sigh

Alright, what WAS I supposed to take from your post if not “minorities should arm themselves”?

I will also note that you did not initially deny that you had been making such a recommendation.

You heavily implied that people of color, at least, should purchase firearms.

What? When the government tells you what your rights are that’s good and normal, but when a random person tells you what your rights are that’s fascism? Nothing about that makes any sense at all.

God. If you’re this deliberately dense, there’s no point in arguing with you. Enjoy whatever this shit is rattling around in your brain. Blocked.

My recommendation for people to arm themselves isn’t going to encourage to or dissuade anyone from doing so.

Then literally why say it?

they have a right to own them

Yeah, and maybe they shouldn’t. There’s lots of dangerous shit you have no right to possess. Guns should be in that category. And for the record, I don’t believe the government should be sending armed people to enforce shit either.

You sound like my mother.

Smart woman.

Yeah, if I’d literally said, “I speak for us.” All I said was, “You don’t speak for us.” Which is true. I never claimed to be speaking for anyone but myself.

Did I say I spoke for the entire class of people?

Because when you recommend that people arm themselves, you are talking to us too. Mental illness is much more common than you think, and becoming even more common as late capitalism exacerbates the conditions which produce some forms of mental illness. Moreover, mental illness can hit at any time. Someone who showed no symptoms of mental illness before can snap one day and commit suicide or murder their family. When you recklessly recommend that people buy guns, you are increasing the likelihood that someone will commit suicide or homicide, due to mental illness or otherwise.

I didn’t say they weren’t a vulnerable person, merely that even if they were they did not speak for us.

This is not about terminal illnesses. I too support euthanasia. This is about mental illness. The fact is that if more guns are purchased, more mentally ill people will die.

As someone who has attempted suicide many times, I have no idea what you’re talking about. The fact is that if you want to end your life reliably and quickly, guns are your best bet by far. As part of being suicidal, I did intensive research into what the best way to kill myself was. The universal conclusion was guns. My other attempts did not work, obviously, and not for lack of trying. It is much, much harder to kill yourself than most people realize. Besides, statistics show that having a gun in the home significantly increases the likelihood of suicide.

Gas stoves used to be a popular method of suicide. Do you know what happened when they stopped being made? Suicides went down. So yes, the method of suicide IS responsible for suicides. It’s not true that people will just find another method of killing themselves. Suicide is often undertaken on a whim and people who survive attempts often never wind up killing themselves.

As the kind of person who is targeted by rising fascism, I would prefer you did not speak for us. I am firmly against gun ownership. The statistics show that having a gun on you makes you less safe, not more.

People are numbers. Thinking you will be the exception to statistical realities is a fool’s errand. And it would be all well and good if the only people who suffered from the myriad gun deaths in this country were the people who bought the guns, but that’s not the case. They are also endangering their families and neighbors. It is just objectively true that you and the people around you become less safe, not more, the moment you buy a gun.

As someone who nearly killed myself with a gun and was only stopped because I was too depressed to fill out the paperwork to buy one, my life was directly saved by gun control. If I had lived in a state where buying a gun was easier, I would be dead. If I had still been living with my dad who owns guns, I would be dead. And I am part of a hated minority, just like the people you seek to protect. The statisical reality is that people like me are still more likely to kill ourselves with guns than to be killed by bigots, and moreover, that having a gun on you does not protect you from bigots. It only gives them something to take from you and use against you. Adding a gun to a situation only ever benefits the most violent and unhinged person in that situation.

You are statistically much more likely to–accidentally or intentionally–kill yourself with a gun than successfully defend yourself against an attacker. Arming minorities will just result in more dead minorities.

I wish the left (the real left, not corporate Democrats) were half as good at strategy as conservatives are. It’s a shame such brilliance is wasted on the worst people on the planet.

I’m not saying mindfulness can’t have serious benefits. However, I would caution anyone who’s into it to read the book McMindfulness. A lot of the “science” behind it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, there can be genuine drawbacks to it, and it’s often used in unethical ways–like to make CEOs of ruthless companies more able to shove aside their feelings of guilt, or to sharpen the minds of soldiers for killing.

yup. we have to raise hell ourselves, because even the non-queers who nominally support us won’t always fight for us.

i mean, lemmygrad is a tankie hellhole

Thanks for this. Arguing with racists is probably futile, but I continue to do it, and maybe this will help convince–if not the most virulent racists–the casual racists who just need to pull their heads out of their asses.

if MODERATORS are landed gentry, what the fuck does that make rich bastards like him?

why? so the police can get there and stand around staring at the punisher logos on their phones?

i’m not against this, i guess, but it’s just… less than the bare minimum.

Huh. Still not gonna use it lol