I'm sure cops really, really love open carry firearms laws, especially in states like Texas where stuff like this is becoming a more regular occurrence.
A demonstration by a pro-gun group in Ft. Worth, TX sent restaurant employees at a Jack in the Box location fleeing into the freezer as police responded to the scene thinking a robbery was in progress.
According to Dallas-Ft. Worth’s NBC Channel 5, Open Carry Texas protesters are irate that police treated them like criminals for staging a heavily armed protest without notifying authorities and without visible signs stating the purpose of the demonstration.
Sgt. Ray Bush of the Ft. Worth Police Department told Channel 5 that officers received a call Thursday night from employees of the restaurant who thought that the large group of heavily armed white men had come to rob them.
“They locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear the rifle-carrying men would rob them,” Bush said via email. “The demonstration had no signage that would have alerted anyone to their real purpose, and to our knowledge they did not attempt to contact anyone in the Fort Worth Police Department to advise us prior to the demonstration.”
And as any open carry advocate will tell you, this is the entire point of open carry laws: I can exercise my Second Amendment rights anywhere I choose to. And no, these wonderful patriots really see themselves as the aggrieved party here.
The department responded as it would to any armed robbery in progress, with multiple police cruisers and officers carrying tactical weapons. Demonstrators say that the aggressive response by law enforcement was unnecessary.
“I’m upset that that many officers had to arrive on the scene,” demonstrator Edwin Haros said. “I would estimate around 10 squad cars showed up, some with two per squad car. I believe we counted more than 15 officers showed up on scene.”
Haros is an Open Carry Texas member who believes it is his right to carry his Smith and Wesson semi-automatic rifle with him at all times and in all situations.
“We’re not breaking the laws,” Haros complained. “We’re not here to hurt anybody. We’re not trying to alarm anybody. We’re doing this because it’s our constitutional right.”
The constitution says I have the right to terrify the hell out of you with an armed group of people ready to use deadly force at a moment's notice in self-defense. Cool.
Exit questions: Would you feel safe at a fast food restaurant with your kids and family when a dozen visibly armed guys came in and sat down? Would your answer be the same if the armed men in question were all say, black or Latino?
Have a nice day.
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18 comments:
Blah blah blah. 45 states allow open carry of holstered handguns - happen all the time, a very non-eventful event. 30 states allow open carry of holstered handguns without permits. So should Texas. Learn more at OpenCarry.org.
One wonders what would have happened if the Jack in the Box employees had been armed - good guys with guns versus other good guys with guns?
Plus, why make it legal for street criminals to carry guns? If everyone has the right to carry weapons, the bad guys can wander around armed as well. I'd greatly prefer that only people with adequate training carry weapons near me.
Bonus "how guns make us safer" stuff: A 26-year-old San Francisco man was shot to death early Saturday when he went to a unit on the wrong floor of his apartment building after returning home from a night out.
Yeah, happens all the time.
Because we live in the 1870's, where bears might attack us.
A couple of weeks ago here in Oklahoma I went to McDonalds to get some breakfast for my kids , yeah I know that's a crime itself but there were about 10 overweight white people carrying firearms and no one said WTF. I looked them in the eye and shook my head and started to say something then I remembered stand your ground. Something is wrong here
Carry on!
You live in Kentucky, an open carry state. If you had a niece or daughter or female friend who was starting a second shift job and she asked your opinion on open carry for her protection, what would you tell her?
What if she had a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend who had tried to hurt her in the past?
Just because you irrationally fear firearms because you have no idea how to use them safely and responsibly doesn't mean the rest of us have to be as ignorant as you or Rebupanon or djchefron.
My suggestion to all of you is a proper gun safety course and to EDUCATE yourselves. A firearm is a tool that as its uses.
The problem isn't open carry of firearms - it's the unregulated open carry of firearms. My suggestion to you is to to support legislation requiring people to pass proper gun safety courses before being allowed to wander the streets with firearms.
It's the same reason we require people driving cars to be properly trained and licensed, rather than encouraging pedestrians to take driver safety classes: the danger comes from the person operating the dangerous piece of equipment, not the other people nearby.
For clarity: I have been trained in the safe and proper use of firearms. This included lectures on not carrying them around just for show. It's all about risk management - does the area where I'm going pose a sufficient safety risk that it outweighs the risk of carrying a firearm?
And in addition to RA's arguments that unlicensed, unregulated open carry goes against responsible firearm ownership, there's the very real question of open carry being a perfect example of white privilege. A dozen black men displaying their open carry fetishism like this would get a very, very different response from law enforcement than the men in the article.
I have problems with both.
Yeah, and look at all the people who shoot themselves or others accidentally. If you want to support a requirement that anyone carrying a firearm in public must be adequately trained in its safe use and storage, most of my concerns would be answered.
