# I have a rock-solid solution for those who want stricter gun control laws... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 27, 2019, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590 "2019-05-27T09:06:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/1 "2019-05-27T09:06:54Z")
…and it’s been done before and I’ve mentioned it here on a thread or two with general agreement: encourage minorities to legally open-carry. I can’t think of a greater example of modern racism in our society than knowing what would happen to a minority member exercising their god-given right to walk around with an exposed gun compared to a white guy. A few years ago, coming home after work, I drove into my neighborhood and saw a guy and a lady walking a tiny dog… completely ordinary, but the guy had a rifle slung over his shoulder. I couldn’t help but think that if this family was black and some homeowner called the cops, this guy would end up dead. But a white guy? He’s just gun nut. No biggie. He’s not out to hurt anyone. A few viral photos of minorities in public places carrying guns would scare the living shit out of pro-gun people. This happened in California when the Black Panthers entered a courthouse armed. Those laws were changed REALLY quick. I’m not actually a fan of gun control laws, mainly because I think the cat is already out of the bag, or that we should always have the right to defend ourselves, but also because there are more important hills to die on if I want to live in a more liberal society. But I do think if anyone was serious about changing the laws, promoting open carry for _everyone_ would be the quickest way to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Unreconstructed\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/76d3ee/32.png) [@Unreconstructed\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unreconstructed_Man)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/2 "2019-05-27T10:34:58Z")
No offence, but I think that’s such a terrible idea - for so many reasons - that I don’t even know where to start arguing against it. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/3 "2019-05-27T10:38:48Z")
This is a meme that’s been floating around on Facebook for years. Sadly, I think it would work, but I hate to think about how many black people would die in the process. Heck, they’re already getting killed by the police with out guns. Just imagine how many more would get shot WITH guns. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/4 "2019-05-27T11:12:07Z")
I’m thinking people who feel comfy open carrying aren’t in team gun control, by and large. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/5 "2019-05-27T12:10:22Z")
So…let’s get a lot of people of colour killed, so white folk can get the gun controls they desire? I’m all for better gun laws but that’s a pretty silly suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/6 "2019-05-27T13:03:34Z")
I’m not volunteering to be the gun-welding black person. [It doesn’t work out very well.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III) ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/7 "2019-05-27T13:08:51Z")
Just use the right grade of goggles and you should be okay 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Covfefe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Covfefe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covfefe)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/8 "2019-05-27T13:20:19Z")
At most it might cause thinking twice on open carry laws. This would do little else to affect gun control. > [@nate](#): > > But I do think if anyone was serious about changing the laws, promoting open carry for _everyone_ would be the quickest way to do it. [The ones I see who already promote this are staunch 2nd Amendment activists.](https://www.youtube.com/user/TrashcanMan76/search?query=open+carry) You think this guy is sabotaging his own cause by mingling with inner city blacks, educating them on open carry laws as well as other information on firearms? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/9 "2019-05-27T14:22:17Z")
I agree that the American gun sanity toothpaste has been squoze out of the tube and ain’t going back any time soon. But I think I’d support a ban on concealed carry. If you’re carrying a handgun, don’t be shy about it! ---
**Author:** ![Aquadementia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aquadementia/32/555_2.png) [@Aquadementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aquadementia)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/10 "2019-05-27T14:58:20Z")
So, buy a gun, go on (looking it up) [Methoxsalen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me)? ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/11 "2019-05-27T15:10:25Z")
I’m assuming minorities right now can open carry in states or municipalities where it’s legal. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/12 "2019-05-27T16:06:51Z")
Well, _groups_ of armed minorities. I always wondered: it’s one thing when the police surround a single man who doesn’t have a gun and shout at him. Or he does have a gun, but isn’t reaching for it, and he just wants to live. But the police give impossible, contradictory commands or just start shooting no matter what. But what if there’s 10 men armed with rifles, in some militia group, and only 5 police armed with handguns? And one of the men needs to be arrested. Somehow I suspect they are real polite. _Now_ the police try to defuse the situation, they probably politely tell the man and his buddies he needs to come with them in a polite, civilized manner without pulling their handguns. But even if they don’t - if they use their usual tactics - and the man puts his hands up in the air and then gets shot dead after the police tell him to pull out his wallet - what now? His buddies just witnesses a wrongful police shooting. And instead of being helpless bystanders, they all have rifles. I wonder how this works legally. There are various self defense laws in states that allow open carry, laws authorizing deadly force to prevent a felony, and so on. A wrongful police shooting you just saw happen sounds like it would qualify… ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/13 "2019-05-27T16:13:36Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Well, _groups_ of armed minorities. > > I always wondered: it’s one thing when the police surround a single man who doesn’t have a gun and shout at him. Or he does have a gun, but isn’t reaching for it, and he just wants to live. But the police give impossible, contradictory commands or just start shooting no matter what. > > But what if there’s 10 men armed with rifles, in some militia group, and only 5 police armed with handguns? And one of the men needs to be arrested. > > Somehow I suspect they are real polite. _Now_ the police try to defuse the situation, they probably politely tell the man and his buddies he needs to come with them in a polite, civilized manner without pulling their handguns. [The police regroup and then decide to drop a big bomb on them. And then that’s exactly what they do.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE) And then the average American hear about it, mutters “That’s fucked up, man” and goes back to watching reruns of the “The Game of Thrones”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/14 "2019-05-27T16:27:11Z")
