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Women and LGBTQ+ people take up guns after Trump’s win: ‘We need to protect ourselves’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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It's only a bad idea when the people who want to hurt you aren't armed. Sadly, in America, that's not the case.
Nope, time and again we see law enforcement doesn't work that way for minorities. The same gun laws that protect the majority are used against those in minorities.
Also gives cops an excuse to kill us. Which they often use.
The kind of cop you are talking about is a coward. They are far less likely to harass protesters when they are open carrying.
Cops fearing for their lives is the #1 reason they pull a gun and shoot
It's one thing for them to be afraid you might be armed, and quite another to know you are armed and surrounded by allies who are also armed.
Works for gangs all the time yeah?
Yes actually. It's not immunity from cops, but it protects from general harassment. If the cops want you bad enough then they will get you regardless.
Well yes, and they fear for their lives so goddamn much of the time because they're poorly trained cowards who are used to being the high school bully and the wife beater and never having their authority threatened.
A very american perspective, tbh. From soneone in a country where you're not allowed to carry a gun around as a random idiot, it's so wild to read.
Then again, I also understand that this external perspective has little meaning. You can't magically wish the laws + all those guns away, and like in any arms race you can't be entirely unarmed until you can enact a more permanent de-armament solution later.
It's actually a lot less common for regular citizens to open carry in the US than some might think from US News. It's unusual in a protest, and almost always a far right thing. It has been used effectively by the left, but not at scale in the last 50 years.
The most effective protest movements usually have two approaches going on at the same time, one that threatens violence, and one that is strictly non violent. Non violent movements tend to be ignored until negotiations with them are seen as more favorable than dealing with an armed movement.
Those cops will kill you, armed or not. Less likely, if armed.
For example, see: DFW John Brown Gun Club shutting down cops who were looking to de-home a house less camp, by being armed and present.
That's never been the case. They only need an excuse
I have you an example where it was the case.
Another example are the BPP in Cali back in the day.... the entire reason we have gun control laws in fact.
Well, no. Not the entire reason. California resulted in the Mulford Act in '67 which banned open carry of firearms, but the Gun Control Act of '68 wasn't directly related to it. The GCA was more about commerce in the wake of Kennedy's assassination, because the Carcano rifle that Oswald used to assassinate Kennedy had been bought as mail order. (And note that the NRA was in favor of both at the time; it wasn't until the 80s that the NRA took a hard turn to the right. They used to mostly be about marksmanship and hunting rather than political activism.) (Depending on whether or not 6.5mm Carcano ammunition is manufactured in the US, and isn't readily available in the US, a 6.5mm Carcano rifle might be legally an antique and not subject to the GCA provisions, which is kind of ironic.) One of the effects of the GCA was to ban the importation of small, cheaply made, and readily concealed pistols; those regulations remain in effect today, and pistols that don't pass a fairly extensive checklist can't be imported. The GCA was preceded by the National Firearms Act of 1934, which had originally been intended to functionally ban handguns (which is why short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns are part of the act), but that got stripped out prior to the vote. That's the act that originally made it very expensive to own a machine gun, silencer, SBS/SBR (and still makes it a pain in the ass).
But, to your point, Reagan was the governor of California at the time, and he was a flaming racist (...who concealed it under 'law and order' and 'welfare queen' language), and the Black Panthers being armed freaked him the fuck out. he was responsible for signing the Firearm Owners Protection Act in '86, which did some good things as far as the now-activist NRA was concerned--like making it much easier to transport firearms across state lines--but also banned machine guns produced after 1986 from being transferred to private owners under the NFA of '34.
Really diving into the history of gun regulations and politics in the US is incredibly complicated and dense. There are bad actors on both sides--notably Michael A. Bellesiles and John Lott Jr.--so getting accurate information ends up being really hard.