Bureaucratic requirements and institutional jockeying largely ballooned the Shuttle into something it was never supposed to be.

Incorrect, but judging by the responses here I conveyed my point poorly. I wasn't trying to say that the Left alienated existing gun owners. I was trying to say that their actions and positions prevented the formation of a grassroots population of responsible gun owners in their ranks. Specifically, a population that might be more ready to stand up against ongoing injustices.

> and it’s really not at all restricted. Some states are more restrictive than others

Your AR-15 you smugly mentioned that you bought last year in "15 minutes" is in spite of Democrats best efforts. If they had their way on gun laws any time in the last 30 years, that transaction would be impossible. You'll note that there's a pattern with those "some states" that are stricter than others. The fact that their overreaches have been successfully fought is not evidence that they aren't constantly trying (Paid attention to the docket in Virginia lately?).

But that's not what I was trying to say anyway, you (like many others) just jumped at the prospect of sticking it to a perceived ideological enemy with a pithy reddit quip.

I was referring, in general terms, to the left wing of mainstream American political discourse without narrowing it down to just "Democrats". I was trying not to trigger the waves of "Ackshyually karl marx says under no pretext" comments that one usually gets.

What I'm saying is that "Gun owner" shouldn't be a political statement, and we'd be a lot better off if more Democrats owned and trained with guns.

So you are actually supporting my point. Conscientious, civically-minded people who own guns are unfortunately a minority on the (American) Left.

> And I still believe this - more than ever. You'd have to be insane to stand up to the current government right now.

Then you should be quibbling with my parent commenter who is smugly asking why the "gun people" aren't shooting back, not me.

I would imagine your idea of "Common Sense laws" is actually just petty attacks on law-abiding citizens that do nothing to stop crime, so I guess we're even.

> it just illustrates the right never actually cared about standing up to oppressive governments,

My comment was not trying to argue that the Right did or does care. My comment was saying "This is the reason there are comparatively so few gun owners on the (American) Left". Because the American Left (speaking broadly) discouraged it for almost a century.

Sounds like a regime worth fighting if that's what you believe, but it seems you've decided it's futile.

Coordinating with your neighbors and compatriots is essential from the soap box, to the ballot box, to the jury box, and to the cartridge box. And I'd like to emphasize the order of those boxes should be followed.

If you genuinely think we're at the point that we need to start shooting, the onus is on YOU to get armed, get trained, and take action. Don't expect anyone else to come and fight for you, especially those you perceive as your political enemies.

>Scientists got wise to the presence of synchronous fireflies in the U.S. in the 1990’s, thanks to the efforts of Faust, a citizen naturalist. “Growing up in east Tennessee, we called them lightning bugs. They're just part of summer,” she says.

In the early 1990’s, Faust read an article in a science news magazine that said there were no synchronous fireflies in the Western Hemisphere. “I thought, ‘Ours are synchronous – who do I tell this to?’” she recalls.

She wrote a letter to researchers, who came to Tennessee and studied those fireflies for the next twenty years.

[src] https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/g-s1-935/synchronous-fireflie...

There's a lot of stuff in the world that's unique and special, but isn't common knowledge on the internet. I think more people should go out and look around for themselves!

Other than that, I know Steven Rinella listed a few pure herds in his (excellent) book [2] on the American Buffalo, but I'd have to dig it out to find them for you.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzyMrBUys90

[2] https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/...

ETA: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/wind-cave-bison-genetics.ht...

"Wind Cave and Yellowstone National Parks are the only two federal herds to have population sizes large enough for sufficient testing. Both herds show no evidence of cattle introgression."

So there are at least two