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As a European, I fucking fear to go to the USA (the country of school shootings). You just don't know how safe we feel here.
Here, you can only get guns after a training, psychology test, you cannot show it in public, etc.. Or you can get a weak gas something that cannot kill people, but can shoot birds.
It's so crazy. Literally anyone can go to a store and buy one. I no joke saw a store the other day called "Dave's guns" and the logo was the American flag on a cross. Reminds me of a certain quote regarding facism.
It's scary knowing everyone else has guns, however the good news is, everyone on the correct side of history can also buy them..
Honestly working class people should all be educated in basic gun safety. Its pretty fucking simple Things like operating a safety, Checking to see if there is any live ammunition in the chamber, Racking the slide to clear the chamber after removing the magazine, Emptying the magazine. Even field stripping and cleaning/ lubrication of a firearm.(if that’s too much for you just stick to revolvers and bolt action long guns)
But since nixon and reagan(who was the first American politician to push for gun ownership restrictions with support from the NRA via the mulford act after the black panther party was making strides advocating for civil rights by participating in protests open carrying long arms and side arms) Killed American education standards to prevent a highly educated proletariat now a majority of Americans cant even handle basic diy car maintenance let alone know how to use a firearm.
And today neo liberal centrists are the primary definition of what right wing maga morons consider leftists to bewhen in reality true leftists want guns to prevent the fascist takeover of our society we have slowly witnessed and were attempting to warn all of our fellow Americans about despite those warnings going ignored due to ignorant or intentional downplaying.
Or you could try living in a first world country that doesn't live in denial of its gun problem.
There's unfortunately no possible way for the government to solve this issue. They can't go door to door and take people guns. And people won't willingly give them up because then they are vulnerable to attack. It's sadly unsolvable. Higher regulations for new purchases would help but thathat doesn't stop all the existing weapons.
Our gun problem in the usa is a symptom of our problem with deteriorating conditions caused by the deregulation of capitalism. The school Shooting phenomena is not new, it first manifested as the “going postal” phenomenon but now with both parents having to work and kids having shitty support structures because they are being bullied by other kids starved of proper parental guidance/nurturing these kids are getting to their parents guns and taking out their frustrations mostly on people that have bullied them and anyone standing in their way or who did nothing to stop the bullies. It doesnt take a genius to see the reality here. There was a very good documentary i saw in the last decade or so pertaining to the phenomenon.
Asking the government to be a paternalistic nanny state and protect us from Ourselves a short sighted naive way to deal with the issues.
Also most of the guns have concentrated into the hands of fascist sympathizers because democrats have been brainwashed by centrism/ neo liberalism And think its a leftist ideal to want to disarm the nation and let police continue to murder people with impunity and give citizens even less recourse to protect ourselves. And also the economic environment we are in has punished true leftists with abhorrent economic conditions snd most of su struggle to survive and afford housing nevermind be able to afford a $1500+ rifle and ammunition and we just rely on grocers and the industrialized murder industry of livestock to provide our packaged dead animal for nutrition so many are so far removed from reality and if things fell to shit in a revolution most neo liberal’s would not last a month on their own probably even less than that if they have renounced gun ownership and taken up pacifism as their answer for the deteriorating state of western neo liberal Democracy (which lacking economic democracy and blatantly opposed to it is actually an undemocratic class dictatorship)
But keep telling yourself everything will be ok and bow down to accept the bloodless right wing coup the heritage foundation project 2025 authors have planned and has obviously been in the works for the last 4 decades at least.
How about educating people on the dangers of guns AND just prohibit all guns so that gun related violence can finally go down?
How about we dont let the concentration of power skew even more towards the hands of fascists than it already is? I mean it must be nice to live in delulu lala land where we can eliminate guns from society but so long as inteligent people exist and 3d printers are consumer goods (not to mention a thriving black market) there will always be ways around laws. I think the world would be a much better place if the mulford act never passed and if the wild west OK panhandle mentality of everyone has a gun persisted. Disarmjng the working class so that police and bureaucrats more than willing to enrich themselves with bribes from capitalists can be the final arbiters of who should and should not posses the means for self defense is just such idealistic nonsense. The world would be a better place if wall street military and prison industry profiteers were scared of the workers instead of the other way around as we have today.
