Worldwide gun control disscussion

[Simon_Jester]

Thinking it over, this may be within the formal bounds of the ways a state can enforce law without passing a true ex post facto law.

It is still an act of profound bad faith on the part of the state of Massachusetts, which was my own original objection.

They wanted to ban scary guns, so they banned superficial features of scary guns. Now, when people market scary guns that don't have the same superficial features, they assert that these new scary guns can be declared illegal. And that this can be done without the legislature having to pass a new law, because they are 'copycats' of the old guns that were banned purely because of the superficial features.

As noted above, this is exactly like banning red cars because "red ones go faster," then banning ALL cars because they're all just as fast as the red ones.

A legislature and executive that are willing to behave this way create major problems for themselves down the line, because they create a situation where the opposition cannot negotiate with them. How do you make a deal with someone, or make a compromise with someone, who will creatively reinterpret the laws as a license to ignore the compromises and deals, and just go do whatever they wanted to do all along?

[MKSheppard]

In every single state with stand your ground laws, homicide rates have gone up.

At your link:

The researchers behind one Texas A&M study found that homicide rates increased by a statistically significant 8 percent in “Stand Your Ground” states.

Hmm...

Link

The idea behind them is to "expand the legal justification for the use of lethal force in self-defense, thereby lowering the expected cost of using lethal force and increasing the expected cost of committing violent crime," say researchers Cheng Cheng and Mark Hoekstra in a Texas A&M study.

Statistics included in the study bore that out, showing that justifiable homicides rose by 8 percent in stand-your-ground states, amounting to some 600 additional killings.

I like how the Washington Post deletes that important modifier Justifiable.

LINK

LINK 2

444 by Police in 2014 (Definition: The killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.)
277 by Private Citizens in 2014 (Definition: The killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen.)

[MKSheppard]

Does not compute. If you eliminate a major accident risk it just does not get replaced by a different risk group. If I stop drinking I don't suddenly start smoking.

The kind of people who are cavalier with firearms and at the greatest statistical risk for accidental death involving firearms are likely to be just as cavalier elsewhere in their lives.

Basically, the same kind of person who Mexican carries a glock 17 in their underwear is also the same kind of person who says "hard hats are for fools" at a job site.

Sorry but that does not really answer the question - why does Stand your ground decrease gun crime or crime in general in your opinion? Stand your ground is a specific doctrine and does not deal with gun crime in general.

Stand your Ground means that concealed carriers (and other people) aren't picked to death by post-event Monday morning quarterbacking under 'Duty to Retreat'.

Here in Maryland, Duty to Retreat has been codified in court ruling (oddity of Maryland criminal law, so much is actually laid down as judicial rulings) as:

"fifth, that the Defendant had a duty, when defending himself outside of his home, to retreat or avoid danger if the means to do so were within his power and consistent with his safety. However, where peril is so imminent that he cannot retreat safely, he has a right to stand his ground and defend himself."

The issue here is defining "safety", "retreat safely", "peril" etc. What is obvious to a district attorney in his office at 2 PM after lunch is not obvious to you operating under extreme time and situational pressures.

As I posted earlier, Zod has found studies saying that enactment of SYG laws increase Justifiable Homicides by 8%; which acts as a permanent removal of high volume crime individuals from the general population.

[MKSheppard]

I have never in my life been to Massachusetts. What possible relevance could this have to the discussion?

Your confusion over what "FOID/Carry Permit" is/means.

Massachusetts' requires you to have a "License to Carry" (LTC) to purchase, rent, lease, borrow, possess and carry a handgun; and they impose restrictions on them; modifying the License to Carry (LTC).

It's pretty confusing.

MA's LTC Restrictions are:

None - The LTC is issued for all lawful purposes with no restrictions. This is used for all FID cards, as by statute, they may not be issued with any restrictions imposed.

NOTE: Traditional Concealed Carry in not-shitty Shall Issue states.

Target & Hunting - Restricts possession to the purpose of lawful recreational shooting or competition; for use in the lawful pursuit of game animals and birds; for personal protection in the home; and for the purpose of collecting (other than machine guns). Includes travel to and from activity location.

