US Politics: Police and the 2nd Amendment
The 2nd Amendment seems superfluous to those with the privilege to feel safe within their environment.
In reality, the 2nd Amendment is the last remaining line of defense against the US becoming a total police state. Those who can't trust the police rely on the 2nd Amendment to keep them safe from the police.
Gun laws only serve to give the police more power to do what they already do best: Oppress and kill Black, Indigenous, Trans and other Minorities.
re: US Politics: Police and the 2nd Amendment
@mawr Yup, it is intensely frustrating that a majority of mainline progressives don't seem to grok this but doing so would require them take off their privilege blinders and see a world were involving the police gets people killed and the justice system is little more than a replacement for chattel slavery and a system for grinding down the poor and keeping them little more than meat for the corporate machine.
Of course, that brings comparisons to other countries which have much more intact social safety nets, access to mental and physical healthcare decoupled from wealth on the whole and with smaller, less impoverished populations.
I guess I hate mid-upper class white Liberals in the US.
re: USPol: Cops & 2A
@wobblewuffess BTW if you want some inspiring reading on the concept of modern anti-racism (which is a _much_ deeper topic than it appears from first glance as I'm sure you can imagine), the best book I've started on the subject is Ibram X. Kendi's "How to be an Anti-Racist"
I got about 3 chapters in and had to stop because I needed like a solid month to fully and properly process and internalize what he had to say. Excellent book.
re: USPol: Cops & 2A
@mawr Definitely looks worth a read!
re: USPol: Cops & 2A
I do find it somewhat ironic that some of the values and experiences growing up in rural Georgia and definitely partly instilled from my definitely racist poor, redneck side of the family helped me recognize why things like gun control laws are tools of the oppressor.
But also somewhat sad that they (rural, poor white) can't make the leap of understanding that the people they direct their hatred and racism toward are trapped in similar circumstances and the same forces are working against them and culturally they have far more in common than apart.
I kinda strayed from the topic but only marginally tangentially so.
re: USPol: Cops & 2A
@wobblewuffess Yeah. There's a disconnect there that's hidden by rage and hatred. Same on the left with guns!
I see 2A stuff as an incredible fence-mending and bridge-building tool to help counter-recruit folks on the right. For a lot of them, it's just a lack of exposure (it's easy to hate that which you do not know).
I've met people who crossed that bridge and got impressively woke in a shockingly short period of time-- and from a range of ages, too.
re: USPol: Cops & 2A
@mawr Those first two paragraphs describe the root of so many problems in the US today.
re: USPol: Cops & 2A
@wobblewuffess Marin Luther King Jr. was so right about this. (You've read excerpts from his Letter from Birmingham Jail, right? http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/060.html)
I wish his later years of activism in which he (previously an integrationist, which is now seen as a racist concept) and Malcom X (previously a segregationist, which is def racist), both working together essentially realized what has now become the more modern anti-racist movement, and the US Gov assassinated them for it.