The recent exploits of members of the group Open Carry Texas carrying massive guns around in public places and into restaurants and other business venues, and the reaction to it, has been a good example of how rubbing your rights into other people’s faces may not always be in your best interest. The best way to support the right of free speech may not be to stand on a street corner and talk to every person who passes by. Instead of being impressed by your commitment to upholding free speech, they are more likely to think you are a crazy person.
Bill Maher had a pretty funny monologue on the issue.
rather amusing that these twits are considered as nuts as their compatriots who scream bible nonsense from street corners.
As my husband has said “I have never been so fearful to need either a god or a gun.”
I really want to see a bunch of folks parading into restaurants carrying rubber band rifles.
It would be interesting to see the response if openly armed openly gay people walked into some of the more restaurants with bigoted owners. Which prejudice would win?
It’s just another way for AWMs to assert their masculinity in public. Because without the guns, no one would would know they were men at all.
@3: Better yet, black guys with berets walking into Cracker Barrel.
@5, my guess is the police would bomb the whole block. It happened before.
I live in Austin, TX and was recently perusing the magazine rack at the supermarket (HEB). I counted no less than 15 gun magazines. Think about that — 15 magazines (and I’m sure more) published every month, and there is demand enough to keep them all afloat.
Sure, there are a lot of running magazines, and lots of guitar magazines, and lots of fashion magazines, but the thing is that those are things which are lifestyles. Apparently owning a gun for a lot of people isn’t simply an issue of safety — for them it is a central to their identity as training for a triathlon is to a triathlete.
IMHO a lot of this gun fanaticism comes down tot eh fact that a lot of talking heads on the right, and lunatic fringe have made a steady drumbeat of asserting, entirely without credible evidence, that this or that Democrat is going to grab their guns or ammunition. Ay time you get an idea that the authorities don’t want you to do something a young man’s head they are going to go out of their way to do it. Defiance, particularly when it is unlikely to actually get them killed or hurt, is the posture of youth.
So hundreds of extra guns, and millions of rounds of extra ammunition get sold. So much that there has been shortages, which causes more panic, and inevitably, price gouging. Ammunition which sold for two cents a round is being sold for that same two cents a round by the manufacturer, snapped up by bulk buyers, and sold on E-bay for five cents a round. A few people openly admit that they make considerable sums reselling ammunition. A very few admit That they post baseless accusations of government plans to limit ammunition supplies frequently to gun forms to help create more panic so they can keep making those profits.
Since Obama has been in office gun and ammunition sales have been at record highs. There was a big boost when Clinton was in office. Irony is that there is a limit. Neither guns nor ammunition are free and storage isn’t simple considering that thieves love to steal guns. These people need Hillary Clinton, or another Democrat to win. Because they need the panic to continue. When you pack twenty years of normal purchase rates into eight years you are facing the strong possibility a market collapse.
If a Republican gets into office a whole lot of gun nuts are going to smell the coffee and realize that they have massively over-purchased buying guns and that they really need cash. With everyone selling at once prices will plummet and there may be a few years when gun and ammunition manufacturers can’t sell their products and make a profit. How long can they hang on without going out of business?
Of course, irony of ironies, if any of them do go out of business these boys are all going to blame Obama and his spooky ability to play chess in eight dimensions and trick them into defeating themselves.