Because carrying a concealed weapon is typical, and shouldering an assault rifle isn’t. As far as I’m concerned, given the rarity of people carrying assault rifles in shopping malls, there’s a 50/50 chance the guy is going to shoot up the place. The basic odds mean that I should call the cops.
For basic handguns, yeah, you can fall back on this argument of “millions of people walk around carrying concealed handguns every day without shooting anyone.” When you change the parameters to assault rifles open-carried in shopping malls, you can no longer make that argument. I only know of two people who have ever done this, and 1 of them killed 9 people. I’m calling the cops. You should too.
This is why I’m much more comfortable with open carry than concealed carry. If you proud enough to carry, be proud enough to let me know you are carrying. That way I can determine my next course of action.
Legal open carry of handguns makes some sense for just that reason. Bad guys need the element of surprise, so they’re usually going to want to hide their weapon until they are ready to use it. Someone who’s carrying legally for self-protection, on the other hand, doesn’t have much reason to hide what they’re doing.
But that’s handguns. I can’t see much reason to carry a rifle or shotgun into a shopping mall.
You fail to understand that other people, yes even most people, have a different perception of the world than you do.
This thread isn’t meant to be a debate, that’s why it’s in MPSIMS. If you want to debate the issues here, maybe you should start a GD thread on the subject. Engaging people in debate when they’re not looking for it will give you no victory and make you look - well, make you look like you do right now. Overly concerned with only your own perceptions of the world around you and how you think things should be, while willfully ignorant of the perceptions and desires of those around you.
No, he’s doing it to be a troll. And I don’t think legalities would play into it, since JC Penney is a privately owned company. In that I would imagine that they have every right to ban him from carrying a gun around in their store like that.
Sevencl, a lot of your posts come dangerously close to trolling, not to mention hijacking many topics you post in. This one goes over the line. Stop posting in these manners, this is a warning for you.
While as usual Der Trihs is in capital form with his typically tortured logic in service of inexplicable hyperboles apparently written for denizens of some far-off planet where guns leap from cabinets and holsters of their own free will and shove old ladies into the paths of oncoming omnibuses, I have to groan at any folks on “my side” (as it were) who try to defend this fellow.
Or else, who at least play party to the self-assured fiction that it’s unreasonable for anybody to be nervous around a guy carrying a rifle on his back in a shopping mall. I’m a gun owner. I have an AR-15 or three myself. I support concealed carry. I support the legality of peaceable open carry (of a handgun in a holster, preferably one that matches your shoes). And I would be pretty nervous if I saw a guy walk into a store where I was browsing with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Not necessarily because I would reasonably fear that he’d start shooting the place up (if he’d meant to do that, he probably wouldn’t have let people see the gun until the fun was about to begin), but because I question the self-awareness and mental or emotional stability of a person who really thinks that that kind of display is a good idea. You know how it’s always a little uneasy when you see a slightly disturbed person acting (perhaps even with total innocence) without regard for the social comfort of the people who share their space? There are those little indicators that a person is not quite integrated into our society and might not share our mores and inhibitions. It’s like that, only he has a gun.
Of all the possible explanations I can conceive for his behavior, simple naive cluelessness is the most kind. Less salutary but perhaps more likely is a latent desire to at once intimidate and set himself above his peers in the general public (perhaps replete with and justified by a number of self-confident diatribes brimming with the word “sheeple”). In any case, if he thinks this sort of thing exemplifies the behavior of a reasonable ambassador for gun rights advocacy, he’s loopy.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that context is everything. There’s a time and a place. Just this last weekend, a couple thousand people demonstrated at the state capitol in support of gun rights; more than a few of them were decked out with various weaponry, including rifles. (Dig the guy with the .50-cal on the right there :p) It was a pretty peaceful event and as far as I’m aware everybody knew what was up and nobody got unduly alarmed; just a bunch of folks doing a bit of political grandstanding.
This reminds me of the idea: “People who do not tolerate intolerance are hypocrites.” Taken at face value, it seems to have merit but at some point it becomes troublesome.
A guy who walks into a department store with a mangun slung over his shoulder, intending to shed as much blood as humanly possible, is absolutely indistinguishable from a guy who walks into a department store with a mangun slung over his shoulder, intending to buy underpants for his wife–until he starts shooting. The above quote seems to suggest it is perfectly reasonable to leave a mangun-toting guy alone, no matter how out of place he looks, as long as he’s not clearly preparing for/engaging in nefarious behavior.
Sure, he has the consitutional right to own the thing, maybe you could even torture the 2nd amendment into meaning he has the right to carry it with him wherever he goes rather than simply to maintain ownership of it until such time as it becomes appropriate to protect himself from a tyrannical government. But I also think he has the right to be harassed as a suspicious character, or even to receive some firm interference intended to preempt a heinous action.
The height of ridiculous is to expect people to ignore what could very quickly turn into a lethal threat, especially after recent events have jammed this very threat into their consciousness.
Yes, yes it is. Can you imagine what type of commentary would result from the knowledge that every third person now carried an AR-15 around and nobody batted an eye?
"After a school was attacked by a gunman carrying a modified-to-be-as-close-to-illegal-while-maintaining-legal-status weapon, the urge to be afraid of this weapon suddenly evaporated. The cause has yet to be determined.
In other news, a barfight turned into a full-blown block war in downtown Philadelphia tonight as bar patrons attempted to defend themselves from a very drunk man who began shooting into the air, hitting people in the building above him. Details at 11."