It's really easy to get a drivers license, yet there are still idiots on the road killing each other and themselves by driving cars. The ones that think they're good drivers are usually the worst.
Educating people on gun safety and giving them reason to believe that they're good with guns... Yes, it's a recipe for having a lot of idiots with guns.
The only gun safety that actually works is not having guns. Guns are designed to kill and that's what they're gonna do when used.
Removing guns from citizens will only allow them to concentrate into the hands of the wealthy, and their militarized forces.
Neo liberalism has failed the working class and parroting the idea that we must restrict peoples freedoms to protect them from themselves is not only dumb its disingenuous and patently false.
If people weren't educated on using cars they would be EVEN WORSE drivers. Also all the restrictive rules on driving like artificially low speed limits actually make it less safe for good drivers.
We killed education standards in this country to make things more conservative and thwarted leftist populism to allow full devolution into authoritarian fascism.
now remind me, did drug prohibition/ restrictions result in decreased supply and demand or did it instead just increase the black market value of these still in demand products while funneling people a majority of which are marginalized poor and working class, into prisons so correctional corporations could siphon tax dollars into their profits and simultaneously profit off of legalized slave labor? How will restrictions on gun ownership be any different?
More people die from Vehicular manslaughter every year than guns, should we further restrict automobile use?
concentrate into the hands of the wealthy, and their militarized forces.
They already have weapons incomparable to those of civilians and also have resources to produce much more. Try to fight with military of any reasonably strong country with all the millions of guns of US citizens lol. This is such a bogus claim.
Yet why was the US military unable to gain a decisive victory in north korea, Vietnam, or afghanistan? To name just a few instances where the level of military capability didn't do enough to combat the will and resilience of the indigenous population.
I would rather die fighting against fascists than lay down my rights and submit to class dictatorship in a wage slave hellscape that isnt even worth living and participating for.
If you want to compare guns to drugs, then consider that legal drugs prescribed by a doctor are generally safe and that the prescription in small quantities hinders people from doing stupid stuff with it. You can't compare drug abuse of illegal drugs to legal firearms. That is better compared to illegal firearms. Of course people do crazy stuff with illegal drugs and guns with or without education.
Maybe Americans need to have a prescription for ammo.
Iinstead of banning guns, which is impossible with all the existing guns, how about limiting ammo, so that people can still get a few rounds if they need to use their legal firearms to shoot rattle snakes or whatever the fuck they realistically need legal guns for.
You don't know a thing about harm reduction then if that's the analogy you're choosing.
Limiting people’s access pushes them to the black market.
We are at the point of full fledged fascist authoritarianism in america and neo liberals still want to take guns away from the workers. Man you all really guzzled down the corpo kool aid.
There are 400 million guns in America.
Exactly 0 of them has been used to take down the fascist regime.
How many guns were used by African Americans before and after reconstruction? Do you not know the history of the civil rights movment and the black panther party using guns to advance their anti fascist cause?(something that even the NRA detested and so chose to support the disarming of the working class) did you know the two biggest growing demographic of gun owners today are colored women and LGBTQ people?
Also it goes without saying that we haven't had a leftist uprising since leftism has virtually been erased From the chat since the 1980’s and supressed to the point that most people believe neo liberal right leaning centrists cosplaying as leftists and believing that ballot box socialism/reform is actually a plausible way to remedy a system Entirely corrupted by corporatists. But right now we are definitely at a precipice where we are closer than ever to a class war and i would rather die in the furtherance of that cause than be provided some half ass sense of security through the deprivation of my civil right to own a firearm. I personally am sick of this consumerist capitalist hellscape we’ve had beaten over the head our entire lives as the only way a civilized society should function while we produce disposable useless consumerist garbage, waste 1/3 of all food produced that isnt sold for a profit to make billionaires even richer while enough homes and apartments sit empty to provide ebery homeless person over a dozen homes,
In the words of Marx “any attempt to disarm the workers should be frustrated, by force if necessary”
So, do you think there's a realistic chance of a violent leftist rebellion now?
Ill answer your question by pasting someones comment i read today in a post in r/technology that briefly made it to r/all before mods removed it. The post was about reddit’s response to the wide spread luigi mangione support and it was someone posting a response to an AI prompt on GROK3 and I think it provides a good image of where we are as a society and where this will lead us in the hopefully not too distant future.(the sooner the better IMO)
I think if you ask an AI they'll tell you.
