Do Americans really believe they’ll be able to get their pet monster under control once they genocide the entire Middle East?

I don’t think any Americans who truly support this think further than the next quarter of Raytheon profits.

Korra and Toph from Avatar, Tsunade and Sakura from Naruto

Ah, well in that case, you might want to consider an AR-15 as your first or second rifle. It’s an extremely versatile platform and, because of its popularity, knowing how it operates will give you instant familiarity with a huge amount of rifles out there. You can even find conversion kits for .22lr (and 9mm, but those are supposed to be way less reliable), so you can have one “gun” (serialized lower) that can be reconfigured to shoot a lot of different kinds of ammo and is useful in various situations.

Then a 10/22, especially a takedown model, should fit the bill. Note that a takedown model will be slightly less accurate than a non-takedown, so if you’re going for super precision shooting, then don’t go the takedown route.

A few other things to consider - if you’re planning on only buying ONE gun, you might want a slightly higher caliber, such as at least 9mm, in case you need to use it to defend yourself - sticking with rifles, the Ruger PCC is a good one (although heavyish), and is also a takedown. Obviously if you’re comfortable in getting a first rifle for learning the basics, then adding another rifle to your lineup later that’s got more bells and whistles, this won’t apply to you.

Another two considerations, especially if you want to be more on the DL, is storage and transport. Your state/county/city might have storage laws that you may have to comply with, making it slightly harder to store rifles than pistols. And clearly if you have to put a big rifle case in your closet it’ll be more obvious than a tiny pistol safe. Regarding transport, it’s pretty hard to covertly carry a full sized rifle around, since the cases are so much longer, whereas takedown models such as the 10/22 or PCC are much easier to fit in a (tall) backpack or tennis racket bag. Pistols are obviously much easier as well.

Welcome! Any reason you’d mostly want to shoot a rifle? What are you actually interested in doing? There’s a lot of different types of shooting. While the recommendations for a 10/22 are great for an all-rounder first gun, if you ONLY want to larp as a tacticool guy, then perhaps a M&P Sport II would be better.

At a time when we also need more housing density, I feel like subways go hand-in-hand. And even for shittily zoned cities with huge suburb-like areas, I feel like most would benefit from at least nearby subways with parking lots (or ideally, additional bike paths).

someone trained in protecting

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a cop protecting anything other than a storefront

A team of a nurse or social worker + cop is the alternative to (generally) 2 cops. Whatever the funding mechanism behind the doors, you’re switching out a cop for an alternative person, which is exactly what the defund movement has always been asking for. See some quotes below:

https://defundthepolice.org/alternatives-to-police-services/

The police service is a dangerous option for people experiencing a mental health crisis—but for many, it’s the only option. By defunding the police, significant resources can be reallocated to create a new community emergency services to support the mental health needs of our vulnerable community members. Teams trained in de-escalation and who root their work in community-informed practices could provide crisis support and care.

…

One common refrain in opposition to defunding the police assumes that our society will not be able to effectively respond to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence. In most incidents of violent crime, police are responding to a crime that has already taken place. When this happens, what we need from police is a service that will investigate the crime, and perhaps prevent such crimes from occurring in future.

Policing is ill-equipped to suit these needs. When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed, and at times refused to take the threat seriously. Why would we rely on an institution that has consistently proven that it is rife with systemic anti-Blackness and other forms of discrimination that result in certain communities being deemed unworthy of support? Instead of relying on police, we could rely on investigators from other sectors to carry out investigations. Social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, researchers, and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place.

…

If we were to defund the police, we could create new investigative services where diverse teams of researchers and investigators, with a mix of scientific, public health and sociological expertise are able to attend to our investigative needs without the inherent anti-Blackness with which the police services approach our unsolved cases. Additionally, we could put money into programs attending to the food security and housing security needs of people living in precarity, to reduce the likelihood that desperate people unable to have their basic needs met would resort to the extraordinary step of attempting to meet their needs through theft.

You’re not wrong, but so are Republicans. That’s the nature of a 2-party system and why it basically doesn’t work.

Meme says you’ll tell me he’s doing all that with good sources though?

Yoo a lot of nostalgia for the Cybiko! My mom wouldn’t let me get a gameboy but my sister managed to find one of these somewhere. That was my only way to do handheld gaming for years! The games sucked but it was better than homework =)

Biden didn’t stutter when he was Obama’s VP and his brain was still intact. Seems like everyone but you cares.

(almost) no black people care about Kamala.

If you like it, there’s a number of etsy sellers that have this. Also see “defend equality” stickers from offcolordecals.

OK vote blue no matter who, give me articles from reputable sources regarding:

• Complete ban on all fossil fuel drilling in any US territory
• Medicare for all
• Massive expansions of railways
• US recognizing Palestine as a state

Edit: thanks VBNMW folks for proving my point - meme says you’ll give me 3 good sources showing he’ll do all this stuff, instead you give a ton of downvotes. Aren’t you guys the angry ones in this meme?

You’re right on crumple zones, but also bumper height makes a big difference (i.e. if bumpers are aligned, there’s less damage). https://www.motortrend.com/news/collision-costs-iihs-says-car-suv-bumper-heights-can-prove-expensive-9290/

https://tacticaltransition.com/product/ar-15-finishing-kit-rainbow-pvd-coated/

It likely won’t be done at scale, but let’s say you are wildly successful and are now in line for a high-value position, where vetting is common. Might look pretty bad if you fabricated your whole thesis. Recently, Bill Ackman basically bullied several schools into firing their head administrators on the pretense of not citing sources correctly in their thesis papers.

I also am not in Michigan, and don’t own property on a lake. But it’s also not a short sighted viewpoint when your original point was that “We and our children will drown in floods, starve in drought and burn in unbearable heat…” That’s simply not true for a lot of people in the first world. In terms of personal politics, I believe that every oil executive should be shot, and people who think Biden is some climate savior have a screw loose. But clearly the green party isn’t going to ever win any national elections (it does decently locally), so the US will keep chugging along and drilling more, but will export the consequences elsewhere, as it has always done. And of course the US will shut its borders and refuse climate immigrants - it’s literally happening right now. We can all see what’s coming. But life will continue just fine for many in the first world.

That’ll be the fate of a lot of the world, especially heat in India, flooding in SE Asia, etc. But if you’re in Michigan, near a bunch of bodies of fresh water, you’ll probably be fine for a very long time.