However, that isn't what Second Amendment absolutists ask for. They want to give everyone the ability to wander around in public with a loaded weapon - no questions asked. This means that if a bunch of Black Panthers (or Rancher Bundy supporters) stand around near a polling area carrying shotguns, the police have no probable cause to stop and talk to them.
I've seen quite a few irresponsible drivers operating their cars in ways that endanger themselves and others, despite rules requiring motor vehicle operators to demonstrate basic skills and maintain knowledge of the rules regarding safe vehicle operation. I can only imagine how these folks would be handling their loaded firearms in public, but I expect many of them would do so in ways that a firing range's safety officer would find strongly objectionable.
P.S.: The NSA already knows who virtually all the gun owners are, thanks to their data mining operations ... so does Google, and so do all the on-line ad companies using cookies to serve up ads to your computer. Seen any black helicopters with giant electromagnets swooping in to slurp up your guns yet? If not, the open-carry folks may want to re-think their reflexive opposition to requiring gun owners to be licensed before being allowed to carry dangerous weapons around in public.
P.P.S.: Don't try the "guns aren't dangerous" garbage, either - if guns aren't dangerous, why not carry marshmallows instead? If gun safety training reduces the danger, why not allow the government to require this training?
Agreed - but that's an equal protection argument. If it could be done safely, I'd like to see a collection of folks dressed in Che Guevara, Black Panther, young black man dressed in a hoodie, and/or Arab outfits exercise their Second Amendment rights at the next gathering of open carry advocates. Emphasis on "safely" - I expect the white open carry folks would try to "stand their ground."
Because that's the real agenda of the Second Amendment fanatics - they want to be able to legally use deadly force against anyone whom those folks find subjectively threatening. Hippies, environmentalists, trespassers, teens not dressed like Beaver Cleaver, panhandlers, homeless people... they want to be able to shoot and kill these folks legally.
We can argue the hypotheticals of what "might be" for all eternity, but as you Obamacare advocates like to remind us, "The time for debate is over".
The Second Amendment is the law of the land and will continue to be so for your lifetime, your children's, your grandchildren's, and so on.
If you had stopped with the first paragraph you might have a valid argument, but your second paragraph means I can safely dismiss you as another ignorant anti-gun fool.
If your lunatic delusion were anywhere close to the truth, it would have happened already. Tens of millions of people own firearms in this country and the means to an armed revolution have existed in this country for quite some time now.
For some reason it hasn't happened. That would mean that "Second Amendment fanatics" are really just law-abiding citizens who recognize that law enforcement begins with the citizens themselves.
What a fanatical concept, one that America was founded upon.
Moron.
Who said anything about revolution? I'm talking George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn. George Zimmerman saw a young black teen, subjectively decided that the teen was a threat - and the courts said Mr. Zimmerman was legally within his rights to shoot and kill an unarmed young black man who was walking home. (Michael Dunn's mistake was in continuing to shoot after the young black men playing a loud radio tried to escape his attack, making his claim of self-defense completely unbelievable.) Note, please, that the open-carry crowd think it was terrible that Mr. Dunn was convicted of any crime at all. I'd say this is strong evidence that they do, indeed want the ability to shoot and kill people that they subjectively perceive to be a threat, with no test as to whether the shooter's subjective belief was reasonable.
For that matter, we have the situation at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. A bunch of people engaged in armed resistance against federal government employees carrying out a court order. That sure sounds like armed rebellion to me.
Plus, I totally agree that the Supreme Court has spoken - there won't be gun-grabbers coming after your guns. Why, then continue to oppose laws intended to help ensure the "well-regulated" storage and use of firearms?
"That would mean that "Second Amendment fanatics" are really just law-abiding citizens who recognize that law enforcement begins with the citizens themselves."
In other words, lynch mobs and vigilantes. Sounds to me as though you admit that you want to be able to kill people whom you find subjectively threatening (they're law-breakers, after all) - but you'd prefer to phrase it in more positive terms.
I learned during 20 years of living in NYC, don't provoke the crazy people. Especially the ones with guns. They will use any excuse to gun you down. Just get away from them as fast as you can.
"they want to be able to shoot and kill these folks legally."
Exactly! And that assertion is proven by the SYG cases we've seen so far. In some places prosecutors automatically drop all charges when a killer invokes the SYG law. Then there's the guy that eagerly fired into a car bull of black kids because he didn't like their music. He was a acquitted on the murder, but found guilty on the attempted murder. The moral of that story is that he should have reloaded as many times as it took to make sure ALL those non-white kids were dead because then he would have walked scott-free.
RepubAnon is 100% correct. Those that push SYA and CCW are eager to gun people down for any reason they can think up and are making sure the law lets them get away with it.
Simply using a gun holster is not enough to carry a gun safety. It is also important to know gun safety rule and information about conceal carry. Conceal carry classes is very useful to learn all rule and techniques related to guns.
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MA firearms license.
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