Sporting - Restricts possession to the purpose of lawful recreational shooting or competition; for use in the lawful pursuit of game animals and birds; for personal protection in the home: for the purpose of collecting (other than machine guns); and for outdoor recreational activities such as hiking, camping, cross country skiing, or similar activities. Includes travel to and from activity location.

NOTE: Traditional right to possess in not-shitty states where there are specific exemptions in firearms carry laws allowing you to carry weapons around your home, carry them for the purposes of hunting and target shooting over your shoulder or in your car trunk without constantly breaking the law while in transit to/from a range/sporting activity

Employment - Restricts possession to business owner engaged in business activities, or to an employee while engaged in work related activities, and maintaining proficiency, where the employer requires carrying of a firearm (i.e. armored car, security guard, etc.). Includes travel to and from activity location.

NOTE: Typical issue of Concealed Carry issued in shitty-states like Maryland, tying your concealed carry permit to your job.

Other -The licensing authority creates a restriction it deems proper.

NOTE: AKA; make up stuff as we go along.

-------------

PS; here's the Illinois cards, relevant to our earlier discussion:



Note the big NOT AUTHORIZE CONCEALED CARRYING thing in red?

[Broomstick]

Oh. I see. You were looking for another strawman. >yawn<

[MKSheppard]

Oh. I see. You were looking for another strawman. >yawn<

So you sure like moving the goalposts.

Let's go back and review:

Chicago has highly restrictive gun laws. Illinois does not.

FOID required to buy/possess guns and ammunition in Illinois. ISP will take away your FOID if you're fucky.

Try again.

And... how is owning a FOID "highly restrictive"? It just declares you passed a background check. For that matter, even a state like Indiana with what is considered very loose gun laws has licensing requirements for handguns similar to Illinois, and issues firearm ID's.

Indiana does not require ID to purchase and possess handguns. How does this = "licensing requirements for handguns similar to Illinois"?

The prior post was an attempt to cut you some slack; because I assumed you were getting confused by growing up under Massachusetts LTC scheme.

EDIT: If you want to move it into "carry" territory,

Indiana doesn't require any training at all, just fingerprinting and waiting for the checks to clear and available from age 18+.

Illinois? Fingerprinting+Waiting, and 16 hours of training in approved course(s) and available only to age 21+

How does this = "licensing requirements for handguns similar to Illinois"?

[Simon_Jester]

As I posted earlier, Zod has found studies saying that enactment of SYG laws increase Justifiable Homicides by 8%; which acts as a permanent removal of high volume crime individuals from the general population.

Alternatively, they result in people finding it easier to murder someone they're angry at and declare self-defense because they "felt threatened," something nobody can easily prove or disprove. We had a thread about this a while ago. As I said then, the problem is that a LOT of fights start as violent squabbles between two people, neither of whom is willing to back down. That can include otherwise level-headed people whose monkey brain kicks in and they become more worried about preserving status than they are about preserving their life.

Which is how you get people claiming self defense when the security camera footage shows them running towards a person and stabbing them eleven times in the chest with a butcher knife. It's kind of hard to parse how that constitutes 'defending yourself' against a threat to their life... but in the mind of a person who "felt threatened" things can get a little crazy.

"Stand Your Ground" lends itself to exactly this kind of thing- people with poor impulse control getting into a squabble, maybe even egging the other person into doing something angry or dramatic enough to justify a lethal response, then pulling out a gun and shooting them dead because escalating the situation seems so much more palatable than just backing up. And it's hard to disprove the "stand your ground" defense in cases like that, because dead men tell no tales and you've already taken away the prosecution's ability to point out that the defendant had options other than murder for resolving the situation.

If we're honestly worried about murders being committed by people with high recidivism, there are better responses than empowering self-appointed private citizens to kill the habitual criminals we're worried about.

Legally enabling people to start an argument, escalate the argument, and then kill them when they engage in low-order violence like "walking closer" or "throwing a bag of popcorn" is extremely dangerous, and 'stand your ground' clauses come pretty close to doing that.

[General Zod]

In any state in the country but Florida, chasing someone for a block and stabbing them to death because they were trying to steal your radio is not considered justifiable homicide. But sure, let's pretend Stand Your Ground is a good idea.

[MKSheppard]

Which is how you get people claiming self defense when the security camera footage shows them running towards a person and stabbing them eleven times in the chest with a butcher knife.

When/where was this? Am interested.

