::: spoiler It’s The Beaverton. :::
What happened to all the conservatives upset about their gun rights? The vast majority are a bunch of hypocritical bootlicking cowards. They want an authoritarian master.
Turns we’ve been misinterpreting their “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan. We all assumed it meant the person didn’t want the government infringing on people’s rights.
Turns out they just meant “Don’t Tread on Me but feel free to tread on anyone else - even if they look like me or are doing things I support, that’s fine as long as it’s not actually me me.”
That’s probably too long to write on a flag though. So honest mistake. /s
“But why was he legally carrying his registered firearm?” is the new “But what was she wearing?”
Afraid the NRA will start pushing back seriously if (when?) they gun down another legally armed non-violent protester?
As a European, I’d never imagined to come to see the NRA as a potential force for good.
This situation is literally what the second amendment is for. When Americans were asserting their right to buy and own fully automatic assault rifles and the NRA would defend them, the second amendment is why. The amendment exists because the citizens of the time believed they would need guns to eventually defend themselves against a tyrannical government.
Now they have a tyrannical government. I’m not convinced guns are actually what they need, but this is precisely what the second amendment is for and it’s not really a surprise to find the NRA is still in support of it.
In my opinion, the problem is not with the second amendment itself, or the NRA’s unflinching support for it, at least in theory. The problem is, in practice, 90% of the people who are the most heavily armed Americans with the biggest arsenals under the second amendment are the ones who openly support the government tyranny: racists, bigots, and fascists who want their white-ethno-state. So not only are the genuine “second amendment” defenders against tyranny, like presumably Alex Pretti, going to find themselves outgunned by a heavily militarized police force and government, they’re also going to be outgunned by their heavily militarized angry white neighbors.
They built a society based on a foundational tolerance of gun ownership, and then they were tolerant of all the wrong people, the most intolerant people, getting lots of guns, while the tolerant people said “we don’t need guns, because we live in a tolerant and just society and the second amendment is outdated”. Meanwhile, their intolerant neighbors were steadily building an arsenal for the civil war that they were planning on starting. And now it’s starting. The second amendment isn’t going to be the panacea that the founders thought it would. It’s been working against them and contributing to the problem. And that’s why reasonable people have been against the NRA and the second amendment for years (and probably still should be, although it’s probably way too late to change anything significant now), because we could see where this was headed. Everyone you don’t want to have guns, were getting lots of guns. And everyone you do want to have guns, doesn’t have nearly enough guns to matter. Yeah, it was everyone’s “right” to own a gun, but most people didn’t take advantage of that right, while the people you didn’t want to abused the hell out of it. It’s not solving any problem, it’s making it worse.
