The story says he’s 22. No surprise there. A *former *member of the military - gave up at 22 did you? Also, he frequently carries weapons like these into department stores.
He does it to protect children from “criminals, drug lords, cartels, and other evil men”
Really? That’s why you carry it? Because you’re the guy who’s going to defend a J.C. Penny story chock-full of children from an attacking drug cartel?
I can’t imagine what on Earth other than tough-guy syndrome motivates people like this to do such foolish things.
Nothing at all wrong with getting out of the military after the first enlistment. Most people don’t serve at all. I applaud anyone who serves and receives an Honorable Discharge.
However the reporter made it sound like the guy has a concealed carry permit BECAUSE he was in the military. Just being in the military doesn’t give you a CC permit - at least in any States I’ve lived in.
What he was doing was stupid, but legal. If you outlawed all stupidity, we’d all be in jail for one reason or another.
Assuming that rifle is loaded, he’s being stupid. His attention is on the woman he is talking to, not on his gun or on who may be around him. He has left the trigger unsecured and available to anyone who comes up behind him. What kind of havoc could occur if someone was to grab the gun from behind and start pulling the trigger?
I thought part of being a proponent of gun rights was being responsible with your firearms. He doesn’t look very responsible to me in that picture. In fact, he looks like he is counting on not having a lunatic come up behind him and take control of that gun, rather than actually being prepared or having taken preventative action so that the gun is actually in his control.
It would have been a horrifically delicious kind of irony if someone had clubbed him in the back of the head and taken his gun from him. I’d guess he’d whine about something other than his own inability to protect himself if that were the case (“No fair! I was talking to someone!” ).
In fairness, “other evil men” covers a lot of bad guys. Guess he’ll leave the evil women to the cops.
Snowboarder, by that logic no one should ever be allowed to carry weapons, because they could be taken from them. Until Judge Dredd style DNA-proofing weapons is a thing, even a cop could be overpowered and their weapon taken. I think anyone crazy enough to do any of the things you describe could also just go get their OWN gun and do the same thing, so I don’t understand that objection.
EDIT: Also, the video says his AR-15 wasn’t loaded. It doesn’t say whether or not the Glock is, though.
The video does say that he was carrying “extra magazines” after mentioning the Glock, so that may have included both handgun and rifle ammo.
Either way - a swift club to his head and he goes down. Then his guns are owned by whomever has bigger brass balls than he does. Like, crazy people? The video doesn’t say whether he intends to defend anyone from* teh crazzys*. In all honesty, most mass killings are carried out by crazy people. So, they’re not on his list, he must not intend to pay them any mind.
Again, a crazy person can pretty much just go out and buy their own gun if they want to do something crazy. This guy’s being taken isn’t really a huge concern when almost anyone can just get their own.
The guy went out of his way to cause minimum fuss, called the cops to warn them so they don’t panic, I bet he’d happily have waited for one to show up to calm people down if necessary. He was pretty much making a peaceful statement about his beliefs regarding gun rights, doing no harm to anyone. It seems unreasonable to call him an idiot for that.
No, cops keep their weapons in a holster. A holster, for those who’ve never seen one, is a carrying pouch for a firearm. The holster covers up the trigger. It’s both for convenience and safety.
The guy in the pic has an unsecured firearm that he cannot physically see himself with an exposed trigger. He’s an idiot and he’s not doing his own cause any good.
Well, the AR-15 isn’t loaded, and considering he was expecting to be challenged about them and had gone out of his way to minimise trouble, I doubt the Glock was either. And either way, I could overpower a cop and take the weapon from his holster. And now I’m a nut with a gun.
Or, y’know, I could just go and buy a gun for myself, since I’m so dead set on going on a rampage that I’ll attack a guy and use his gun in full view of everyone plus CCTV. Or maybe I just can’t control my violent impulse when temptation is dangled in front of me like that?
He’s poorly trained, military or otherwise. The rifle is being carried so the barrel is pointed at other shoppers as he moves through the store. That violates one of the cardinal rules of gun safety. An accidental discharge could hit someone.
Just for that alone, he should be barred from owning firearms.
Sevencl, there’s no such thing as an unloaded gun, that’s how people get killed. With his display of poor weapon handling, I wouldn’t bet my life that he didn’t leave a round chambered.
Is that one of those absolutes you get drummed into you in training? Like, “even if you distinctly remember ejecting the [insert appropriate gun word] don’t point it at anyone in case you’re confused”? If so I can see the sense in that, actually - I’ve been known to be sure I turned the oven off and be wrong.
Even so, if he’d been walking around carrying it pointing it at the ground, I think he might have scared people pretty badly. I mean, it might be sensible, but it looks pretty bad.
Excellent advice, and much the same as I learned when I learned to shoot.
I’d add this: a “safety” on a gun is, among my fellow shooters, known as “a device prone to failure.” If you treat all firearms as if their “safeties” were off, whether or not they are, then you will have no accidents.
[QUOTE=Samuel F. Moore]
The government certainly carries assault rifles at the airports and major train stations, protest rallies, Kent State, etc.
[/QUOTE]
So we should never outlaw any unsafe behavior, because hey, we all do stupid things at times!
There are different levels of stupidity, and there are different levels of unsafe behavior. There’s also a difference between stupidity that is dangerous to yourself, and stupidity that is dangerous to others. There are also different levels of danger, and there’s something called a risk reward ratio.
So it’s not true that either we outlaw all stupid unsafe behavior or we outlaw none.
If you’re going to respond with “who’s going to decide which stupid behavior should or shouldn’t be outlawed” then I’ll respond “our elected representatives”. They may make mistakes, but the biggest mistake of all would be throwing up our hands and saying “we can’t outlaw everything, so we shouldn’t outlaw anything”.
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