But I can’t build a sledgehammer that can reliably drive sledges into lumber yet not harm people either, and yet you don’t seem to want to do your imitation of a scared rabbit if you happen to see a worker carrying a sledgehammer stop by a restaurant for a bite.
And you’re not paying the check?
Have I mentioned lately that your tendency toward being over-pedantic sure makes you a complete idiot?
I mean, do I really have to explain why I’d be much less afraid of the guy with the sledgehammer than the guy with the gun?
Are you really that dumb?
No, you’re not. I have to assume you’re doing this out of sheer jerkitude.
I’m getting away from threats to my life. I’m damned sure not going to stop on the way out the door to ask for the check.
Your perception that a person with a holstered gun is a threat to your life that justifies your departure from a restaurant without paying your bill is unreasonable.
Would a person with an unholstered gun justify leaving?
We clearly have different definitions of reasonableness.
I have a deep aversion to being around random people carrying devices that they can use to blow a big hole through my body at a second’s notice.
If you don’t share that aversion, that’s fine and dandy for you.
A person brandishing a gun would justify leaving. “Unholstered” is too non-specific. It could refer to a pistol in a locked carrying case or a long gun slung over the back of a shoulder.
I don’t. And more to the point, society (in most states) doesn’t either. A state that permits people to carry firearms has already made the determination.
How quickly could a long gun slung over the back of a shoulder be brandished? My recollection of the photos in the article were various nasty looking guns on straps that could be in hand and firing with only a few hand movements.
Same way a holstered gun could be pulled very quickly, I imagine.
So what?
You seem to support the idea that someone carrying a gun is a danger. But laugh at the idea that someone else would wish to arm himself against that danger.
If I say, “I want to carry a gun because I’m concerned about being attacked,” you suggest that’s foolish. But if you see someone with a holstered gun, you think it’s normal to assume you’ll be attacked.
Given that most people have only the vaguest idea of what’s going on in their state legislatures, confusing ‘society’ with what such bodies do under the assorted pressures applied to them is really a pretty dumb thing. Almost, but not quite, as dumb as the bit about the sledgehammer.
You’re really doing yourself proud here, counselor.
Speaking of stupidity, this post is a rich vein to mine.
Just to pick on one before I get back to work:
“But if you see someone with a holstered gun, you think it’s normal to assume you’ll be attacked.”
Where do you get that from? We stay indoors during thunderstorms not because we assume we’ll get hit by lightning if we go outside, but because there’s certainly a risk of being zapped if we go outside that isn’t there if we stay inside - a risk that is generally unnecessary to take.
Same thing with people who carry guns in public. I don’t assume someone carrying a gun will attack me, but he is bringing a risk into my life that wouldn’t be there if he weren’t carrying, and AFAIAC, it’s unnecessary and unreasonable for him to foist that risk on me.
And then no one is safe until everyone is armed. I don’t care for that version of society.
OK, correction accepted – although I don’t agree that my version was stupid; I’d say your words lent themselves to either interpretation, and more so to mine, but you’ve clarified your flight is not due to the assumption that you will be attacked, but rather the risk that you’ll be attacked, and you’re unwilling to assume that risk.
My question remains the same: why can’t someone else say, “I am mitigating the risk of being injured if someone pulls a gun out and starts shooting by carrying my own gun with which to defend myself?”
In other words, you regard that calculation as one made by a “Nervous Nellie,” but you simultaneously regard your decision to flee without so much as paying for your meal to be prudent.
But you understand that society doesn’t seem to agree with you, right? That the democratic republic in which we live has explicitly permitted people to openly carry guns in the majority of states?
So is it fair to say that the version of society you care for – the one in which people are not permitted to openly carry guns – is one that the majority of people in the majority of states don’t like? And isn’t it fair to say that, notwithstanding that, you wish to impose your preferred version of society on the rest of the people?
Kinda like a religious fundamentalist?
Society is basically with me on this, actually. Otherwise Sonic, Target and the other businesses wouldn’t be telling the gun carriers to fuck off. So, no, not at all like a religious fundamentalist.
Why are Sonic and Target better bellwethers for “society” than the overwhelming majority of other businesses that permit weapons, added to the actual laws passed by the majority of states?
That’s like Shirley Phelps saying society is with her because all the members of her church agree with her.
They were even rarer 5 minutes before the one cited.
Aaaand, THIS is why you can’t participate in great debates.
Well, the “right to bear arms” cases haven’t made it to the supreme court but we can’t simply read the word “bear” our of the second amendment now can we?
Why do you think that? We had that in parts in our past and it led to modern democracy.
cite.
And i will lay even odds that Hillary is “caught” duck hunting in Pennsylvania by “secret web cam” or something like that to show how much she is FOR gun rights but really really against child killing military style assault weapons.