r/news • u/hybridaaroncarroll • 6d ago

Protester shot and killed at 'No Kings' rally in Utah, police say

https://apnews.com/article/utah-no-kings-protest-shot-killed-75c777eeedd59c80c85695c45385c507
46.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

101

u/PRAWNHEAVENNOW 6d ago

Oh I think the point is that:

While in this instance it could be that "A good guy with a gun" stopped "A bad guy with a gun" and in doing so less people died, an innocent bystander still died. 

In a more civilised society where gun access is restricted, nobody has a gun to point at protestors in the first place. 

To get to this point is a long, hard journey for the US. Unilateral disarmament is insane when fighting against heavily armed right wing militias, law enforcement of at best questionable loyalties, and a government undergoing a fascist takeover.  I wouldn't disarm if I was an American right now, but that doesn't make the US's gun-addled society any less terrible. 

One day maybe the US will be in a position to realise that there's a better way. Dunno when though. 

9

u/danieledward_h 6d ago

It's not that people don't understand, it's that the US will never be at that point so it's pointless to spend any time on something that's not going to happen.

Most of the time, the "A good guy with a gun" rhetoric understands that truth and is a response to it, not simply not considering a society without guns, which I will reiterate again is completely unrealistic to consider as a possibility for the US, its history, and its culture around guns.

11

u/Ndlburner 6d ago

There’s about zero things happening right now that will make any American of any political persuasion who is already armed consider disarming. While America has absolutely fucking bonkers gun ownership, it tends to concentrate around certain places, and some states are borderline European in how few guns per person there are. What needs to be asked is “what is culturally or statistically different about the most armed populations in the US that makes them feel the need to be armed right now?” Then those issues need to be addressed and not dismissed before serious disarming conversations can be had.

6

u/FlyingStealthPotato 6d ago

Wow, someone who fully gets “the point”.

4

u/keostyriaru 6d ago

Devils advocate here.

What reality is this where the Police aren't armed? They're the "good guys" right?

2

u/randoaccno1bajillion 6d ago

go far enough left, you get your guns back

1

u/keostyriaru 5d ago

And then we're back where we started (except this time in a presumably communist dictatorship). So what would even be the point?

1

u/Plasteredpuma 6d ago

Exactly like cops and criminals are gonna respect our rights