Here's what Grok told me a couple weeks ago:
here is Grok 3's unexpurgated take:
(Me) Assuming that the billionaires solidify their control of the US government past the point that the people can ever have a say in what happens anymore and voting becomes irrelevant, what ultimately happens after the system is completely controlled by the 0.001%?
If billionaires were to solidify control over the U.S. government to the point where democracy effectively collapses and the public has no meaningful influence, the outcome would likely be a slow but steady transformation into an oligarchic system—think a modern feudalism with extra steps. Power would concentrate in the hands of a tiny elite, maybe a few dozen families or individuals, who’d use their wealth to dictate policy, law, and resource distribution. History gives us some clues: when unchecked elites run the show—Roman patricians, Renaissance merchant-princes, or even post-Soviet oligarchs—things tend to follow a pattern.
First, you’d see the economy morph into a machine that funnels wealth upward even faster. Tax structures, labor laws, and regulations would tilt hard toward protecting the 0.001%—no more pesky antitrust enforcement or worker protections. Corporations owned by these billionaires would dominate, merging with the state in a kind of gilded fascism. Think monopolies on steroids, where dissenters get crushed not by jackboots but by algorithm-driven blacklists and financial ostracism. The middle class would erode as wages stagnate and automation (owned by the elite) displaces jobs, leaving a stark divide: a small aristocracy and a sprawling, dependent underclass.
Society wouldn’t stay quiet forever, though. People don’t just shrug off losing their voice—they simmer, then boil. Without voting as an outlet, unrest would grow. Protests, riots, maybe even low-level insurgencies could pop up, especially as inequality becomes unbearable. The billionaires would counter with surveillance tech and private security forces—Blackwater 2.0, but with drones and AI. Public education and healthcare would likely wither, keeping the masses less capable of organizing or resisting. Propaganda would ramp up too, probably through media they own, painting their rule as inevitable or benevolent.
Long term, it’s unstable. Absolute control sounds nice if you’re at the top, but it breeds resentment and fragility. The 0.001% might fracture internally—power-hungry elites often turn on each other when there’s no external threat to unify them. Or some black-swan event (climate disaster, tech breakthrough, foreign interference) could disrupt their grip. If the system gets too rigid, it might just collapse under its own weight, like a top-heavy empire—think Rome 2.0, but with better Wi-Fi. Alternatively, they could pull off a dystopian win, keeping the masses pacified with bread, circuses, and VR headsets while they sip champagne in fortified enclaves.
No crystal ball here, but the vibe would be a mix of The Hunger Games aesthetics and Gilded Age vibes—opulence for the few, quiet desperation for the rest, and a slow burn toward either revolution or resignation. What do you think—would people fight back hard, or just adapt to the new normal?
(Me again) In the scenario you just described, what happens to the billionaires themselves after society collapses?
Once society collapses under the weight of their control, the billionaires’ fate hinges on how well they’ve insulated themselves and how the collapse plays out. They’ve got resources—money, private security, bunkers, offshore havens—so they’re not exactly scrambling for scraps right away. But they’re not invincible either; a societal breakdown cuts both ways.
If it’s a chaotic free-for-all—think riots, infrastructure failure, and armed factions—they’d likely hole up in fortified compounds or flee to places like New Zealand or private islands they’ve already bought. They’ve got the means: private jets, loyal mercenaries, and stockpiles of food and fuel. Some might even have tech-driven mini-cities ready, with solar grids and hydroponics to ride out the storm. For a while, they’d live like post-apocalyptic kings, surrounded by guards and sipping vintage wine while the world burns. But isolation has limits. Supply chains, even private ones, erode in total chaos. Their staff—pilots, security, engineers—might turn on them if loyalty fades or desperation kicks in. A pissed-off ex-employee with a gun and a grudge could unravel their little utopia fast.
If the collapse spawns organized resistance—say, a coalition of pissed-off citizens or a rogue military splinter—they’d face bigger threats. Billions don’t buy immunity from a determined mob or a drone strike. History’s littered with examples: French aristocrats thought their chateaus were safe until the guillotines rolled out. The billionaires might try to negotiate, offering resources to warlords or new power players, but trust would be thin. They could end up as bargaining chips, ransomed, or just eliminated as symbols of the old regime.
