…or sport shooting at ranges has gone viral due to some influencer trends
On the other hand, you better hope they are practicing at those shooting ranges. They are less than worthless for defense, if you are not familiar with how to use them.
There are nowhere near enough shooting ranges or ammo for this.
The nearest place to the Bay Area for example, where you can shoot on public land legally is neither easy to find, nor anywhere near where most people live.
That was happening around 2016, but social media, including YouTube then started to heavily downrank and demonetize viral shooting related content.
This is the entire reason several of my liberal friends have bought a gun or two recently, and started practicing at the range. Unlike right-wingers (I gather, anyway), their nightmare scenario (or wet-dream, depending on how generous we're being) isn't needing to shoot at government agents, but at right-wing militia nutters trying to bring their own brand of authoritarianism—for which authoritarianism-supporting purpose private arms are, so far as their political uses go, more suited than for resisting an authoritarian government with firm backing from its military, but as long as the authoritarian movement's active violent arm is restricted to deniable private militias, private arms might suffice for effective resistance.
You could, like, go speak to them and find out what their actual opinions are, rather than pointlessly speculating about what their opinions are. I'm sure you would be able to catch one in the wild nursing a cold beer at any good American pub.
Also you need to take a breath - quite literally - that last paragraph is almost entirely one sentence.
> right-wing militia nutters trying to bring their own brand of authoritarianism
If this is referring to a certain January 6th incident, for the most part the uproar was caused by a belief that democracy wasn't respected.
Don't get me wrong, people who want authoritarianism are out there, they just probably look different from the ideas people have in their heads.
If we're completely honest, many people in Urban areas purchased guns around the same time the mostly peaceful BLM protests coincided with random arson events and shootings. Everybody seems to support it right up until the point people are on their streets with pitch forks, at which point it gets real.
I come from good country bumpkin very-small-farmer and country-bum stock (as in, I'm the first generation from one side, and the second gen on the other, to not be wholly in those categories) and love the hell out of getting beers in the worst-looking country bars I can find, entirely for the company, so I was being a bit coy about my level of knowledge. Plus, not my entire social circle is left-wingers.
> If this is referring to a certain January 6th incident, for the most part the uproar was caused by a belief that democracy wasn't respected.
Of course it was for what they thought were good reasons. No-one on the front lines of the bad sort of revolution thinks their cause is bad, their information wrong, or that the likely outcome of their actions will be that things get worse, unless they're nihilistic paid mercenaries. Leaders are another matter, of course.
> If we're completely honest, many people in Urban areas purchased guns around the same time the mostly peaceful BLM protests coincided with random arson events and shootings. Everybody seems to support it right up until the point people are on their streets with pitch forks, at which point it gets real.
Yeah, that's probably true too, just reporting the explicit reason folks in my circle are buying them. The right-wingers I know already had guns—lots and lots and lots of them. That aside from hunters of all political persuasions who, obviously, already owned guns and/or bows. The ones getting guns in the last ~2 years haven't been buying them to shoot animals.
[EDIT] Further, I'm not necessarily claiming that my liberal friends buying guns in case social cohesion breaks down, accelerationist "let's do an actual race war" people succeed, or right-wing authoritarians become a real everyday threat, are rational in doing so. But that is why they're buying guns. If anything, I think the right-wingers I know have slowed down their gun purchases, because it's harder to justify buying your tenth firearm when prices are elevated.
[EDIT EDIT] Also, the reasons for "blue tribe" buying guns in blue-tribe areas may differ significantly from why they buy them in red-tribe areas, like where I am. Not a clue about that.
Sure, I was being a little sarcastic. The point was just that "the other side" are humans too and we should just go speak to them if we want to know their minds.
> Of course it was for what they thought were good reasons. No-one on the front lines of the bad sort of revolution thinks their cause is bad [..]
As long as there is reason behind their actions, it means they can be reasoned with. I think it's when we start assuming that people are unreasonable that dangerous things happen.
On a different note, I have zero idea why you got downvoted for just sharing a related experience to the news article.
Meh, just fake Internet points anyway. I think some people take relating something as supporting or promoting it (this is a sub-category of the problem of needing to explain oneself to the point of absurdity to avoid being misunderstood on Web forums) and others might just not think my adding that anecdote improved the conversation.