[MKSheppard]

In any state in the country but Florida, chasing someone for a block and stabbing them to death because they were trying to steal your radio is not considered justifiable homicide. But sure, let's pretend Stand Your Ground is a good idea.

http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-grou ... s/case_133

Judge ruled on that and basically said:

1.) Garcia was within his rights to attempt to recover his stolen property or impede the thief.

"was well within his rights to pursue the victim and demand the return of his property. The defendant had no duty to retreat and could lawfully pursue a fleeing felon who has stolen his property."

2.) Judge ruled a bag of Car radios is dangerous

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/greyston-ga ... crossfire/

"The judge, in part, based the ruling on the testimony of the medical examiner who said the bag of radios, weighing four to six pounds, could have caused serious bodily injured or possibly death if it had hit Garcia in the head."

[General Zod]

A judge also ruled that a convicted rapist should only get 6 months because jail would be too hard for him. Sometimes judges are incompetent and need to be removed.

[Simon_Jester]

Regarding the "chase and stab" incident:

That was, honestly, a made-up example. I have a bad memory for specific instances of things like this, but I've heard several cases of obviously false self defense claims over the years. And as a schoolteacher I have definitely seen people with poor impulse control who think they "have to" get into fights over absurdly tiny things, or who "feel threatened" when there is no actual present threat. Thankfully no incidents involving weapons, but it's a reality of human nature that we often feel like a violent response is justified when an objective outside observer thinks it isn't. People aren't supercomputers dispensing finely metered proportionate responses to emergencies.

Also remember that "it was self defense" is one of the few defenses you can have for a homicide in a case where you definitely killed the person, so there are probably a lot of dumb criminals who've been caught dead to rights, claiming self defense.
_________________

And I'm going to have to agree with Zod on this one. You might be justified in chasing someone who's stolen your stuff, but if you chase someone and kill them you haven't got a leg to stand on when it comes to self defense; any judge who rules otherwise is basically enabling hundreds or thousands of future murderers by doing so.

It is an incredibly bad idea to set a precedent that you can deliberately create a situation in which violence is a reasonably foreseeable consequence, and then kill the other person in "self defense." Because:

1) This can easily create logically contradictory situations where I 'have to' kill someone in self defense to prevent them from killing me in self defense.
2) This makes it way too easy to get away with premeditated murder, as discussed above- I can deliberately goad someone, then pull out a gun and shoot them dead as soon as they swing a punch.
3) This also makes it too easy to get away with intensely reckless and aggressive behavior, because a swaggering bully with a gun can claim "self defense" if someone reacts to their insulting or aggressive behavior by resisting too forcefully. As I said in that other thread a few years ago... it is a truism among gun advocates that "an armed society is a polite society." The question is, polite to whom?

[General Zod]

There's also this fun case from Texas where a neighbor took it on himself to be a dispenser of justice and kill two people he thought were breaking into his neighbor's home despite being told not to. This sort of law seems to encourage vigilantism and a disproportionate response.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13texas.html

[AMX]

And I'm going to have to agree with Zod on this one. You might be justified in chasing someone who's stolen your stuff, but if you chase someone and kill them you haven't got a leg to stand on when it comes to self defense; any judge who rules otherwise is basically enabling hundreds or thousands of future murderers by doing so.

I'm afraid I have to support Shep on this one.
In the described situation, the duty to deescalate lies entirely with the thief.
If he instead chooses to further escalate by attacking his pursuer, and that ends up resulting in his death, that is self defense.

[MKSheppard]

There's also this fun case from Texas where a neighbor took it on himself to be a dispenser of justice and kill two people he thought were breaking into his neighbor's home despite being told not to. This sort of law seems to encourage vigilantism and a disproportionate response.

From your own link, Zod:

the two men — both illegal immigrants — lay dead on winding Timberline Drive, leaving behind a pillowcase stuffed with jewelry and about $2,000 in cash.

A later article on the NO BILL has a little bit more information:

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/pasad ... 587004.php

They had taken about $2,000 in the burglary.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110604114 ... 07_4479736

The Pasadena Police Department has presented to the Harris County District Attorney's Office its monthlong report on Joe Horn, who fatally shot two men he saw burglarizing the house next door.

