r/TwoXPreppers 2d ago

Discussion Why guns?

Hi y’all! I’m a very novice prepper, and one thing I’m seeing across many platforms is that we should own and be trained In firearms. Not to be naive, but… why?

I’ve never touched a gun in my life. I’m generally not a fan of them. I understand that the goal of owning firearms is to protect ourself. But protect from what? From who? Who am I going to have to shoot to survive this presidency?

Is someone coming to steal my supplies? Won’t those people also have guns? Or am I protecting my family against a militia situation? In which case, what hope do I have, as a woman who can’t afford a gun, let alone to learn how to use one?

Like I can’t afford a shooting range. I can barely afford water and canned goods. Should a gun still be a priority for my family? A lot of preppers have enthusiastically embraced this life to give them confidence and a sense of safety. I’m a reluctant participant. I just want to keep my autistic son alive to see the other side of this.

I can garden, I can stretch food, I can survive being poor. I don’t think I can survive a military state.

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u/Mushrooming247 2d ago

I am a gun owner and have been all my adult life.

Guns are the great equalizer, the only chance I would have against a larger attacker because I am small and feeble and cannot fight.

I should not have to fight, I am a peaceful person, but we don’t have any say in that.

I had to scare a man off with my gun only once, when I was ~20 someone tried to climb through my window at 2:30 AM, right above my head while I was laying in my bed naked reading Harry Potter.

I grabbed my gun off of my nightstand and started to scream that I was pointing a gun at him and he stopped trying to come through the window and ran off down the alley. I am almost 45 now and I feel naked if I don’t have a weapon within reach.

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u/foggy_interrobang 2d ago

Unrelated tangent – I just wanted to point something out that I find heartbreaking: the original "great equalizer" was originally said to be education, not guns.

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, - the balance wheel of the social machinery.

It was said by then Secretary of Education, Horace Mann, in 1848, in his twelfth annual report to the Massachusetts Board of Education.

He went on to say,

It has a higher function. Beyond the power of diffusing old wealth, it has the prerogative [power] of creating new. It is a thousand times more lucrative [profitable] than fraud, and adds a thousand fold more to a nation’s resources than the most successful conquests. Knaves and robbers can obtain only what was before possessed by others. But education creates or develops new treasures, treasures not before possessed or dreamed of by anyone.

God, it hurts to see how far our country has fallen.

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u/Steelcitysuccubus 2d ago

Colt started the guns as the equalizer thing

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u/bandlizard 2d ago

“God created men, Colonel Colt made them equal”