A Washington state senator was arrested at the airport in Hong Kong and charged with possession of an unregistered firearm, his office said.

Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, was detained at Hong Kong International Airport on Friday night after he found a pistol in his carry-on bag and reported it to customs officials.

He was released on bail Sunday and faces a hearing Oct. 30.

  • kowcop@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    70
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    8 months ago

    Australian here… I have never actually touched a handgun, in fact, I have never seen a handgun with my eyeballs outside of police/security… it is weird how casual this seems

    • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      70
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      8 months ago

      “Woops, got so many firearms I didn’t even notice one was misplaced into my bag”

      And americans think that’s normal

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      58
      arrow-down
      20
      ·
      8 months ago

      “I’m a responsible gun owner!” say every irresponsible gun owners.

      Fuck the USA and its constitution, it even becomes an issue the next country over because idiots get their firearms stolen and they make their way to Canada so gang members can shoot each other and kill bystanders at the same time.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        I used to work at a place where a guy would bring his guns in his truck to work every day.

        To work in sales in an office in an industrial estate.

        They were locked in that metal case in the back of his Ram, but if you were robbing a truck isn’t that the first place you’d look? I also am willing to bet they weren’t disassembled, cased, ammo separate either.

        • Birdie@thelemmy.club
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          8 months ago

          I’m older than most of y’all, 70. In high school, it was not unusual to have the student parking lot filled with pickup trucks…most of which had shot guns on gun racks hanging on the back window.

          It’s so weird to think about that now, how very normal it seemed at the time.

          • JustZ@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            8 months ago

            My older buddy tells me about how he used to bring his rifle on the school bus because he was on the high school shooting team. In and of itself, I don’t think anyone can say such a change is either good or bad, just that the culture is different, as it always is after as many years.

            • remotelove@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              8 months ago

              Same for me. I have been around guns most of my life and seeing them in trucks was very common. Hell, me and my friends all owned .22’s at a minimum and nobody cared when we wanted to go shooting. Where I grew up it was just… normal.

          • MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            8 months ago

            The big difference being about 5 billion more people on the planet since then and now.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          8 months ago

          100% what you break into. Its exposed, and the exact place most people keep expensive tools and stupid people keep guns.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 months ago

          A guy I worked with had a handgun with permits and stored in his car. We made torpedo parts for the navy. HR found out and sent an email about weapons on the premises. Hehe

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        I was in the military, I regularly practice and teach responsible use and ownership. My background checks are clean and I never use firearms while under the influence of anything. All of my firearms are well maintained and locked away or disabled when they are not.

        Guns are just guns. They are fun to shoot and a useful tool for hunting. Quite honestly, I love the precision engineering that it takes to contain up to 65,000 psi and direct that energy in a controlled manner.

        Your generalization of responsible gun owners is bad, unfortunately. You seem to demonize people blindly and that is simply not healthy and not fair to people who actually respect what these tools actually are.

        I am guessing your experience around firearms is basically nil and that is OK! Fear of them is a natural thing and is healthy to maintain a deep respect for any kind of high energy machinery.

          • remotelove@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            9
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            Stop deflecting with rehtorical questions. It’s kinda hostile. But, to answer the question anyway, it’s fairly close between motor vehicles, firearms, cancer and just “normal” accidents.

            My point, is that you are generalizing a group of people based on the behaviors of a minority. You can call me an idiot to my face for any reason that you would like for anything that I have said. Totally cool. You cannot group me in with a subset of people that you believe are all the same. That is completely unrealistic.

            • Nudding@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              12
              ·
              8 months ago

              It’s not a rhetorical question, and what the fuck is fairly close lol? There is a right answer here, big guy.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              8 months ago

              The person that asked the question was someone other than the person you originally replied to (me).

              My comment was just pointing out the truth, all irresponsible gun owners talk like they are responsible gun owners. You might be a responsible gun owner, it doesn’t make what I say any less true.

              It also doesn’t change the fact that US guns make their way to my country and people get killed using them and these guns come, in part, from people who called themselves responsible owners and who got their gun(s) stolen.

              • remotelove@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                6
                ·
                edit-2
                8 months ago

                Canada should stop exporting alcohol. In my opinion, that is a much more potent killer than guns will ever be.

