I first started shooting when I was 8 years old. I was hunting when I was 14. As an infantryman in the PPCLI, I’ve fired many types of weapons, from pistols, AK’s, FN’s, assorted sub-machine guns, as well as being a certified machine gunner. So, please don’t act like you know me or even have a grasp of where I’m coming from. The army doesn’t teach people to blindly fall to the ground. It depends on where you are and what you are doing. The army doesn’t want automatons. It wants people who can think. At least the Canadian army did.
The ISSUE I have is with some guy going to a bar and drinking while carrying a firearm. AD clarified he wasn’t drinking. It wasn’t clear in his OP if he was. Because to me safety if paramount. Guns aren’t toys, no way, no how. And if you read my first post you’ll see that I’m pretty much of the variety that if you point a weapon at someone in fun then I won’t cry if you get your fool head blown off for doing it. So, I don’t have anything against people carrying guns. I do have something against idiots carrying guns. And posers like you who think they’re Dirty Harry shouldn’t be allowed near them.
The sad part is he only acts like it. At least in this thread he is anyways.
I don’t either, but since this thread is about carrying a weapon in public, and you referred to Spector as carrying around a gun, I’m not sure of the relevance.
No, that wasn’t carrying a weapon. Carrying a weapon refers to public possession, not private (in home) possession. If **Doors **had been relating something that had happened in his foyer, this would be an entirely different thread.
FTR, Uzi, I never addressed Doors’ evasive action. I said I agreed that cops oughtn’t be treating weapons as toys. As for me being a poser (I’ve always favored the poseur spelling), you stamped your little foot and sobbed
Just guessing here, but I imagine she’s referring to the post where you say, “this fake PTSD act on Doors’ part is making me roll my eyes out of my head.” Even if you were sincerely accusing Doors of being a hoaxer, it could reasonably be read as “making light” of PTSD. Especially by, y’know, his wife.
It’s also far better to keep a level head, and not react inappropriately to the actions of others. When those reactions involve a firearm, there is a real chance that the situation will escalate from being safe, to being very dangerous. Dangerous for Doors, and dangerous for people around him. Maybe the next time he overreacts, you’ll get that visit from the insurance man, or a visit from the police, taking him away for a while.
What do you think is more likely:
Some random nobody walks into a bar with a laser sighted pistol and starts waving it around intending to blast someone.
A cop (or pistol packing barfly) sees someone armed with a pistol dive on the floor of the bar, grabbing at his weapon and makes a really, really shitty decision.
And you are missing the part where it says “intended to cause”. It is the intent of the actor not the feeling of the actee. Just because he thought there might be a gun isn’t enough. Sorry.
ETA the quote from previous post so you don’t have to go back to page 4.
The intention of the actor is a question of fact. My exact words were: an argument could be made. We don’t know the intent of the wielder, but there are grounds for making a case.
My point to you was only that the object does not have to be capable of causing “serious injury” as defined under PA law for it to amount to an assault charge.
Wait, so a person with a weapon shouldn’t defend themselves against a person with a weapon because another person with a weapon might see the second person’s weapon and decide to try and defend other people, who may or may not have weapons and who may or may not have been endangered by the second person with a weapon, with his weapon? What about the person who’s defending the weaponless from the person with the weapon who’s defending himself against a weapon with his weapon?
Blimey. Heaven forfend there is a fourth person with a weapon in the bar - I think we’d need a whole new field of mathematics.
A person shouldn’t overreact to an event while carrying a sidearm.
Second, if you’re carrying a weapon, and choose to defend yourself from a perceived threat, you should realize that there is a chance that something really bad is going to happen. Not all perceived threats are real threats, and it would be a shame if something bad happened because of a threat that didn’t exist.
MsRobyn was thrilled that Doors had such an extreme reaction to a laser dot, and didn’t seem to appreciate that his diving on the floor while reaching for his gun could have gotten him looking down the barrel of that cop’s gun. That happens, you’re one dropped beer bottle away from a shooting.
A potential shame, too, if you don’t react and a threat does exist, which of course it did.
Anyway, this thing is just going in circles now. I’m off to ponder my proposed scheme of N-dimensional weaponomics topologies. How to account for the light beer factor, though; that’s the key.
Was his reaction to the threat correct for the actual nature of the threat? The actual nature of the threat being a couple of cops dorking around with a taser.
I can only assume that the OP had a good reason to carry his weapon to the bar. As for Phil Spector:
I think that if you carry a weapon to a recording studio, that’s carrying it in public. Especially if you use it in a business transaction.
I suppose, however, if Spector hadn’t had a firearm, and Clarkson had been found strangled or hit over the head with a blunt object, the jury wouldn’t have come to a mistrial the first time. But Spector seems to prefer firearms.
And I don’t think the OP over-reacted, because he obviously felt threatened.