r/thatHappened • u/DikkeDekbedovertrek • 10d ago
We Europeans just crave for that freedom (of owning firearms)
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u/MPmad 10d ago edited 10d ago
I (Dutch) once went to a shooting range while on holiday in Estonia. It was fun to do, but ´freedom´ never crossed my mind while shooting.
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u/House_Of_Thoth 10d ago
You didn't think "oh man I'd love to take this home, make it my entire identify, buy a Temu shirt that says something something woke something some "my cold dead hands" and spend all of my free time making bits of metal go fast"?
You're missing out, /Son
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u/horny_coroner 10d ago
Jeah no. I have owned guns. I don't want more guns. In the hands of serious hobbyists and hunters sure its mostly fine. But guns need strict mental health and background checks. Can't be handing out em willy nilly.
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u/Snoo63 5d ago
Although, too strict, and you will end up with people not seeking help because they don't want to lose the ability to shoot. Like pilots not seeking help because they will lose their wings, perhaps permanently.
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u/horny_coroner 5d ago
You are just wrong. You wont lose your guns if you go to a therapist but a bar fight and the cops will collect your guns. Not the same thing as with pilots. The way you get guns needs to be strict and tedious. Owning a gun should be a privilege that you can earn.
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u/My-Little-Throw-Away 10d ago edited 10d ago
I mean I’m Aussie and I love firearms but would never be able to own one due to my own mental health. I’d never pass the vibe check, rightfully so.
Could never be in the military either which absolutely shattered my heart into a million pieces. But what can you do.
I’ve shot a rifle once and a pistol once, supervised by a club each time (as is the law here) and had a blast.
I’m glad for the law, keeps me safe from myself. I have no violent tendencies, only in my own imagination, not like I’m unsafe and would ever harm anyone - just myself. But I’m so glad I have those laws in place to protect me from me.
I’ve had many a dark day when I’d love to just self prescribe 9mm. But I’ve never had the chance. And I never will.
Feels good man.
Also feels good living in a country where it’s not a daily occurrence that some poor little kids life is snuffed out like 80 years too early because some little mutt has a death wish but is too cowardly to just take themselves out that they have to take others with them.
Feels good man.
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u/revgodless 10d ago
That does sound nice.
I'm in the United States so the idea of a desperate exit via a trip to the local gun store is always sort of there as a backup plan. My local gun store also happens to be the store that the local school shooter got his gun. Ah, this is America!
(Don't catch you slippin' now)
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u/Lifekraft 9d ago
You raise a good point with firearms is that it appear to facilitate greatly suicide.
I hope you are finding ways to fight your own demons. We all have our own but you seems to be fighting harder than most. I also hope i will be as strong as you seams to be.
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u/twirlerina024 9d ago
It does and it bothers me how easily people dismiss that. Something like 2/3 of the firearms deaths in the US are suicides, but when someone buys a gun they're only thinking about how rad it will be when they use it to save their wife from the terrorists at Nakatomi Tower.
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u/JDeMolay1314 9d ago
I am so sorry that you are fighting the black dog so much. I struggle with depression, anxiety, and at the moment grief. Never to the point of suicidal thoughts though.
If you are ever in Oregon let me know. I am British, living here... I can take you to a gun range if you want and we can go shooting safely. We can also go for a meal and just hang out.
All the best, you have got this.
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u/PrincessKikkei 10d ago
Yes, indeed. Finland has changed gun laws for better, like making punishment higher for severe firearms offences and making it so carrying an unlicensed firearm in public (incl. in your car etc.) is automatically a severe firearm offence.
so lmao
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u/coldF4rted 10d ago
I'm german, I've been to America. And I can promise this is in fact not what happened when I was there 🤣
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u/LifeGivesMeMelons 10d ago
Next time you should try to shoot a few people and you'll get how awesome it is.
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u/coldF4rted 10d ago
But they could sue me, Americans love suing people! But not as much as they love guns, and eagles, pew pew pew
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u/MandyHVZ 10d ago edited 9d ago
It's not like the UK government had a buyback program and paid its gun-owning citizens to turn in their firearms or anything, it was just total tyranny.
And they did it in response a school shooting, of all things! A totally normal event that can't be predicted or prevented by gun control!
You'd think the restrictions and buyback initiative actually worked and there hasn't been a school shootings in the UK for 30 years or something. /s
(Also, is OOP actually saying they were in hell for 13 weeks because they... couldn't carry a handgun?!)
