The guys in this video were booted out of a Sonic because the restaurant didn’t want them openly carrying firearms. By their own words they don’t feel safe eating there. If I felt that an establishment was so dangerous that it was necessary to openly carry a weapon to go there, I wouldn’t go there with or without a weapon. Especially not for the poor to mediocre food served at Sonic.
From the conversation, they’ve done this before and intend to do it again. They’re a bunch of immature assholes getting a kick out of going around deliberately causing confrontations. At some point assholes like this are going to end up getting themselves or someone else hurt.
This isn’t even about the right to carry guns. This is about behaving yourself and acting like an adult and not going around deliberately frightening people and causing a scene.
I bet 21 of the patrons eating Big Macs and Happy Meals on July 18, 1984 in San Ysidro, California would disagree with your cavalier threat assessment ability.
Did you watch the video? This is a bunch of immature idiots yucking it up and deliberately looking for confrontation, which is not the way to create a safe environment.
Just because there are some extremely rare situations where violent wackjobs shoot up a restaurant doesn’t mean that it’s at all rational for restaurant patrons to “not feel safe” unless they’re open carrying.
The OP is right: these jerks are just trying to stir the shit so they can complain about having their “rights” interfered with.
Well, if you think that pointing to a thirty-year-old instance of a fast-food restaurant massacre in any meaningful way “rebuts” anything that the OP was actually saying, you have my condolences on your impaired reasoning capacity.
No, Bricker, nobody’s claiming that fast-food restaurants are always guaranteed to be 100% safe from random violence. The OP was simply noting that the danger of encountering random violence in them is not realistically great enough to frighten any sensible person to the point of needing an openly carried firearm.
A meteorite fell on some lady’s head 30 years ago about eight hundred miles from where I live.
That’s why I walk around with a helmet whenever I go outside. Cuz you never know when it will happen again.
I mean, seriously. It would be one thing if you cited a recent incident. Hell, you could have mentioned the Santa Barbara shooting that happened on Friday and I probably wouldn’t have said anything. But you went all the way back to 1984. That’s weird even for you.
Because you have pointed to one incident in the history of fast food where an armed clientele might have saved lives. Compare that to the number of incidents of accidental firearms discharges, and the incidences of unarmed criminals stealing a gun and shooting with it, and the number of incidences of a black person being “mistaken” for a robber, and the number of incidences of someone losing their temper and pulling a firearm where they might have done no damage throwing a punch, and…
Well, suffice to say, a fifth grader could tell you that the risks outweigh the benefit.
And complaining to a fast-food restaurant manager because s/he asks you not to open carry long guns in the establishment definitely qualifies as being a shithead.
Actually, I pointed to two instances: I also mentioned Luby’s.
So to be clear: are you saying that not only do risks outweigh benefits for carrying firearms, but that the conclusion is so blatantly obvious that any fifth grader can correctly reach that conclusion? That is, literally, your claim? Or is this hyperbole?
You are legally justified in carrying a firearm anywhere allowed by your state’s laws, unless specifically prohibited by private property owners. Which is precisely the case in the article linked by the OP.
As for morally or rationally justified, well, that’s an inherently subjective measure, isn’t it? I have, as i’ve said numerous times on this board, moderated my previous strong anti-gun position somewhat since coming to the United States, and i believe that there are plenty of decent, responsible gun-owning people in the United States. Part of the reason for my changed position is precisely that i’ve met some such people.
I also think that anyone who feels the need to carry a gun everywhere they go is either paranoid, irrational, or intentionally confrontational. Or some combination of those things. This belief is, in my opinion, in no way inconsistent with the previous paragraph. I support the free-speech rights of racists and homophobes and other assholes, but i reserve my own right to shun them, or to call them assholes when the circumstances warrant. Similarly, i recognize your right to carry a gun in your state, but if you sat down for a meal with me in a restaurant with that gun, i’d probably call you an asshole, and get up and leave.
I agree with the latter claim. If the law permits you to open carry, I say you have every right to open carry, and should, because if enough people do it it will become an unremarkable sight. But if the person in charge of the establishment asks you not to, that’s their right, and you ought to comply.
Serious question: Can anyone here point me to any examples where a random armed person was able to stop someone on a rampage? I am not referring to law enforcement, but someone who happened to be on the scene and also happened to be carrying, AND decided to get involved.
We can speculate about past massacres and rampages - IF someone had a gun, THEN they PROBABLY would have been stopped. Seems to make sense, but how about some examples where things really went down that way.