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   A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:56:37 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

   Last week a man stood on a street carrying an AR-15. It’s the sort of weapon that people who want to massacre schoolchildren most prefer to use.

   The place he chose to stand was a pickup stop for an elementary school bus as the children got on.

   https://armoxon.substack.com/p/the-gun-defenders

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:56:37 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     He said he was doing it to protest new gun laws in Maryland, which would make it administratively a bit harder for him to carry this gun in the open. He’d need a permit. And who can’t sympathize? Permits are inconvenient.

     He also said that he believed that by standing there, it would deter crime in the area.

     He’s a good man, according to him.

     Maybe so!

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:56:37 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     He represents no danger to anybody but bad guys, according to him. As far as I know, he didn’t share his criteria for making those determinations.

     Better hope he doesn’t decide you’re a bad guy, I guess!

     The man stood by the elementary bus stop in Maryland, brandishing the tool favored by people who want to murder roughly a busload of schoolchildren, as a way of demonstrating what a law-abiding and safe fellow he was, in protest against a new gun law that said he would need to get a permit.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:57:34 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     They carry these death tools into fast food joints and government buildings and on the streets, and think it is very good that such a tool exists, and that anybody can own it, especially themselves, because they think it creates a zone of safety that will make everyone in its radius safe from guns, as an extension of their clear belief that their intentions are as easy for everyone to see as their massacre weapons are.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:57:34 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     It’s important to understand that people love this weapon. They don’t think that carrying the favored tool of school shooters ought to mean they should be thought of as a dangerous sort of person who loves owning a grim and fearful thing; rather they believe they should be thought of as the sort of person who creates safety by preventing such things from happening.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:57:34 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     They insist on being seen this way, even though the evidence is clear that guns are what make shootings possible, and that owning a gun makes you more dangerous to yourself and everyone else, even though these millions of guns cause deaths by the hundreds every day, and these thousands or perhaps millions of gun defenders across the country don’t ever seem to prevent shit.

     But never mind, because the massacres make a case for themselves.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:57:35 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     This is how we know we live in a nation that values guns more than it values lives; a nation that turns every gun massacre into a defense not of people but of guns; a nation that has prioritized the ease of those who feel they might need to kill somebody someday over the lives of those who would prefer to not be killed.

     It’s something that would be difficult to believe, if you actually considered victims of gun violence to be people.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:57:35 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     And a man stood on a street in Maryland with his massacre weapon, defending his gun in full view of children and their parents.

     I’m not mentioning this man’s name, because he’s not special. He’s one of thousands or maybe millions of gun defenders who love to walk around carrying this tool that is so good at turning a lot of people into meat very quickly, so bad at doing anything else.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:57:36 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     The idea that he would even need to get a permit is not the most basic matter of common sense, by the way; it is a controversy. The idea that ownership of massacre weapons should be in any way curtailed is controversial. In many states of the country, passing gun regulation has not only become unlikely, but impossible.

     And so, day after day, week after week, schoolchildren and others keep getting massacred by the busload.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:58:20 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     Let’s further say that what you fear most is the day when there might be somebody who needs killing but you have no ready way to make that happen, because the laws have been changed so that you no longer may legally own weapons that allow you to kill with a single adrenalized finger-twitch—and since these weapons are not legal anymore, you will no longer own them, because you (who will brag you have massacre weapons in case you need to someday murder the U.S. government) are law-abiding.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:58:20 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     It’s very important that you are permitted as a natural right to decide who needs to live and who needs to die, because you are one of the good guys, which you know for a fact, because good guys do not make people afraid, and bad guys do make people afraid, and you are not afraid of yourself, and the fear of people who are not you doesn’t matter at all, because another thing you know is that only bad guys need to fear good guys; therefore anyone who is afraid of you—a good guy—must be a bad guy.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:58:21 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     I keep saying *they.* That’s very divisive.

     Let’s not play these “us vs. them” games.

     Let’s try to understand other perspectives.

     Let’s pretend you are one of these people who, in an age of frequent massacre brought on by a political environment that makes massacre weapons readily accessible, believe you have a natural right to own massacre weapons.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:58:21 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     You *need* these massacre weapons without restriction, because there might be a need to massacre somebody someday for a good reason, as opposed to all those other people who massacre people for bad reasons—and you know they were bad reasons because you personally disagreed with those reasons, as is your right as one of the few who gets to decide who should live and who should die, based on who you have decided is afraid and who you have decided is a threat and who you have decided is a person.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:58:22 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     In large part *because* of all the gun violence, there are lots of other people that a good law-abiding person might someday need to massacre, such as a criminal, or an intruder, or a school shooter, or maybe a fleeing shoplifter, or the U.S. government.

     ESPECIALLY the U.S. government.

     Ask a gun defender, they’ll tell you: they might need guns to massacre the U.S. government someday.

     They'll tell you if you *don't* ask.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:58:22 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     They will need to massacre the government if the government ever becomes *tyrannical,* as defined by them, and they need guns to massacre *bad guys,* as defined by them, in case the bad guys ever try to hurt other *people,* as defined by them, or even make those people *afraid,* as defined by them.

     And it seems what they really want is the sole license to define these terms: person, bad guy, people, fear—and if you won't accept their definitions, that seems to be what the guns are for.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:59:35 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     You believe you have the right to decide if somebody needs killing.

     And you have opinions about what should be done with tyrants.

     And you consider their fear of you to be tyranny against you.

     Maybe you’ll never connect those two thoughts between your fear and their tyranny over you, but maybe you will.

     Many gun defenders do. Pretty much every day, some supremacist or other connects those thoughts, and then goes out to make the news.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:59:36 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     Your weapon makes it statistically far more likely that you will kill somebody, whether with intent or by happenstance. It especially puts your family and friends and yourself at a far higher risk of being killed, and yet you think of yourself as a defender, and will insist on being thought of not as a threat but as a protector.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:59:36 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     The threat to you is just a hypothetical one—that you may someday no longer be able to decide who lives and who dies.

     The threat to everyone else is the one you are creating, with the actual massacre weapon you are holding in your actual hands.

     It strikes me that these are things that you can really only believe in a world if you have convinced yourself that other people are not actually people.

     And that's how everyone recognizes that you are a gun supremacist.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:59:36 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     So you stand on a street corner, your massacre weapon in your hands making you look exactly like any of the killers who have carried out any of the hundreds of recent massacres we might mention, and if anyone is scared of you, you firmly believe it is not something that you are doing to them, but something that they are doing to you.

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     A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-May-2023 01:59:36 JST A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?

     in reply to

     Again, this strikes me as something you can only believe if you believe that other people do not really exist, and that the comfort of people like you, who hope to somebody shoot somebody in a justified altercation should take precedent over the lives of those who would rather have not been shot.

     You stand around children at a bus stop where you can murder them all in a heartbeat—and for all they know, in the next heartbeat, you will!—yet you insist that they act as if you are their protector.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.