Remember when that motorcycle backfired in NYC after the shootings? Good Guy With a Gun is the theory that the proper response to that would be for some terrified bystanders to fire potshots toward the noise.
That's silly, no it's not. I don't support GGWaG generally but nobody who does support that is going to condone "firing potshots towards the noise."
They're imagining a Sutherland Springs style Good Guy intervention where a trained civilian showed up, but that ignores that the guy got there way too late - 40+ people were already shot - and that having an armed civilian intervention is not possible for every mass shooting
Criticize it on its merits, we don't need to lie about their position and say "lol they want to cast magic missile at the darkness"
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Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
Remember when that motorcycle backfired in NYC after the shootings? Good Guy With a Gun is the theory that the proper response to that would be for some terrified bystanders to fire potshots toward the noise.
That's silly, no it's not. I don't support that generally but nobody who practices is going condone "firing potshots towards the noise."
Yes they are, because, if you dont open fire within like 30 seconds then your suicidal gunman has already got off like a half magazine worth of shots, and has already concluded the deadliest phase of the shooting in all shootings other than a school shooting. In addition, your counterfire is now disrupted by a terrified crowd who is trying to flee.
I think coming up with good-guy-with-a-gun fantasies is a response that allows people to feel more comfortable because they feel like guns increase their ability to control something that scares them. I can understand it, but it's a response that increases measurable harms in exchange for a really bad coping mechanism. It also prevents you from actually helping folks, because actually engaging with the structures around you that need changing isn't as cool as pretending to be an action hero.
I don't think of it so much as good guy with a gun, more that social awareness that a group is armed provokes caution amongst those that would victimise that group. Home defence is not a concern for most but it is definitely a concern for BLM activists in small towns in the rural South with local White Supremacist groups.
Except of course, it doesn't. What it does provoke is attacks like Las Vegas, where the shooter attacked the crowd at range from an elevated position. If it even does that. And in the long term what it provokes is people buying more guns, using them for defence and killing bystanders through walls etc.
Guns are bad. They are dangerous, and require accountability and careful judgement before they are used. The police shouldn't carry them by default, let alone the public.
I agree. But guns don't seem to be going anywhere in the US. As I said, in the mean time, it seems justifiable.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Remember when that motorcycle backfired in NYC after the shootings? Good Guy With a Gun is the theory that the proper response to that would be for some terrified bystanders to fire potshots toward the noise.
That's silly, no it's not. I don't support that generally but nobody who practices is going condone "firing potshots towards the noise."
Yes they are, because, if you dont open fire within like 30 seconds then your suicidal gunman has already got off like a half magazine worth of shots, and has already concluded the deadliest phase of the shooting in all shootings other than a school shooting. In addition, your counterfire is now disrupted by a terrified crowd who is trying to flee.
see my edit, please, I had made it before your post but mobile ate it and I had to repost.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
The rules for how to govern a civilized society are different from the rules on how to survive in a totalitarian or failed state, and it is debatable where on the scale the United States currently sits. Where you fall on that question often depends on your race and income, and that means that a lot of people are right to respond to a breakdown in order and rise in fascist militias by becoming a hard target.
For an example of how and why this works and doesn't in the U.S., look at the Los Angeles gangs. The older African American gangs can directly trace their lineage back to self-defense societies formed in the 1940s to defend black communities against groups of rednecks and cops who would ride around beating up whoever they could find. By arming, they managed to eliminate the freelance racist beatings and force the LAPD to come into their neighborhoods in force. The self-defense groups also ended up creating the divisions that have led to decades of low-intensity warfare, and provided an avenue to mass market cocaine and heroin products to black America.
You see the same trends with groups like the Sadrists in Iraq or the Kurds - armed self-defense is necessary in the presence of a hostile state or general lawlessness. It's also far inferior to a civil society where the police and courts are not corrupt, and armed groups of racial supremacists commit violence regularly in the face of allied or indifferent authorities.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Like I very much am pro gun control and always have
But recently I have been somewhat moved on the topic. Maybe some people do need guns for social protection; people who are the targets for mass shootings, and lynchings, and being beaten to death. LGBTQ communities, hispanic communities, african american communities, and their allies. If ICE are going to kick their way into your house and illegally deport you, then maybe they'll think twice if they know you and half a dozen friends are over with AR-15s. They no longer have the confidence that they hold the monopoly on violence in the exchange.
This has been part of leftist praxis in places where they can genuinely expect violence for a long time. And in the US right now, it isn't illegal. I'd prefer it to be illegal and unnecessary but...
I was a gun abolitionist until they started coming into progressive cities with the intent of committing violence. It's probably not good enough for the Penny Arcade Tribunal here, because it's stuff I hear from other medics and I've seen; I was not joking when I said there are small gangs of fascists stalking people of color after dark. My friend that taught me street medicine treated a gut wound from a knife after Patriot Prayer was in Berkeley in 2017. It wasn't reported because the person it happened to needed to avoid law enforcement for reasons, and even when these incidents are reported it's usually as one-off violent robberies; not a hate crime. If they're already coming into our cities and maiming and murdering people after dark, and into our local event spaces to try to intimidate us out of organizing, and have been firing shots at our organizing spaces and committing spree shootings everywhere from places of worship to the grocery store; what makes you think they'll voluntarily disarm? What can possibly slow them down besides presenting a hard target?