Internally, they’d probably start eating each other too. With no common enemy left to unify them, rivalries would flare. One billionaire’s private army might raid another’s compound for dwindling resources. Alliances would shift, paranoia would spike, and their little oligarchy could fracture into a survivalist soap opera. Think Game of Thrones, but with fewer dragons and more Teslas.
Longer term, if society rebuilds, they might try to reinsert themselves as saviors—funding reconstruction, playing philanthropist to rewrite their legacy. Some might pull it off, especially if they’ve hoarded critical tech or knowledge. Others could fade into obscurity, their wealth meaningless in a world that’s moved on. Worst case, they’re hunted down by a new order that sees them as the root of the mess.
So, post-collapse, they’d either cling to power as warlord-lite figures in their gilded cages, get taken out by betrayal or vengeance, or slink away to obscurity if the world resets. Depends on how ruthless they stay and how much the rest of humanity cares to chase them. What’s your take—would they outlast the chaos or get swallowed by it?
Continued:
Its like people are Soooooooo fucking close to seeing the reality of our society for what it has become but so many continue to cling to a delusional ideal of American exceptionalism and the integrity of neo liberal western democracy that has for anyone with a functioning brain, ceased to exist since at least the 1980’s or very likely since the mass assassinations of left wing civil rights and political leaders in the 1960’s like maybe the second half of the prompt hasn't become reality yet but the first half is spot on. It is just like that scene in sacha baron cohen’s the dictator where he goes on a tangent about why do american’s hate dictatorships so much and then describes what american would look like in a dictatorship and pretty much describes exactly what America has increasingly become i the last 5-6 decades
If you noticed and have been paying attention to society and reading between the lines you can see we are already well beyond the first half of this AI assessment having happened Like we are so close to where we need to be but so many people have been immobilized by poverty and continuing the motions of paycheck to paycheck existence that they really cant stand up behind the scenes and so many others have bought the koolaid and think that a system that has been completely compromised by corporatism and money will allow for self remediation through the same system while they simultaneously ignore the fact that the democratic party actively works to thwart any policy movement to the left and ultimately neo liberal western democracy actively fights against the implementation of economic democracy which makes it a defacto class dictatorship. Too many of us have been conditioned so thoroughly and insidiously that they cant tell the difference between real journalism and corporate propaganda masquerading as journalism with integrity. And then anyone who points out the most likely reality of the situation is called a conspiracy theorist and leftist leaning explanations that substantiate any collusion by the ultra wealthy and are deemed “conspiracy” are considered lunacy but now the right has coopted this mistrust of authority to empower itself and weaponized it to the complete opposite end of the spectrum that leftists calling out abuses of power who first brought this type of diabolical over reach by the ultra wealthy to light did in the days before the internet and modern PR tactics that aim to discredit anyone who aims to speak truth to power. The world has become a bizarro upside down land but i think the same old tricks that corporatists/ capitalists have been using now since the 1990’s (and really even before then) are becoming obvious and class consciousness is at a level Of main stream acceptance that we have never seem before since the advent of the information super highway at least.
It may take more time but things are getting where they need to be and removing the right of regular people to obtain firearms will be a step in the wrong direction and serve to push the precipice of revolution further down the road possibly decades or even a century or more.
I went through the comments, and I'm still lost. What is the punchline here? Is a long string of bad gun safety decisions by multiple people funny, or am I completely missing the joke?
I know how to be safe, suggests unsafe thing.
That's not safe! Does even worse thing.
Pretty standard joke setup.
PoorlyDrawnLines comics are like that, they're silly and simple. I've seen better ones, this just happened to be recent
What I found slightly funny about this one was that 'shooting all the bullets out' is how it works in games if you want to make a weapon useless
Yes. "Stop! That's a bad idea" followed by an even worse idea. That's the twist.
Next comic: sprinting with scissors
Wait! Stop! That's dangerous.
Throw the scissors to your destination first. You don't want to be running with scissors.
I have a little bit of a story in gun safety.
I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.
When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”
This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.
To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.
But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.
This is why you
A) Don't have live ammo on set at all,
B) Don't touch a real gun capable of firing real bullets unless you know how to (or have someone to instruct you on how to) do so safely with that firearm.
C) All guns are always loaded.
