I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.
I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.
I am very leftist and somewhat split.
Modern guns are an engineering marvel and I can understand if someone is fascinated in the precision and engineering knowledge needed to construct them - the same way some people are fascinated by mechanical watches, steam engines, etc.
They are also a necessary tool for some jobs - I can worked alongside these and in theory am trained to handle one(but haven’t had a gun in my hand for 15 years if you don’t count two instances I had to take it from a patient before law enforcement arrived). So I am very happy that the people who need to have it have modern,safe, versatile and easy to handle guns at their disposal. And I want these people to have the best training,the best equipment and the best recruitment and background check possible.
This brings me to another point: I am sternly against people using “shooting” (large calibers) as a hobby and the whole gun culture around it - we see in the US this can easily become a purpose on it’s own and the detrimental effects it has on everything, from mental health care,policing, emergency medicine to the political culture, even influencing their neighbours negatively.
Go for small calibers all you want, no problems with that. But there is no reason an average private citizen needs a 9mm or a AR15 (even with manual fire)as a hobby or for self defence here. (There might be some very rare cases when people are under so much threat for their life that it is different - but these are really rare and tbh should require the same amount of training a professional carrier needs)
Hunting is a bit different, but even there I see problematic behaviour within recreational hunting. I am not at all against hunting per se, it’s absolutely an requirement in most industrial nations to keep the ecological balance in the few remaining ecosystems and is the most ethical source of meat available.
But again in some nations a subculture around it has formed that is not healthy,not required to maintain biodiversity and ecological balance, etc. My shire owns large wooden areas and has decided to switch to (semi-) professional hunters quite a while ago, they are payed to hunt according to a ecological plan, do not get less or more money if they are successful, the shire sells the meat to the inhabitants for relatively cheap prices. This model has been proven (scientifically) to be successful as it allows very targeted hunting, e.g. to keep animal tracks away from certain roads, to intentionally allow the reintroduction of larger predators,etc.
Let me preface this with I’m very liberal so I’m not attacking anyone but I’m also a physics nerd so…
Anyway, is a .22LR a small caliber? Because the difference between a .22LR (5.66mm) and the typical shell in an AR15 (5.7mm) is only 0.04mm, about the size a small human hair. A better distinction is muzzle energy which is a function of mass of the projectile and velocity of the projectile. I mean a typical paintball is bigger the a 50BMG. It just doesn’t weigh very much or go very fast. So caliber is a terrible measure for your purposes.
There is a distinct difference in terms of sport shooting which I was referencing to - with Olympic shooting .22 lfb is the reference for “small caliber shooting”. Everything above that, including other kinds of .22 are often seen as larger calibre. Therefore I was intentionally referencing the sport context.
While a .22 lfb surely can absolutely kill and has done so, nevertheless the chances of doing so are far smaller compared to 9mm, 5.56,etc.
Everything Olympic related is air guns as far as I know. But I’ve even seen 50cal air rifles. Again these are going to be much much slower.
“very leftist” “wants police to have lots of versatile guns and the populace to not” I’m confused.
Not all leftists are anarchists,not all leftists are communists,not all are utopians and not all leftists are pacifists either. Some of us know Realpolitik fairly well. But considering I was a candidate for a state parliament for one of the furthest left parties in Europe I think I can still claim that. (I left in the meantime on their stance on supporting the Ukraine,btw. Don’t be shocked,some of us aren’t couch pacifists either and firmly believe that democracy needs to be defended - even though a lot of us and a lot this ideology died back in Spain)
I firmly believe that a healthy society needs a very well regulated, extremely well qualified and trained and well equipped police.
That does not make me a friend of the police as it is acting in a lot of countries (we have our fair share of them and I am constantly addressing them publicly - but our situation is far better than e.g. in the US and a lot of other countries) and I campaign for that a lot. With police officers,btw. Because good policeman have one major problem - the bad apples spoil the whole lot.