Denver police have arrested a 13-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting a man whose leg was blocking the aisle on a public bus.
Why does a 13-year-old have access to guns?
I had my own gun and access to guns as a 13 year old. Hunting, target practice, etc. It’s not an insane age to have firearms.
That said, I was raised to respect the fuck out of the danger inherent in a gun, and I used mine to kill deer for food, not kill people I had a mild disagreement with.
Edit: Well fuck me for being born into a different environment ig. Mass downvoting someone for offering a different perspective is healthy for an online community /s
Gotta love being down voted because “America bad” mixed with “guns bad”
Lemmy sure is a weird mixture of people wanting to arm themselves (or allow others to arm) against an increasingly fascist state while some want all guns to be gone forever and think voting and talking is the only way to enact change. These types are also usually the ones who complain about peaceful protestors being mildly inconvenient to others, and shrug their shoulders when the people they watched beat another person nearly to death get a slap on the wrists because “that’s justice for you, whaddaya gonna do”
And it really depends on which group gets to the comments first as to how the votes and conversations go.
A properly run society with good living conditions, social programs, medical/psychological care absolutely can have guns, and there are several examples in europe alone.
But you know… America bad.
I’m a leftist that’s cool with guns and was raised around them, and technically, not legally, owned my first gun at 11.
A 13 year old still should not have access to guns anywhere in public without adult supervision. I get hunting, I get protecting the farm, etc. None of those involve taking a gun on public transport though.
And yeah, America bad. If this was even remotely a significant issue anywhere else, we could say otherwise, but it’s not.
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Can you show me where the downvotes hurt them or you?
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I got beat regularly, and my stepfather at the time used to do stuff like make me wait in the basement for 30 mins, then he’d slowly walk down the stairs with his belt unbuckled so we could hear the jingling in each step, then he’d tell us some scriptures and say this hurt him more than us.
Then if you cried right away it was faking, but if you held on too long it was you being rebellious and stubborn, so my brother and I learned to start faking our cries after the 6th or 7th hit.
I told that to friends as an adult as what I thought was a kinda funny story, and they properly realized I was abused in a somewhat sadistic way and pointed it out to me.
They weren’t calling me out for having a different environment, they were correcting my incorrect belief that it was normal or acceptable.
People are doing the same for you. You made it out safely, but giving unstable teens access to guns is definitely a risk that probably shouldn’t be taken. Survivor bias isn’t an excuse to say it’s fine.
Hahaha we sound very similar. I’ve definitely told stories like that to my close friends thinking they’re funny and they’re horrified.
The sight or sound of someone, especially a man, taking off their belt still triggers the ol’ CPTSD decades later lmao.
Anyway, that was a great example. I grew up in a similar place with similar gun culture as them, and had to figure out for myself what you mentioned in your comment. I definitely think a bit of that is at play here.
Well fuck me for being born into a different environment ig. Mass downvoting
Are you sure that is the reason? Maybe it could be that posting that 13 is a good age for gun ownership in a thread about a 13 year old who used it wildly inappropriately? You are entitled to think what you want, I just personally find it a little distasteful everytime there is a gun death to make justifications about the system that allowed it to happen. I imagine others agree.
He didn’t say it was good age. He simply stated what his life experience was.
He didn’t simply state what his life experience was. He said the age is “not insane”.
Which, tbf, is not the same as saying it’s a “good” age.
Eh, I feel like most people wouldn’t disagree with the statement “it’s insane to allow 13 year olds to own guns”, and the argument of “well I owned guns at 13 and I turned out fine” isn’t a strong one.
absolutely insane age to have access to a gun unsupervised lmfao
I hunted, shot targets, and protected the farm from predators and varmints safely for years because I was taught religiously and throughly since I was a small child what the responsibilty of wielding a firearm is. Firearms are tools designed to end lives, and they are very, very good at it. There are no take-backs, no do-overs. Each time you touch a firearm, a life could end, and you NEED to be absolutely 100% certain it’s the life you mean to take.
It’s a great crushing weight that many adults, much less 13 year olds, should not be trusted with, but some 13 year olds can bear that responsibility well, as I did. There were never any accidents, because there could not be accidents.
