Mar8 |
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They’ll take my gun when they pry it from the cold, dead fingers of my hand that’s not carrying a Starbucks soy latté
Turns out that there are a number of gun-rights advocates who feel the same way: They’ve started entering coffee shops across the nation with guns openly displayed, a sort of Second Amendment lunch counter protest — with the option of vanilla or cinnamon sprinkles — to make gun discrimination more vivid to the general public. They’ve been tossed out of Peet’s and California Pizza Kitchen, but they’re apparently welcome at Starbucks. But not all gun advocates are fans:
All due respect to Mr. Gottlieb, but isn’t scaring people part of the reason for gun ownership? If you’re buying a pistol for self-defense, aren’t you wanting to make sure you can outmuscle any assailants? And if you can assure them that they’ll be outmuscled before they even assail you, haven’t you won? Where’s the problem here? Seems like some gun owners want it both ways. They want the right to pump a bad guy full of lead — but they don’t want to have to face the social discomfort that comes with having an armed man in your midst. I think they should own it! It’s OK to be a tough guy, gun owners! Head on down to Starbucks and show your Second Amendment pride with a smile on your face, a .357 on your hip and a frappucino in your hands. |
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PhillyNow | PW Style | Make Major Moves | The Trouble with Spikol
With all the fights that have gone on around the nation in recent decades about “concealed carry” laws, I’ve often wondered: Why wouldn’t gun owners go the Dodge City route and strap a holster to their hip? If carrying a gun is about personal safety, wouldn’t having a gun openly displayed work really well as deterrence? Why force a mugger to guess if they’ll get shot?
“All due respect to Mr. Gottlieb, but isn’t scaring people part of the reason for gun ownership? If you’re buying a pistol for self-defense, aren’t you wanting to make sure you can outmuscle any assailants?”
No. It’s not to scare people at all: it’s to provide for self-defense, which generally takes place in your own home. this article pretty much explains why I generally oppose carrying a weapon in public at all. This kind of flamboyance is an abuse of the right to bear arms, IMO.
The fact is, even in a dangerous city like Philadelphia, carrying a gun (openly or concealed) will not protect you from criminals. By the time the criminal is shooting, unless you have the tactical training that the police and military receive, you are shit out of luck.
What handguns are for are home invasions, when you hear someone breaking in with the presumed intent to do you harm. Outside of going to the practice range, that’s the only appropriate use of a handgun. these morons who insist on carrying them openly have inadequacy issues, and by needlessly scaring people, they do more harm than good to the cause of gun ownership.
This post reads as if it were written by someone who had never seen a gun before, except in movies and picture-books. It is probably best for such people to leave the owning, carrying and responsibilities pertinent thereto to people who actually own and touch and care for firearms.
Not everyone is as superstitious about guns as people who have never touched one.
Your post is obviously written by someone that knows little or nothing about why people carry guns. The point of concealed carry is to force the “presumption” of a percentage of regular people to be resistant to armed force. This is safest for everybody. Think of it this way, if someone were to rob a bank, would they not make sure to handle the uniformed armed guards if they wanted a successful robbery? Same presumption here. Police are deterrents, they don’t need to be everywhere to ensure general safety. The presumption that police can be around also helps in the same way the concealed carry would. However, if you carry openly (if you are forced by law), you have none of the police protections and become more open targets, which doesn’t benefit as many people.
We don’t want to “pump lead” that’s what your liberal mind with no practical experience with guns pretends to straw man gun owners with. We don’t want to pump lead into people any more than police officers or security guards, or soldiers want to kill people. This idea that gun owners are more dangerous than regular people is just your illogical fear of guns and gun owners.
How about this, I’ll agree with you and not have my 1st amendment right if you can agree that your right to the first amendment is not guaranteed and that if the 1st amendment were allowed, I can call you Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Then you can wear a swastika take your Macbook to your closest Starbucks and spout useless straw mans like the one I just used on you.
the other two comments are silly.
most people do not encounter “armed force” in the course of daily life. I have lived in Philadelphia for a decade, most of it in southwest. I hear gunshots every single day. But (knock wood) i have never yet encountered directly armed force that i had to resist.
