A Gun

On a serious note, if you find a gun and you don't know how to handle it safely, don't even pick it up.

To take this a bit further: don’t touch it at all. You don’t know where that gun has been or what it’s done. If you touch it, you become a suspect in whatever crime was committed.
I don’t typically advocate for this, but in this case, call your local LEO and move away from the weapon. But make sure nobody else (kids especially) don’t come grabbing it up after you.
- If necessary, shoot anyone trying to approach the gun. /s
- I learned this from nearly every episode of Perry Mason
It's wild to me that there's a place on earth with a chance of just randomly finding a gun lying around

I have a little bit of a story in gun safety.

I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.

When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”

This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.

To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.

But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.

Remember kids, video games love to teach you about how cool guns are but never teach you how to safely handle them.

Not the worst idea

That’s a pretty low bar, but you’re technically correct.
- Unless it hits a rock and ricochets and hits you or your friend.

I went through the comments, and I'm still lost. What is the punchline here? Is a long string of bad gun safety decisions by multiple people funny, or am I completely missing the joke?

Yes. "Stop! That's a bad idea" followed by an even worse idea. That's the twist.
PoorlyDrawnLines comics are like that, they're silly and simple. I've seen better ones, this just happened to be recent
What I found slightly funny about this one was that 'shooting all the bullets out' is how it works in games if you want to make a weapon useless
I know how to be safe, suggests unsafe thing.
That's not safe! Does even worse thing.
Pretty standard joke setup.

I thought that was a koala.

As a European, I fucking fear to go to the USA (the country of school shootings). You just don't know how safe we feel here.

Here, you can only get guns after a training, psychology test, you cannot show it in public, etc.. Or you can get a weak gas something that cannot kill people, but can shoot birds.

It's so crazy. Literally anyone can go to a store and buy one. I no joke saw a store the other day called "Dave's guns" and the logo was the American flag on a cross. Reminds me of a certain quote regarding facism.
It's scary knowing everyone else has guns, however the good news is, everyone on the correct side of history can also buy them..

Honestly working class people should all be educated in basic gun safety. Its pretty fucking simple Things like operating a safety, Checking to see if there is any live ammunition in the chamber, Racking the slide to clear the chamber after removing the magazine, Emptying the magazine. Even field stripping and cleaning/ lubrication of a firearm.(if that’s too much for you just stick to revolvers and bolt action long guns)

But since nixon and reagan(who was the first American politician to push for gun ownership restrictions with support from the NRA via the mulford act after the black panther party was making strides advocating for civil rights by participating in protests open carrying long arms and side arms) Killed American education standards to prevent a highly educated proletariat now a majority of Americans cant even handle basic diy car maintenance let alone know how to use a firearm.

And today neo liberal centrists are the primary definition of what right wing maga morons consider leftists to bewhen in reality true leftists want guns to prevent the fascist takeover of our society we have slowly witnessed and were attempting to warn all of our fellow Americans about despite those warnings going ignored due to ignorant or intentional downplaying.

- Our gun problem in the usa is a symptom of our problem with deteriorating conditions caused by the deregulation of capitalism. The school Shooting phenomena is not new, it first manifested as the “going postal” phenomenon but now with both parents having to work and kids having shitty support structures because they are being bullied by other kids starved of proper parental guidance/nurturing these kids are getting to their parents guns and taking out their frustrations mostly on people that have bullied them and anyone standing in their way or who did nothing to stop the bullies. It doesnt take a genius to see the reality here. There was a very good documentary i saw in the last decade or so pertaining to the phenomenon.
  Asking the government to be a paternalistic nanny state and protect us from Ourselves a short sighted naive way to deal with the issues.
  Also most of the guns have concentrated into the hands of fascist sympathizers because democrats have been brainwashed by centrism/ neo liberalism And think its a leftist ideal to want to disarm the nation and let police continue to murder people with impunity and give citizens even less recourse to protect ourselves. And also the economic environment we are in has punished true leftists with abhorrent economic conditions snd most of su struggle to survive and afford housing nevermind be able to afford a $1500+ rifle and ammunition and we just rely on grocers and the industrialized murder industry of livestock to provide our packaged dead animal for nutrition so many are so far removed from reality and if things fell to shit in a revolution most neo liberal’s would not last a month on their own probably even less than that if they have renounced gun ownership and taken up pacifism as their answer for the deteriorating state of western neo liberal Democracy (which lacking economic democracy and blatantly opposed to it is actually an undemocratic class dictatorship)
  But keep telling yourself everything will be ok and bow down to accept the bloodless right wing coup the heritage foundation project 2025 authors have planned and has obviously been in the works for the last 4 decades at least.
- There's unfortunately no possible way for the government to solve this issue. They can't go door to door and take people guns. And people won't willingly give them up because then they are vulnerable to attack. It's sadly unsolvable. Higher regulations for new purchases would help but thathat doesn't stop all the existing weapons.
It's really easy to get a drivers license, yet there are still idiots on the road killing each other and themselves by driving cars. The ones that think they're good drivers are usually the worst.
Educating people on gun safety and giving them reason to believe that they're good with guns... Yes, it's a recipe for having a lot of idiots with guns.
The only gun safety that actually works is not having guns. Guns are designed to kill and that's what they're gonna do when used.
- Removing guns from citizens will only allow them to concentrate into the hands of the wealthy, and their militarized forces.
  Neo liberalism has failed the working class and parroting the idea that we must restrict peoples freedoms to protect them from themselves is not only dumb its disingenuous and patently false.
  If people weren't educated on using cars they would be EVEN WORSE drivers. Also all the restrictive rules on driving like artificially low speed limits actually make it less safe for good drivers.
  We killed education standards in this country to make things more conservative and thwarted leftist populism to allow full devolution into authoritarian fascism.
  now remind me, did drug prohibition/ restrictions result in decreased supply and demand or did it instead just increase the black market value of these still in demand products while funneling people a majority of which are marginalized poor and working class, into prisons so correctional corporations could siphon tax dollars into their profits and simultaneously profit off of legalized slave labor? How will restrictions on gun ownership be any different?
  More people die from Vehicular manslaughter every year than guns, should we further restrict automobile use?