One thing that I constantly have to remind myself is that people I’m debating with live a vastly different life experience. So many people who are so antigun clearly live in an urban or suburban environment and cannot fathom living somewhere rural enough that defending livestock from predators or hunting for food is a fact of life.
And some that are so pro-gun live in rural areas and don’t get the issues that dense populations where guns are cause issues.
Personally, I don’t think guns are the main problem. It’s the culture around guns, the worship of guns, the lack of better conflict resolution skills, the rise of extremist echo chambers, and harmful rhetoric online.
Even the “come and try to take them” and “fuck around and find out” attitude implicitly says that guns are going to solve whatever conflict people have and that it’s a valid solution equal with other options. The rhetoric doesn’t tell people that it’s the option of last resort for conflicts.
🏅
Hear you however not, most, aren’t like that rural or not. There are stories of kids harming and getting harmed by guns.
Best friend grew up in Arizona and got accidentally shot by his friend as kids roughly the same age. Ended up with a bad leg his whole life from it.
Children should not have guns period. Just my opinion
The biggest part of gun laws is checking for responsible ownership. You are allowed to get hunting guns in most of the countries that the right says “ban guns”. They just have common sense checks, like do you have training at a shooting range, do you understand gun safety, do you have a gun safe, are you not a psychopath prone to fits of violence? Your upbringing wouldn’t be any different because your parents were responsible and would have passed all those checks.
This is about not giving a gun to every dumbass yahoo that stumbles into a store. The household this kid grew up in obviously wasn’t responsible because this kid has unsupervised access to a gun.
Kids much younger than 13 know right from wrong, and are capable of understanding the harm they can cause. I don’t want to live in a society that thinks the problem here is “13” rather than “psychopath”.
Societal expectations for teens are far too low. We infantilize tweens and teens. We set our expectations so low that even when they outright murder someone, we blame everyone else.
If he’s murdering people at age 13, he learned how to be a scumbag criminal before he could talk.
The problem here is untrained, unrestricted and unsupervised access to guns. You’re right that we don’t want psychos owning guns in general, not just 13 year olds. Look up the steps to getting a gun in Canada, you just need to take a safety course and pass some background checks. That’s to add assurance that gun owners know what they’re doing, and aren’t psychos. In this case the kid had unrestricted access to a gun without supervision, because his parents were either untrained to understand proper storage, or irresponsible. Training is a big part of keeping guns out of the hands of people who have not been verified to be responsible to own a gun unsupervised, like this kid.
The problem here is a 13-year-old actually, seriously, wanted to kill someone. Not just got angry or frustrated. It wasn’t unintentional, negligent, or accidental. He deliberately and knowingly decided to kill.
Take away the guns, and the bigger problem remains.
No, we absolutely should not be stereotyping every 13-year-old because this irredeemable piece of shit happened to be that age when he decided to kill.
It’s 33/33 so I’d say your comment is very “center”
Bad parenting.
It’s not just parenting. There are crap parents worldwide, yet this only regularly happens in one place.
E: downvote all you want. Remove my comment if you want. You know it to be true. This is a US thing. Stop worshiping your guns.
And if you are to have them, keep them in a safe, inaccessible to children, when not in use. The fact that this is a controversial statement to Americans is insane.
You can’t just handwave away gun problems as “oh it’s the parent’s fault, nothing can be done”
I talk about how much America loves guns and it’s military and I get downvoted all the time. And I say that as a left-leaning armed American.
Sorry that facts hurt people’s feelings. We literally had school shootings involving kindergartners a decade ago and nothing has changed. Nothing.
if you arent personally going into people’s houses and taking their weapons away from them, then preventing them from buying more weapons, then you cant expect anything to actually change.
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yet this only regularly happens in one place.
No it doesn’t. Lol.
Among the world’s economically developed democracies, it absolutely only happens in one nation. This is not up for debate; it’s an objective fact.
How we choose to address this fact is up to us, but being in denial about it is not a sane option.
Because they think trolling is more entertaining
Yes it does. People under 18 getting hold of firearms and behaving like idiots with them is something that gets reported on frequently in the US and pretty much the US alone.
