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The town I used to live in has to have signs in the laundromat to remind people to check their pockets for ammo.
Apparently they’ve had to replace a couple dryers.
You know how old I was when I learned the most important rule of firearms? Five.
I learned it from watching an anime called Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs.
The rule is “the weapon is always loaded, treat it as such”.
When a fucking anime from the 80s has better firearms safety than a boatload of CERTAIN people, something is horrifyingly wrong.
Idiots?
Its easier to paint all gun owners as reckless at best, criminals at worst, when you have dumbasses like this walking around. Truth is, the vast majority of american gun owners I’ve met have been strict followers of the 4 rules. If I ever meet someone who isn’t, they immediately become strangers after I leave the situation. Ill try to correct behavior, but not everyone is receptive. Thats where common sense gun laws would be great to have, like proving competency with a firearm and the safety rules especially, every year if you want a ccw. Unfortunately, the ccw in my state is an online course with 10 questions at the end, and fees and a waiting list to get your physical card. I could (and did, but did not carry until confident with my setup) get this ccw without ever having fired the gun I intend to carry, much less handled it safely.
Also, for people less familiar, if you are ever handed a firearm, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CLEAR IT YOURSELF. Just because someone clears it in front of you, does not make it clear. I dont care if the person field strips it in front of me, the first thing im doing after they hand it to me is clearing it myself.
Gun owners reading maybe? Please be more reponsible/safe with your firearms. Be as safe as you think you should, then be a little safer. There’s countless little things to work on, like not breaching the fire line or responsible clearing before leave line. We all take a huge responsibility when we decide to carry concealed. You have to delete your ego, you can’t be short fused. There’s no room for prejudice, or stupidity. You alone are responsible for what comes out of your weapon, and if the responsibility is shrugged off, tragic things happen that you have to live with. Don’t mess around, stay sharp.
Treat EVERY GUN as if its loaded (imagine that rounds can magically appear if you set it down or take eyes off, because they sometimes do!) Keep your finger off the trigger until ready and safe to fire. (Keep your booger hook off the bang switch!) Do not point your firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy (whether youre firing or not, whether its loaded or not) Fully know your target and all things behind it(bullets have a tendency to keep going)
I dont care if the person field strips it in front of me, the first thing im doing after they hand it to me is clearing it myself.
This kind of attitude is the exact right way to do it when safety is involved. You make it automatic, not a decision. It’s like wearing your seatbelt. It saves you time and energy while producing the best results.
Put another way: Crazy shit happens every day. You make it automatic not because you distrust the person unloading it in front of you. You do it because you shouldn’t trust yourself to be perfectly flawless in life and death situations. You do it 100% of the times that you rationally know for certain that it’s empty, so that you skip the check 0.00000% of the time that some crazy sequence of events quietly creates a dangerous situation.
I’m honestly very anti-firearms, I live in the USA and while I have met young veterans who take good care of their firearms and exhibit excellent discipline, I have met enough dangerous folk waltzing around toting firearms to flex power at best or to carry out violence at worst, (many different walks of life), that I do not want fire arms in the hands of anyone. The state already has a monopoly on violence, thigh high sock wearing lesbians on lemmy, or people who served and choose to own and carry aren’t really necessary. We’d be better off without them as a whole. And violence isn’t the absolute solution some of my peers would make it out to be.
Having observed the state, I do not trust it with a monopoly on violence. Yes, we might be better off without weapons. When we can guarantee that nazism will never, ever rise again, then we may feel free to disarm ourselves. Until then, that seems unwise. After all, ICE is doing most of their work in cities and states with harsh gun restrictions, where it’s safe for them to oppress.
Btw
When we can guarantee that nazism will never, ever rise again
That’s a “never.” Remember like 8y ago when everyone said “it could never happen here?” Well…
I like to think humanity is capable of evolving beyond such stupid ideas. But in the near term it does seem a bit of a long shot.
You can’t really kill most ideas (it seems especially not the bad ones), they just lay dormant for a while, maybe change shape a little, maybe change location, but they come back. Many things in life are cyclical, just like fashion trends coming back in style so do ideas, and unfortunately those are usually not limited by nostalgia.
Unfortunately, even if it did “never come back” we can’t verify that “never” until the sun explodes (assuming that kills all the humans, if we get off planet before that all bets are off) as “never” can only truly be known retroactively.
And tbh, if we did have that utopian world devoid of fascism (all authoritarianism, really) and crime for eternity, guns wouldn’t be an issue anymore anyway to necessitate a ban, at that point fuck it, have fun!
obligatory firearm safety reminder:
- rule one is “keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire”
- rule two is “never point the weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy”
- rule three is “always treat any weapon as though it is loaded”
- rule four is “know your target and what lays beyond it”
only by holding each other accountable can we make sure that everyone stays safe and has fun.
