> Kids used to be taught gun safety in public school
The problem is that this normalizes the behavior, something that a specific political sect (coincidentally overlapping heavily with those employed in education) desperately wants to avoid.
Which is somewhat odd to me. Why wouldn't they want to normalize and emasculate gun usage? That seems to be the general playbook of the US Left to change behavior. Of all of the big Democrat vs Republican wedge issues, gun rights seems like one that is being approached entirely wrong.
> Why wouldn't they want to normalize and emasculate gun usage?
Because it isn't emasculating - it's very much empowering - and anyone who has ever fired a gun or read a history book written in the last 200 years can't be deluded into thinking otherwise.
Im not saying firing a weapon is emasculating. I'm saying you can reduce the toxic masculinity aspect of gun ownership through cultural enforcement. Safe gun use can be taught strictly with respect for the dangers of mishandling guns (even intentionally) enforced.
In other words, make gun ownership normal, understood, and uncool.
It's not that helpful. What stops this technocratic authoritarianism is shutting down the electrical grid. If that happens the surveillance state dies instantly and all of the top echelon becomes vulnerable again. They live in a house of straw.
Why are you calling the administration ending research funding, undermining education, and hiring media sycophants into cabinet positions as "technocratic". I can't think of a less technocratic US Presidency.
Find like minded people you can trust and know who will have whose back if something really goes wrong. Also have a passport and some cash, crypto and/or jewelry to get you out if this goes too far.
There was a protest against the election in Tanzania on October 29th where the police were ordered to gun down the protesters, this is a country that has strict gun laws. Hundreds died.
One of the reasons that doesn't happen in America is because the protestors would promptly shoot back and there would be a rapid formation of a militia. Hard to do that when you don't have guns.
I think you have too much faith in humanity. It had never happened in Tanzania until recently. And I think you're right about them being initially unarmed, but most people do have guns at home.
I'm depending on Americans to have a limit to their willingness to harm other citizens.
I know that hasn't been much in evidence lately, and I know that American humans are no more special than any other humans.
But we're starting from a very different place than, e.g., Tanzania.
I predict reversion to the mean, not revolution. (It can be argued that what we're seeing right now is the reversion to the mean, which is a whole different cart of apples.)
But later on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge_standoff happened. It didn't end that well for Randy Weaver, but he did get to kill a US Marshal without jail time, and they are not happy to try that again.
Kent State was a very different America, a long time ago, and the reaction was immense and swift.
I won't argue that there will not be isolated incidents of horror (too late). I argue that the practice will not take hold and become normalized.
If a new Kent State happens, I depend on Americans to respond immensely and swiftly again. I'd prefer a catalyzing event without loss of life, of course.
>Kent State was a very different America, a long time ago, and the reaction was immense and swift.
Was it? An American political culture dominated by Christians and war hawks paranoid about the influence of "cultural marxism" in academia and whipped up into a moral panic about the "degeneracy" of feminism and homosexuality, with pervasive censorship of criticism of American foreign policy and the deployment of militarized police in the streets doesn't seem very different than what we have now.
>If a new Kent State happens, I depend on Americans to respond immensely and swiftly again.
I think you deeply misunderstand which side of the fence American gun owners and militias tend to be on and just how normalized the rhetoric and expectation of violence has already gotten. If a new Kent State happens they'll say "that was for Charlie Kirk" and dance in the streets.
These are all important points, which I can't refute individually.
I do still believe that the whole is less than the sum of the parts, though. The batshit crazy doesn't have critical mass generally, but certainly does in some areas. If things get ugly, I expect it to be localized and temporary. I hope to be right. :-/
If the fascists do outnumber you and like minded people who disagree with them, then sadly your views are just the minority, and there's nothing to do besides leave the country. But that is a strong claim, it requires that >50% of Americans are fascists or are neutral to them.
Not all citizens are brownshirts. The fascists are more mobilized. But they are, and always will be, a small minority. They might still dominate situations or periods, though.