The report still lacks results of the clothing analysis and firearms testing that will be included as soon as they are complete, police said.
The case is now to be reviewed by the District Attorney's Office, which will then present the findings to a grand jury to determine whether Horn, 61, a communications computer manager, should be indicted. Prosecutors said it will take at least several weeks to complete the review.
Diego Ortiz, 30 and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38, who were carrying a sack with more than $2,000 cash and jewelry taken from the home, were pronounced dead at the scene in Pasadena.

And here's the copy of the police interview with JOE HORN

http://dig.abclocal.go.com/ktrk/Joe%20H ... ew0001.pdf

Mr. Horn reported that he heard "something weird" outside and initially thought the noise might have been the cat. He heard the noise again at which time Mr. Horn looked out the window of the room which faces the neighbor's house which had been burglarized. He observed two black males breaking glass on the neighbor's house window. He initially thought that the black males were repairing the window but then realized that they were breaking into the neighbor's house. He described one of the males as looking around (being the look out) while the other was breaking the glass with the use of a crow bar. Mr. Horn indicated that he feared that the two subjects would break into his home so he went to his truck and retrieved his shotgun. He then telephoned 911 and returned to the upstairs room to watch the two subjects. Mr. Horn spoke with the dispatcher while he watched the two men breaking into the neighbor's house. He observed the subjects go to another window and break it out and then enter the house.

[MKSheppard]

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/pasad ... 658647.php

Also, for the first time, investigators revealed the Nov. 14 shooting was witnessed by a plainclothes Pasadena detective, who had pulled up in an unmarked car seconds before Horn fired three shots from his 12-guage shotgun.

[Broomstick]

In any state in the country but Florida, chasing someone for a block and stabbing them to death because they were trying to steal your radio is not considered justifiable homicide. But sure, let's pretend Stand Your Ground is a good idea.

That's not "stand your ground". Anytime you are chasing someone is NOT "stand" your ground.

Of course, there are a LOT of comprehension problems when it comes to concepts like "self defense".

[hunter5]

Which is how you get people claiming self defense when the security camera footage shows them running towards a person and stabbing them eleven times in the chest with a butcher knife. It's kind of hard to parse how that constitutes 'defending yourself' against a threat to their life... but in the mind of a person who "felt threatened" things can get a little crazy.

"Stand Your Ground" lends itself to exactly this kind of thing- people with poor impulse control getting into a squabble, maybe even egging the other person into doing something angry or dramatic enough to justify a lethal response, then pulling out a gun and shooting them dead because escalating the situation seems so much more palatable than just backing up. And it's hard to disprove the "stand your ground" defense in cases like that, because dead men tell no tales and you've already taken away the prosecution's ability to point out that the defendant had options other than murder for resolving the situation.

If we're honestly worried about murders being committed by people with high recidivism, there are better responses than empowering self-appointed private citizens to kill the habitual criminals we're worried about.

Legally enabling people to start an argument, escalate the argument, and then kill them when they engage in low-order violence like "walking closer" or "throwing a bag of popcorn" is extremely dangerous, and 'stand your ground' clauses come pretty close to doing that.

All Stand Your Ground laws do is require police and prosecutors to look at evidence before arresting someone it does not give free range to claim fear and shot someone dead. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/vol ... ally-mean/

What ‘stand your ground’ laws actually mean

By Eugene Volokh June 27, 2014
Two commenters on the McCullen v. Coakley threads have posted:

If I ask someone to stop impeding me and stop shouting at me, and that person continues to move toward me loudly and aggressively … it seems to me that people have been shot for less in “stand your ground” states.

and

I wonder what will happen when the first young woman feels fearful for her life and shoots a protester in a SYG state?

Seems to me that there’s either a lot of misinformation about what “stand your ground” means, or attempts to sow misinformation.

Here’s the deal:

1. In all states, shooting someone who is simply impeding you, shouting at you, and moving towards you loudly and aggressively (absent more), is a crime. The crime is called, assuming you shoot and kill the person, “murder.” (It could also be attempted murder if you miss, or aggravated assault if you hit and injure the person.) Yup, same crime as if the person wasn’t impeding you, shouting at you, or moving towards you loudly and aggressively (though in some states, it’s conceivable that if the person is shouting insults at you and that is viewed as “adequate provocation” — unlikely, but conceivable — you’d get lucky and get off with a voluntary manslaughter charge).