My point stands: someone who has made the decision to start shooting in public will not be detered by the threat of retaliatory violence (he or she already knows the cops will show up eventually with THEIR guns). You are delusional if you think that you will have the wherewithal and ability to accurately locate the gunman in a crowd of panicking people, while dodging bullets yourself. It’s an insane proposition, and even the police will acknowledge what a difficult situation that is.
handguns are for self-defense at home, when YOU have the jump on the intruder. i’d like to knopw how much tactical and combat experience wry mouth and george have, their own personal experiences fighting off a determined criminal in public.
“i’d like to knopw how much tactical and combat experience wry mouth and george have, their own personal experiences fighting off a determined criminal in public.”
I don’t have any. Zero. Zilch. And yet, I persist in my “silly” belief that gun ownership and care and carrying of firearms be left to those who are experienced and not “askeered” of guns.
Silly; I know.
As for people defending themselves/others against criminals, some choose to use conventional firearms (fine with me); others use less conventional brute force (like my fellow teachers who tackled that gunman in Littleton the other week).
I once was kicked to the ground and had my chin opened up by a drunk who was assaulting bicyclists in my college town, after I engaged him to get him away from the bicyclists. My clever strategy was to curl up in a ball and wait for him to get drunkenly distracted by something else.
I have NO problem with the average persons *I* know carrying concealed or openly. That’s only because the people I know are by-and-large responsible, caring citizens.
Captcha predicts: a reply to this post! — “existing but”
Wow, interesting; personally I can lawfully carry either open or concealed. I almost always conceal why; because I understand that firearms make a lot of the law abiding public uncomfortable, there is no personal benefit in making my fellow law abiding citizens feel anxious. That said I feel fine when I open carry, I do not feel more or less safe, and I don’t really care if people don’t like seeing my holstered firearm but as I said there is no benefit in making other law abiding citizens fear me, so concealed carry is for is the route I choose. All that said there are a lot of reasons why people choose open carry all of them are valid to varying degrees IMHO.
So now to my rebuttal; Joel your assertion that people who lawfully carry firearm are tough guys is ridiculous. Overall, I only want to ensure my own safety; in fact Joel it would be a very unique set of circumstances that would cause me to draw my firearm. The only reason that I have even considered that would cause me to produce a firearm is in the defense of my life or a loved one.
Brendan, I am not looking for the shooter in a crowd, I am moving in the other direction, I would not even contemplate drawing on an assailant more than 25’ from my location. My firearms are not to protect society as a whole; my firearms are to protect my life and the lives of my loved ones. As for the idea that pistols are for home defense; you have no idea; the only reason I carry a pistol in public is because it is too difficult to conceal a 12 gauge shotgun. As for tactical training Brendan you are naïve, what is the point of bringing up tactical training; we are not going door to door, looking for bad guys. As for me I am a US Marine, I have tactical training, none of which is generally relevant to civilian self defense.
Many of you in the anti-self defense crowd seem to focus on the idea that people who lawfully carry have a super hero complex or are police wannabes why is that? You could not be more wrong, we are not here to rescue you nor are we here to right injustices. Simply, we are here to live our day to day lives the same as you; with one small exception, we have chosen to take the responsibility to take additional steps to ensure our own personal safety. I am not in the least critical of your choice; please leave me the freedom of my choice.
If we were to use the authors logic applied to police, he would likely have a fit. Isn’t intimidating people part of the reason for the police existence? If your becoming a police officer aren’t you wanting to make sure you can outmuscle any assailants? And if you can assure them that they’ll be outmuscled before they even assailyou, haven’t you won? Where’s the problem here? The problem is that you don’t want the police to assume that all people are assailants. The general public shouldn’t be afraid to see people open carrying but it is not the purpose of the open carrier to scare them.
To better understand the Second Amendment to the United States
Constitution it is helpful to consider how almost every reasonable
person would interpret this amendment if it did not involve something
which is considered controversial or politically incorrect by some and
idolized by others. Arms in the possession of ordinary citizens meet
both criteria. Let’s, for the sake of argument, suppose that the
Second Amendment dealt with books, not arms or weapons, and read like
this: “A well educated electorate, being necessary to the maintenance
of a free State, the right of the people to own and read books, shall
not be infringed.” Does anyone really believe that liberals would
claim that only people who were eligible to vote should be allowed to
buy and read books? Or that a person should have to have voted in the
last election before the government would permit him or her to buy a
book? Would the importation of books be banned if they did not meet
an “educational purpose” test? Would some States limit citizens to
buying “one book a month”? Would inflammatory “assault books” be
banned in California?