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The Republican Election Challenges

Lin Wood encourages Trump supporters to plan for a wtshtf scenario

Better to be safe than sorry," Woods wrote in his tweet. "Make sure you have PLENTY of water, food, flashlights & batteries, candles, radio, 2nd Amendment supplies, & a plan to meet with leaders of your communities. Remember we only have 1 President at a time. Our leader is Donald Trump, not Biden."





Gun sales always increase around now (Black Friday, gift giving at Christmas, hunting season etc) and always increase ahead of an election, but this time it’s more than normal.


Americans have purchased almost 17 million guns so far in 2020, more than in any other single full year on record, according to Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, a research firm that tracks firearms.



And Covid is driving an increase in gun purchase too, it seems.

 
Lin Wood encourages Trump supporters to plan for a wtshtf scenario







Gun sales always increase around now (Black Friday, gift giving at Christmas, hunting season etc) and always increase ahead of an election, but this time it’s more than normal.






And Covid is driving an increase in gun purchase too, it seems.


It would be interesting to see some deeper stats on this stuff - is this Mr Bob Doesn't Have A Gun going out and buying one, or this Mrs Andrea Already Got Seven adding to her collection?

Gun ownership numbers stop mattering once you go passed one - you can only use one at a time, and guns are fairly reliable: your one gun isn't going to break, you don't 'need' a spare....
 
It would be interesting to see some deeper stats on this stuff - is this Mr Bob Doesn't Have A Gun going out and buying one, or this Mrs Andrea Already Got Seven adding to her collection?

Gun ownership numbers stop mattering once you go passed one - you can only use one at a time, and guns are fairly reliable: your one gun isn't going to break, you don't 'need' a spare....

People upgrading from handguns to semi automatic assault weapons makes a difference though. So does militias purposefully building up arsenals.
 
It would be interesting to see some deeper stats on this stuff - is this Mr Bob Doesn't Have A Gun going out and buying one, or this Mrs Andrea Already Got Seven adding to her collection?

Gun ownership numbers stop mattering once you go passed one - you can only use one at a time, and guns are fairly reliable: your one gun isn't going to break, you don't 'need' a spare....

Good point, but my impression is that most of the "I have an entire wall covered in rifles" type of firearms owners are overwhelmingly white.
 
I read a thing a while back that said that one of the factors playing out now, in the unravelling of the Republican party, is the fact that for a long time now they have outsourced their messaging to the NRA and to Fox news (& similar).
Which hands those organisations a lot of power and sway over the republican electorate.
Lin Wood is just a wildcard at this point, he is absolutely not helping the republican party at all (telling people not to vote in georgia etc) but they can hardly do much about any of it having given up any attempt to talk directly to people about what if anything the party stands for years and years ago. Maybe that’s part of what made trump so powerful, he definitely did talk directly to his supporters, all day long.
 
It would be interesting to see some deeper stats on this stuff - is this Mr Bob Doesn't Have A Gun going out and buying one, or this Mrs Andrea Already Got Seven adding to her collection?

Gun ownership numbers stop mattering once you go passed one - you can only use one at a time, and guns are fairly reliable: your one gun isn't going to break, you don't 'need' a spare....

I
I agree. I did begin to dig into the stats as I was making that post but realised I was essentially making notes for an essay and it was too late for that, way past midnight, so I made myself stop.


But there is this :

First time buyers in greeter numbers, including higher than previous numbers of women and Black people.






 
Good point, but my impression is that most of the "I have an entire wall covered in rifles" type of firearms owners are overwhelmingly white.


Yes, I think that’s right.

And I think, in the South at least, Black people tend not to hold arms in the same way that white people do, not because they prefer not to but because to do so would be provocative. They need to keep their place. As I’ve said many times before, unless you've spent time in the South it’s hard to understand quite how racist and segregated it really is. And it’s not easy to convey it either.

A lot of those (whites) who have guns in their walls aren’t militia types though. Plenty of rural households have gun racks in plain view. I’ve been inside those homes and sometimes they’re not even locked up, just laid up on the rack. It’s so normal as to be commonplace. These are normal households, albeit Republican, which these days could be something different to the last time I was there....