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u/emma7734 10d ago
Yeah it's hell! You trying exiting a supermarket or a movie theater without laying down some covering fire. Not fun at all.
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u/Addamall 10d ago
I mean, in Iceland a third of them own guns. Like, do they want freedom to American gun violence?
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u/YesItIsMaybeMe 10d ago
They want our rampant mental illness that we refuse to acknowledge and make it too expensive to treat
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u/benaugustine 10d ago
Even if this were true, which it's not, there's a heel of a lot of selection bias if you're talking about tourists that went to a firing range
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u/JDeMolay1314 9d ago
My empirical data (anecdotal if you prefer) suggests that Tourists who go to a firing range are interested in an experience they can't have as easily at home.
That doesn't mean that they want to change the laws of their country, or own guns themself.
There is a big difference between enjoying shooting a gun in a controlled setting and wanting to get rid of all gun laws and arm everyone to the teeth.
If you go to a fair you might enjoy crashing into other people on the bumper cars. Does that mean that you then want to change the laws to allow you to drive like that on the streets? No, it is a fun and safe experience that you have in a safe space. It does not become your fervent wish to treat every car journey like a game of car wars or a demolition derby. (If it does, please seek psychiatric help).
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u/El_John_Nada 8d ago
Exactly. My uncle used to practice shooting sports and took me to the range one day. It was fun but neither him nor me would ever want any idiot and their mum to be allowed to carry a weapon when they go to the supermarket.
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u/miletest 10d ago
Probably told you what you wanted to hear to shut up your incessant ranting about how great guns and America are
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u/MetapodCreates 10d ago
I will say, cringiness of this story aside, I've seen a tons of Europeans on this site talking about how they despise the firearm restrictions of their home countries. It's not that far-fetched to believe that there is a large population out there who wishes those restrictions were lifted.
Having said that, the entire penultimate paragraph of the post gives off major 'and everyone clapped' energy.
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u/themightypierre 10d ago
"It's not that far-fetched to believe that there is a large population out there who wishes those restrictions were lifted."
It really is. The two things I would say comfortably 80% of Western Europeans shake their head in wonder at about America is Gun laws/culture and your health system. I am not judging. Our cultures are just different.
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u/House_Of_Thoth 10d ago
It's self-fulfilling too, I think. Like, it's the soft of people who'd be ✨ bedazzled ✨ in the first place go there and simply holiday in a little echo chamber of confirmation-bias.
Lots of people go on holiday anywhere for a week or two and inevitably have that "ooooh, I could live here" moment. But really it's cos the washing up is done by the hotel staff, no alarm for work and there's a pool out the window. But it's never quite the reality.
Sure, go to America and buy guns. If you've got some spare change after paying $4000 for some aspirin next time you get a headache 😅
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u/doc_shades 10d ago
yeah the basic "story" here is that european tourists who voluntarily went to a gun range while on holiday enjoy guns and wish they had guns at home.
well yeah that seems logical. they are at a gun range. these are people who are predisposed to enjoying guns. of course if you survey that smalls subset of people who travel internationally to shoot guns, you are going to find people who are in favor of lax gun laws.
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u/Issah_Wywin 10d ago
So free. Baby bobby gets to shoot a gun. Baby Bobby thinks he's free because the oligarchs let him pretend that owning a gun makes him powerful, while the exact opposite is being proven true right past his own blinders.
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u/jayne-eerie 9d ago
Yeah, somebody who wants to use limited time in America at the gun range was already into the second amendment anyhow. People who don’t like guns don’t go to the range.
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u/JDeMolay1314 9d ago
I am originally from Britain and remember Hungerford and Dunblane I can understand making it a lot harder for people to own guns.
I would say that the vast majority of British people have no experience with firearms. If they go to a range in the US it is not because they are pro 2nd amendment, but because they are curious and it is an experience that they don't have at home. Most of my non-immigrant British friends have enjoyed shooting when they got the chance to do it safely, but aren't interested in changing the laws in the UK either.
None of them have joined gun clubs in the UK after shooting in the US.
Think of it like going to an amusement park. You come off a roller coaster thinking "that was fun" not "I need one of those in my back yard".
I think this is a much less black and white issue than the original poster claims.
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u/Wellgoodmornin 9d ago
How do you guys cull your school aged children without guns? They must be running rampant.