But sure, name all these other places where this happens on a regular basis.
E: lmao. Straigh up lies in the retort. Asia and Africa don’t have gun problems. Even the most violent place in Africa has a gun violence rate of barely over half of the US’s. Fair enough on central America.
Basically everywhere that isn’t Canada, Europe, China or Australia.
That’s absolutely not true. Data shows the only countries with higher gun deaths per capita than the US are all central and parts of South America. E.g., India’s per capita gun death rate is 0.56 vs 4.12 in the US.
You literally made that up. It’s the US and a few unstable countries in South America.
South Africa, one of the highest homicide rate countries in the world, with a murder rate 6.5x higher than the US, has half the gun homicide rate of the US.
India has has 1 gun homicide per 100k. The US has 11 per 100k.
But yeah. Keep telling us how everywhere outside of Europe and Australia is like this. It’s BS.
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Why are only English-speaking countries relevant?
But fine, Sudan. South Sudan. South Africa. Liberia. Sierra Leone. Ghana. Nigeria. Jamaica.
Mexico? Except guess where Mexico gets most of their illegal firearms from…
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Lmao how America-brained do you have to be to say that thinking 13 year olds having guns is a bad thing is “pearl clutching”
No. 13 year olds should not have guns.
And I’m from Asia you nitwit. I speak a couple of Asian languages, as well as a couple of European ones, such as the one I’m speaking now.
Asia does not have a gun problem. Africa does not have a gun problem. You made that up and tbh it just sounds like racist dog whistle - “those uncivilised darkies and slit-eyes are violent savages! Their children have machine guns! No I don’t have any proof, don’t ask!”
South America yeah, particularly Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia. And so does the US. Forgive me for having higher expectations of the highest GDP country in the world than I do of fucking Venezuela.
Children should not have tools designed expressly for quick and easy murder. If you think otherwise, cool. Have a good think about it next time you’re on the bus and a child shoots you when you do something to mildly inconvenience him.
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Really only South America (actually mostly central America and Brazil) and South Africa, Mali and Somalia fit into that stereotype. The rest of Africa and all of Asia (except Thailand, which is still significantly lower than the US) have very low rates of gun violence.
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We’re the neighbors. Yes it does.
Wait, which neighbor?
The lol makes it factual
It’s not guns, it never was done. It’s lack of good education, farming it out like it’s just some subscription thing. People aren’t learning practical information in schools. We don’t teach kids how to think, or how to deal with anger in their mind. And they get up and they grow up to be these idiot full grown adults who don’t know how to think past them not liking a person because of skin color, they go with their first wins because they’re idiots, they get a hold of guns because only idiots need guns. And then they do something stupid. Thinking it’s just guns is fucking stupid. Guns don’t hurt people people do blah blah blah, it’s true people suck now. They’re dumb they don’t read and they should shoot themselves in the head next time
It’s guns.
People from other countries aren’t just intrinsically superior to Americans. We haven’t all trained our kids to be paragons of virtue. It’s that any American can trivially get a gun.
It’s that simple. It’s guns.
It is legal to hunt at 12 years old in some states.
Edit: I bought enough trigger locks for all my long guns and pistols for under $100. There is no excuse not to have them installed and I live alone. My guns are also in a locker as well as trigger locked. My ammo is in a different room in a safe box screwed to the closet floor from inside the locked box. All this was well under $200 including the gun locker.
I need to get some sleep. I read that as
It is legal to hunt 12 year olds in some states
And thought this 13-year old had a gun after the age he needed it for protection…lmao
To be fair to you, 12 year olds are the worst. Source: was 12 year old
I don’t think there’s an age limit for hunting in my country, either. I did have a couple of shotguns for the purpose.
To get a license for them I had to pass an exam identifying all game, even by silhouette. And I had to pop in for a quick interview at the police station before applying for a weapon’s license.
I feel like those hoops would filter out 95% of those looking to get weapons fpr illicit purposes. In the case of a handgun, you’d need to show a long-lasting interest in either range shooting or hunting game that hide in dens.