Yup. Modern gun-rights culture has already got a huge amount of legacy racism baked into it. In fact, traditional racist notions of scary black men with guns are one of the main drivers perpetuating modern gun-rights culture. In our cultural stereotypes, black men with guns are coded “scary criminals” while white men with guns are coded “salt-of-the-earth common-man patriotic defenders”. (Unless the white men with guns are getting out of shiny black vehicles, in which case they’re coded “mobsters” or “international-villain henchmen”, or are standing by themselves in a crowd and looking angry, in which case they’re coded “mass shooters”.) Encouraging more black men to have guns will not change those stereotypes, nor will it promote more reasonable gun-control laws. It will just provide more fuel for the apocalyptic fantasies that gun-rights culture already feeds on. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/15 "2019-05-27T16:31:27Z")
You don’t even have a rock. Your “solution”, if not deliberately set up to cause harm to others, will certainly end with that happening. Would you happen to have any solutions that involve you personally doing anything that risky? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/16 "2019-05-27T16:57:10Z")
Funny that your notion of “evidence” for racism is a hypothetical about what would happen to a black person who practices open carry. To actually be evidence it would have to have actually happened, and then to have found to happen at a greater rate than white people. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/17 "2019-05-27T17:03:31Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Funny that your notion of “evidence” for racism is a hypothetical Um, AFAICT the OP nowhere claimed that his hypothetical was any kind of “evidence” for anything. The post appears to be simply a description of the OP’s personal opinion, along with the remark in passing that some other people share this opinion. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/18 "2019-05-27T17:03:49Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You don’t even have a rock. > Your “solution”, if not deliberately set up to cause harm to others, will certainly end with that happening. Would you happen to have any solutions that involve you personally doing anything that risky? Yeah, it really does sound like the OP is saying “Why don’t we get the blacks to stick their necks out for all of our benefit? What’s the worst that can happen?” I don’t think he intended this sentiment, but that’s how it comes across. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/19 "2019-05-27T17:26:56Z")
Yeah. I can remember as a kid seeing [Black Panthers posters etc.](https://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/collections/exhibits/arch/1969/1969-4.html) that did convey a message that gun ownership was empowering for black people, even though empirically speaking it was pretty dangerous. That message did in fact [contribute to white conservatives’ passing gun control laws](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/): > [@](#): > > In [Panthers founders Huey] Newton and [Bobby] Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police. […] > > Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. “Article number two of the constitutional amendments,” Malcolm X argued, “provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.” […] > > Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers’ police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. […] > > Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” […] > > The fear inspired by black people with guns also led the United States Congress to consider new gun restrictions, after the summer of 1967 brought what the historian Harvard Sitkoff called the “most intense and destructive wave of racial violence the nation had ever witnessed.” […] > > Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it. > > Together, these laws greatly expanded the federal licensing system for gun dealers and clarified which people—including anyone previously convicted of a felony, the mentally ill, illegal-drug users, and minors—were not allowed to own firearms. More controversially, the laws restricted importation of “Saturday Night Specials”—the small, cheap, poor-quality handguns so named by Detroit police for their association with urban crime, which spiked on weekends. Because these inexpensive pistols were popular in minority communities, one critic said the new federal gun legislation “was passed not to control guns but to control blacks.” I very much doubt that today’s white gun-rights conservatives would respond to increased black gun ownership and carry by supporting gun-control laws. Most of them would probably advocate other kinds of crackdowns and enhanced police militarization instead. (Some of them, of course, aren’t personally racist against blacks, but all of them are living amidst the ubiquitous cultural stereotypes about the assumed scary criminality of black men with guns.) ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590/20 "2019-05-27T17:38:50Z")
If black people went around openly carrying guns as the norm, the response of many white gun owners would probably be to try to engineer some law whereby blacks are restricted from guns but whites are not. They are not likely to embrace some solution of “Okay, then NOBODY gets to keep or carry guns.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-rock-solid-solution-for-those-who-want-stricter-gun-control-laws/834590.md?page=2)