D) Never point your muzzle at anything you're not willing to destroy.
E) Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot
F) Know what is in the foreground and background of your shot.
G) Don't be the producer of the show letting all this unsafe shit happen
H) Don't say "I'm just an actor, I can't be expected to learn" as a piss poor excuse. I taught an 18yo kid (new employee) the safety rules last week and he got it, you telling me some kid is just smarter than any actor other than Keanu Reeves? No, Baldwin didn't want to learn, and this is what happens. Guns aren't toys and shouldn't be treated as such even between shots on a set.
But most importantly, don't hire scabs. The union armorer staff walked off the set of Rust due to repeated safety violations. Instead of fixing the issues, management hired unqualified scabs and continued.
I had heard that but went looking for a source and was never able to find one, so I didn't include it, would you happen to have one? (I hope you do, I'm not trying to be a dick I want to save it to my bookmarks.)
The camera crew walked out over gun safety. I'm not seeing anything about the armorer yet, so I may have misremembered.
Still something, thanks!
With today's video technology, I don't see a reason to use real guns that can fire real bullets at all on movie sets. A realistic looking replica should be enough. Anything else can be added in post (like sounds or flashes) or acted (like recoil). It could have a mechanism to shoot empty shells out the side or otherwise behave like a real gun for everything other than being able to fire bullets or blanks (which can also be dangerous, though perhaps a blank shooting gun could be designed to mitigate those dangers).
There are reactions to a weapon firing right next to you that are very difficult to fake, they are extremely loud after all.
Movies where everything is done in post just lack a sense of drama.
I agree. And those blank firing guns already exist and would be mostly fine, the dangers are already pretty low especially for semi-autos which require a barrel plug to cycle with blanks, revolvers however do not. The dangers with blanks are often overstated because of a misunderstanding of what happened to Brandon Lee, IRL they could potentially hurt you if the little bits of brass from the crimp hit your eye, which would totally suck but you'd live, or if the barrel is too close the pressure could kill you (but like, we're talking execution style to the temple here, 3ft+ of distance mitigates the pressure dangers). They'd still be a little dangerous but nowhere near live rounds lol.
(What happened to brandon lee is a bullet got stuck inside the barrel and nobody noticed, and then a blank pushed it out when fired. That's a whole 'nother thing, and the armorer in that case fucked up a completely different way making props which anyone with a lee press and a flat punch could have done safely, that one was squarely on him.)
Yeah, I was thinking of Brandon Lee, but also In Burgess, though that one was a part of the movie rather than a filming accident. It's a great movie and that scene is my favourite in the movie.
Tap for spoiler
A couple set up the MC with a seduce, bring him back to her room where the other guy steps out with a gun to rob him scheme. Only the MC takes the gun from the guy, who is scared for a second until he remembers it was only loaded with blanks and charges the MC, thinking blanks == harmless, but then gets a blank pretty much point blank to the face and gets blinded.
That scene taught me that even blanks shouldn't be fucked with like toys.
Funny story, I have that on dvd somehow, but have never watched it lol.
Yeah a point blank blank (lol) can definitely cause serious problems, but a few feet back and it's "safer" (though really you should still have eye protection, and it's still not something I'd do without a multimillion dollar movie contract, of course. Don't try that at home lol) but they're safe enough for movies assuming no live rounds on set and no "brandon lee accidents", but yeah still not "toys," it's like working with power tools, you can hurt yourself or others being dumb so don't.
Remember kids, video games love to teach you about how cool guns are but never teach you how to safely handle them.
On a serious note, if you find a gun and you don't know how to handle it safely, don't even pick it up.
It's wild to me that there's a place on earth with a chance of just randomly finding a gun lying around
To take this a bit further: don’t touch it at all. You don’t know where that gun has been or what it’s done. If you touch it, you become a suspect in whatever crime was committed.
I don’t typically advocate for this, but in this case, call your local LEO and move away from the weapon. But make sure nobody else (kids especially) don’t come grabbing it up after you.
If necessary, shoot anyone trying to approach the gun. /s
That's silly, you shoot them BEFORE they approach the gun as a deterrent for maximum safety.
I'm learning so much about gun safety!
If you find a gun, Chekov's Law says you need to use it.
You could also not do it, and prevent the world from ever reaching the third act
Too late for that, I suspect.
Not the worst idea