I doubt THAT’S why the kid had a gun. It was easier to buy one in my high school than to get one as an adult (even with a good income) where I grew up in NYC.
Seriously is this person think the only way to get stuff is from Walmart or Target? Embarrassing
You might want to keep that info to yourself in real life. You’re the rare motherfucker who’s got a lot of guns and is easy to rob lmao.
Come give it your best try.
That’s usually only for rifles, most states it’s 21 for a hand gun.
America.
at 13 you should be able to be trosted with a gun. tthis is a parenting issue.
So strange that you would make this comment on an article that perfectly exemplifies why we don’t let children walk around with guns.
This same person told me in another thread that the reason guns should be legal in the U.S. is protection against bears and mountain lions- which almost never attack anyone. Like less than 100 times in the last 50 years combined. They can’t even come up with a good argument for adults to have guns.
Honestly it doesn’t really matter. The second amendment does exist, so some arms in the hands of the populace will be allowed unless we amend our constitution.
That said, we can draw lines based around what kinds of weapons. And something like a bolt action rifle or pump shotgun can be excellent for hunting, but very difficult to conceal or commit any kind of mass shooting with.
It’s semi-autos that are specifically capable of high rates of fire and quick reloads, and that become dangerous. We can regulate some of those arms the same way we regulate access to tanks, jets, nukes and chemical/biological arms.
Used to have to shoot cottonmouths and copperheads all the time when I lived out in the country. We were too far from a hospital to chance it with poisonous snakes. Glad we moved
Which is a valid argument because people out in the country can get bitten by snakes and be too far from a hospital. The only time he mentioned poisonous snakes was when he said people need guns to protect themselves from rattlesnakes in Dallas.
I have killed plenty of snakes in my life and never once thought a gun would be useful for that task.
Snake/rat shot is designed for this task. Basically small shotgun pellets in a handgun cartridge. I’d think it a rather small target to aim a regular bullet at.
Speak for yourself, I get viciously mauled by a mountain lion every time I go grocery shopping.
Maybe you are just hot and attracting a lot of cougars.
Hunting
Yes, that would definitely be one of the many, many better arguments for guns than ‘protection against bears and mountain lions.’
Even then, though, you don’t need pistols for hunting.
I do know of people who hunt with handguns, but it is definitely rarer. I honestly don’t have any issues with hunting if you eat what you hunt. If you just do it to massacre an animal and just leave it where you killed it, fuck you, but I have no issue with responsible hunting practices.
That said, it’s my understanding that bow hunting is the fastest, and thus most painless way of killing an animal.
.357 mag will kill a deer
Tbf I carry a rifle any time I go in the woods damn near.
I love nature but am terrified of bears and I want a big firecracker, if it comes down to trying to use it on a bear that wants to fight I am probably already fucked and I know that.
If it makes you feel more secure, I won’t judge you, but you should know that-
Statistics suggest there have been over 180 fatal bear attacks in North America since 1784. While the majority of these fatal attacks have been carried out by wild bears, some are the result of bears held in captivity.
https://blog.batchgeo.com/bear-attack-statistics/
In contrast-
over 100 people drown every year in bathtubs.
An activity where you would definitely supervise the child, not send them off on their own on a bus.
Dawg there are so many ways to hunt that don’t involve a bang.
Hey man, not cool to talk about my dating experience that way.
Manlier ways to hunt. That’s how you get to them. Guns are for sissies, bows are for real men.
I have both and they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
I prefer my rifle because it has a much much higher chance of a clean quick kill.
Personally if you are willing to let an animal suffer more to be more “manly” you were never manly at all.
I know, I own those too.
My bow may be twenty years old but it kills just as good now as then.
As a longtime SAR guy --I’m in my 50s-- I always tell people to carry a gun in the backcountry if that’s what makes them feel safe, but just know that you’re far far far more likely to get in trouble from things like weather, terrain, rivers, meltwater, falling, exposure, hypothermia and just the elements in general than you are from any animal. The risk profiles aren’t even remotely close. This is true even in places like Alaska where almost everyone is armed. As far as I’m concerned, a gun is dead weight. Lose it and concentrate instead on carrying the ten essentials and knowing how to use them
I like your writing style and approach. If you published a book on this topic, I would likely read it.
