Trick question: Which one is the good guy with the gun?
Why did this take so long?
The one that looks the most like me?
So to sum up this story: the incident took place in a gas station, where it was already legal to open carry. Thus this particular incident had nothing to do with the new law, the article was simply being sensational.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, a city with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country … 82 people were shot and 14 were killed over the July 4th weekend. So given the choice, we could certainly use more “gun violence” like this: no shots were fired, no one was hurt, and the idiot who was threatening people was arrested.
Is there a problem with this story? Nobody was shot, killed, or otherwise hurt. Somebody’s panties got in a bunch, sabres were rattled, and the idiot-in-question got the cops called on him. End of story, yes?
There goes the “an armed society is a polite society” theory.
First of all, Chicago’s supposedly high murder rate is basically imaginary. It’s pretty much middle of the pack for large cities in the US. There are about a dozen large cities in the US with higher murder rates, including Atlanta Georgia- which is the same state this incident took place in.
Second of all, Chicago’s “most restrictive gun laws in the country” are no more. The supreme court struck down one ban, and concealed carry is now legal. Even after the 4th of July weekend, shootings are down in Chicago this year (as they are virtually everywhere, and have been for the past 20 years). Something a lot of pro-gun people were attributing to the city’s newly loosened gun laws.
Ya’ll should pick a line. Also, know something about murder rates.
… police shot at least 5 people over the holiday weekend, including the two youngest.
Is one of them wearing a white hat?
Is there a problem with nuclear brinksmanship? The world didn’t end in a global nuclear conflagration and asubsequent ice age. Somebody stationed ICBMs within a hundred miles of the US mainland, sabres were rattled, and then the Berlin Wall came down. End of story, yes?
Armed standoffs are bad. It doesn’t matter if some of them end without bloodshed, the mere iminent possibility of senseless death and destruction itself is abhorent - because if you keep having armed standoffs, eventually people are going to die.
It was not even a real standoff. One gun was held but not pointed at anybody, the other stayed in the holster. Of course it hits the news because it is the Slow News Season. Wake me up when both guns get drawn and pointed.
As is usually the case with these sorts of things, this “theory” has been demonstrably disproved countless times throughout history - and yes, even our own American history.
Well over a century ago, Mark Twain wrote with utter disgust about the American tradition - imported from Europe - of young men settling petty offenses and disagreements by dueling. But the tradition stretches back many centuries, and provides innumerable examples of just how wrong the sentiment that “an armed society is a polite society” is.
After all, if every time you offended someone you could be called out to defend your honor in lethal combat, surely that would instill in people a sense of propriety, patience, politeness, and calm?
Yeaaah… about that… it turns out that humans are emotional, irrational, violent creatures - especially when someone who disagrees with them threatens to kill them over their differences.
Weapons do not make people more polite - they make people more dead.
Wow. There’s a fatal lack of imagination, if ever I saw one.
The police chief said no one can demand a person to show their gun permit. Under the new law, he as police chief and his officers cannot demand to see a firearms permit, Childress said.
Hmm.
Yes, it doesn’t seem like the events really relate to the new law. I wish those owners who openly brandish for no reason other than to show they can would use a little judgement. I believe it gives other gun owners a bad name. I am happy to stick here in VT where we can carry open or concealed WITHOUT a license—but hardly anyone chooses to carry openly and crime is relatively low. Most of us have nothing to prove.
LOL. Sounds like the ol’ boy should have minded his own damn business.
One of the reasons I’ve never been impressed by people quoting our 18th century political leaders on issues relating to modern-day gun control is that so many of them seemed keen on settling disagreements via ritual murder. It wasn’t just Hamilton and Burr, either: by some accounts Andrew Jackson participated in scores of duels.
