being armed enables vulnerable people to prevent their exploitation.

this is a thought terminating cliche

it’s one of the very real dangers people face. and firearms are one of the tools they may use to defend themselves from it.

You seriously think that the cause of modern day slavery is lack of guns?

that’s not what i said. it’s a bad faith argument: a strawman.

at this point i’m making due advocating that would-be slaves aren’t legally prohibited the tools they need to protect themselves.

that’s cold comfort for slaves

none so far, and id like to keep it that way, but there is no reason i or anyone else should become a victim for a lack of self defense tools.

there are more slaves now than ever in history. there are more prisoners, more prisons, more cartels, more police (but i repeat myself). i won’t tell you how you may keep yourself safe. please return the courtesy.

there you go again, assuming things you don’t know about me.

your statistics don’t know who i live with, who lives next door, or how corrupt my government is. and, as samuel clemons said, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.

you don’t know my circumstances or anyone else’s.

guns are for vulnerable people who want to ensure their own safety.

But no, none of that matters. You’ve already figured out what I believe, and you’ll tell me about it at length, whatever I have to say about it.

total lack of self-awareness

liberal democracies are breeding grounds for fascism. every fascist regime has emerged from them.

you can also read mussolini. he says explicitly what fascism is and why. eco is not singularly authoritative on fascism, and his definition gives liberal democracies far too much leeway. modern america, and much of the rest of the developed world, is doing exactly what mussolini would have had us do.

democrats and republicans are both fascist. they don’t need to be hitler to be protecting the interest and primacy of the state at the expense of the interests and power of all other institutions. in fact, having hitler as a foil serves well to protect them from accusations of fascism.

harm reduction is a specific strategy, and voting is not harm reduction.

The candidate that does the least harm would probably be Cornell West or Jill Stein. voting for the senator who put in place the conditions for roe v Wade to be turned over, the senator who confirmed some of those very same justices, to be president does not reduce harm. if you won’t take it from me maybe it’ll take it from this guy

https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/

harm reduction as a specific thing. The best example of it is needle exchanges and safe injection rooms for addicts. you recognize that the bad thing is happening, and you do what you can to mitigate the harm that comes from the bad thing. The bad thing is bad people being in power. what you can do to mitigate that is engaging in mutual aid and community organizing around issues that are affecting you locally. voting for a Democrat or Republican won’t stop the bad things from happening. The Democrats have brought us to the point where Trump is seen as reasonable by half the electorate. The Democrats have shared power with the Republicans for the past hundred years as fascism has taken over the government. voting for them doesn’t reduce the harm that they cause.

edit

voting for Democrats is like giving out free Suboxone and saying at least it’s not heroin. That’s not harm reduction. harm reduction is recognizing that the addicts are going to use the substance of their choice and making that as safe as possible.

voting is not harm reduction.

Therese kind of personal attacks have no place in this community