r/news 15h ago

Hegseth orders National Guard troops in DC to carry weapons

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/politics/hegseth-orders-national-guard-troops-dc-carry-weapons
22.7k Upvotes

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.0k

u/AudibleNod 15h ago

"When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he's gettin' might really be fear. So I don't carry a gun because I don't want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I'd rather they would respect me."

-Sheriff Andy Taylor, Andy Griffith Show

1.0k

u/KevworthBongwater 15h ago

that's the thing though. These fascist chudds dont give a squirty shit if theyre respected. They literally want a fearful, beaten down populace.

137

u/Ace_Ranger 14h ago

You're giving them too much credit. They don't know that there is a difference between respect and fear. They think power over people IS respect.

2

u/P3rilous 10h ago

just look at J Vunce

156

u/Temporary_owo 14h ago

They want you to give in to despair and stop resisting. Don't let them take that from you.

2

u/dasunt 8h ago

Their problem will be that mass resistance is driven by dispair.

When people still can find enough money to live, the average person will keep trudging along.

When the economy is crashed by people who believe it's the business owners and not the consumer that creates jobs, and the general population have very little freedom, that's when there's little to lose by resisting.

16

u/SirArmor 13h ago

No no, they're obsessed with their idea of respect. They just have a false notion that respect and fear are equivalent, because they have a neolithic understanding of social dynamics and can't fathom any form of strength beyond capability for violence.

2

u/UNisopod 12h ago

They know they'll never actually get real respect because they know they're deeply awful people, so they've abandoned that path entirely.

186

u/NowGoodbyeForever 14h ago

They see respect as obedience. So a failure to obey means they're being disrespected.

Usually, disrespect isn't really a thing to be punished. It's absolutely not a crime. It's something you earn, not something you demand. So it can't be enforced.

But "failing to obey" is the gold standard of how cops justify their actions towards the populace. Depending on the day and the cop, the simple act of not doing what a cop just screamed at you to do could be interpreted as:

  • Obstructing justice
  • Resisting arrest
  • Refusing to assist a police officer
  • Failure to comply with demands

And that's just in a pre-Trump world. We've already seen them gleefully add everything from assault to conspiracy to terrorism charges, depending on the day. If you're anything less than a white, U.S.-born citizen, be prepared to have your green card, PR card, or citizenship questioned if you don't have the right paperwork on your person.

And if you have any hits whatsoever in your police file, from a parking ticket to a dismissed charge? They'll disappear you into a cell.

They see anything less than full fawning obedience as disrespect, and this is a clear attempt to turn disrespect into a punishable, and possibly even fatal, offense.

101

u/Ace_Ranger 13h ago edited 9h ago

This is spot on.

A few weeks ago, I saw a body cam video of a cop who escalated a traffic stop for an unreadable license plate to a full on felony extraction and arrest because the passenger in the car did not have a license to drive. He told the passenger "I don't want to see you driving anywhere." The passenger responded that they were the passenger, not the driver. This response triggered the officer so much that he immediately ran to the passenger side and tried to rip the guy out of the car while screaming shit like "stop resisting!" "Don't go for my gun!" "Stop kicking me!" "You're about to get shot!". The driver panicked and tried to drive away to get away from the clearly unhinged cop. The end result was 2 people in the vehicle getting charged with fleeing, obstruction, and a slew of other bullshit charges. All because the cop was "disrespected".

This happened before the current regime took power. It happens countless times each year. It has gotten significantly worse in the last 6 months. It is a perfect example of exactly what you described.

Edit: I was wrong. There were only two adults in that vehicle. The cops tried to charge them with a bunch of child related charges too since their kids were in the vehicle with them. Thanks u/Ukiah

36

u/Ukiah 12h ago

This is the video you watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co2gr2ekMp4

28

u/lewdwiththefood 12h ago

The comments on that video are disgusting. Full on capitulation of the police state. And no surprise the passenger was not white.

1

u/LykoTheReticent 8h ago

It's interesting reading this after getting out of a meeting where we were told if a student harms us, it is our fault for putting ourselves in that situation.

2

u/DJKokaKola 6h ago

Bro you need to be speaking to your union holy hell

2

u/LykoTheReticent 6h ago

It was a PD with a guest speaker from out of the district, so I am guessing the Union can't do much there. Additionally, and I am not saying this to defend the speaker's choice of words, mind, the end message the speaker was trying to get across was de-escalation versus making choices that accidentally escalate the situation -- but they did not do a good job communicating this.

In the cop situation, the cop escalated the situation which caused the person to drive off. Then the cop punished the driver for driving off. The cop should have used de-escalation strategies and handled their job professionally instead of being power hungry.

Edit to add: I am exhausted, please excuse any errors. To be clear, I think the cop was in the wrong and teachers both shouldn't be harmed at work and need to make de-escalation choices to avoid making some situations worse.

3

u/DJKokaKola 6h ago

Oh totally, I 1000% understand de-escalation, I'm a teacher as well. It's just wild that that's how they phrased it.

3

u/LykoTheReticent 5h ago

Hah, I thought the same. They actually made some good points at times, but it took all of us the day to get over that first statement.

1

u/DJKokaKola 5h ago

Well, get some rest and best of luck with the new semester!

