this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
917 points (98.9% liked)
Not The Onion
16090 readers
1700 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It started because of school shootings, ironically enough. If you’re in a lockdown for hours while the cops take their sweet time, (coughUvaldecough), there’s a near 100% chance that at least one of the children in your class is going to need to use the restroom during that time.
Luckily, camp toilets are a thing:
They’re basically a 5 gallon bucket with a snap-on toilet seat lid. You use a trash bag to line it, then sprinkle an alginate powder in, (the same powder used in diapers) and it turns into a gel when it gets wet. This helps avoid the smell and splashing, and a single small sachet of alginate powder is enough for the entire bucket.
As an added bonus, you can use the bucket to store other things that might be needed in a shooting or extended lockdown. Tourniquets, gauze, protein bars, etc… It’s all there in a single grab-and-go location. Lockdown starts, you pull the bucket out of the closet, dump all the supplies out, and set it in the corner for kids to use if they need to pee.
But this very quickly got flipped around, because conservatives didn’t want the left to start using “schools need toilets in the classrooms because school shootings are so frequent” campaigns. So they flipped it around, and said schools were providing litter boxes to furries. There’s also a heavy anti-trans lean on the litter boxes messaging, which just plays into the conservative fear mongering even more.
The U.S. needs stricter gun laws, imo. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country
https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527/
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/may/27/the-onion-gun-violence-texas-shooting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens
We have a scenario where 8 blue states have effectively banned concealed carry, 27 red states have said concealed carry is legal without a license, and 15 (former) swing states need licenses to carry concealed weapons.
Over 30 million Americans have obtained such licenses since the early 2000's. Those 30 million Americans now hold pro-gun opinions. They have each invested thousands of dollars on expensive firearms, ammunition, range time, classes, targets, gun safes/lockers, holsters, belts, clothing compatible with concealment.
Democrats have consistently pushed for "stricter gun laws" like you are talking about. Those gun laws were never popular among the people in 27 red states, and once 30 million people in the (former) swing states started picking up licenses, those laws stopped being popular there as well.
"Stricter gun laws" being popular in only 8 states, yet being a central plank in the Democratic party, is how several swing states have turned reliably red over the past 25 years.
Stricter gun laws gave us Trump. Twice.
No, actually a lot of 'em skip a lot of those steps. They have the expensive firearms, and ammunition, but rarely practice at the range, mostly don't take any classes, targets? meh - why waste money on targets when we've got old cans?, gun safes are for sissies with kids, etc.
After hurricane Andrew in Miami, there was a long period where services like 911 just didn't exist. I thought briefly about getting a Glock 9mm and a pump action 12 gauge, but when it came to the reality of ownership I could foretell that I wouldn't spend as much time at the range as I believe I should if I were to keep such things in my home, so I opted to not buy them. 32+ years later, there have been a couple of incidents over the years where I might have pulled my weapon if I had it, none of them could have had a better outcome if I had my weapon at the time. Flipside: my stepfather concealed carried for 40 years - as was his Constitutional right. He planned scenarios, shared them, was prepared should he ever need to use one of his many weapons - his collection was probably worth $50K by the time he died. He was also an alcoholic, and eventually addicted to opioid pain killers, never gave up his guns. Luckily the only thing he ever shot besides ducks while hunting was a bookshelf by accident while cleaning his guns. All those years, all that planning on when and how to take another human life should the need ever arise, all those years and years of drug clouded judgement... I do NOT feel safer knowing that there are literally thousands of old men, and women, at various stages of dementia and infirmity out there in our county just like him.
I pointed out the cost to demonstrate the depth of their concern. You aren't likely to cast a vote to ban your own hobbies. You aren't going to vote to make your collections worthless.
20-some years ago, I took my first concealed carry class. 30 people in the room, and only 6 of us (including me and two of my brothers) had ever fired a gun before.
Democratic leadership never bothered to consider how gun ownership would affect the political opinions of all those new gun owners in swing states. It just shunned them as Republican baby killers, and wondered why they were losing votes.
Us? There has only been 9 school shootings, since 1975. I voted recently for NDP for my MP, my riding voted for a Conservative MP. Liberals won as a minority government, with Conservatives and Bloc Québécois coming in 2nd and 3rd.
Australia used to be full of guns, until the government peacefully bought back guns.
I still think U.S. citizens have too many guns.
The number of guns we have is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand. The relevant issue is the opinions of the people who would actually be affected by the law.
Gun control is one of the major reasons why people in 42 of our 50 states are dissatisfied with the Democrats. Gun control is one of the major reasons why Trump is now in office.
Democratic leadership should have learned this lesson two decades ago, when our Federal Assault Weapons Ban sunsetted, Democrats couldn't get it renewed, and the US went from generally banning concealed carry to generally licensing it. Failing to recognize that fact in 2004, Democratic leadership should have picked up on it from pro-gun legislation passing in 42 states. But no, they were hell bent on pushing 1980's gun control efforts, and ignoring any pushback against that position.
Democratic leadership refusing to follow the will of the people is how the US got itself in this disaster.
The assault weapons ban in Australia forced the retirement of the entire set of politicians who voted for it.
They have no regrets, it is a good law and makes their country a better place to live for them and their children.
The assault weapons ban the US had from 1994 to 2004 didn't force the retirement of the entire set of politicians who voted for it. It simply drove the majority position across party lines, and left everyone wondering how the hell the Democrats become so out of touch with their own constituents.
Yes, what the Democrats need to do is to keep shifting to the right.
/s
Gun control in the US is a centrist position, not a leftist position. Both the left wing and the right wing are pro-gun, and largely for the same reasons.
Its the centrist, corporatist, CEO-owned Democratic leadership who doesn't want guns.
Blasphemy!
Best we can do is take away hypothetical litter boxes in school.
I mean, there's a position nobody is going to argue against, amirite?
Where is the class cat supposed to piss, if you do that?
but then how will they overthrow a tyrannical government?!?!
… wait
Well yeah, I doubt you’ll find many disagreements here. The biggest disagreements are probably going to be the “if you go far enough left, you get your guns back” crowd. AKA the “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” version. Conservatives aren’t exactly popular around these parts.
No need to complicate things. A couple handfuls of sawdust eliminates the smell too
I read a very different thing. Classes were putting medical supplies in them and other emergency gear, but again, for mass shootings.