Thanks. I’ve never owned, fired, or even held a gun.
I have no intention to. I knew most of these, but I’m glad to see it officially written out like this.
If I’m ever in the position where I need to handle a gun, I can do so more safely then I would have before.
Good work. Keep that shit up.
Calling a firearm “fun” is already part of the problem
I’m not American, and this kind of absolute is completely unacceptable.
You’re basically fun-shaming.
There’s plenty of stuff that’s universally disliked, like… Idk, murder… But that’s not the whole reason guns exist. Sport shooting, hunting, event target practice, can be lots of fun to people, and they all involve guns, and no person is harmed, if done correctly.
Stop being so hateful.
I don’t even like guns. I’ve never held, nor fired one. And I wouldn’t ever, even slightly, say that there is no “fun” to be had with firearms.
You’re a dick.
You missed the point. Saying that calling it “fun” is problematic doesn’t imply that you can’t have fun, of course you can (I have, a tonne). I assume the above comment called it problematic because they weighed the “fun” of gun owners against 40k dead Americans a year and decided maybe we shouldn’t be focusing on the entertainment.
You can absolutely have more gun control and not really inhibit firearm sports or hunting BTW. The USA ought to have a monopoly on Olympic shooting medals if that weren’t the case 😅
Firearms are fun. Knives are fun. Martial arts are fun. At least to a decently large number of people. That doesn’t mean that their roles in society don’t suck.
One might say that the danger (to people, to society…) outweighs the benefits of allowing target shooting as a sport. Maybe, I’d still disagree, but that’s an opinion we can argue about. We don’t allow people to build their own nuclear reactors for fun, for example. But saying something isn’t “fun” is ignoring that a lot of people perceive the world differently.
A lot of stupid things are “fun” to a huge number of people. Loud cars, street fights, guns… Normal people grow out of it. Just because some adult children still think it’s “fun” doesn’t mean we have to tolerate and allow it.
Disagree. I’m not from the US, so maybe guns being seen as fun is more of a cultural issue in not aware of, but plenty of weapons are seen as fun here in the UK. And while we do have gun crime, I think firearms are seen differently here vs the US.
People will go axe throwing for fun. With Scouts, we shot air rifles on camp a number of times (supervised by people who knew what they were doing). Knife throwing is also a thing. Clay Pigeon shooting is also not uncommon here.
I genuinely believe using a weapon on a (non-living) target is fun for a lot of normal, well adjusted people.
1: Don’t have a gun.
The only rule You really need.
I get your point, but hunting, as a sport, is about as old of a sport as you can get, and for that sport there will always be people who prefer firearms.
At a basic level, firearms really can’t be barred from most countries as a blanket rule for everyone that is never allowed to be broken.
Therefore, firearms exist and people have them. That might not be you, or your neighbor, nor anyone you know, but they exist and people have them.
If you are ever in the rare position of being in the presence of one, and/or the situation where you need to handle one for any reason, would this information not be better to know ahead of time, rather than unknown until that moment?
It’s like first aid, IMO. I’ve known first aid for well over two decades, including CPR and everything. I’ve never needed anything more than how to correctly apply a bandaid. I’m still grateful to know what I know in case I’m ever in a situation that I may need it. That situation might never come, it may never happen. I’d rather know, and never have the need to know, than have the need to know, and not know.
Safety, first aid, anything that keeps people alive, should be universal knowledge. Doesn’t matter if it’s guns, cars, CPR, bandaids, or forklift safety… It’s better to know it, and never need it, than need it, and not know it. Period.
Running is a sport. Swimming is a sport. Football is a sport. Hunting is a game at best. For mentally unwell people.
Oh come on. I get what you are trying to point out, but that is like saying you don’t need to know forklift safety rules, as you will never operate a forklift.
Dude. Forklifts are useful.
Guns are also useful. Especially with the world at its wits end with Nazis
I don’t get America, a place where you can walk around with a weapon that has no purpose other than to cause harm
Some context here: this is almost certainly a gun store, and this is going to be from the check-in station for when people come to jlhave their guns worked on, a holster fitted, or for gun sales.
I used to work an a major outdoors store and we’d have dozens of customer-owned guns come in a day, and we’d find a round in the chamber a few times a year, and we have them hell over it every time. We also had jar of shame like this one.
The worst that I experienced was when I was mounting a scope on a 300 Win Mag. The rifle was checked in up front, made it through 2 salesmen who helped them select a scope, and then to me for the mounting.
I had the customer shoulder the gun so I could find their eye position, got the appropriate mounts, and took the gun to the back and spent some time.mounting everything.
