Like most buildings, my house has windows I can exit in an emergency

Double cylinder deadbolts are pretty common IME

Some houses have a deadbolt that has a lock cylinder on both sides because it’s more resistant to breakins. My house is like this and I need a key to leave unless I want to jump out of a window

This is 100% a thing. Basically just give it a flowering light cycle when it’s barely past the clone stage

Ironically, search and rescue services in the USA are usually done by volunteers and park rangers, and typically free

Yes if they put you in a helicopter it’s gonna be expensive, like $10k, but 99% of the time S&R won’t cost you anything. They’d prefer you call when the situation isn’t so dire instead of waiting until it gets really bad because you are scared of the cost.

Ya know, that never occurred to me. That makes it twice as hilarious if true.

Yeah I had an alcoholic, overweight, uncle in a leg brace who was like this. He’d try to “help” me get girls by suggesting I do things like this.

“Hey, look, that girl is cute, go ask all her friends to dance with you at once, then you can increase your odds because she thinks she has competition”

Yeah bro no. They’re clearly having a nice girls night out and I don’t want to ruin it

“Just say they look like donuts because they are all curves and sugar”

…. Yeah that’s a double hard no

sigh “you just gotta have confidence. Watch this.”

Then he’d wobble over, joke around, make some catcally comments on their looks, and they’d all be blushing and laughing before heading out with him to the dance floor. It was fucking wild.

As a kid who loved reading, the one and only time I read the cliffs notes was for the Diary of Anne Frank. I just couldn’t stand to slog through it and nobody else in class wanted to read it either.

Ironically, I got a perfect score on that test with an average class score of 60. Every single question was addressed in the cliff notes while I skimmed them the night before the test. My teacher treated us to an extended rant when she handed back the tests. “CLEARLY nBodyProblem is the only person who actually WORKED HARD and bothered to READ and UNDERSTAND the material. You all need to learn to be more like nBodyProblem”

Western media trends towards the myths and legends from western culture? No shit

I mean, what else would you expect? That’s human nature. Kinda a wild thing to be complaining about

Do you really think an assault rifle is going to give you that critical edge against an f-16 or armored fighting vehicle vs a hunting style rifle?

Do you really pay this little attention to history? If AFVs and fighter jets were some magic bullet, the wars in the Middle East and Asia would have been vastly different affairs. Resistance fighters don’t shoot down fighter jets and they are often successful regardless, it’s a completely silly point to make.

frankly it doesn’t matter too much after a certain point if the writers of the constitution wrote this part of the law without ANY of the modern context of how much more violence a single person with a weapon can do in a short time.

I could make points about how the founding fathers knew about repeating firearm development, people owned warships, etc.

But ultimately, I really do not care what the founding fathers would have thought. They weren’t gods. Here, today, a large proportion of Americans believe that modern firearms are an important check on tyranny. The second amendment is not my reason for holding this belief, it’s just a guarantee of our right to defend ourselves.

Yes I have

Fooled me. You wouldn’t have said that if you had much experience with guns because it’s patently untrue to anyone who does

save your “civilian ar-15s aren’t automatic or burst fire so they aren’t technically assault rifles or military weapons” nonsense

What? This is true but that’s not my point at all. I simply don’t care if they are military weapons or not. The entire point of the second amendment is for the citizenry to pose a threat against tyranny, which could include the military. Civilian ownership of effective weapons is part and parcel with that.

You’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with some preconceived idea of who you assume I am. That already says a lot about your viewpoint.

When was the last time a bunch of rennaisance faire nerds turned on the news and saw that someone else had just murdered 30 kids in a school dressed up in the same kind of costume they all like to wear

Once again. What? You’re acting like school shooters all show up wearing BDUs, NODs and plate carriers which is just wildly wrong.