I literally can’t wrap my head around the US’s culture.
Guns for 13 year olds? Yes.
Some beer? Are you crazy?!
God forbid he sees a tittie
Forget about talking about sex either. Which is how EVERYONE got here. Backwards ass dumb ass thinking. I’m American btw
Well we couldn’t give them guns AND beer.
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That’s not all of our culture. We’re not all the same person and, as you can clearly see, that guy’s attitude is not at all approved of lol
I’m not saying it’s all of your culture. I’m sorry if it came across that way.
But it certainly is a shockingly large and loud part of it, and the lawmakers clearly have zero intention on stopping it, because not enough people want more restrictions.
Im with you all the way up until ‘because’
About six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) favor stricter gun laws. Another 26% say that U.S. gun laws are about right, and 15% favor less strict gun laws. The percentage who say these laws should be stricter has fluctuated a bit in recent years. In 2021, 53% favored stricter gun laws, and in 2019, 60% said laws should be stricter.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
Our disproportionate political representation is a huge part of the issue, and our media representation is very good at burying it. So you’re not wrong, but it’s certainly fair to say there’s more to it.
I’m not saying that people who want law changes aren’t the majority, I’m just saying it’s not enough to actually change the laws (even if there is a small majority for it).
Things generally don’t just happen whenever the public gets to 50% + 1 person support. Support generally has to be higher before things get pushed through.
That’s… A take for sure. By all means, take your kid hunting and target practicing that young, instill good practices in them, but there’s a big gulf between that and a teenager ever being in the situation in the article.
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Why do you need to trust a 13 year old with a gun?
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Irresponsible parents are a fact of life. Please stop deflecting from the problem that has a very simple solution to the one that isn’t going away ever. Keep the fucking guns away from children…
13 yesr olds usually aren’t held criminally responsible for their actions because they don’t understand the value of life or consequences of their actions etc. so maybe they should’nt be given guns to take on the bus or wherever. But Im Australian. Never seen a gun or heard a shooting.
I’m not saying that you need to, I’m saying you should be able to.
Ok that solves everything then. He shouldn’t have done that. Problem solved. /s
The question wasn’t about trust. It was: “Why does he have access to a gun?”
i think we all agree he shouldn’t have done that.
“Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, cause I’ve
workedridden in a lot ofofficesbusses and I tell you people do that all the time.”
I barely trust 13 year olds to properly wipe their asses, and that won’t get people killed most likely.
Alright, you seem to have identified the problem now what do you think the solution is? Gun violence seems to be the worst in the areas with the most guns, is that just a human issue?
Not who you replied to, but I personally feel it’s more than just guns.
It’s the culture around guns, the worship of guns, the lack of better conflict resolution skills, the rise of extremist echo chambers, and harmful rhetoric online.
Even the “come and try to take them” and “fuck around and find out” attitude implicitly says that guns are going to solve whatever conflict people have and that it’s a valid solution equal with other options. The rhetoric doesn’t tell people that it’s the option of last resort for conflicts.
We need to change our culture, our respect for guns, and ultimately give people better tools for solving conflicts. The solution isn’t necessarily more laws, they can certainly be a part of it, but we aren’t going to legislate this problem away.
If you are a gun owner, promote better safety with firearms. Call out those who treat them irresponsibly. If you are around those that act like they are the solution to all problems, give them shit for it. Make them realize it’s not a proportional response to kill someone for a minor disagreement or property theft. Call people out who brandish their firearm - it’s not a de-escalation.
Realize that not everyone is a threat and trying to harm you or your family. The people who are going to harm or kidnap you are so incredibly rare that you are unlikely to ever encounter them. And the situation where you don’t have any other options but to kill them is even rarer. Most situations you can find a way to just leave. I’m not saying that there aren’t dangerous people out there, but the vast majority are generally nice people that just want to live their own lives.
If you aren’t a gun owner, take a safety class and learn a little about them. You don’t have to like them or own one, but try to understand that there are many who do enjoy them. The majority of gun owners aren’t the ones causing issues.