This is because “stand your ground” simply means that, if you reasonably believe that you face imminent death, serious bodily injury, rape, kidnapping, or (in most states) robbery, you can use deadly force against the assailant, even if you have a perfectly safe avenue of retreat. In non-stand-your-ground states, when you face such threats outside your home (and, in some states, your business), you can only use deadly force against the assailant if you lack a perfectly safe avenue of retreat. In no states are you allowed to shoot someone who is simply shouting at you or moving towards you loudly and aggressively, unless you reasonably believe that you’re in danger of death, serious bodily injury, or the other harms I listed. (When the person is coming into your home, in many states you can indeed shoot, but that doesn’t apply to confrontations on the public street.)

2. What if you just feel fearful for your life, but it’s not reasonable for you to feel such fear (again, of death, serious bodily injury, etc.), and you shoot and kill the person you fear? In some states, that would still be murder; in others, it will still be a crime, but a lesser one, usually called involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide. But of course if your fear is unreasonable, a jury might conclude that it was insincere, too (even given that the prosecution must disprove your defense beyond a reasonable doubt, in all states but Ohio).


3. The stand-your-ground vs. duty-to-retreat distinction comes up in the relatively unusual case in which you are faced with a threat of death, serious bodily injury, etc., but you can escape with perfect safety. If you’re facing an assailant with a gun, it generally doesn’t matter what state you’re in, because you generally can’t escape a gun with perfect safety. So if you’re in the fortunately very rare scenario in which you reasonably believe that the person outside the clinic will imminently shoot you, you can shoot him in any state (if you’ve got a gun, that is). And if you’re in the much more common scenario in which you just think the person might slap you or block your entrance or insult you, you can’t shoot him in any state. Only in the very rare scenario in which you think the person might kill or seriously injure you, but with a deadly weapon that you can flee with perfect safety would it matter whether you’re in a stand-your-ground state or a duty-to-retreat state.

4. In Florida, the “stand your ground” principle is also used to refer to certain statutory procedural protections that are provided to people who claim reasonable self-defense; the cases against them can be dismissed at an early pretrial stage, if the judge concludes that they were likely innocent. That’s an important procedural protection, but it doesn’t affect the substantive rules I describe here.

[General Zod]

In any state in the country but Florida, chasing someone for a block and stabbing them to death because they were trying to steal your radio is not considered justifiable homicide. But sure, let's pretend Stand Your Ground is a good idea.

That's not "stand your ground". Anytime you are chasing someone is NOT "stand" your ground.

Of course, there are a LOT of comprehension problems when it comes to concepts like "self defense".

I don't think it's a problem of comprehension. The problem is the law is vague enough that people can use it to justify all sorts of reprehensible acts that wouldn't fly otherwise.

[Broomstick]

Oh. I see. You were looking for another strawman. >yawn<

So you sure like moving the goalposts.

And you sure like making assumptions, mis-reading posts, and waving pictures in peoples' faces.

I do, in fact, know what the Illinois cards look like because I work in a store not 10 miles from the Illinois border and have sold ammunition to our customers. Are you now going to wave the "under drinking age" and "over drinking age" driver's licenses in my face to prove some sort of point?

YOU find Illinois regulations onerous in some manner. I actually lived in Illinois for 15+ years. My spouse once owned guns in that state (I believe at its height his collection totaled seven in number) and lived in Illinois for over 40 years. While yes, the Indiana regulations are more lenient neither of us regarded the Illinois regs as particularly onerous for people without felony records or mental health issues. While I might entertain an argument that non-violent felons might be given gun privileges (with a LOT of oversight and conditions) I certainly do not want violent felons or the mentally ill who have required hospitalization in the past with conditions that pose a risk to either themselves or others to be buying guns of any sort.

All your whining and crying that Illinois is full of big meanies is bullshit. Yes, Chicago had (and still tries to have) some draconian laws that disarmed the law-abiding but the rest of the state is more sane. Unlike you, I am actually in favor of licensing, regulation, and oversight of tools that can cause a great deal of harm in the wrong hands. How does requiring a background check for a person desiring to own a firearm cause harm to citizens who don't have a criminal/mental health record?