And then there are people like my Trump supporting Facebook contact, who - despite not being familiar with guns as described above - went out and bought an assault rifle in defiance of the Federal ban in 1994, in order to excercise his “right” to have one. My father confiscated it and locked it away in his own house because he was concerned for the children in the house.



He took it out to show me and it was a strange and terrifying thing to handle. So much lighter and easy to manoeuvre than I would have supposed, and very clearly designed for only one thing to happen, for my finger to press the trigger. I’ve held guns before but this was much stranger. It felt.... slippery somehow. I handed it back immediately but I caught a glimpse of the seductive power of the thing
 
I read a thing a while back that said that one of the factors playing out now, in the unravelling of the Republican party, is the fact that for a long time now they have outsourced their messaging to the NRA and to Fox news (& similar).
Which hands those organisations a lot of power and sway over the republican electorate.
Lin Wood is just a wildcard at this point, he is absolutely not helping the republican party at all (telling people not to vote in georgia etc) but they can hardly do much about any of it having given up any attempt to talk directly to people about what if anything the party stands for years and years ago. Maybe that’s part of what made trump so powerful, he definitely did talk directly to his supporters, all day long.


I saw that too. Or something very similar.
Where was that...
 
Here is the Gallup stats about gun ownership.

I haven't the time right now to parse it out into a post but it’s pretty detailed, and recently updated.


 
Yes, I think that’s right.

And I think, in the South at least, Black people tend not to hold arms in the same way that white people do, not because they prefer not to but because to do so would be provocative. They need to keep their place. As I’ve said many times before, unless you've spent time in the South it’s hard to understand quite how racist and segregated it really is. And it’s not easy to convey it either.

A lot of those (whites) who have guns in their walls aren’t militia types though. Plenty of rural households have gun racks in plain view. I’ve been inside those homes and sometimes they’re not even locked up, just laid up on the rack. It’s so normal as to be commonplace. These are normal households, albeit Republican, which these days could be something different to the last time I was there....

I didn't mean the folks who keep a couple of rifles and shotguns in a handy place without bothering to lock them up. Having a full gun rack in open display is certainly a weird sight for many Brits, but I was actually referring to the batshit types with an arsenal big enough that it looks like that armoury scene from The Matrix.



And then there are people like my Trump supporting Facebook contact, who - despite not being familiar with guns as described above - went out and bought an assault rifle in defiance of the Federal ban in 1994, in order to excercise his “right” to have one. My father confiscated it and locked it away in his own house because he was concerned for the children in the house.

That silly ban doesn't actually ban assault rifles. It bans so-called "assault weapons", which were clearly defined by someone without a clue. That semi-automatic AR-15 with a certain kind of foregrip might look more scary and militaristic to some, but it's just as effective a weapon without it. Also you can turn almost any semi-automatic rifle into a quasi-automatic weapon using your thumb and a belt loop. If for some reason you are unable to fashion your own bump stock, which fall under the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (IIRC), but are mechanically simple enough to make in a small workshop of the kind that can be easily found in rural areas.

He took it out to show me and it was a strange and terrifying thing to handle. So much lighter and easy to manoeuvre than I would have supposed, and very clearly designed for only one thing to happen, for my finger to press the trigger. I’ve held guns before but this was much stranger. It felt.... slippery somehow. I handed it back immediately but I caught a glimpse of the seductive power of the thing

The novelty of holding such a weapon does wear off a bit if, like when I was in the Army Cadets Shooting Team, you have to lug the damn thing across the damp English countryside all day. Still lots of fun to shoot though, even if you're uncomfortably propping your elbows up on hard wet gravel while doing so. I miss using live ammunition.
 