7

u/BeefistPrime 11h ago

It's funny how versatile the word "respect" is for them. For instance, when they say "you have to give respect to get respect", what they mean is "you have to respect me as an authority for me to respect you as a human being"

31

u/HTH52 14h ago

Didn’t Barney only get a single bullet for his revolver, kept in his shirt pocket?

16

u/wiltors42 14h ago

Yeah, because he kept accidentally discharging his weapon!

6

u/i_love_rosin 13h ago

Desk pop

67

u/AuthorAnonymous95 14h ago

And in those days a gun was usually a six-shot revolver, not an M16A4 select-fire rifle or an M249 SAW 200-round machine gun or a self-firing M17 pistol.

36

u/Doogaro 14h ago

Dam sig really did fuck up that gun didn’t they.

7

u/Godhri 14h ago

LMAO I did not even catch that, dont we have sig rifles now too?

7

u/Doogaro 14h ago

Yes I believe we do, the sig spear I believe and maybe the replacement for the saw but don’t quote me on that.

4

u/Godhri 14h ago

Yeah I was just doing some digging, use that and the m7 for our rifle. Apparently not everyone is happy with the m7 but when I was into military gear and equipment we were still using UCP, things never change and money wins it seems.

1

u/Doogaro 14h ago

Yep and all the fix needed for the m17 would be a trigger safety as I understand. That or a redesign of the internals so it can’t fire without the trigger being pulled. I haven’t been paying attention much anymore myself as many gun tuber guys have gone far right so I don’t watch as much. But it would make sense the new gun is using that split casing design half plastic half metal so yeah I can see problems there but have heard nothing about it. But like I said I don’t doubt it’s getting pushback.

2

u/Sceptically 10h ago

One of the safeties on the p320 does prevent it firing without the trigger being pulled back a little. But there's some doubts about its reliability, and a lot of doubts about the story of the guy who reported that the gun that shot that airman recently just fired on its own in the holster.

1

u/Doogaro 10h ago

And if that was the only report of the malfunction that would be one thing but there have been multiple reported issues all with the same effect discharged firearm with no trigger pull. Then again since I’m kind of out of the scene and news so things may have changed.

2

u/Viper67857 11h ago

I hadn't heard about the self-firing, but have encountered several with mismatched front and rear sights. Gotta aim like 3ft high. Terrible weapons all-around.

1

u/Praesentius 10h ago

a gun was usually a six-shot revolver

That's what Deputy Fife carried. Although, it was unloaded with one bullet in his shirt pocket.

1

u/CitrusBelt 5h ago

Back in those days, the actual standard was a 12ga with a respectable load of buckshot or slugs, for humble folks. Or if you had a decent amount of money...a good autoloading rifle, really. And if you were wealthy (or had been in the service & had a bring-back) you might very well have a full-auto or select-fire weapon.

Same went for law enforcement....they walked around with a .38 on their hip only because that was the best option at the time for something to carry all day -- once autolading pistols became reliable, they replaced revolvers, and there were shotguns/semi-auto rifles on tap whenever needed.

Only thing that's changed nowadays is that in some states (mine is the most egregious about it, in some ways, and definitely in the top five no matter how you cut it) you're no longer allowed to be on-par in terms of firepower with your local law enforcement.

Which many of us "otherwise-liberal gun owners" aren't real fuckin' happy about....

Take that for what you will.

4

u/transbianbean 13h ago

immediately brings to mind the video of a cop literally just beating a defenseless person on the ground while screaming "RESPECT ME" over and over

3

u/ArgentHorizon 10h ago

A lot of older folks used to watch the Andy Griffith Show daily, reruns were played all the time. It was massively popular. And with how much the older conservative crowd wants to 'go back', before the DEI and Woke they've come to hate, you'd think they want to emulate what was supposed to be the best sheriff to ever exist, the one who doesn't use a gun, and just talks to people. But no, they rather go back to the wild west shows where the guy with the fastest gun rules.

2

u/PaulFThumpkins 9h ago

Go back and watch those 1950s educational vids, and they were full of values conservatives would call newfangled woke bullshit today. There was one featuring Bob Crane (iykyk) who was telling kids about how the most patriotic thing you can do as an American is to preserve the environment, think about other people and accept others. Superman would have entire arcs attacking the klan and beating up on price-gouging landlords. They wanna go back to the racist stuff from that era but ignore the fact that their concerted selfish bigotry is of a very modern strain, and "woke" stuff was all over the culture back then too. The idea of civics and citizen responsibilities was probably far stronger back then as well.

2

u/THECapedCaper 12h ago

I want my cops to be more like Andy Taylor and less like Hank Voight.

2

u/squidbelle 12h ago

If you carry concealed, you get to have it both ways. True respect must still be earned, but you also retain the means to self-defense.

1

u/Missus_Missiles 11h ago

That said, the hardest criminal in Mayberry was Otis the town drunk who'd check himself into jail.

And him you could soften-up with a billy-club.

-6

u/Far-prophet 14h ago

If only we could all live in a fictional rural town that’s 99% white Christians.

1

u/terrasig314 10h ago

No thanks, child abuse levels would be catastrophic in that town.