As a society, put more time and money into healthcare and particularly mental healthcare. Work to raise people out of poverty and remove the socioeconomic pressures that lead many towards crime. We need to spend more time with each other, see things from each other’s point of view, and break down barriers between each other. We need to be more empathetic. We need to learn to accept losing in disagreements. Make it okay to be wrong.
Some of these arent truly concrete steps, but more of an ideal we need to work towards. But ultimately, it’s our culture that needs to change. Our culture treats them as a solution to problems and that’s why we see them used for even the dumbest of issues like a blocked aisle on a bus.
Gun issue probably won’t be addressed for another 40 years until not just Boomers but Gen X go away.
They love their toys and romanticize being the hero (though statistically wind up being the villain or victim more frequently).
I think you’ll find a stronger correlation between gun violence and economic disadvantages than you will with the mere presence of guns, but whatever
I’m guessing you’re human and probably over 13, so I’m confused.
Did you not get the hormone rage? Were you not horribly stupid with bad judgement like the rest of us?
This is America.
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Look what I’m whippin’ now
Somehow i heard that in my head like 300: this is sparta!
Some treat it as such.
My brain hurts
“Hopes and prayers, constitution ties our hands, we’ve done all we can do, it’s the parent’s fault, he played too much red dead redemption, if all the bus passengers had guns this wouldn’t have happened….”
Start taxing the SHIT out of ammo, Chris Rock had a great idea, we just need to make it law.
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I quoted a comedian, my suggestion was sarcastic, along with the rest of my comment
Modern countries did that with gas, and you don’t see us all driving about in fuel efficient cars instead of tiny-penis truc… Oh wait, as you were
This is a gun thread. But if you’re implying that taxing gas has not stopped Americans from driving big ass trucks, realize that the USA does not nearly tax gas as much as other modern nations and in fact we subsidize it. In most other countries few people drive big ass trucks precisely because it’s so expensive.
Amazingly, that was precisely the point I was making. Well spotted, lass
Ammunition reloading is already alive and well in America and an amazing money savings versus buying new. Saved brass is paid for an smaller caliber rounds are cheap, like a dime per bullet (.223); ultimately it would spread dirt cheap methods of self production and selling brass casings as something innocuous like “paper weights”.
Gun nuts always find a way to circumvent law. See defining “assault rifle” for example.
I’m sure this kid learned reloading his own ammo at some after school club or something, didn’t buy it off the interwebs.
Take the guns away. Don’t let them have any more.
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ah, adopting HP’s business model (printer is dirt cheap, consumables cost an arm and a leg)
Another proud “only in America” moment.
this is america… don’t catch me slippin’
Being held on suspicion of murder…
Nothing gets past these clever police officers.
I bet the rest of the people on the bus learned some fucking etiquette that day.
gross.
It’s a joke. Let go of your pearls.
its hard for me to find dead humans funny, especially in a weird tragedy like this. for this you need to add time. youre just uncouth
While I do think this situation is tragic all around, I feel the need to post the definition of “Joke” from Wikipedia:
“A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, and ends in a punch line, whereby the humorous element of the story is revealed; this can be done using a pun or other type of word play, irony or sarcasm, logical incompatibility, hyperbole, or other means.”
And so I think his comment was an absolutely valid joke. You can joke about horrible things and still remain respectful. Actually it’s a very therapeutic and didactic thing to do, if done right.
my point is the golden rule of tragedy + time, and how you failed that equation, but whatevs. no one is sayin ya cant be gross, and im allowed my opinion.
One is allowed to call a joke gross regardless of the definition of a joke.
That’s disrespectful of their freedom of speech.
Lmao, I see you troll account, trying to fit in with a parody of American culture…nice lol
Nothing like that, I just think we should ban people who don’t respect t other people’s free speech.
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W.T.Absolute.F. is wrong with people?!
Seriously, what manner of deranged maniac would intentionally block the aisle of a bus…?
Illegal guns are widely available. A friend of mine was told where to get one for $40.
So are legal guns.
I imagine most illegal guns start off as legal guns, too…