I'm asking sincerely, I don't like the answers I've arrived at and the work I do these days; but I see it as incredibly necessary. Because people I care about are dying already and I don't see gun control fixing it at this juncture. Again, look at how many weapons have been turned in in New Zealand.
It's completely true that there are already a huge number of guns on the streets and in the hands of bad people. It's also true that removing all those guns is hugely problematic, maybe impossible. However, the number can be reduced. The first step is slowing the flow of guns into the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
I think coming up with good-guy-with-a-gun fantasies is a response that allows people to feel more comfortable because they feel like guns increase their ability to control something that scares them. I can understand it, but it's a response that increases measurable harms in exchange for a really bad coping mechanism. It also prevents you from actually helping folks, because actually engaging with the structures around you that need changing isn't as cool as pretending to be an action hero.
I don't think of it so much as good guy with a gun, more that social awareness that a group is armed provokes caution amongst those that would victimise that group. Home defence is not a concern for most but it is definitely a concern for BLM activists in small towns in the rural South with local White Supremacist groups.
Except of course, it doesn't. What it does provoke is attacks like Las Vegas, where the shooter attacked the crowd at range from an elevated position. If it even does that. And in the long term what it provokes is people buying more guns, using them for defence and killing bystanders through walls etc.
Guns are bad. They are dangerous, and require accountability and careful judgement before they are used. The police shouldn't carry them by default, let alone the public.
I agree. But guns don't seem to be going anywhere in the US. As I said, in the mean time, it seems justifiable.
But it's not because the guns literally make the people and communities who buy them less safe. The BLM activist is more likely to kill themselves or their children in an accident than save their own lives. And the only way it can possibly be effective at defence is if the BLM activist is a public advocate for gun ownership and is known to own guns, which will then cause more people around them to purchase guns in imitation of the well known figure. So even if the activist is careful, selects only firearms fit for home defence purposes (shotguns loaded with light shot) and trains regularly while keeping a stringent gun safe culture at home, her imitators won't, and she will still cause more deaths than she prevents.
Good guy with a gun is a myth even if it's from your allies.
Part of that is because of the statistical unlikelihood that preparedness and opportunity will ever intersect.
So, because it was a speficic ally, whose mind was definitely not changing, I was feeling out the possibility of how to persuade everyone agree to disagree with his life choices and move on before all *gestures* that happened.
Cops should not be excluded from the "no good guys with guns" argument because they exhibit all the worst qualities of good guys with guns
Which is why cops should not be armed for 90% of their duties. Just like in the UK. Body armor, patrol in pairs, and batons only. If you need guns, you send for a rapid response squad who knows what they are walking into. A gun is useful when combined with a plan and foreknowledge of what is happening. Which is why you use them cautiously and never in the heat of the moment.
Y'know, I decided to actually look into the history of gun control. The commonly repeated bit about gun control only being a thing because of the Black Panthers is based on one state law in California, which was indeed enacted due to racist fear of Black Panthers open carrying around police. It was also during a time prior to the NRA's co-option by 2A absolutists, which happened a decade afterwards. On a federal level, the major gun control laws (that restricted gun rights rather than protecting them) are all in the wake of political assassinations (notably of JFK and MLK Jr) and targeted towards common sense gun control. It's definitely true that these laws were later unevenly enforced, but that's just true of our racist society and how we model police action. The core issue being: police suck, but that's for another thread. Gun control itself is not inherently grounded in racism, despite the leftist argument for it being so.
Maybe I'm incorrect in this assessment but this is what I found after having realized I had never actually fact checked the Black Panther thing.
Cops should not be excluded from the "no good guys with guns" argument because they exhibit all the worst qualities of good guys with guns
The problem is that "good guy with a gun" actually means something specific. It's a phrase used as part of a specific argument with a specific meaning and it's "armed bystander". Because the whole point is to justify an armed populace by saying that they will prevent gun violence by shooting the people perpetrating it.
Cops should not be excluded from the "no good guys with guns" argument because they exhibit all the worst qualities of good guys with guns
The problem is that "good guy with a gun" actually means something specific. It's a phrase used as part of a specific argument with a specific meaning and it's "armed bystander". Because the whole point is to justify an armed populace by saying that they will prevent gun violence by shooting the people perpetrating it.
The fact they aren't a cop is also a distinction of critical relevance to them when the uniforms eventually arrive looking for an armed suspect.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
edited August 2019
The unfortunate answer is that violence against white supremacists isn't violence, it's self defense. And rooting white supremacists out of your community is, in my opinion, a moral necessity, and should be done by any means necessary. Legislation will not solve the issue because white supremacy doesn't threaten the state apparatus in America at all.
