About
A community for leftists and progressives within the Minneapolis - St. Paul Metro Area, including all suburbs and exurbs.
Community banner courtesy of @maven@lemmy.zip ❤️
Guidelines
Be nice
Comment substantively
Probably some other stuff
Some of these fucking comments, jeez. Interesting how its always the highly victimized populations who get the "Kumbayah" speech, and not the people who follow those populations around harassing them to use ANY response as justification for violence.
Very Christian guys. I'm sure Jesus would love all this violence!
"Jesus is a woke DEI hire and we don't listen to that libshit."
-American "Religious" Right
Middle eastern hippie Jew says be kind to each other and pay taxes! Nail to cross!
I just don't understand how so much hate can exist for your fellow person :(
truly appalling & super sad :(
Please arm yourselves and learn to shoot. Never pull a gun you are unwilling or unable to shoot.
Problem: I want to kill myself, owning a firearm is probably a bad idea
taser + pepper gel are good alternatives to a firearm, if yr unwilling or unable to shoot at someone.
Don’t get into gunfights in train stations ffs
Counterpoint: get into a gunfight anywhere someone is trying to beat you to death and you have a gun
Fistfights exist everywhere but rampant gun violence does not. “Buy a gun to deal with that hypothetical problem” is terrible advice compared to, idk, deescalation training. Yeah if you’re already on the ground getting punched in the face it’s too late to deescalate but there were choices made before that. Buying a gun so you can shoot up a train station isn’t exactly the most beneficial way to deal with bigots as a society.
Non-fatally shooting one or two among a group of men that's got you down on the ground attacking you is not "rampant gun violence."
The problem is not hypothetical, we're discussing it as it just happened.
It's important to de-escalate, you're right. Owning a firearm comes with many responsibilities that you must uphold as a gun owner, and responsibly weilding the firearm (including and especially not using it as an excuse to threaten whomever you may) is one of them. But in this situation, it seems as though the men struck first, last, and hardest.
You're right also, that they could have just ignored it. And, without video, there's no way to tell how intense the initial conversation was. But do you think asking to not be called slurs on the train deserves a response in physical force? And do you think being beaten by a group with a 2:1 ratio on your own does not deserve a response in physical force?
I'm not suggesting "shooting up a train station," I'm suggesting using a firearm to deter a group of men that are beating you.
There are more guns than people in the US. Gun violence there is rampant, more children are killed by guns than by cars. The cause of the gun violence IS the gun ownership. It’s the idea that when you have a problem - even a physical one - that the solution is a gun. That idea is unique amongst war-torn countries and the US. So no, shooting up a train station isn’t rampant gun violence. But the idea that you ought to is.
But the idea that you ought to is.
But that's not the idea: self defense is not the same as a mass shooting, and you refusing to differentiate that gives me the vibe you aren't arguing in good faith.
The UK doesn't have gun violence, they have knife violence. So are you going to tell someone not to carry a knife for self defense because it's a potentially deadly weapon?
that the solution is a gun.
Sometimes it is, bud, welcome to the real world. If you're being attacked, especially if you're outnumbered, your argument is basically "you should have talked your way out if it, or just taken the assault, rather than use a tool you may legally be allowed to use to protect yourself." Do you ask rape victims what they were wearing before the assault too?
They clearly couldn't rely on bystanders to intervene, like people attempted to for George Floyd, and the victims were outnumbered and clearly overpowered. Had one of them been carrying a firearm, the assholes who just assaulted two people for existing may have been deterred.
Oh, so one of the cities with the lowest levels of racial equality also has a problem with transphobia? I'm not shocked, I'm not surprised. Between this and the people in Springfield Ohio instilling fear in the towns Haitian residents, I will never understand how people can become so hateful.
People are emotional, tribal, creatures. It's very easy for us to hate the out group. That was probably beneficial for pre-history humans, where the other tribe could be a real threat. It's not so useful today, where "the other group" is just some people waiting for the train.
I think the best paths forward have to make people believe more people are in-group. That's a reason why stuff like representation matters. People might be like "who cares if there's a trans main character in a movie?", but that helps people be less hateful. They don't hate the character from the movie, they relate to them, and then a person in real life gets seen in that light.
It should not be forgotten that it was not the wider 'people of Springfield' who pushed that shit. There were certainly kooks/nazis in Springfield who were willing to say it, but the responsibility falls on the politicians/media organizations who maliciously propagated it.