There could be 30 to 50 feral hogs in there
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Both of those things are indeed happening in different parts of America.
There are many, many places in the USA where it’s absolutely illegal to carry around a gun when you have no legitimate business doing so. At one extreme, for example, we have NYC, where it’s extraordinarily difficult to get a carry permit unless you have a really, really good reason. Heck, just to keep a gun in your home you need a special permit that requires hundreds of dollars in fees, extensive interviews and background checks (not just a database search), with the police, and all kinds of requirements for how you keep and transport the gun (you can’t actually keep the gun loaded in your home in NY–guns and ammo have to be kept in separate locked boxes).
At the other extreme you have places that are actively seeking to repeal the limited gun control laws that are already on the books, in the name of freedom. More than half the states don’t require any kind of permit or license to carry a gun. The Iowa legislature just passed a law a week or so ago eliminating handgun permits (private sales will no longer require any background checks unless the seller has reason to believe the buyer is a Bad Guy).
IMO the former is MAYBE a bit overly restrictive for a country where it’s relatively easy to get an illegal gun (it would strike me as entirely reasonable if black market guns weren’t so damn plentiful), but the latter is just plain bonkers. But there are an AWFUL lot of people out there who really, truly do believe that the occasional mass shooting is just the price of freedom, and that the only solution is for more “good” people to get trained and start packing, so we’re ready to stop the bad guys. And that philosophy is in fact being taught in many, many places in this country.
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That’s pretty much the law in Canada…handguns have no practical use. We actually had a couple in our house inherited from a family member but we turned them over to police. I could have got them licensed to me but unless you want to take them to a range to shoot them, which requires a transport license, there is literally no use for them. Hike in bear country, can I take a handgun? Nope, bear spray works better anyway. Handgun for self protection? There is no provision for that in the law (as I understand it. It’s not a concern for me so maybe I’m wrong.) And the separate locked storage applies to long guns as well.
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The only thing that can stop a bad guy with five guns, is a good guy with five guns.
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There is absolutely zero reason for carrying three pistols and two rifles into a store, however.
If you treat guns like jewelry, you have every reason to carry and display them in public.
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I am a gun control advocate who supports open carry.
The best way of convincing people to support gun control is for them to see how messed up the status quo is. Open carry puts the crazy on display. And quite a few open carriers are crazy like foxes.
What I really wonder about is how eliminating open carry would affect police shootings of innocent people who had real or imaginary carried on their body. Could just make it worse.
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This was covered many years ago, in an educational show in BBC.
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Or: “Officer/Your Honor, I was a good guy with a gun.”
They’d claim the analogy is like driving a car. You can’t arrest the car driver until he has started swerving. Up until that, I’m just another legal car driver. In the same way, I should be able to carry an assault weapon and limitless ammunition into a mall, grocery store, or church without being harassed.
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Someday, someone is going to explain how using the second amendment which was written in a time when defending your home was a thing, now, completely anachronistic because the only thing you are defending is your right to being a racist xenophobe is still allowed. We don’t need guns. People who keep insisting we do really do need to have their heads examined.
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I agree 100%. I think open carry should be absolutely required. Everybody should know exactly how many guns you have on you at all times. If you want to live like you’re in the old west should feel like you’re living in the old west. Plus it’d make security easier. And, if someone was hiding a gun, you’d know they were probably up to no good, and you’d have a reason to arrest them for it.
Get them out there, I say.
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The courts disagree with you.
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“We’ll see about that.”
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You must watch all the propaganda videos. Even the unethical ones full of lies.
Also you have to sit through a detailed mockup simulating what it’d be like if you got into a shoot out and all your loved ones were ground into finely textured hamburger.
And we’ll make you have a funeral for every cartridge you discharge.
Isn’t it interesting how you don’t see people protesting outside of gun shops. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that carrying guns around is a declaration that you think killing people is good.
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FTFY
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It would be nice if people start calling the cops on people open carrying as often as they do on “suspicious” young people of color just walking down the street minding their own business. In the reality I live in the person with a killing machine strapped to their chest is the one I’m worried about.
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There is an entire set of politicians that message and clearly advocate for a world where you do need to defend your home on your own. They seem to depend on and desire a society that’s unsafe, with no sense of community at all. Where everyone is on their own, there’s no law that’s not enforced yourself, and every interaction with someone else is a life or death encounter.
It’s sad that their opponents haven’t been able to communicate or frame the position this way. It seems like it would be an easy way to defeat them. “My opponent wants world so lawless that you’re on your own and every neighbor that drives by could mean your death! Vote for me, I want a community that believes in itself where you can get the mail and grocery shop without fear of imminent death.”
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What part of “rugged individualism” don’t you understand? Don’t you realize: empathy is weakness, and compassion is folly.
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This older but still relevant essay by Davin Brin does a good job explaining what some people believe about the need for gun ownership.
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