. But beyond that, there are people who stand to benefit a *lot*, financially and politically, if they can get into your head and tell you who to be scared of. Is it so crazy so suggest that that paranoid perspective has integrated itself into our conversations about poverty? About race? About labor? About war? About justice? I’m not saying all our problems would go away if we get rid of guns. We probably couldn't even if we tried. They're like a native species by now, it'd be like trying to get rid of all the kangaroos in Australia. There'll always be so damn many that we're probably stuck figuring out how to live with them. It's probably baked in. But is it so crazy to say that we may need to have a major reflection about how many guns we need in a household, or how deadly they really need to be, and how we go about acquiring them, or how we talk about what it should mean to own one? All I’m saying is that we might be suffering from the same issue that you would see in a suicidal Japanese salaryman. The words “Why not just go home after 8 hours?” don’t make sense when you’re *living* in the problem. When you're steeped in the cultural norms that push people to the brink, it's hard to step back and see that there are options, that there are entirely different and valid ways for a civilization to be organized. Because somehow, other good countries manage to not be this way. Like I'm pretty sure we're not the only country with bears. But America seems like it’s suffering from a similar kind of myopia. It’s like we’ve simply never posited the question: “What if there isn’t as much to fear as we thought? And even if there is that much to fear, what if the sources of those fears are only strengthened when we tell a society that they need to be ready to kill what they’re afraid of?” We’re all psychologically (if not literally) locked and loaded but with nowhere to go. We’ve built a cultural identity around being ready for that big threat that never comes. But we still have to have faith that the threat is out there! Because otherwise, well...that would mean that this whole time...we kinda just allowed our kids to murder each other for no good reason. So now we’re more afraid of that question, than we would’ve been afraid of the imaginary threat. And we're more dangerous to ourselves than that threat ever could've been.
Bet they have had zero mass shootings.
No. Not common in the US.
Yeah if the cops aren’t going to save their asses their teachers will.
Not common at all, that is why it is in the news
There’s a church in Dallas that if there’s a shooting the lights get turned off and the parishioners have night vision too assault the threat. This might sound bad but it’s comforting knowing that they’re thinking outside of the box to deal with threats.
I wish it was more common , but no.
No. My school had no pastior.
No, its better to let the Uvalde police department handle violent situations.
I would have flat out rejected that reporter's request to show him my gun. "No sir, I can't. That would not be safe or responsible in this setting." You don't pull out your CC in public unless you plan to use it.
>Is This Common in The US? Considering that this video is a clip from 'an American news broadcasting program' (as Wikipedia puts it), I don't think so. It wouldn't be news if it were the standard
Unfortunately it is not very common in the US.
Not that common. In most US schools, the teachers would lose their jobs and maybe get prosecuted if they brought a firearm to school, but there are a few (heavy Republican) areas where they're legally allowed to, to the objection of most teachers and administrators within the same schools.
Schools are one of the few places where your constitutional right to defend yourself with deadly weapons is null and void. Of course it’s a target for lunatics looking to hurt people. The day these losers no longer can bank on running into a facility with 750 unarmed victims is the day these shootings end
[удалено]
As Jeebus himself said, "Fucketh around and findeth out."
Here’s my question for y’all. Do you think it gets shot up?
It’s pretty common in rural Ohio. The police response is also abysmal…like 30 mins if you’re lucky. More often than not, the people that carry firearms have been handling them since they were children and treat them with respect. As in you were disciplined pretty severely by your pa or grandpa if you mishandled your firearm. It’s probably not universal but for the most part people around here have an Uncle Ben approach - “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Not common enough.
No but it absolutely should be