Posted on 12/31/2010 4:40:10 AM PST by marktwain
“Sitting down for dinner at any Texan diner, in my experience, often involves guns,” Rachel Stewart of the Tarnaki Daily News (New Zealand) informs her readers.
I can't recall the exact number of times I have eaten a meal in the immediate company of a man, or men, with shooters on their hips in plain view. For me, I am always equal parts spellbound and queasy.
Spellbound because there is something so fundamentally cowboy and western about it. Guns, freedom, country music and the Second Amendment. It is Texas after all. Yeeha!
Try to recall the exact number, Ms. Stewart. Because funny thing about Texas, besides that “Yeeha!” stereotype you ridicule them with. From Open Carry.org:
Texas is not a traditional open carry state. They also do not allow open carry, or even printing, by those who have a concealed carry permit.
And from NRA-ILA’s “Firearms Laws for Texas”:
It is unlawful to intentionally, knowingly or recklessly carry on or about one’s person a handgun in a motor vehicle if the handgun is in plain view…
It’s true that gun rights advocates are pushing for open carry reforms, and a discussion from last month on the OpenCarry.org forum tells us of a pledge to sponsor a bill in the upcoming session.
But sorry, aside from the "I can't recall" part, your story simply doesn’t wash.
So which is it, Ms. Stewart? Do you habitually frequent establishments populated by brazen armed lawbreakers, where the proprietors and customers are oblivious to Texas law and violate it openly, and with impunity? Or is your hoplophobia, your “queasiness” at the mere thought of armed citizens so deeply rooted that you’ve become delusional, unable to distinguish your “spellbound” hallucinations from reality?
Or maybe you’re just…uh…making it all up, so secure in your snotty sophistication over the “Yeeha!” rubes, and so sure of the ignorance of anyone who would give credence to the drivel you churn out that you think you can feed them anything and they’ll swallow it? And they’ll all think you a clever girl because of your talent for wittily stringing words—even if they are demonstrably untrue…?
To paraphrase the title of your hit piece, Ms. Stewart, even gals not toting guns need manners. And even writers of opinion pieces, as opposed to “straight news,” have a basic ethical obligation to form their arguments around the truth. But you go right on being “comfortable” with New Zealand citizen disarmament edicts, and with viewing human rights as privileges to be doled out by parental masters to their childlike charges. And you can even go on thinking New Zealand “women are made of sterner stuff” than Americans.
Evidently unlike you, I don’t judge entire groups based on generalities, but I am proud to know a few individual women who can do a lot better than a fire extinguisher when it comes to self defense (and I don’t suppose the fact that the chamber where the Clay incident you cite took place was a government-enforced “No Guns” zone violated by a “prohibited person” enters into your spellbound thinking?).
And the other good thing about these women I know: They don’t lie.
They’re made of sterner stuff than that.
Yeeha!
The whole philosophy of the left is based on lies.
I do not believe govt. has the right to tell me what where or in which manner I can or should carry.
that being said, I believe concealed carry is the way to go. In my opinion (and we all know opinions are like) open carry in some cases could tend to provoke ‘arguments’ amongst dimwits.
>that being said, I believe concealed carry is the way to go. In my opinion (and we all know opinions are like) open carry in some cases could tend to provoke ‘arguments’ amongst dimwits.
I also favor concealed for a couple reasons. While I agree that we should be able to open carry in principle, there are more benefits to concealed carry. Concealed carry, by nature of it being concealed, has a greater effect on crime deterrence because once it is known to be in effect, the criminals don’t know who is armed, so that can act to protect the unarmed. The other reason is the one about dimwits you mention.
/johnny
>The trouble with that line of reasoning is that concealed carry makes a person indistinguishable from the sheep; a soft target. It makes little sense to believe that the thought that a person may have a gun will deter a criminal, but the knowledge that a person does have a gun (through OC) will embolden the perpetrator. In reality, that just does not happen.
You are reading in extra things into my point and making rather odd assumptions.
Sure, a given instance of open carry tells the predator that a particular target is going to be tricky. Yes, that protects the person with the visible gun. Good for him.
Concealed carry takes a bit longer to get the deterrent effect going, but once it is well known among the criminal element that a lot of civilians are carrying concealed, there becomes a general caution in attacks on people who might be armed.
If you cared to check out the statistics on this, CCW laws generally result in a shift in the types of crimes committed. Things like muggings and rapes go down, and property crimes increase somewhat as criminals shift away from targets which might be able to defend themselves. Also the general level of crime will go down as well.
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