Dinsmore

Do Americans really believe they’ll be able to get their pet monster under control once they genocide the entire Middle East?

I don't think any Americans who truly support this think further than the next quarter of Raytheon profits.

Korra and Toph from Avatar, Tsunade and Sakura from Naruto

Ah, well in that case, you might want to consider an AR-15 as your first or second rifle. It's an extremely versatile platform and, because of its popularity, knowing how it operates will give you instant familiarity with a huge amount of rifles out there. You can even find conversion kits for .22lr (and 9mm, but those are supposed to be way less reliable), so you can have one "gun" (serialized lower) that can be reconfigured to shoot a lot of different kinds of ammo and is useful in various situations.

Then a 10/22, especially a takedown model, should fit the bill. Note that a takedown model will be slightly less accurate than a non-takedown, so if you're going for super precision shooting, then don't go the takedown route.

A few other things to consider - if you're planning on only buying ONE gun, you might want a slightly higher caliber, such as at least 9mm, in case you need to use it to defend yourself - sticking with rifles, the Ruger PCC is a good one (although heavyish), and is also a takedown. Obviously if you're comfortable in getting a first rifle for learning the basics, then adding another rifle to your lineup later that's got more bells and whistles, this won't apply to you.

Another two considerations, especially if you want to be more on the DL, is storage and transport. Your state/county/city might have storage laws that you may have to comply with, making it slightly harder to store rifles than pistols. And clearly if you have to put a big rifle case in your closet it'll be more obvious than a tiny pistol safe. Regarding transport, it's pretty hard to covertly carry a full sized rifle around, since the cases are so much longer, whereas takedown models such as the 10/22 or PCC are much easier to fit in a (tall) backpack or tennis racket bag. Pistols are obviously much easier as well.

Welcome! Any reason you'd mostly want to shoot a rifle? What are you actually interested in doing? There's a lot of different types of shooting. While the recommendations for a 10/22 are great for an all-rounder first gun, if you ONLY want to larp as a tacticool guy, then perhaps a M&P Sport II would be better.

They exist, but are more niche. See, for example, the Savage takedown rifle that shoots 22lr / 410 shotgun shells. https://www.savagearms.com/content?p=firearms&a=product_summary&s=22440

Clearly it's geared towards more of a survivalist/bug-out type scenario, where you might need the 22lr for a squirrel and a 410 for game more substantial.

Obviously several revolver calibers are multi-use too - 357 mag revolvers can all shoot 38 special ammo, for example. Shotguns are also very versatile, letting you shoot slugs/buckshot/birdshot/whatever, all out of the same tube.

I think the increase in ballistic technology has basically made multi-caliber guns fairly obsolete, but I'm no expert. But if you're carrying something pistol-sized like the article shows, I would imagine you would benefit mostly from just more magazines of 9mm, rather than trying to make a clunky shotgun attachment for a pistol, leading to (1) more complexity in the pistol, meaning more possibilities of something going wrong, (2) need to carry multiple calibers, and (3) more difficulty in training to use both calibers effectively out of the same pistol (i.e. hold it like this for 22lr, hold it like this for 44 magnum).

At a time when we also need more housing density, I feel like subways go hand-in-hand. And even for shittily zoned cities with huge suburb-like areas, I feel like most would benefit from at least nearby subways with parking lots (or ideally, additional bike paths).

someone trained in protecting

I don't know that I've ever seen a cop protecting anything other than a storefront

A team of a nurse or social worker + cop is the alternative to (generally) 2 cops. Whatever the funding mechanism behind the doors, you're switching out a cop for an alternative person, which is exactly what the defund movement has always been asking for. See some quotes below:

https://defundthepolice.org/alternatives-to-police-services/

The police service is a dangerous option for people experiencing a mental health crisis—but for many, it’s the only option. By defunding the police, significant resources can be reallocated to create a new community emergency services to support the mental health needs of our vulnerable community members. Teams trained in de-escalation and who root their work in community-informed practices could provide crisis support and care.

...

One common refrain in opposition to defunding the police assumes that our society will not be able to effectively respond to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence. In most incidents of violent crime, police are responding to a crime that has already taken place. When this happens, what we need from police is a service that will investigate the crime, and perhaps prevent such crimes from occurring in future.

Policing is ill-equipped to suit these needs. When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed, and at times refused to take the threat seriously. Why would we rely on an institution that has consistently proven that it is rife with systemic anti-Blackness and other forms of discrimination that result in certain communities being deemed unworthy of support? Instead of relying on police, we could rely on investigators from other sectors to carry out investigations. Social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, researchers, and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place.

...

If we were to defund the police, we could create new investigative services where diverse teams of researchers and investigators, with a mix of scientific, public health and sociological expertise are able to attend to our investigative needs without the inherent anti-Blackness with which the police services approach our unsolved cases. Additionally, we could put money into programs attending to the food security and housing security needs of people living in precarity, to reduce the likelihood that desperate people unable to have their basic needs met would resort to the extraordinary step of attempting to meet their needs through theft.

You're not wrong, but so are Republicans. That's the nature of a 2-party system and why it basically doesn't work.

Meme says you'll tell me he's doing all that with good sources though?

Yoo a lot of nostalgia for the Cybiko! My mom wouldn't let me get a gameboy but my sister managed to find one of these somewhere. That was my only way to do handheld gaming for years! The games sucked but it was better than homework =)