Georgia's got a Republican governor who Trump supported during his election campaign - in Trump's worldview, this means Brian Kemp should now do anything he wants, including doing whatever it takes to give him a win in the state. Trump can't abide disloyal subordinates so he'll be taking out some of his post-election frustration by destroying Kemp's political career.
The sound you hear is me playing my tiny violin, Kemp has built his career around kissing Trump's arse so it must have been a surprise to Trump when Kemp suddenly showed some backbone.
However given that Kemp has made serious attempts to suppress the Democrat vote and failed, I wouldn't have put much faith in his ability to overturn it If I were Trumpy the Trumpster
 
Something interesting about seeing this thread and the "dissident activity in Northern Ireland" thread active in the same day - I just need to remember that that one's the thread about dissident Republicans who reject the legitimacy of the political process, whereas this one is about...
 
This could go in any number of places on here but this one works, the whole 'election challenges' thing being a conspiracy theory with huge appeal.
The writer studies Qanon but this insight in his thread here is i think important more broadly, if we are interested in doing more than just pointing and laughing at the idiots.
Basically, people choose to buy into these apparently mad theories for rational reasons, they get something out of it, and if you ignore that and just picture them as victims of the internet or dupes of trump's grift or whatever you'll never come up with any ideas of how to deal with the problem.
 
This could go in any number of places on here but this one works, the whole 'election challenges' thing being a conspiracy theory with huge appeal.
The writer studies Qanon but this insight in his thread here is i think important more broadly, if we are interested in doing more than just pointing and laughing at the idiots.
Basically, people choose to buy into these apparently mad theories for rational reasons, they get something out of it, and if you ignore that and just picture them as victims of the internet or dupes of trump's grift or whatever you'll never come up with any ideas of how to deal with the problem.


I totally agree that it's important to look beyond 'these people are idiots' if you're going to get a grip on this stuff. It seems to me though (and I might be misunderstanding him here) that there's a hole in there somewhere, around the point where people actually start to believe in this stuff. Either you have a moment where they go 'I deliberately choose to believe in something that I know not to be true' which I find hard to see happening (is it even possible?). Or there's a point where people start to believe it without being aware of it - in which case surely there is an element there of not just being rational beings. Or they don't believe but pretend they do I suppose, for which there might be rational reasons.

Short version - looks like 'choose' is a tricky word in here.
 
I totally agree that it's important to look beyond 'these people are idiots' if you're going to get a grip on this stuff. It seems to me though (and I might be misunderstanding him here) that there's a hole in there somewhere, around the point where people actually start to believe in this stuff. Either you have a moment where they go 'I deliberately choose to believe in something that I know not to be true' which I find hard to see happening (is it even possible?). Or there's a point where people start to believe it without being aware of it - in which case surely there is an element there of not just being rational beings. Or they don't believe but pretend they do I suppose, for which there might be rational reasons.

Short version - looks like 'choose' is a tricky word in here.
Yes. That’s exactly what I’m trying to get better at understanding.
The point still holds true, people ‘believe’ - or align themselves with - things that bring some perceived benefit to them.
But there’s a vast range of different stuff in between the way that I believe for instance that I have 2 feet and how I might believe that, idk, trump has never known what it is to feel joy. I’m trying to get better at not ascribing overly simple ‘believes / doesn’t really believe is just pretending’ motives to other people cos I know I’m not that black & white myself, if you know what I mean.
 
I didn't mean the folks who keep a couple of rifles and shotguns in a handy place without bothering to lock them up. Having a full gun rack in open display is certainly a weird sight for many Brits, but I was actually referring to the batshit types with an arsenal big enough that it looks like that armoury scene from The Matrix.

Yes it was clear what you meant, I wasn't clear in my reply. Should have said something like "Yes, that is something that worries me. However, there is also these people who have guns on their walls who aren't an issue and in all likelihood never will be. Dealing with guns is increasingly difficult because while there are this type you've also got another type of gun owner."

Or something.
 
In order to defend FREEDOM a fair number of trumpists are apparently all geared up for full military dictatorship, this week or maybe next week.
If this sort of thing is actually reaching new audiences as a result of the whole mess that has been 2020 then gun sales will be up, and not just to the collectors.

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