[Simon_Jester]

The problem I perceive is that there is a lot of room for the basic idea behind "stand your ground" to be over-interpreted into an excuse for killing people who didn't urgently need killing. Because so much hinges on 'reasonable fear' and it is relatively easy to lawyer over whether a given fear was reasonable.

[MKSheppard]

I took the time to find the exact "Stand your Ground" Bill passed in 2005 in florida. It was moderately hard to find.

The Protection of Persons/Use of Force Bill (Senate Bill 436) -- LINK to final enrolled version

Here's the current as of 2016 text of the Florida Statutes on Self Defense LINK with the SYG text incorporated.

[Zwinmar]

The problem is that there is no standard regulations for Mental Health. This has caused some guys I know to not go seek help because they are afraid of loosing their ability to hunt.

[MKSheppard]

And Obama hands off the baton for Gun Salesman of the Century (at least 100~ million guns sold under his administration) to DOLAN TROMPH, a/k/a/ Donnie Jingles a/k/a The Cheeto Messiah a/k/a The TRUMPENING.

Since everyone pretty much has a gun now (or five of them); it was thought that there were no new markets to be exploited in the Firearms industry.

But Mr. Jingles in his foresight saw a completely untapped market: LIBRULS.



LINK

Why US liberals are now buying guns too
By Brian Wheeler
BBC News, Washington DC
20 December 2016

Gun ownership has traditionally been associated with the right wing in America but the election of Donald Trump has prompted some left-wingers to join gun clubs - and even start preparing for the collapse of society.

"I really didn't expect to be thinking about purchasing a gun. It was something that my father did and I rolled my eyes at him."

Clara, a 28-year-old nursing student, grew up in the Mid-West, where "the folks that had guns were seen as hicks" or were just "culturally different", she says.

But since the election of Donald Trump in November she has started going to a gun range for the first time and is shopping around for a semi-automatic pistol.

"It's been seeing the way that Trump's election has mobilised a lot of the far right and given them hope," she says, citing a rise in reports of hate crimes and neo-Nazi activity.

As a transgender woman, she does not fear for her personal safety in the Californian city where she now lives but she says she knows people in rural areas "who woke up and found a bunch of swastikas and words like 'faggot' and 'trannie' scrawled all over their building".

She foresees a wide-ranging struggle between the Trump administration and the left over issues such as immigration and racial politics.

But won't buying a gun just increase tensions?

"Things are already escalating and they will continue to do so and me not engaging or being prepared to defend my friends by force... isn't going to stop people from being attacked or harassed," Clara says.

Gun sales in America hit record levels in October amid fears a Hillary Clinton election victory would lead to increased controls.

Many expected the election of Donald Trump, whose candidacy was backed by the National Rifle Association, to bring an end to the panic buying. Shares in gun manufacturers dropped by as much as 18% following his victory.

But instead FBI background checks for gun transactions soared to a new record for a single day - 185,713 - during the Black Friday sales on 25 November, according to gun control news site The Trace.

Some of this has been put down to gun retailers selling off stock at reduced prices, but there have also been reports of more "non-traditional" buyers, such as African Americans and other minorities, turning up at gun shops and shooting ranges.
Lara Smith, national spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, says her organisation has seen a "huge" rise in enquiries since November's election and a 10% increase in paid members.

Some of the new members are reluctant first-time gun owners, says Smith, concerned that isolated acts of aggression against minorities could escalate into something more violent and that a Trump administration will dismantle key constitutional rights, leading to a "more fascist rule than the US has ever had".

The club, which has nine chapters and members in all 50 states, aims to provide a forum for people whose political beliefs do not fit the traditional right-wing gun enthusiast stereotype.

The club's members have a keen sense of irony, joking in their discussion forums about drinking herbal tea and practising yoga "to get fired-up to hit the range".

"In the more conservative gun world, there is definitely a feeling that liberals hate guns," says Smith, who voted for Hillary Clinton and describes herself as a "moderate Democrat".

"If you go into gun forums and discuss your politics, you are very clearly not welcome. Libtard [an abbreviation of 'liberal retard'] is one of the nicer things they say. It can get pretty nasty very quickly."

