And then the police and Federal agencies will go after them, as has historically happened. The point of “gun rights” isn’t self defense, it’s to make terrorism by the Right easier.
I can tell you from personal experience that that just isn’t so. The overwhelming majority of gun owners I know are libertarian or even anarchist; if they hate the Left as institutionalized in the Democratic Party, it’s because they resent what they see as attempt to institute a quasi-socialism by top-down mandate. Yes, they really do believe in the personal freedom for everyone to own guns.
Libertarians are overwhelmingly part of the far right, and anarchists are a small minority. And by nature terribly organized.
And the thing anarchists and libertarians are best at is failing. Although it takes longer for anarchists due to the lack of malice.
The sides are not symmetric.
Had Harris won, and a lot of right-wing militia types tried something, Democratic voters would have left the fighting to the official US military, unless they were being directly attacked. If some left-wing militia types did try to organize a private effort to oppose the right-wing militias, the government would act to shut that shit down.
But now? There’s very little chance that you actually will see any organized militia-type response from the left, and if there is some small amount of that, it’s far more likely that the Trump government will be only too happy to let right-wing militias organize and act to attack left-wingers.
And even then sometimes even immediate families were split on the issue; to the point of sometimes winding up in different armies.
Civil wars are really, really nasty.
What on earth makes you think that GOP voters will care the slightest bit around this? They want kangaroo elections that always favor the GOP. They want businesses to run everything. It’s the only sincere principle that they’ve ever demonstrated, it’s the main thing they’ve been working toward for the past 30 years.
To be perfectly honest, I fear that the right-wing militias aren’t waiting for a pretext to organize.
I am concerned that the first time a full-fledged anti-Trump protest gets started, law enforcement will be told to “stand back and stand by” while right-wing paramilitaries run rampant. A lot of them have been dreaming of this moment.
Again, I’m just not seeing the pro-fascist activism you paint conservative gun owners with in the actual gun owners I know. Most of the “militia” types have been preparing for resisting a leftist tyranny, not the triumph of a rightist tyranny.
It’s not all of them, or even most of them, but it will be enough of them.
Do you hang out with the Proud Boys? Those guys have been looking forward to this for several years now. Have you seen the “When do we get to use the guns?” guy? This isn’t someone who is reluctantly taking up arms, he’s actually eager to get on with it. Sure, he’s talking in the context of losing in 2020, but do you really think this guy has calmed down in the last four years? Give him a tacit go-ahead, and he’d be lining up his neighbors within the hour.
I’ve been target shooting since I was 11. All the guns I have I’ve inherited. If they think democrats aren’t armed, well, best of luck.
Sure, and the “Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea” is a democracy. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
It’s always been about doing violence to people that threaten their preferred social order. When Democrats are in power it’s about “resisting tyranny”. And they’ll still call it that now that Republicans are in power. These are people who can’t stop feeling threatened and insecure unless they have all the power, including the power to kill whoever they want.
In the context of someone who apparently genuinely (though mistakenly) believed that the Democrats had conspired to steal the 2020 election (but they didn’t), he was asking “where do you draw the line? When do you actually rise up?” That might be delusional, but unless you claim that conspiracy delusions, or being reactionary and illiberal are ipso facto fascist, then he doesn’t come across as pro-fascist to me. Not as someone waiting for a green light to start shooting the people he dislikes. My presumption is that he is greatly relieved that Trump won in 2024, and that a grass-roots uprising won’t be necessary now.
Just because people can be extremely reactionary does not mean they are motivated by hate and cruelty. Remember, they see themselves as the aggrieved party.
A perfect example of why people don’t believe the LEFT’s rhetoric.
Do you take the point that people who claim to be terrified of “leftist tyranny” aren’t really honest about that, or was this purely a “whatabout” style deflection?
I would point out here that these people aren’t simply “mistaken”. They see it as fundamentally illegitimate that the left would ever have power, so they fluidly redefine “leftist tyranny” to whatever they need it to be.
People like this guy will never feel safe from “leftist tyranny” even though Trump won a trifecta. They will consider it even more urgent to wipe them out so that they can never “steal an election” ever again, because it’s harder to do that when you’re out of power. They will see a “leftist tyrant” behind every bush.
And the scary thing is, they’ll feel more empowered than ever to act, because in their mind, a “just country” allows them to do that, and they’ve just been given a green light that this is their sort of country.
That’s what being “extremely reactionary” is.
That’s like somebody saying "just because I shoot people doesn’t make me violent".
Listen to the tone of his voice, and look at the words he used. It wasn’t a worried, “When will we have to use the guns?”, it was an aggressive, “When do we GET to use the guns?” He’s got his guns, and wants to know when it is he finally gets to use them.
If some Proud Boy type tells him “That guy down the street is plotting a revolution!”, he’ll be quite happy to step up and ‘defend’ Trump.
The ‘right’ does not understand that the ‘left’ wants to help everyone. Even them. They just see it as the ‘left’ wanting to help minorities and gay people. They can’t stand that idea.
This is why they fight against having a better life for themselves. If the extra water is going to float all/more boats, well, they just can’t deal with that.
Yes. There are more conservative gun owners than liberal and Americans are the most frightened, spoiled and housebroken people any dictatorship could ask for. Nothing significant will happen as long as things don’t get too awful. I wish the opposite was true but we don’t live in a fantasy world of valiant heroes waiting to fight tyranny.
I believe this adamantly.
As long as peoples stomachs are full and fat, as long as their kids aren’t starving, as long as they have 5 zillion TV channels to watch and a smart phone to stare into, as long as they get sexual release at least a few times a year there will never ever be a revolution nor a civil war.
For those that don’t get all those things the bread and circuses will keep them satisfied beyond uprising as well.
If the top 1% starts feeling vulnerable to gun violence, they are going to contact the Congress members they own and tell them to do something about controlling guns.
This is just one incident. It may pass off without the Ruling Class starting to feel targeted. Or then again, they may want action to stop the flow of firearms. (Those who don’t own stock in the gun industry, anyway.)
Trump, of course, is aiming at achieving a dictatorship. (It may take him a while, but it’s his goal.) No matter what dictators say to keep their base happy, the fact is that they do NOT want the populace to be armed. Ask Vlad.
If ‘not even a billionaire-CEO is safe’ becomes widespread enough, Trump’s minions will be able to use it as a pretext for disarming the masses.
The shooter escaped on an E-bike. I can see those being banned because of this long before guns are.