You clearly think, then, that anyone who carries a weapon is mentally unhinged.
If someone is a regular carrier of a firearm, concealed or otherwise, he or she will carry it everywhere. There’s nothing about a “suburban toddler soccer game” that somehow invalidates that person’s decision to keep themselves armed at all times. For someone who carries a pistol, that pistol is part of their daily routine of items carried or worn on the body, just like a wallet, a watch or a medallion of St. Christopher. Someone who believes in the concept of carrying a firearm believes that it might be needed at any time; that includes a kid’s soccer game. Let me ask you, if there was an off-duty cop who was carrying his pistol at his kid’s soccer game, would you feel the same way? Is that cop “unhinged?” Or does his training as a police officer give him the right to carry that pistol that an ordinary citizen doesn’t have, in your mind - even if the cop in question is a lazy slob who practices with his sidearm at the range twice a year, and the ordinary citizen is a USMC pistol marksmanship champion?
See where I’m going with this?
A gun, as carried, is an accessory. That accessory goes everywhere with you. This concept is not new at all; it’s only in recent years that guns or weapons of any kind have been so demonized and so vilified that everyone is socially conditioned to piss his pants at the sight of one. Have a look at any painting of nobles from the 16th or 17th century, for instance. Guys standing around watching a tennis game will have swords at their sides. Men congregating at the court of Queen Elizabeth will have swords at their sides. Any respectable man during the time of Shakespeare, Tycho, Michelangelo, Galileo, or Cervantes would have a sword at his side. Are all of the men in this painting “unhinged?” Is this man “unhinged?”
There is something to be said, admittedly, for acknowledging that cultural norms have shifted. Not that they’ve shifted for the better, or that it’s wrong to try to shift them back, but that open carrying of any weaponry in these times is NOT the norm and risks snap negative judgments or harassment.
I certainly agree that it is provocative and that it risks snap judgments. However, snap judgments should be avoided. I just think that people should spend a few minutes and think about why someone might carry a weapon, think about that person’s reasons and motivation and not just write him or her off as “unhinged” and worthy of scorn.
Yes, but we’re no longer living in Davy Crockett Days and most of us manage to get through our daily lives without having to shoot a b’ar. A child’s sporting event is not the socially acceptable place to be walking around with a loaded weapon. People get really really excited about their kid’s sporting matches and even the best of 'em can lose their cool. There’s a tacit social agreement that we’re not going to bring loaded weapons into that environment–whether you’re an off-duty cop or a Secret Service sharpshooter. You can’t bring your gun into the local library or the school either.
While I support your (& my) right to own guns, I think if you can’t acknowledge that bringing a weapon to a kids’ soccer game is a no-no on quite a few levels, you’re not being intellectually honest. There’s a time and place for everything–do you strap on your sidearm under your tuxedo at your wedding? How about tucking that derringer into your daughter’s cleavage as she’s heading out the door to the prom? What’s the proper weapon to wear in church?
Rights still have responsibilities attached. Carrying a handgun at a sports event being played by preschoolers is fucking irresponsible by any goddamned definition you care to mention.
No, but I think it’s a safe bet that someone who feels the need to open carry AT A MOTHERFUCKING YOUTH SOCCER GAME in suburban America probably doesn’t have the greatest critical thinking skills on Earth.
I think it’s a social taboo. However, I don’t think people who break social taboos deserve to be scorned, or mocked after death! You have every right to do so, just as the woman here had every right to carry that handgun with her even if it made people uncomfortable. There are places in America where the presence of a black person or a gay person would make others extremely uncomfortable. A black person who sat down at a white lunch counter in the 1960s made people very, very uncomfortable. Maybe that man just wanted to eat lunch, or maybe he was trying to make a statement about his civil rights. But either way, he didn’t deserve scorn. And maybe the racists who would object to his being there don’t deserve scorn either, because they were, after all, products of their society - just like the people who would freak out at the sight of a gun are products of their society.
Nobody on either side is 100% right or 100% wrong. But what I am reacting to here is the characterization of the gun-carrier as being “unhinged.” This is a baseless accusation.
Quantify for me why it is so, please. If it’s in a safety locking holster so a specific technique is required to draw it, it’s a safe and well-maintained gun that the owner wears 100% of the time, and the owner is properly trained in responsible firearms use and safety.
If a person attracts such danger as to reasonably require a handgun at a children’s soccer match, then for the sake of the children, that person should not attend that match.
If that was the only issue I’d agree with you, but you have no idea where or what said gun owner is doing before or after the match, not to mention the fact that really, it’s not about the specific odds. The average gun owner wears a gun either almost never or almost always, depending on their particular preference for gun ownership–they are not thinking “holy shit I’m in danger all the time I better have my gun” but “given I know how to use this tool safely and effectively, it’s probably safer for me in general to have it than to not have it regardless of the specific risk of needing it during today’s activities, however low.”
