Real talk.
Hell, guns are easier to get than ANY form of healthcare in the US, including Medicare.
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But hey. That would be great. These right wing goons aren’t going to just stop threatening people they don’t like. At best their attention might eventually get shifted to someone else for awhile. They NEED an other: Muslims, Immigrants, “Marxists”, etc.
They are already taking statements of protecting/defending people as proof of a violent agenda - which is clearly bullshit. But they were pushing this narrative even before this with the “butchering of childrens’ bodies”.
Example: The flak from Fox News and others over Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan wearing a Protect Trans Kids shirt.
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You know very well that the threats are so dangerous in part because America is a country where anyone can pick up gear enough to shoot up a school and take out anyone who tries to stop them, and nobody even knows if it’s suspicious or just…you know, your ordinary gun lover making their weekly purchases, as apparently one does.
And sorry, but given how you’ve reacted to discussions about the prevalence of guns in the past, your sudden concern for the lives of people affected by them now can’t help but feel extremely hollow.
Sure, maybe trans people do need to start arming themselves now…and as a connoisseur maybe you can even help them decide whether the School Shooter™ or Hidden Murderer™ is better for their escalation needs. Glad you’re on their side, sort of. You can see from these threads how many people aren’t.
But that doesn’t mean guns weren’t a huge part of the problem in the first place, and I’m afraid I don’t have patience for trying to reinvent “everyone should have the right to self-defense aka have enough firepower to kill a small army!” as if it weren’t part of what brought things to this point. This is not your hobby being vindicated, and you don’t deserve to to act like it is.
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Performative, even.
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I hate cisgender people using us to push their agendas.
If we want weapons- we’ll do that ourselves.
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They’ll always find something and never play fair.
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I thought it was kind of fucked up that the videos were released to the public so quickly… not just on Daily Wire, either… it was everywhere a day or two after the shooting.
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You’re focusing on one line when my over arching point was that it doesn’t matter how people protest or resist, they will demonize it.
This goes way beyond my hobby. If you think I feel some sort of vindication because that a segment of the population might actually NEED to defend themselves, you’re mistaken. I have friends whose kids are trans. My cousin is a trans activist in AZ. My GF’s kid is trans and lives in godforsaken Florida, causing endless anxiety. I don’t want any of them hurt.
When I said “defense” I didn’t necessarily mean firearms. There are other means of physical defense (which is why I used that term) that doesn’t include them. But that is besides the point, because the people the right is pushing back against aren’t necessarily armed either, but they are protesting with memes and slogans like the Protect Trans Kids shirt I posted above, the Defend Equality logo, Trans Rights or Else, the Trans Day of Vengeance (which Twitter is not removing from the platform), and others. These are protests, shirts, posters, and digital images, etc., but the right is treating them like material threats. It shows it doesn’t matter how you choose to protest or resist, it’s all going to be be framed that the movement is violent because they dared to push back at all with some aggressive language or images. They will attack the movement using a handful of tragic examples they can point to (ignoring the huge white cis male elephant in the room).
For the trans people who do want to be armed, they are treating each of them as some how unhinged and violent because they dare to post a defense meme - even though the right glorifies such displays. And they are already talking about how “being trans is a mental illness and should prevent you from owning guns”. Or that some one running an FFL would refuse service to a “man in a dress”. Which we can all agree is bullshit.
I’m not telling anyone how to protest or resist - nor that they need to run out and get a firearm (never said that) - my point was it doesn’t matter in their eyes, it’s all the same. You can’t do it a “right way”, like some previous posters were suggesting. (Which is true about anything the right rallies against. They can’t/won’t concede any validity. And in past movements and there are examples of people who were somewhat sympathetic,but say “We agree with your general position, but wish you wouldn’t do XYZ.” Which was less than helpful. )
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Of course I am. So did Melz and Kathy. Why, are we supposed to believe that despite you spending half your time talking about guns and literally naming your account after one, that line happened to sound like a smuggled-in pro-gun talking point by pure chance? Sorry, but that sounds pretty hollow too.
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Semantic chicanery, how nice.
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You might be right, and I’d hope you are.
But you cried wolf too many times, in fact every time, so nobody will believe you now.
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( … it’s a line from a movie about a serial killer )
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Fuck that.
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You’re late to the pile-on, but for some reason, of all my posts, the one where I apologized was deleted.
So again, I’m (not sarcastically) sorry for tone policing. The trans folks can do and say what they want, the fascists should fuck off.
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I think your comment included a response to a now-banned member; one of my replies which @'d that person was also modded.
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Late To The Pile On is my band name. What a weird coincidence.
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Why don’t we reply to what I am actually saying, and not jump on me for what you think I’m saying and making this about me and my previously expressed shit opinions and derailing the thread. I get accused of that enough, I don’t need outside help, and I have tried hard to not do that.
Believe it or not, I try to choose my words carefully, and if I am not explicitly saying something, it is because I am trying to avoid making this about “guns”. I don’t have the bandwidth, spoons, or desire.
But the last line about the “right to defense” is germane to the post. This post was about MTG spreading hate about “Antifa driven trans-terrorism”. She and others are using trans resistance memes and self defense posts as some how “evidence” of “trans-terrorism”. Which I think we all agree is fucking bullshit. And people expressing the opinion that maybe if they just dialed it down a little bit, the right wouldn’t attack them is also bullshit.
Actually, it is from a song by the Electric Hellfire Club that I adopted in the mid-90s based on a Vampire the Masquerade character I played. I didn’t learn until later that it was a nickname the newspapers had given The Son of Sam. I have used this as a handle for the last 27 years and have use it as a pseudonym back when I was writing for magazines. But really, my username isn’t important to the discussion.
Yeah, all the other points are great. That is why, if you cared to read the thread, many other people had already said them. The “one line” we reacted to is also the only thing you actually brought into the discussion.
And sorry, but you aren’t the only one who is scared for loved ones and short on spoons. Expecting everyone to gently give the benefit of the doubt to someone who has spent years advocating for the overabundance of guns that have helped make this crisis over the people they kill is asking a lot. Too much from me. I’m sorry it’s not enough to phrase things cautiously just like someone trying to twist a discussion would but…I’m actually not.
If you get accused of that a lot, maybe you should consider why. But this is a bad time to demand patience for it.
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It is true, I have a ‘right to defense’. But since I know the poachers (we have lots of fish in our pond) carry guns, that means I would be required to carry a gun, locked and loaded, any time I wanted to walk around my own property. And hope that I can draw faster, and aim better.
So in reality, the only ‘right to defense’ I have is to not use my own property and just accept that criminals are using it for their own purposes. Because their freedom is more sacred than my freedom.
Explain that in a way that could possibly make sense to someone like me.
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You know what, I am going to say a right to self defense is inadequate trash for exactly that reason. It basically leaves it so that the strong can do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. We should have a right to communal defense, where we actually look after one another instead of throwing it on everyone to figure it out for themselves.
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