                Crown Royal, and the responsible consumers of that product, should be held responsible for all deaths and domestic abuse caused by their products. The people that get drunk aren’t the issue, so we should just ban alcohol completely.

                People who say they are responsible consumers of alcohol are actually not. They actually hide bottles of booze from their family and get completely blitzed whenever they have the chance.


                Before you dismiss my example as a false equivalence, and to a degree it is, I can’t help but see your logic as a shift of blame per my example.

                If someone gets drunk and beats their kids, that person is at fault. If someone stabs someone else with a knife, that person is also at fault. If your car gets stolen and it is used to run people over, it’s the fault of the thief.

                If someone shoots someone else with a stolen gun, it’s now the fault of responsible gun owners who may also be victims of crimes (theft) themselves.

                I should also point out that words are not actions. People can say anything they want. If someone says they are responsible and they actually aren’t, that can create a risky situation. Guns aside, that is life in general. If people act irresponsibly, they should be treated as such. If they drink too much, send them to a doctor. If they don’t obey traffic laws, send them to remedial training and suspend their license after that if necessary. If they can’t operate a firearm or follow laws, take their guns.

                Also, in my personal experience, irresponsible gun owners talk like irresponsible gun owners. In general, irresponsible people act like irresponsible people which is much easier to identify.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  6
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Alcohol is easy to make at home so no way to realistically ban it, plenty of campaigns to lower it’s consumption.

                  Knives are necessary to make food and are easy to make at home, already illegal to carry knives over a certain size.

                  Cars are necessary for personal transportation because of the way our countries are developed, manufacturers are making them safer and harder to steal.

                  Guns? Neither necessary or easy to make at home, manufacturers make them more efficient at killing, easy to ban.

                  The only reason these guns exist in Canada is because USA has the gun culture it has, make all guns disappear from the USA and Canada and see how little will illegally make the way inside both countries. The fact that you guys have such easy access to guns is the issue, no matter how safely you store them, if someone enters your house without you noticing, points one at your head and tells you to open your safe to steal your firearms, you’ll do it while pissing your pants and say thank you if they don’t shoot you before leaving.

                  Sure, people are the issue, the object isn’t. What you guys don’t get is that all people who want to own guns are the issue, not just irresponsible owners.

                  • remotelove@lemmy.ca
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    5
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    I can easily make a “gun” at home and it doesn’t take that much creativity. With a little bit of chemistry knowledge, you can make extremely dangerous explosives as well. Hell, it’s even easier to make a gun at home with the advent of 3D printing and the wide availability of desktop CNC machines. By your logic, there is no realistic way to completely ban guns either.

                    There are plenty of people in Canada and the US that still require guns as a tool for food. It’s not as prevalent as it once was, but it’s still a thing. I still participate in the destruction of invasive species from time to time and it’s a huge benefit to those farmers.

                    I will also admit that I really enjoy firearms and the hobby happens to align well with the rest of my engineering fascinations. To me, my guns are just as interchangeable with the new CNC machine I am designing and building. Two different machines, but are incredibly interesting when it comes to precision.

                    Also, what you think you want is a perfect world. Until that happens, I am absolutely more comfortable with a firearm at my side in some situations. If we all were good people and always had good intentions, sure! Throw out all the guns. Let’s hold hands and sing. The truth of the matter is that humanity is undeniably dirty. If someone breaks into my house, they will probably be armed and I have no issues putting them down quickly in such a case. It’s a sad and disgusting part of life that many people don’t see, or choose to ignore.

                    There are a lot of gun owners from all walks of life, btw. Calling us “wrong” or “the problem” is just something that you need to do to feel better, I suppose.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          8 months ago

          Pretty much all guns used for crimes in Canada illegally made their way to Canada from the USA, that’s just a fact.

      • JustZ@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        It’s a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as responsible gun owners and irresponsible gun owners, just gun owners. Believe it or not, human beings are frail and emotional creatures, prone to decompensation. Most of us will die without our faculties or dignity intact. It is this feature of humanity that makes gun ownership so dangerous.

        Along with the absolute nut jobs who’s gullibility and lack of integrity seem to know no limit when it comes to interpreting the Second Amendment.