I really dislike this dumbass meme and it just gets worse the longer it's been around. Letting rednecks have guns creates a lot of our problems. Letting Christians be Christians creates a lot of our problems. America is about freedom? Tell that to Black people. Tell that to immigrants. Shit, tell that to people who aren't immigrants but who are having their citizenship challenged because they're the wrong shade. Tell that to women and trans people who need healthcare. America is about freedom for some and not for others, and this meme is for the some.

Why the focus on Christians in particular? There are a lot more religions in the US than just Christianity.

Also, a lot fewer people would have something against Christians if Christians quit trying to infringe on everyone else's rights. Gay marriage, abortion, and unnumerable other things are only an issue because Christians make it one.

Before anyone says it, yes, I know that's not all Christians, but it is the "Christians" controlling the government right now. The kind of Christian who doesn't understand or care about the teachings of Jesus.

This is some closeted Republican shit.

It's the "Christian" rednecks with guns that are threatening everyone else.

Yeah but one side of the aisle really, really doesn't like it when people are living their lives differently than how they see fit.

Kind of hard to live in harmony when one side is at the table and the other is polishing their guns and elevating pedophiles.

So, I'm queer. I live in California.

I saw young people moving in downstairs and left a care package of shit you always forget the first few times you move in by their front door, and a bunch of granola bars, a loaf of fresh bread, so they didn't strictly need to go out for the first few days after they moved in while they were unpacking most intensely. Basic courtesy shit. Regretting that now.

Theres like a metal girder or something in the wall, conducts sound up and down like crazy. If I put my ear to it, I can just about guess the position of anyone walking and hear every conversation within like two floors on this half of the building. Its also where the network cable comes in to my apartment. Natural spot for my computer shit.

Turns out theyre christofascists. They think people like me are monsters who need to be exterminated. I'm not really down for that. Not my first run in with this shit. Considering leaving, definitely being stompy.

Oh and the care package wasn't 'our neighbors are nice' or 'people can be good' but 'god provides, this is one of our little rewards'. They kept talking about the fucking bread.

Guns equating to freedom is straight up NRA propaganda. Do we really think people in Australia, the UK, and Japan are oppressed by tyranny?

The 2nd is the only "right" that the lowest government official can execute you for exercising. That's what passes for freedom in America?

You DON'T have the right to YOUR life, YOUR liberty and YOUR pursuit of happiness at the cost of others' life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

The only freedom that is truly sacred in America is the freedom to exploit the working class for profit.

What about freedom from economic oppression?

This is some white people shit.

The problem with guns is that there's too much ambient stress and so we have a lot of guys running amok.

In the Malay Peninsula men would sometimes lose their mind and indiscriminately start killing their fellow villagers, and there was nothing for it but for a response group to overwhelm him, hold him down and kill him. They called it meng-âmuk from which we get the expression to run amok.

Here in the states we have the same problem. People -- mostly men with right-wing-leaning tendencies -- keep running amok. But the problem is exacerbated because our population is big, so more of them pop off. And we have an awful lot of guns, which make the situation much worse.

Hence on October 1, 2017 Stephen Paddock opened fire from the Mandalay Bay Hotel onto the Route 91 Harvest music festival, killing sixty and injuring ~867, using multiple AR-15 style firearms with bump stocks to make them automatic. It is the worst shooting incident in the US to date. Meanwhile we have small shooting incidents every effing day.

Few people who own and shoot guns actually use them irresponsibly, though the numbers of shooting incidents grow with each year, especially as tension increases between social factions and far-right movements are emboldened. (As with suicides, law-enforcement-involved homicides, and hate crimes, shooting incident rates are also statistically magnified by the presence of Trump as a political figure. It's like his campaign in 2015-2016 gave all of America permission to go batshit crazy.)

So, before we can safely allow guns to be freely obtained and traded, as a nation we need to tone it down a bit, and get our nation back to regularity. Sadly, we re-elected Trump in 2024, and in 2025 he immediately started dismantling the US as a cohesive state, both internally and internationally. This has done a lot to assure the chaos and tension is going to be bad for a long time. And sadly, we're regulating guns less with each year as SCOTUS vetos any regulation, so we Americans are less safe, and more at risk to gun deaths. (But we make up for it with SUVs, which put us at risk of death by vehicle collision.)

All that said, with the rise of the 3D printer and availability of ghost guns, we may make owning legal guns more difficult, but determined shooters will still find ways to acquire them, with Luigi Mangione serving as proof of concept. I think the ultimate path forward is in promoting behavioral health and work-life balance for the entire society, so that fewer people are inclined to use their guns for actual violence. In a better world, we can get back to Atticus Finch using a rifle to put down a rabid dog at range, and then putting it back on the mantle, and that's the incident of the year.

That's unlikely to happen in my lifetime.

So brave. Needs updating for things that are more controversial today. Trans rights, open borders, kicking police out of your neighborhood, etc.

Nice message. However, the whole point of christianity is to prevent everyone from having any fun. Christians are free to enjoy their religion, in PRIVATE.

The Revolutionary War was about expansionism, land grabbing (stealing) and money. Freedom was last thing in the minds of the people who controlled the colonial war effort.

Tired of knowing the people on my life who have been killed by guns. We now lose thousands of children every year to gun violence. It is the number one killer of children in the US now.

One of these things is not like the others.

Any man who has to say "I am the king" is no true king.

Ask people who posted Charlie Kirk quotes after his death how "free" the US is.

Way to shit all over the thread, tankies! As usual.

The funny thing about Christianity is not all Christians are equal so bringing religion into government leads to hating themselves and they don't realize that they will be the ones to marginalizing themselves.

And tell a libertarian that they're stupid, and definitely punch a Nazi.

By the time the older, largely conservo-facist crowd dies off and the country survives another decade, we need to remember this sentiment and act on it.

People currently in your 30s+40s, I'm looking at you.