Nazis and white supremacists should be afraid to be in public. I ain't seen Richard Spencer around in a while! Milo Yiannopolous sure did drop off the map, didn't he? Violence is the only language fascists understand and they're also frightened and weak-willed cowards, hence the fascism and the servile wretchedness. This is what people mean when we say "punch Nazis." Because it fuckin works.
Spencer and Milo were more "deplatformed" than punched off the stage.
Spencer got to be on goddamn CNN a month ago.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Via concentrated and aggressive, active resistance movements. Antifa didn't show up at Berkeley singing kumbaya, they showed up ready to fucking start fires and smash fascists in the teeth and it worked. And it just worked again in Portland.
If fascism could be defeated by logic and reasonable debate it would have been in the 30s. Spencer is literally afraid to go out in public without security. Milo Yiannopolous can't go to public restaurants. These are Good Things.
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That's silly, no it's not. I don't support GGWaG generally but nobody who does support that is going to condone "firing potshots towards the noise."
They're imagining a Sutherland Springs style Good Guy intervention where a trained civilian showed up, but that ignores that the guy got there way too late - 40+ people were already shot - and that having an armed civilian intervention is not possible for every mass shooting
Criticize it on its merits, we don't need to lie about their position and say "lol they want to cast magic missile at the darkness"
Yes they are, because, if you dont open fire within like 30 seconds then your suicidal gunman has already got off like a half magazine worth of shots, and has already concluded the deadliest phase of the shooting in all shootings other than a school shooting. In addition, your counterfire is now disrupted by a terrified crowd who is trying to flee.
I agree. But guns don't seem to be going anywhere in the US. As I said, in the mean time, it seems justifiable.
see my edit, please, I had made it before your post but mobile ate it and I had to repost.
For an example of how and why this works and doesn't in the U.S., look at the Los Angeles gangs. The older African American gangs can directly trace their lineage back to self-defense societies formed in the 1940s to defend black communities against groups of rednecks and cops who would ride around beating up whoever they could find. By arming, they managed to eliminate the freelance racist beatings and force the LAPD to come into their neighborhoods in force. The self-defense groups also ended up creating the divisions that have led to decades of low-intensity warfare, and provided an avenue to mass market cocaine and heroin products to black America.
You see the same trends with groups like the Sadrists in Iraq or the Kurds - armed self-defense is necessary in the presence of a hostile state or general lawlessness. It's also far inferior to a civil society where the police and courts are not corrupt, and armed groups of racial supremacists commit violence regularly in the face of allied or indifferent authorities.
It's completely true that there are already a huge number of guns on the streets and in the hands of bad people. It's also true that removing all those guns is hugely problematic, maybe impossible. However, the number can be reduced. The first step is slowing the flow of guns into the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
But it's not because the guns literally make the people and communities who buy them less safe. The BLM activist is more likely to kill themselves or their children in an accident than save their own lives. And the only way it can possibly be effective at defence is if the BLM activist is a public advocate for gun ownership and is known to own guns, which will then cause more people around them to purchase guns in imitation of the well known figure. So even if the activist is careful, selects only firearms fit for home defence purposes (shotguns loaded with light shot) and trains regularly while keeping a stringent gun safe culture at home, her imitators won't, and she will still cause more deaths than she prevents.
Part of that is because of the statistical unlikelihood that preparedness and opportunity will ever intersect.
So, because it was a speficic ally, whose mind was definitely not changing, I was feeling out the possibility of how to persuade everyone agree to disagree with his life choices and move on before all *gestures* that happened.
C'est la vie, I suppose.
Which is why cops should not be armed for 90% of their duties. Just like in the UK. Body armor, patrol in pairs, and batons only. If you need guns, you send for a rapid response squad who knows what they are walking into. A gun is useful when combined with a plan and foreknowledge of what is happening. Which is why you use them cautiously and never in the heat of the moment.
Maybe I'm incorrect in this assessment but this is what I found after having realized I had never actually fact checked the Black Panther thing.
The problem is that "good guy with a gun" actually means something specific. It's a phrase used as part of a specific argument with a specific meaning and it's "armed bystander". Because the whole point is to justify an armed populace by saying that they will prevent gun violence by shooting the people perpetrating it.
The fact they aren't a cop is also a distinction of critical relevance to them when the uniforms eventually arrive looking for an armed suspect.
Nazis and white supremacists should be afraid to be in public. I ain't seen Richard Spencer around in a while! Milo Yiannopolous sure did drop off the map, didn't he? Violence is the only language fascists understand and they're also frightened and weak-willed cowards, hence the fascism and the servile wretchedness. This is what people mean when we say "punch Nazis." Because it fuckin works.
Spencer got to be on goddamn CNN a month ago.
If fascism could be defeated by logic and reasonable debate it would have been in the 30s. Spencer is literally afraid to go out in public without security. Milo Yiannopolous can't go to public restaurants. These are Good Things.
Milo ha dsome "oops, we are fine with a ton of things but pedophilia is a bit too far for us fascists" from what I remember.
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Thanks for the opinions about gun control, guys. Five thread kicks, a temp ban and a lot of time and energy. Hurray.
Geth, close the thread.
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