It “helps” that most of these extremist open carry advocates seem to be white. I suspect that people of color walking around with enormous weapons would have bigger problems than being asked not to go to Chipotle, as you said.
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Well, last summers iteration of this issue featured a number of Open Carry advocates walking around in public with similar weapons and filming the police response. Several of those OC guys were latino IIRC, but it would be interesting to see if a clear pattern emerged in the form of more calls to police, or different police response to black Open Carry advocates.
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Well, it worked for Bilbo.
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They’re ALL the good guys, so it’ll work out fine, silly.
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He’s holding the rifle for a picture. If you’re holding a rifle doing whatever, not shooting, that is where you put your finger. The same thing is taught to military and police.
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Young crenquis would probably get in trouble, because his first instinct would be to dash out of the restaurant and return with a hastily assembled dildo rifle. (it would still be the first impulse of old crenquis, but I would finish my burrito first and then be too lazy)
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Unless of course he’s inside a restaurant, in which case he shouldn’t be brandishing a weapon at all.
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The only thing that stops a good guy with a gun is another good guy with a gun.
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I should just like to point out that the vast majority of mass shootings happen in "gun free zones.’
Hypothetically, if you wanted to commit a shooting, would you rather to someplace where victims might be armed, or someplace where you can be guaranteed a shooting gallery until the police arrive?
With that being said, in general, most people who open-carry are jerks – especially if they are open-carrying in groups. That makes people nervous, and understandably so. IMHO, if you want to carry at a restaurant, fine, just get a concealed permit first. The only exception being in rural farming/ranching areas where people actually open-carry for reasons other than scaring the crap out of people just to make a political point.
EDIT
And… completely off-topic, but WTF is up with the new BoingBoing two-columns layout. I hate it. Sorry, but I like to scroll down until I have seen things that look familiar – that way I can be reasonably sure of at least glancing at all of the headlines. This new two-column crap makes that more complicated.
It really wouldn’t have been. There are rational ways to debate gun control, but these idiots want no part of that. Any position to the left of “issue guns at birth to everyone” is cause for chest-thumping, sexuality-questioning, dick-waving histrionics.
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But freedom! You’re asking them to not exercise their constitutional right to be an arsehole. What are you, some sort of commie?
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Non-hypothetically, if you wanted to commit a mass shooting, you’re already clinically insane.
And, water is wet. What else is new?
The freedom of speech allows you to run around and insult everybody that you see (in alphabetical order if you wish). The 1st Amendment protects your right to be a flaming asshole. That makes it legal, but does not make it polite or kind. Same thing for the 2nd Amendment. Just because it might be legal does not make it right or considerate.
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My neighbors must have one of those. Or they really love doing home improvements at 1 am.
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The worst mass shooting in living memory was at Virginia Tech in 2007, where a number of armed police were already on site. There were also armed personnel at Columbine High School and at a number of other mass shootings you could name. It turns out that the threat of retaliation isn’t a big deterrent for violent psychotics already bent on committing suicide.
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It’s almost as if Chipotle is more okay with the possibility of being robbed at gunpoint for the meagre contents of a cash register (and who pays with cash these days?) than they are with the possibility of a “responsible gun owner” trying to intervene to stop the robbery!
For as awful and corrupt as this nation’s police force can be, people still prefer to let the professionals handle the criminals than relying on private citizens. For all their flaws and misdeeds, the police still get better results more reliably than random gun owners ever could.
Every gun enthusiast who spouts off about “criminals” like this is delusional. They honestly think “bad guys” are out there somewhere, lurking, ready to pounce, leaping from the shadows to rob them while they’re getting a fast food burrito.
Yes, people (rarely) rob stores and restaurants at gunpoint. Poor, desperate, stupid people. They quite typically flee before the police arrive, but overwhelmingly they end up arrested in short order. Sometimes they get away with a bit of money, but almost never do they fire their weapons - unless provoked.
Enter John Q. Gunhaver, concealed carrying his M1911 with hand loaded .45 APC rounds for that good old “Stoppin’ Powah”. A robbery occurs, and John whips out his piece.
Congratulations, John - you just escalated the situation! You made the panicky idiot who is so desperate for cash that they decide to rob a fucking Chipotle fear for their life. You backed the scared animal into a corner, and now it feels like it has no choice but to bite. Bullets fly.
At best, the robber escapes and no one gets shot - in which case the police still have to track down the robber, but now they also have to deal with the legal and bureaucratic results of Mr. Gunhaver’s handywork - plus the damages to be paid for whatever inanimate objects those bullets ended up hitting.
At worst, someone is dead - maybe the robber, maybe John, maybe innocent bystanders, maybe someone across the street struck by a stray shot, maybe all of the above. Lives are destroyed. Assuming he survived, John feels proud for defending the community. In reality, he turned a minor inconvenience into a bloodbath.
Theft happens. It is a fact of human civilization, stretching back throughout all of recorded history. It’s not worth killing people over - not even the thieves.
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