When everything was mounted properly, the optic zeroed with the bore scope (good enough to hit paper at 100 yards), and the gun ready to go I worked the action to check clearance on the bolt and a nickel-plated round was ejected. The guy at the gun check-in had seen the color of the jacket and assumed it was the magazine follower (they’re supposed to che k more thoroughly, and the next 3 of us in line did the same quick visual check and were fooled by the silver color.
My asshole was puckered for a week, and when I reported the incident to the firearm department manager he threw a shifting at everyone involved (including the customer), but let me off easy since I reported the incident and he could see how shaken I was.
But it also was a great demonstration of the importance of the rules of gun safety. Even though we all “knew” the gun was unloaded, there wasn’t any real danger since we all still treated it like it was loaded at all times.
Safety requires multiple layers. With the 4 rules (treat all guns as if they are loaded, do not point the gun at anything you aren’t willing to kill or destroy, be aware of your target and what’s behind your target, and keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire), you can screw up on any 3 of the rules without anyone being injured.
I have a neighbor who appears to be schitzophrenic. He seems to think I hacked his wifi for some reason. He’s threatened me in the parking lot, assaulted another resident, and I have a video of him standing outside my bedroom window in the middle of the night, pointing at it, and swinging a baseball bat. I bought a gun. I carry it when I go to my car or the mailbox or do laundry. Because the cops didn’t do shit and I am not going to get murdered by this motherfucker.
I’ve actually drawn once in a defensive situation. Juvenile mountain lion was curious. I was growling and hissing at it but it kept coming so I drew. It finally turned and I didn’t have to try and kill it.
Peak life experience. I was really lucky to get see one and I’m so glad I didn’t have to shoot it.
That’s the other thing Europeans don’t understand. They drove all their alpha predators extinct centuries ago.
Idk why but you reminded me of this story lol.
I had a neighbor for a while who would walk around talking to himself. The closest I got to him, I was walking to the dumpsters with the trash and he was walking the other way towards me. As I was walking by I nodded and said “how’s it going” y’know as ya do, and he responded with a totally normal “fuck you american you come to africa I kill you yadda yadda.” I laughed and said “Ok you have a nice one too” and everything was cool, but I probably would have been worried if I hadn’t had a gun concealed on me at the time.
Luckily I didn’t have to use it! Closest I’ve got was a different dude who pulled a knife on me and my then-gf in a parking lot in '19. I moved the concealment and grabbed the grip and for some unknown reason he decided to walk away without pressing the issue further. I assume he found someone else to rob, no clue what happened after I bought my groceries and left.
People seem to think gun owners are itching for an excuse to use it. Maybe some are like that, but as for me, and it sounds like you, and the majority I’ve met, well I don’t ever want to put holes in anything that isn’t made of paper. It is reassuring to know that if someone’s going to try and bludgeon me to death I have an option to prevent that though.
You see, we might just need to cause death at any moment, one never knows, there’s too much life around all the time. Someone’s gotta keep that in check.
how do you expect us to protect ourselves from other gun owners?
I can’t tell if this is a joke or you can’t see the irony haha
It’s for killing MAGA. Washington and his friends were worried people would try to create tyranny, so they made sure Americans all had guns to kill the people who do that.
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Then why’d they add “being necessary to the security of a free State”?
Idk if the other guy is right, but it’s not like they would add “to hunt down slaves” instead. So they might have put that to get the whole thing added on.
Right, but if the only way the slavers could get it in was to say it’s for rebelling against tyranny, then it seems like rebelling against tyranny was the important concern.
Also I’ve read the declaration of secession by the confederate states and it was really explicit about slavery being the point. I think they would say it’s for slavery if they thought they could get away with it
It’s wrong… kinda close, but wrong (not slaves - different non-white people). Wondering if a correction gets made.
Take a bullet, leave a bullet
I can’t tell you how many times this has saved me at checkout.
Wow you must encounter some really aggressive cashiers
I dunno about aggressive, they seem pretty courteous to me
Ammmeeeeriiiiicaaaaa
American things.
I’ve had multiple people try and hand me a gun saying “It’s not loaded.” Let me see you clear it, please. I want to see light down that chamber if I’m going to accept that. Some guys get annoyed, but I once failed a gun safety course as a teen because I forgot to ask as the instructor as he handed me one. I will absolutely never forget that going forward.
I taught my kids never to touch a gun unless the owner cleared it in front of them and showed them the empty chamber.
My gun and I are always loaded so I would not be going to that store.
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If you aren’t condition 4 when entering, I’ll meet you at condition 0.
the perspective of this pic makes some of those rounds look like grenades
Imagine living in a place where fire arms are a reality around you and you need constant worry about it.
The american dream.
