Don't carry a gun with Punisher logo on it

In the best case. Worst case is police getting buried in a plot, if they bite the hand of the populace.

Like I tell cops: “If you aren’t accountable, then you are just another armed wacko prowling my neighborhood, and will be treated accordingly.”

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I’m pretty sure most non-white-supremacists would immediately understand why it would be a terrible idea to adopt the “Fightin’ Fascists” as the mascot for their High School sports team.

Maybe that sniper platoon isn’t entirely comprised of people who identify as Neo Nazis, but it’s comprised of people who seem A-OK with using Nazi imagery and that’s not a whole lot better.

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It would be kind of a downgrade after getting used to a bolter.

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I think this video doesn’t go far enough. Don’t modify the gun. A modified trigger could be the difference between self-defense (intentional shooting) and manslaughter (gun went off due to reckless modifications).

Carry a stock gun and conventional factory ammo from a major manufacturer. Anyone who shoots in self-defense is going to be scrutinized for mindset. A punisher skull, or exotic ammo, or a competition trigger, all show a mindset that’s not pure self-defense.

One other point, these days your social media will be scrutinized too. Don’t say anything that indicates desire for violence, being over-prepared (perhaps hoping for it), or statements that any group deserves punishment.

I generally like this lawyer’s basic statements: the jury is going to see it, and there is an aspect of popularity contest. Obviously, best thing for everyone is to avoid these situations from ever happening, but if it does, don’t do anything to make your lawyer’s job more difficult.

This is serious stuff…

It’s worse than simple skull imagery (which, as you say, is pretty bad). It’s skull imagery connected to a fictional vigilante who torturers and murders, combined with the “Blue Lives Matter” reference, and that’s basically just a white supremacy organization. It’s a loud, clear message that they don’t respect the law or the lives of black people.

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My point is, go back far enough in time and the Spartans, who were both authoritarian and nationalistic, were as hated as the Nazis by some people

From what I remember hearing from some other Marines, it was a misguided attempt to reclaim the runes and make it their own. I remember they were reprimanded and the Marine commanders were not having it.

I remember the first time encountering a Swastika “in the wild”. It was on a ring and turned out to be a reverse swastika on Native American Jewelry. Lady at the local antique store was part Indian.Yes the Navajo officially renounced the symbol, but lots of tribes used it, and evidently some still wear it in vintage jewelry. Some times an 88 on a shirt is just a design element. It certainly was a bone head move on the Marines part, but that pics was ~2010 IIRC and we didn’t have Nazis in the streets at the time.

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No doubt, but there aren’t countless people alive today who watched as their families were butchered by the Spartans. Nor are there “Neo-Spartan” Greek Supremacist movements actively committing violent hate crimes across America and elsewhere. Nor did the United States Marines fight a war against the Spartans less than three generations ago.

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Have you met many police? Most of the people I have seen with firearms have been police, and many, many of them would fail these criteria. And not everyone holds them to a easy double-standard.

From what I hear from lefty veterans, the white supremacist rate in the US military overall is about 25%, and it increases as you move from support troops to combat arms. A unit of specialised infantry being dominated by white supremacists wouldn’t shock me at all.

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Not hated like Moose.

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Hear in person or on websites focusing on that population?

Podcasts, Twitter, assorted other things over the years.

Just a general guesstimate, not a formal survey, and using a fairly loose definition of “white supremacist”. Speaking of ideas and attitudes rather than formal membership of an organisation.

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The 70 million US gun owners who claim “self defence” as a reason to own a gun, only manage to kill about 2,000 bad guys per year. On average they’ll be waiting 35,000 years for their day in court.

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“We train young men to drop fire on people but their commanders won’t allow them to write FUCK on their airplanes because it’s obscene.”

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I’d wager that the majority of US gun owners who get in trouble with the law aren’t the ones who actually killed bad guys in self defense.

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Seems pretty blatantly sexist to me. Black or tan is really no less silly. But then juries have the same biases as the public from which they’re empaneled, so I guess there’s a kind of stomach-churning logic to playing to the bigotry of the masses in court.

Trial by a jury of your peers is a lot like democracy. It’s not a good system, it’s just the least worst. I guess the question I’m left wondering is whether there’s a way to make a jury trial less of a popularity contest.

Sadly, no one ever went broke underestimating the American knowledge of basic history. Though they might just as well have simply not cared and thought it made them edgy. :roll_eyes:

One of the pitfalls of being educated is finding it difficult to understand how ignorant most Americans are. Kids don’t join the Marines because they’re whizzes with full-ride scholarships. They’re mostly poor and uneducated cannon fodder failed into joining up by the American prison-education complex.

It only took 70 years to rehabilitate Nazis. /s

You’re not wrong of course, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that fascism started getting “rehabilitated” roughly as there are few still alive with first-hand memories of WWII.

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Its why Holocaust Denial didn’t get its start until the late 1970’s. When older veterans and survivors started dying off from old age. Of course the internet gave it a bit of a revival. One which survived for close to a decade until David Irving tried to silence Deborah Lipstadt with the UK libel laws and failed spectacularly.

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I don’t think they are anywhere near rehabilitated. The problem is the Nazis were both a country (Germany) and an ideology. Man has a very short term memory with both.

Where did the Nazi’s go? Most them just became “Germans” again. Where did the Fascist Italians, Imperialist Japanese, North Vietnamese, or Confederates or even the 1776 British go? It is a bit of a blessing and a curse man is willing to forgive and forget countries they were at war with - as I don’t think it would be a good thing if America retained the animosity for the various countries for too long. I still remember working at the electronics counter and having a guy who didn’t want to look at any “Jap” cameras.

Even though Fascism and Nationalism still exist in the world (and America has had its own issues with it separate from the Nazis), the Nazis are still largely despised as a concept. There has always been some respect for their military tactics which our Military leaders learn or history buffs, or war gamers. There are those who are interested in the technology that they pioneered, such as rocketry. The most dangerous are those who still relate to their ideology, or use it to further push their supremacist agenda. A resurgence that is squashed might be the best thing to keep their memory alive and hated. Remind people why what they stood for was shit.

The reality is, by the end of my life I am probably going to have to remind people why the Nazis were shit for everything except bad guys in movies and video games. How many kids ever heard about “Remember the Alamo!” or “Remember the Maine!” I bet many younger people don’t know about “Remember Pearl Harbor”. Some day “Remember 9/11.” will be something someone has to google, because they don’t know what it is. While there are certainly some like the Daily Stormer who are actively looking to white wash and re-write history, the vast majority of people are simply ignorant.

Already in some parts of the world not directly affected by the war in Europe, Nazis are seen more as curiosities than monsters. It all has to do with the distance from where someone is to their link with someone who cares or was affected.

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Basically. An example interaction of this outdoors forum at work:

  • Someone posts a video of a white guy robbing a gas station where the attendant pulls a gun and shoots them, and they flee.
  • People discuss “Good guy with a gun” for a while (whatever, it’s a fair thing to discuss, no problems here)
  • One guy mulls, “I wonder if he was gay?”
  • I call the guy out on this comment suggesting maybe it’d be nice to shoot gays
  • Guy has a total fucking tantrum meltdown, saying he’s just musing with no particular intent whether the guy is gay
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Thank you for the editing brb notice. I was reading your comment then it vanished. That was funny but also thoughtful of you. :slightly_smiling_face:

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