But, even if we accept for a moment that were true, normal people with healthy viewpoints are capable of separating themselves and their motivations from bad people who just happen to wear the same clothing. I wouldn’t throw out my favorite t-shirt just because someone did something terrible wearing the same type of shirt. Neither would me wearing that shirt somehow normalize shootings like you seem to imagine it would.

If someone went on a stabbing spree with a shun chefs knife I wouldn’t turn around and throw out my favorite kitchen knife because it’s the same model. Nor would I be normalizing stabbings by continuing to chop onions with my favorite knife.

you can kill an entire crowd of people with an assault rifle in seconds

You’ve never fired a gun, have you? There is a massive amount of misinformation out there, and that’s not how any modern firearms made for the civilian market (including AR-15s) operate.

they are normalizing carrying around a murder weapon and being utterly obsessed with it

How so? We are talking about people who like to wear gear when they go to the range for fun. Thinking it would be fun to wear a bulletproof vest at the range or wearing NODs so you can shoot at night doesn’t imply any of those things.

even if their motivations are innocent provides a nice big smokescreen of normalcy for the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world to hide behind

How? A range trip isn’t “normalizing” anything nefarious regardless of what you choose to wear to the range. It’s just a range trip.

I am just pointing out how much more lame and uncool this is than ren faire or LARPing stuff

I don’t wear gear to the range but I know folks who do, and also go to faire and belong to a group who likes to fight with foam swords. From my perspective, it’s really the same deal. Dorky/nerdy people who like to dress up for fun. IMO it’s worth giving your fellow humans the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst.

Totally fair. Most of these people haven’t experienced combat in any way. I’m just saying the motivation is mostly fun instead of some demented desire to kill.

That’s not what I’m suggesting. The vast majority of gun owners don’t shoot their guns on their property. I live in a condo.

There are indoor and outdoor ranges all over the United States. If you live in a suburb it’s a safe bet that there is a gun range open to the public within a 20 minute drive of your house. Range access is easy and affordable everywhere in the USA. It doesn’t take an immense money or time commitment to go out and shoot every now and then.

If you buy a firearm, but refuse to learn how to use it, it really will be a waste of money because it won’t be useful to you if the time ever did come to need it. Plus you have an obligation to those around you to own a firearm responsibly. Part of responsible firearm ownership is basic competence with the weapon.

It doesn’t take any more space than simply owning the gun and safety gear to go shoot for fun.

If you’re going to own a gun you really ought to go out and use it sometimes so you are somewhat competent in handling the firearm.

I don’t think this is an actual case of that. I have a few friends that get kitted out with plate carriers and night vision for the range and it’s just LARPing. No different than ren faire people showing up to the faire in steel plate when obviously there isn’t some sword fight that’s about to break out at the fairgrounds.

It’s dorky but generally not malicious.

I can’t fathom how people saw police beating protesters to death in 2020, are decrying the new Trump presidency as the rise of fascism in America, and still believe that the government should be the only ones with firepower in their hands.

Now is exactly the time when the left should be rallying behind the second amendment.

I have traveled most of the country and 95% of Americans are normal people who just want the best for the people around them. They just have different perspectives on what that means.

You should let your hate go, my friend. I promise you’ll be happier for it.

There are all kinds of discussions we can have about this, not the least of which is that “no guns” simply isn’t an option in a country with 500 million firearms and no central firearm registry.

But, really, all that stuff is beside the point. Guns are the ultimate equalizer. They equalize the weak and the strong. An 80 year old grandma can defend herself against a 25 year old man using a gun. A suppressed populace can defend themselves against a tyrannical government using guns.

Gun crime has negligible impact on most Americans; we have about half as many firearm homicides as traffic deaths annually.

Philosophically, the gun community feels having that equalizer and balance against tyranny is more important than the impacts of gun crime. Whether or not more gun control will decrease gun crime is irrelevant if a person feels that free firearm access is the more important of the two issues.

Btw, regardless of your views, if you come to the US you should shoot some guns. It’s fun and you’ll be glad you did.