#i don't know if airsoft groups are like this in real life

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

I saw HiddenXperia's tweet that MW3 feels like it was written by cringy airsoft larpers. Now I'm imagining if the whole MW reboot trilogy was a bunch of cringy teenage airsoft larpers. With the main larp group being Task Force 141 and their encounters with other factions in the games like Shadow Company, Konni Group, Farrah's ULF group and Alejandro's Mexican SF group just being other larp groups.

Makarov would lead his larp group just to fuck with Task Force 141. So Makarov, would be a troll and that would explain why he's constantly in and out of the story after his schemes have failed like a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

And for the ending of MW3 I'm just imagining that Soap's mom called him to come home which winds up ending the larp session abruptly and causes the lackluster ending for MW3. It might also explain why Soap views Ghost as this big brother despite both being grown men in the games which feels slightly awkward. In the larp session they're actually teenagers so it would make more sense for their immaturity. Specifically, Soap would be a few years younger than Ghost while both are still teenagers.

[acevenoms]

Right, no one does that dumb thing at the range where we talk about revolution, that was kind of my point. But a bunch of communists.... look a certain way in real life. It's just the facts. Also, you alluded to what that actually leads to later, you're 100% right that the GCA of 1968 was basically a direct result of the BPP openly carrying firearms in defense of their communities. Like the only thing Biden has been remotely mobile on during his presidency is gun control, it's wildly unproductive to suggest that we need to look like a revolutionary army right now.

Also, there are still problems with that collective ownership even if you're not committed to legal methods. You completely ignored the logistical ones, but we can talk about NFA items being a pretty big problem there. Suppressors and SBRs have very real value and you super don't want to get caught with them without your name on that tax stamp. Beyond that, it's not always obvious, like it's weird to call this a part of leftist gun culture specifically, but if you've got a group of people who like to shoot and train together, they're gonna pool resources for ammo. It's just a matter of course.

I think you're missing the point a bit about the self-defense thing. Individual self-defense is only important to a point but only without context. You need to remember that for the vast majority of left-leaning folks, we are starting from essentially 0 with gun culture. Appealing to the average proletarian's desire for revolution is complete nonsense when capitalist realism is so pervasive, but appealing their desire to not become a number in a newspaper headline is, as I know for sure, a lot more effective. Overcoming that alienation is a lot easier once people are comfortable with a group.

I can't believe you'd double down on calling marginalized people's defense essentially the same as the fucking McCloskey's delusional display, especially with such a bad argument as "well it's usually cops". Like I don't have the data, but even if that is the case, we're still talking about a job that presents a mortality rate hundreds of times more than most others, just because a majority of that danger comes from state violence doesn't mean it all does. The trans panic defense is a thing you know. Like a real thing. C'mon.

The rest of my points don't cancel each other out, they illustrate a progression of involvement within leftist gun orgs. Basics of handling a firearm can be done dry, and even introduction of SUT can be done dry or with like Airsoft, but once you're at a point where you're doing that, doing it dry becomes less and less effective (and accessible). I could get into what some have found to be a pretty good curriculum in this respect privately if you want, I'm not gonna publicly lay that out. Also, advertising SUT as a thing your org does is a good way to get dipshit larpers, trust me lol.

I really don't have any idea what you're talking about when it comes to the "settler mentality" that drives people to use effective gear. Steel plates will kill you with spall, if you can only afford $60 plates, do not buy plates. Milsurp carriers are fine, but do not cost $50 lol. You also mention rucks, and like, this is where I again implore you to actually interact with active local leftist gun orgs, because if you think they don't do rucks, trauma medic, comms, and security training, you either have only really shitty ones near you, or you've never interacted with them.

Comrade, armed revolution is so far off, probably beyond our life times. We have to lay the groundwork. Creating a real leftist gun culture is a task the magnitude of which I really don't think you fully appreciate.

Finally, "apolitical orgs that offer training to women and minorities". lol. lmao even. May the ghosts of Philando Castile and Amir Locke haunt you for saying that. Here, lemme tell you a thing I saw just a week or two ago. I was at the gun shop waiting for a transfer I think, and a black couple that were there before me were just finishing up a purchase when the clerk, a young white man, did the usual pitch for concealed carry legal protection, specialized lawyers who deal in self-defense pleas with gun deaths. This is mostly a scam, it can be useful, but like all insurance it's exploitative. But the real kicker is how the clerk pitched it. To these people of color he said "Yeah you know George Zimmerman? this company was started by the lawyer that defended him". It's like... insulting to suggest that marginalized people can't tell immediately how hostile 99% of gun culture is to them.

Seriously OP, if you want to do more than engage in tumblr discourse about this, DM me.

‘Leftist gun culture’ is, overwhelmingly, focused on a very petty-bourgeois, hobbyist sort of individual firearms ownership, rather than anything genuinely revolutionary.

General armament (a historical aberration) came about in the US almost entirely due to the nation’s roots as a settler state, where every settler was expected to take up arms and wage genocide wherever they were - defending occupation. As the country developed, this morphed into the need for the (white) citizenry to be ready to organise into posses and slave patrols at a moment’s notice. Later still, lynch mobs of armed citizens. The throughline here is the petty-bourgeois settler, Defending Their Home and Property - and this is still the dominant narrative in the wider US gun culture to this day.

Supposedly-leftist gun culture often carries on this trend, emphasising individual firearms ownership justified by, with some minor modification, these conceptions of self-, and home-defense. The idea of ‘home invasions’ by anonymous masked men (fought off with a shotgun hidden in the drywall) is changed slightly, given a progressive veneer, but the core idea remains the same. But, to fight off the masked men most likely to actually invade your home with guns - the police - requires much more than personal gun ownership, it requires a revolutionary war. The quote bandied about so much: “Under no pretext, etc.” has much less to do with arming proletarians, and much more with arming the proletariat.

Even those nominally more focused on revolution still replicate the existing, petty-bourgeois gun culture, through their hobbyist outlook. Guns are pored over as an object of obsession - not just a tool. Customisation, arguments over different brands and manufacturers, and expensive personal collections; they fit equally well on a forum for motorcycle enthusiasts as they do in the discussions of these prospective revolutionaries. The customised AR triggers and bespoke leftist plate carriers fit much more with the ‘50s Man of the House, building a gyrocopter in his garage, from a mail-order parts kit; not the soldier, equipped with standardised, stock equipment - and much less the guerrilla fighter, using whatever stolen equipment is available.

Spending thousands on a gun, on its accessories and ammunition, and further still on regular upkeep, let alone other equipment - it isn’t something most people can afford. And when the time calls for the use of guns, when an armed people’s uprising takes place - not just by the most active vanguard of the guerrilla forces, but by the mass of the people organised into local militias and self-defense groups - will we expect every one of them to have previously dedicated a month’s worth of income on it? Even ignoring the importance of other sources of equipment, hobbyist insistence on top-of-the-line gear restricts the actual usefulness of broad, basic training and equipment.

Lenin’s focus was largely on providing the proletariat with military training - firearms experience, not firearms ownership. A ‘leftist gun club’ pooling together funds to buy a rifle and range time can provide that training to a much greater number of people, at a much lesser cost, than the same org hashing out EDC pistols (and far moreso than disorganised individuals arming themselves!). In countries with mandatory military service, civil unrest is especially volatile - the workers, trained in military affairs, need only capture weapons to equal the state forces. When the time comes, a hundred well-trained people ready to take up arms are far more useful than a dozen that come pre-equipped.