It’s like some other poster here who got yelled at for carrying their (concealed) gun into places they were running errands in while on the way to/from the pistol range.
What the hell kind of schedule do you keep if you go straight from the firing range to your toddler’s soccer game in a typical suburb without taking a couple minutes to put the gun in a closet or a safe or even the fucking glove compartment of your car?
Damn, of all the crosses to nail yourself to, why THIS one? The idea she viewed that gun merely as a tool is pure conjecture. For my part, I have one of those Leatherman fold up multitools, but I don’t carry it everywhere I go because there may or not be a risk of my needing to tighten a bolt or sand something down with a file at some point in my day.
To my fellow 2A supporters: Please leave this thread and don’t come back. It was an exercise in trollery from the first post. All the usual chorus members are here from the other side, saying nothing new, and as insulting as ever. They aren’t going to change their minds any more than we will change ours. Further, our side is winning in the legal and political arena, and has been winning for a while now. This bunch constitutes nothing but a loud minority of the willfully ignorant.
Go shooting. Go for a walk. Take a nap. Go to one of the other fora. Anything else is a better use of your time and energy than this.
(Even in colloquial speech, “guns” never means “fists”–it means “muscles,” usually biceps.)
I see you’re enough of a coward to keep making the same empty Internet Threats, albeit in a backhanded way, even after being warned off of it. Nice.
I talked to the Queen of England this afternoon, and she thinks you’re a dick. True story. Also, Jesus hates you.
I have no problem with BDSM. But I think that a couple that acts out a rape fantasy in a public area and then doesn’t understand why people call the cops is probably mentally unhinged.
Dude, even Crafter_Man agreed that openly carrying a firearm at a kid’s soccer game is irresponsible, and he’s a fucking militiaman. You’re not going to win this argument.
To have some words? Bullshit. Speaking of internet cowards, why aren’t you man enough to apologize for what you actually meant? I’m pretty sure we are all clear about what “I’ll feed your own words, one tooth at a time” means. And why if it’s just words you’re offering, can’t you do it here?
Curious, the time you pointed a gun at someone - were they armed?
What sort of violent person imagines that disagreeing with someone is grounds to kill them? It’s so odd that the gun nuts call the gun owners scary, when it’s always the gun nuts that talk about shooting someone over a parking space or dueling someone in the street for an imagined insult.
Is the reason gun nuts generally don’t own guns because they consider themselves likely to do these sorts of things?
Go check out the spare tire analogy higher in the thread.
Even though I have had multiple cars and driven hundreds of thousands of miles, I have needed my spare tire exactly once. On the one hand, it’s a demonstrably rare event that I need a spare tire. On the other hand, in those rare events where I need a spare tire, I need a spare tire. So, despite the rarity of the necessitating circumstance, I drive around with a spare tire all the time.
You don’t say “Well, how likely is it that I’ll get a flat at a motherfucking youth soccer game? It’s not like I’m driving over rusty nails and broken glass to get there.” You take the spare tire. You might view the fact that there are children present as even more of a reason not to take the chance of being caught unprepared.
There’s some kind of spectrum of probability from “almost certainly going to come in handy most of the time” – like, I should probably have my wallet on me even if I’m just going to visit somebody – all the way to “no fucking way is this shit necessary,” and yes, both changing a flat tire and shooting a rapist or a kidnapper or a werewolf or a teenager lie somewhere on that continuum. So technically, yes, having a firearm on your hip is analogous, very strictly speaking, to having a spare tire in your car. Both provide for relief from unpleasant eventualities that are unlikely but possible.
The thing is, it’s also possible that I’ll be pursued not by a single frothing anarchist with a flamethrower, but three of them. Then I’ll need at least an automatic. Or a whole carload of them. In that case, I might need something a bit more heavy duty; maybe some kind of rocket launcher mounted on the roof, or just a cache of grenades, maybe. Sure, it probably won’t happen, but it could. Or fuck, what if they have a helicopter? Even less likely, but you know what the Boy Scouts say. They say carry a god damned RPG within arms’ length at all times in case the Commies spring the trap, that’s what they say.
Now, you might say “hey, that’s pretty fucking stupid. In fact, it’s downright insane. The odds that you’ll ever need to blow a bunch of renegade cyborgs out of the downtown skyline in late afternoon rush hour are nearly zero, especially in comparison to the odds that you’ll blow the fucking bejesus out of a school bus for cutting you off twice in a row, because you’re exactly the kind of paranoid and unstable whackjob to create exactly that kind of mayhem, as evidenced by the fact that you’re carrying high powered fucking weapons around with you all the fucking time, you demented, dangerous fuck.”