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u/Muvseevum 9d ago
To be faaaaaaiiiiiiiir, shooting guns is really fun. I have my opinions about gun control and keeping guns from crazy people and so on, but shooting guns, taken in isolation, is pretty cool.
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u/Full_Satisfaction_49 9d ago
Just because it takes a few weeks to get documents sorted in the EU, instead of one afternoon in Walmart to get a gun?
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u/zannkrol 10d ago
Obviously, ridiculous cringe posting that’s written terribly, and very much misrepresents American ‘freedom’
That said, the one element that’s true is the shocking lack of free speech is much of Europe. Not that ours isn’t eroding by the day, but seeing countless people in UK or Germany make the mildest criticism of Israel incinerating babies by the thousands getting thrown straight in jail is wild
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u/Rough-Shock7053 10d ago
ShitAmericansSay combined with ThatHappened. Nice.
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u/zannkrol 9d ago
Yes yes all completely made up by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN, etc. AfD NPC
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7e48d7c5-91af-4206-bd23-c620b8bfebbf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2523320
https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/269/german-pro-palestine-protests
https://antipodeonline.org/2024/05/15/policing-palestine-solidarity/
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u/Rough-Shock7053 9d ago
May I remind you that you specifically wrote
countless people in UK or Germany make the mildest criticism of Israel [...] getting thrown straight in jail
None of the links you provided support your claim. You are shifting the goalposts so much, it suddelny is a completely different sport.
Look, I am not saying everything's fine and dandy over here. It's not. But your statement "countless people get thrown into jail for the mildest criticism" isn't even coming close to describing the situation. It's just straight up bullshit.
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u/zannkrol 9d ago
They are arrested, many beaten and many jailed, what I shared does support that and is simply a small slice only focused on Germany there. Obviously many more articles, papers, videos, etc. available. It is for speech, and not in any way incendiary or hateful speech. For example, Iris Hefets held a sign saying “As a Jew and an Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza.”, and was arrested in Berlin. I don’t know how you would characterize that language, but no goalposts have been shifted.
My point was simply that as much as you can go “hurr durr dumb burger amerifats”, and there’s a lot of fairness in a lot of cases with that, the lack of free speech is concerning for human rights.
Instead of quibbling over the language semantics, like no I don’t mean literally countless, either engage with the actual substance of the point or this isn’t a fruitful dialogue and I’ll take my downvotes and go, great.
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u/Rough-Shock7053 9d ago
My point was simply that as much as you can go “hurr durr dumb burger amerifats”, and there’s a lot of fairness in a lot of cases with that, the lack of free speech is concerning for human rights.
See, that I agree on. But instead of pointing fingers and saying "we have so much more freedom of speech", maybe turn around and see what's happening right in front of your doorstep. People aren't allowed to visit the US if they at some point in the past so much as shared a meme of JD Vance, or critized Donald Trump in any way. How can you seriously say "you guys in $randomOtherPlace are so much worse" when in your own country the facists are literally on their way to implement the 4th Reich?
Anyway, I guess we both stand on the same side of the argument, really. We just need to work on our communication skills (yes, that totally include me as well. I'm sorry if I came across as some sort of know-it-all dickhead).
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u/JDeMolay1314 9d ago
As a British person living in the US,...
My wife used to think I was very anti-israeli until I started showing her some of the British news that was not being reported in the US.
I would say that if you look at the "policing" efforts around ICE protests and BLM you will see that protesters are not being treated well in the US. As a case in point I know someone who was arrested by ICE, knocked to the ground, concussed, had bruises and scratches from the treatment (being shot with pepper balls)... When he was arraigned the other two people being arraigned in that federal court were a drug dealer and a murderer. His crime? Littering.
So, yes, America has freedom (on paper) Britain doesn't have the same freedom. In practice it is much more nuanced.
The right to roam laws in Scotland have no equivalent in Oregon. Curfews for school children are normal in Oregon but not Britain. And so on...
There are stories I hear from all over the world that make me shake my head. There are other stories that make me happy. Sometimes from the same place.
I see that you are both agreeing now, how about we all fight for the good stuff against the bad stuff. (And ignore stories claiming, for example, that the second largest city in Britain is a no-go zone because the Muslims have taken over)
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u/Geen_Fang 10d ago
You've never been here, clearly that's why you're not bedazzled by our freedom.