55% of Republican-supporters say they have a gun in the house, compared with 32% of Democrats, according to research by PRRI
Hillary Clinton campaigned for tougher background checks and a ban on those on terror watch lists gaining access to firearms
This was seen by the National Rifle Association, which reportedly spent more than $26m on pro-Donald Trump's TV ads, as an attack on the Second Amendment of the US constitution which declares "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

Gwendolyn Patton, of the Pink Pistols, a club for for gay, lesbian and transgender gun owners, says new members fear being "harassed by the gun nuts at the range".

But she says they are mostly "welcomed with open arms by the shooting community".

"There are people who have professed to carrying a gun now because Trump made them feel unsafe," she says.

"I think their fears are groundless but I can't make them not be afraid, so whatever they need to do to feel safer, I don't have a problem with that as long as they do it responsibly."

It is not just gun ownership that liberals are reassessing in the wake of Donald Trump's election win. There appears to have been a surge in interest in survivalism too.

In America, stockpiling weapons and food, in preparation for social and economic collapse, has tended to be the preserve of right-wing libertarians and foes of "big government". But the Liberal Prepper Facebook group - up to now a small band - reports a big increase in enquiries.

"A lot of people are worried that not only will [a Trump presidency] fail but that it will fail spectacularly to the point that we are going to end up on in one or more critical situations that we are just not prepared for," says Jeff, 36, one of the group's members.

The group is run by BlytheBonnie, a 70-year-old lifelong Democrat who turned against the party at the recent election because she "didn't like the way they treated Bernie Sanders".

She has a purpose-built, above-ground storm shelter, stocked with emergency supplies of food and water, with its own generator.

Like Jeff, she is concerned both about natural disasters, and a presidency she regards as the biggest threat to economic stability America has seen for decades.

"We are not preparing for a battle with the federal government but we are preparing for if we have local chaos. Like they have had with some of the police shootings."

It's possible that liberal preppers will be able to pick up some bargains as the Trump victory appears to have caused sales of emergency food and supplies to crash, according to the author of The Economic Collapse blog.

"Now that everyone is feeling so good about things, very few people still seem interested in prepping for hard times ahead," he writes.

"In fact, it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community."

Liberal preppers seem keen to underline the difference between them and their right-wing counterparts, who they tend to regard as paranoid, gun-obsessed conspiracy theorists.

"We are not looking for end of the world Mad Max-type scenarios, we are not looking at a zombie apocalypse," says the author of a left wing survivalist blog, who also reports a surge in interest since Trump's victory.

He says it is "fairly easy to predict" an economic collapse under Trump but adds: "No matter what, the country is still going to be here in four years, there's going to be another election."

But some left wingers take a more pessimistic view.

"It just feels like we are living at the end of the world and everybody expects the apocalypse to come sooner rather than later," says Clara, the nursing student.

"So learning how to shoot a gun doesn't seem like a bad idea. Certainly more useful than learning how to make PowerPoint slides, or whatever."

God Bless America. God Bless The Ability of the American People to find a way to arm the last 5% of the population.

[Joun_Lord]

Part of me wants to make a snide comment like "well now that you fucks are worried you are all for clinging to guns" though that would be petty. Fuck it imma do it anyway.

People whined for the past 8 years about moronic right wing morons stockpiling arsenals, laughed at them for worrying about how the nations economy was and called them paranoid for worrying about laws that would effect them. Now what we got, left wing morons doing the exact same goddamn thing. Won't see the irony in that, no sirree bob, won't see the irony of railing against guns rights but no when they right or wrong feel threatened they are all about those semi fully automatic death dealing penis compensators. The entire aftermath of this shitshow of an election has been goddamn irony like a 9 iron upside my dang fool head. And I have no idea what a 9 iron is beyond it being a golf club.

I would think this would be a good thing if both sides had an epiphany, if the right wing shits realized that gay people and women protecting their rights with firearms is just the same as them protecting their own rights, that rights even if you don't agree with them are worth defending. If the left wing fucks realized that gun rights help protect other rights, to protect lives. Nope. Nobody will realize shit, just bury their heads deeper in that goddamn sand box digging for treasure.

Personally I hope the liberals labias don't lead to a constant panic buy for the next 4 to 8 years like their conservatives cunt counterparts have for the past 8 years. I've been tempted to get back into shooting but it seems like anytime I do prices go fucking insane. I was hoping maybe the only thing good about Lord Trump of Flipflopia would be maybe gun prices would go back down.